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Letters
   

  August 7, 2003
  By David Joachim and Brad Shimmin


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This Edition: Top 11 Signs your co-worker Thinks He's Neo; Godzilla in Space!; and Running of the Bull.



Top 11 Signs your co-worker Thinks He's Neo
1) Refers to IT manager as "the Operator"

10) Asks to trade in his fancy VoIP phone for a rotary dial unit

9) Submits "discuss how deep the rabbit hole goes" as topic for all meeting agendas

8) Says, "That's an old neural data port. It's not a hickey!"

7) Refers to the network as the "Zion Mainframe"

6) Still wears the T-shirt from the 2000 BrainShare conference that says, "I took the red pill"

5) Keeps trying to plug a Cat 5 cable into the back of his head

4) Sets up a "test" server that only tests the XMatrix screensaver

3) Can read PDF file print codes

2) Adds a cookie recipe to the Oracle database, insisting, "You'll feel just fine by the time you finish eating them"

1) Suggests using an electromagnetic pulse to deal with a virus infection

Thanks to Jim Cobb, Drew Decker, Jim FritzHuspen, Patrick Kingsley, Andre Kruger, Dave Newman, Clifford Osburn, Ted A. Richart, Henry Rohlfs, Peter Scott and Tony Tiongson for their submissions. Follow the white rabbit to our complete set of reader submissions.



Godzilla in Space!



Godzillameter

click to enlarge

When NASA sends astronauts into space, accuracy counts. Orbits are measured in cycles, speed in kilometers per second and altitude in miles. But a status report from astronaut Edward T. Lu, the International Space Station's science officer, recently introduced another, highly inventive measurement: the Godzillameter.

According to Lu, "This is a screenshot of the computer program we use to tell where we are. The places labeled 'EOS' are locations that scientists have requested photos of. Godzilla is shown for scale."

We are now assessing the Godzillameter's ability to represent Web transaction latency.





Running of the Bull



Bullfighter

click to enlarge

When Deloitte Consulting released its Bullfighter software last month, it was hoping the program would help reduce marketspeak by scanning documents for phrases like "value-based paradigm shift" and "repurposeable, leading edge thoughtware."

We're an inquisitive bunch here at Network Computing, so we decided to put the no-bull software to the test, comparing multiproduct reviews from our editors with those of our competitor, Network World. Here are our preliminary findings:

The Bull Composite Index measures the number of bull terms and their frequency, resulting in a low, medium or high factor of bull. The higher the score, the better.

Of course, given our extensive traction gained from cumulative decades of interpersonal content normalization coupled with a strong commitment to data hygiene, we are not surprised at the level of multislacking, negative-impact verbifications in use at the competition. Simply shameful.

Download Bullfighter here





Find more Last Mile items and submit your entries for upcoming issues at www.nwc.com/go/lmile.html.





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