May 1, 2000– Newsletter #78

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Oh, am I hooked! My wife has a collection of Mexican miracle
crosses, which are called “cruz de milagros” in Spanish. Of
course I felt left out, not having a collection of my own, so
I thought it would be good to start collecting items with the
name “Burns”. One trip to eBay and it’s like falling in love
all over again. I am now the high bidder on 12 different
auctions and have actually won three. I just bought a 1901
first edition of the poetry of Robert Burns. I can’t wait to
read it.

Did you hear . . .

The rock group Metallica has become the first rock group to
sue Napster for copyright violation for the illegal swapping
of the band’s music. (Several colleges and universities are
following suit.) In apparent retaliation, a cyber-vandal
posted the text, “LEAVE NAPSTER ALONE” on the Metallica Web
site.

Have you ever heard of the small country of Tuvalu? Well,
Tuvalu – which is easily located by looking off of the
northeastern coast of Australia–has lucked into a Web
gold mine. Their country extension is “.tv”, and that must
be worth money… $50 million, to be exact. That’s how much
Idealab will be paying in installments over the next 12 years.
The deal with Idealab has already netted the tiny country
$15 million, which is one million more than their current
national budget. That’s wonderful. May they use the money
wisely and live well.

Network Solutions (NS) has sent a formal request to the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN),
in hopes of starting two new top-level domain names. NS would
like the domain extension “.shop” created, to be open to all
who wish to register site names with that suffix, and “.banc”,
which would be open to financial institutions only. That has
to start happening. The current top-level domains are filling
up.

Now onto today’s topic…

You know what I need? I need a handle, a nickname. Something
that makes me sound much cooler than I probably am.

I’ve been following the news about the young Canadian boy
alleged to be the hacker who pulled off attacks on some of
the largest Web servers in the world. You’ve probably heard
the story. Do you remember the handle the kid hacker used?

Mafiaboy.

That’s a pretty good one, huh? These handles represent who
you are – or at least who you want to be. Of course, we’re
not all hackers or crackers, so most people set their handles
through their email logins. It’s really fun reading what
people call themselves. I went through some of my deleted
emails to look at the email addresses people have chosen.
Dig these:

Jewelsrave, Jeeps, Flyboy, BabyBrian, Woogley, Okledoff,
BadGuy, ComptonDuo, Vid, Chasam, Dobber, Songman, SnowFlaek,
VolsOne, LSUTigerFan, CrasherNet, Optin’, Primoz, Zoberan,
Zamboni, LowBrow, NetMan, EditorMan, BagaDonuts, Wayward,
Chuckee, and YaYa.

See? Now, those names have some punch to them. I know they’re
just handles, but it at least proves these people put some
thought into their future email addresses. You know what else
is great about the names above?

They don’t have numbers after them. Those people got to those
names first, and first is good. We all know that the first
man to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong, but can you name
the second? That’s my point!

I always think it’s a little funny when I get a letter from
someone whose address is something like
BettyBoop1524@something.com.

I always figure that kind of figure has to be a running count
of the number of people that chose BettyBoop. If it were a
more specific number, like a year or a one, I could see
choosing the name, but 1524? Does that mean I could write
letters to everyone from BettyBoop1 to BettyBoop1523 at
something.com, and all 1524 messages would hit an actual
mailbox?

A login numbered that high must have been suggested by the
computer after the person created the account. He or she put
in “BettyBoop” and the computer replied something like:

“I’m sorry, but that login has already been taken. May we
suggest BettyBoop1524?”

See, right then the person should have said “No,” and gone
back to choose another name. There must a different way to
spell BettyBoop, or another cartoon character you could be
just as happy with.

I should talk. I have only chosen my login name once. Every
time I got a new email account, I basically went with whatever
the computer suggested. If you’ve ever allowed a computer to
pick for you, you probably know the drill: First letter of
your first name, plus your full last name, up to seven letters.
If that login is taken, then they add the first letter of your
middle name. If that login is taken, they switch it around and
put your last name first, and then your first initial. If that
one’s taken, they begin adding numbers.

Does that sound familiar? I know, I know; I should have
stopped the process when I had the chance. I should have said
to my university webmaster, “Stop! I want my login to be
StudlyGuy!”

Yes! StudlyGuy!

What student wouldn’t find that funny, writing to their
professor, Doctor StudlyGuy?

Eh, the Webmaster wouldn’t allow it to happen anyway, so I’d
still get stuck with the computer-generated email login. Here
are the ones I’ve had so far:

“Jburns”, “jeburns”, “jburns2”, “burnsj”, and “joe”.

There is NOTHING worse than possessing an email login that
ends with the number two. The two key on the keyboard is also
the “@” key. That is so hard to type and gets messed up on
every other attempt.

I did like the last one, “Joe”. At least that gave me the
ability to pronounce the login. The others above have never
been transmitted on the first verbal try. Everyone asks,
“What was that?”

I’d like to be able to say that, given a choice, I wouldn’t
have used the traditional format, but I did. I am the only
person who receives mail on the HTML Goodies site. I could
have chosen any login I wanted. What did I choose? That’s
right, “jburns”. I’m just part of the establishment, I guess.

Luckily I’ve never been on the server that did that underscore
thing between the two names. I have a nice short name, so it
wouldn’t have been so bad:

joe_burns@server.com

Those with long last names get into all kinds of trouble:

bill_georgiamitsopolis@server.com

That’s an actual name. It’s Greek. I was at his wedding!

I think it’s time for the handle revolution. We should each
stop, look at our boring handles, and become something we
want to be. I want a handle that is so great that when I tell
people my email address, they’re impressed. I want to appear
suave, sophisticated, and debonair. I shall call myself…

GoodiesGuy!

Nah, that’s silly.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading and replying. I really do
appreciate your letters. I can’t respond to them all, but I
try to write back to as many as I can.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: The second man to walk on the moon was Buzz Aldrin.