[EDITED 28-Nov-2003 @ 1:05 PM: I posted an update earlier claiming that the site had been fixed, as it momentarily worked for me and several others as of midnight last night. Apparently this was only a temporary change; it seems that the site is now back to blocking all browsers but MSIE/Win! Thanks to several people for pointing this out.]

[EDITED 30-Nov-2003: It didn’t work in IE/Mac before, but apparently they’ve fixed that particular problem; the site also works with a Safari user-agent header. Still… are there any Mozilla or Netscape 6+ users at Cox’s support department?]

Accessing http://usercenter.cox.net/ in anything besides Internet Explorer for Windows, as of the time I wrote this post, produces the error shown in this screenshot, which states that the site is only accessible via Internet Explorer for Windows.

Now, my question: What were they THINKING? This is bad. REALLY bad.

I mean, come on. I can understand possibly limiting particular advanced support options so that they can only be accessed by evil security-hole-ridden browsers, but I literally can’t access ANY part of Cox’s support site; it keeps throwing an error in my face, even if I spoof an IE user-agent header.
(more…)

What do you get when you combine the basic idea of a Markov chainer with the contextual searching abilities of Google? Why, Google Talk, of course. (Thanks to Nyperold for the link…)

Here’s just a sample of the insanity that results from chaining such a large database of text:

“It was a Dark and stormy Night. The rain drenched not only my own thoughts and feelings from the heart. a Leader S Guide. to the Internet. and the World Wide Web Resources. for the study of The American Medical Association. All rights reserved…”

Edited to add: Even better, mentioning a particular anime convention causes us to get into a loop that goes on forever:

“Anime Weekend Atlanta By car from This site. is not a Geek/ ForumOC, Members: Threads: Posts: Last post: The latest version of the United States House of REPRESENTATIVES. Category: of One: s Own ORGANICS Guide to HTML? and CSS. by Example By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example, By Example…”

And one last bit of insanity, via a mention of that popular cartoon villain:

“Strong Bad Email Addresses. and phone Numbers. and addresses, Phone, Numbers and addresses, Exceptional circumstances EC) drought assistance, for the web, Yellow pages directory ON the internet. This Is London is the sky blue Sounds. like A Pirate Day! Sept. th Sept. th Sept. th Sept. th Sept. th Oct. th am Dr. Megavolt; and his OWN words. A M”

Hilarious stuff, at least for people as easily amused as myself. And it appears to give different results on each run, or at least so it seems, judging from the results I’ve seen on consecutive runs of the same phrase.

Since I don’t really have anything important to talk about in my life, and since I’m generally too busy to post anything all too introspective, I’ll instead just share an amusing bit of Engrish spotted on a local Chinese restaurant’s menu. This doesn’t appear to be just a careless typo, as it appears this way twice on the menu:

And I quote:

Kasparov, Computer Tie in Chest Match

(If by some chance the headline is actually fixed, I’ve taken a screenshot for posterity as I always do.)

From a San Francisco Chronicle article linked in this LiveJournal post (whose poster, incidentally, I know from the 1997 National Spelling Bee):

…a proposal in the seaside Marin County town of Bolinas is getting the most attention. Voters will ponder a stream-of-consciousness statement of policy that reads: “Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful.”

My own question: Is that even in English?!