Millions have hated that intrusive anthropomorphic paper clip with the blinking bug-eyes that pops up uninvited in Microsoft Office software asking repeatedly and needlessly whether one really wants to do something.
Clippy, as the pest is called, is being downsized as a marketing gimmick to promote the fast-approaching arrival of Office XP, the first total remake of Microsoft’s office package of word processing/data processing/graphics software since Office 97. While one cannot draw and quarter a paper clip, it clearly is possible to bend one straight and throw it away.
Details at www.officeclippy .com.
WINDOWS XP
XEROX ENDURES HARROWING EXPERIENCE
As if things weren’t bad enough with its once-highflying stock now among the single-digit midgets, Xerox Corp. was forced last week to send an emergency e-mail to its 50,000-strong U.S. workforce ordering one and all to stop fooling around with the beta software for Microsoft Windows XP.
Xeroxers running the beta apparently managed to cause three major network outages. Since the purpose of beta software is to test for bugs, this is good news for Microsoft, but Xerox workers were told in a widely circulated e-mail that they face disciplinary action unless they uninstall all copies eXPeditiously.
THE INTERNET
ARABIC NAMES GET A PLACE ON THE WEB
The world abounds with software that can read and write the Arabic alphabet, but there was no way that Arab-speaking Web users could type in their native language to reach a Web site. Bummer, as T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) might have said.
Anyway, there was joy everywhere from Beirut to (one must presume) Baghdad on news that Arabic characters can be used to register Web sites in the .cc domain. Seattle-based eNIC Corp. executives say they have set up servers to handle names input Arabic style, thereby permitting an exclusively Arabic sector of the Web. “This heralds the decline of the Roman [characters] empire,” says eNIC’s Brian Cartmell. For details, type this in English: www.arabicdomains.cc.
COMPUTER ETHICS
BOOK BRINGS HOPE TO CLUELESS PARENTS
How will Mom and Dad ever understand the kinds of trouble that await Dick and Jane when the plucky youngsters are up in their rooms fooling around on the Internet?
“Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids (and Parents & Teachers Who Haven’t Got a Clue)” brilliantly lays out the joys and the potential legal consequences of such things as e-mail bombing, Napster-style music swiping, plagiarism, lurking, harassing, cracking, stalking and even morphing somebody’s head on somebody else’s body.
Samples at www.nicekids .net.
