Power Corrupts… PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely

Edward Tufte is professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics and graphic design at Yale. He’s also no big fan of PowerPoint, likening it to a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication.

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint — pointed out by sbszine — illustrates the absurdities of PowerPoint beautifully.

Symantec Embraces Product Activation

Software giant Symantec is adding product activation technology to all of its upcoming consumer products, starting with Norton Antivirus 2004. Customers who fail to activate the software by contacting Symantec within 15 days of installing it will be left with a non-functioning application. Despite such good intentions, product activation remains a tricky business, and that Symantec runs the risk of alienating loyal, legitimate customers by imposing the technology

Why Do These People Have Access to a Computer?

It’s always interesting to read through the search logs for the site to discover what loons have been attracted like moths to a flame.

This week’s offerings include: vampire, were wolf [it’s one word, mate], aligator man [misspelt], bambi, chimera twins and come cabra [another misspelling], which strange as it may seem are all actually site content.

The odder searches were: custom guns [wanker], eardrum [huh?] and the bizarre dog hair dye [run, Fido, run].

These people are out there. They are your friends and neighbours, they are the annoying people who read over your shoulder on public transport, they are the people walking brightly coloured dogs, they can’t spell, are searching for weapons and are capable of entering random characters into a search engine. Be afraid.

New G5 Ad

Power Mac G5 ad.

I saw this ad on tv last night for the first time. It’s very very slick, and like all the other Apple ads, makes you salivate in/on your seats.

Australia Lags in Tech Commercialisation

Australian companies have long prided themselves on their highly inventive nature and global reputation as early adopters of new technology. But Australia’s track record in commercialising technical know-how on the global stage is lamentable. Australia is yet to produce a globally significant technology company, and risks falling behind rivals in Europe and Asia as a centre of technical development