News You Can Bruise for 1999 October 28

"Females are 'repressed' males and males are 'repressed' females." There go a whole lot of metaphors.

I called Scott up today and talked with him about the plan of disabling comments and write-ins. He said go for it. So I did. Am now bracing myself for the torrent of email. Also bracing myself for my phone bill.

Dan improved the KatzDot thing while I was sleeping (while you were sleeping), including moving it over to my suggestion of the Dada Engine (not affiliated with Dada Pokey except in spirit). Some samples:

• The Interactive Internet War, Digital Troubled Teens and Grief
• The Website Hysteria - Part One
• Beware The Online Music Industry Syndrome
• The Virtual Web: First Steps
• The Power of Digital MP3s and Geek Culture

Some of them are lousy, but most are pretty good. Good job, Dan.

Actually some of them are funny because they don't make sense ("Beyond the Open Source Hellmouth"). Dan and I were debating whether a good KatzDot engine would have those or not.

Over 20 messages so far; only 4 have anything negative at all to say. I think I made the right decision. But the tough work of coming up with a system that functions correctly is still ahead.

I got a perfect score on my logic midterm. At last, Smithers! A perfect score! But argh! I have a music history midterm and a database project due Tuesday! Argh!

Dan's trying to get KatzDot to do the first paragraph of stories. It's not going as well as the headlines, but the stories are funny in a different way. "On Monday this society presented this society with morally superior violence across the country of information as information opening a whole new chapter in Internet. Jane's Intelligence Review is riddled with mind-boggling education."

That may be as good at it gets. I'd be happy with more stuff in the headlines, personally.

The headline generator is still going strong:

• The Hellmouth Demands Students
• Slashdot? Don't Believe It
• Lo-Tech Sexbots - Experience It!
• Microsoft, Sexbots and Kids
• Cyber-Terrorism: An Interactive Experiment