It’s been long  enough out of the original Napster era and RIAA filing extravaganzas that we can revisit this and see if there has been change.  In fact, there’s probably even room to take it a step further away from even acquiring music at all.  Some people may rely solely on places like last.fm, pandora, satellite radio, and grooveshark for their music needs.  Who needs to spend any money at all?

[poll ID=14]

A practical use for LEGO in the data representation arena. Colors are used to show countries and adding the to the depth of the cartogram to show emigration and immigration to countries. See, I can do useful things with LEGO too!
http://infographicsnews.blogspot.com/2011/02/cartogram-done-in-real-3d.html

Beware the women who wears leopard, cheetah, or tiger print.  As of this writing, zebra print remains a mystery.

This post was going to start off as a bit of a stupid people rant, but a few people redeemed it from frustration and dragged it into entertaining.  Possibly, the sheer ridiculousness of the entire thing brought it to the ‘funny’ category too.

Yesterday, I got this email:

From: Katlyn Fergus
Sent: July 7, 2011 5:40 PM
To: pnc_ach (pnc_ach@mail.rmu.edu)
Subject: Activation code

I have not received my activation code?

Thanks

Katie Fergus

My initial reaction was, “is this some sort of phishing scam?” Then I looked at the To line, and that means that either I’m somehow BCC’d on this email or that someone has my Robert Morris (rmu.edu) email on a stupid group email distribution. Sadly, it was the latter, and what ensued was ~120 reply all circle of choas and mayhem. So many Hall’s rules of Social Order were broken.  It didn’t stop until 7:01 PM.

0 replies from Katie Fergus

3 men asking if there are any single ladies

1 man asking if there are any single men

9 People replying “stop replying all!”

3 people replying more than once to “stop replying all!!”

31 people replying all requesting to be removed from the email list.

2 people replying all requesting to be kept on because they liked getting all the emails

18 people simply stating they were confused, not sure why they were getting the email(s), or asking why they were getting the email(s)

4 People placing (undeserved) blame on PNC and/or Katie Fergus

8 “IT Guys” explaining (or attempting to explain) what was going on and what needed to happen to fix it for everyone

2 Actual RMU IT guys sending the same exact message explaining what the problem was and that it would be fixed soon.

5 People replying with reference to needing more activation codes, getting Katie her activation code, or saying they don’t need any activation codes.

1 Suggestion that you should have to pass an I.Q. test to gain access to the reply all button  (I wish this had a facebook like button)

3 “Shout outs” to friends or people on the email distribution

1 porn site registration confirmation email to pnc_ach@mail.rmu.edu

Some of the funnier replies:

WAIT!  EVERYONE STOP FOR A SECOND!

People still use blackberries?!

We must have the activation code

RMU SUCKS!

Poop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUZUImChHJE (I thought for sure this would have been a Rick Roll)

I like turtles 😀

Let’s talk about the octothorp.  What is it?  It’s what you might call the hash symbol, or the pound sign, or the number key.

#

Kallie had read one of my twitter updates one day, and i tagged something at the end of it, and as she repeated it out loud to me she said “number”.  I laughed.

To be clear, the octothorp is different from the sharp symbol found in music (♯).  I’m not sure what that one is called…

“Veritas odium parit”

-Terence

(Tranlated from Latin “Truth begets hatred”)