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jayfurrBriefly put: I will be a guest panelist at "ROFLcon", a con dedicated to Internet pop culture memes this weekend in Cambridge, MA. I will be part of a panel at 2 pm EDT on Saturday, specifically, called "Heroes of Usenet". (Pause for the "Sweet Jeebus" reaction on your part.) The con organizers say it's gonna be streamed on the Intertubes at http://www.roflcon.org/live -- there will be four sessions going simultaneously so I assume you'll have to pick which session you want to watch.
More verbosely put: I'm a guest because I was a HUGE FARKIN' LOSER in the early-to-mid 1990s, spending far too much time on the Internet message boards of the day: purely text-based things that we called Usenet newsgroups. On the panel with me will be Laurence Canter (1/2 of the "Canter and Siegel" or "Green Card Lawyers" Usenet spam team that offered their services helping people get green cards circa 1994), and Brad Templeton, former moderator of the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny and former chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Several other luminaries were to have been on the panel with us but have had to drop out due to health or family issues, but it's possible that others may still be added.
Regardless, I question why on Earth anyone would want to come hear me talk -- I have a nightmarish vision of sitting at a table facing an empty room. Assuming that a large number of the conference attendees will be MIT students who were infants or not yet even born when I was staying up all night being an online loser instead of doing my graduate school homework, I wonder if any of 'em will even know who I am. Hopefully they won't. Notoriety based on extreme lameness is the sort of thing you hope will get forgotten eventually.
Usenet newsgroups are still out there but a lot of internet service providers don't make access to them available any longer and hence you've got to access them via an interface like Google Groups (for example: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.appalachian). If you're REALLY REALLY BORED you can search the Google Groups archive for my name (but be aware, I went by 'Joel Furr' in those days).
You can read more about ROFLCon and see a full schedule at http://www.roflcon.org.
More verbosely put: I'm a guest because I was a HUGE FARKIN' LOSER in the early-to-mid 1990s, spending far too much time on the Internet message boards of the day: purely text-based things that we called Usenet newsgroups. On the panel with me will be Laurence Canter (1/2 of the "Canter and Siegel" or "Green Card Lawyers" Usenet spam team that offered their services helping people get green cards circa 1994), and Brad Templeton, former moderator of the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny and former chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Several other luminaries were to have been on the panel with us but have had to drop out due to health or family issues, but it's possible that others may still be added.
Regardless, I question why on Earth anyone would want to come hear me talk -- I have a nightmarish vision of sitting at a table facing an empty room. Assuming that a large number of the conference attendees will be MIT students who were infants or not yet even born when I was staying up all night being an online loser instead of doing my graduate school homework, I wonder if any of 'em will even know who I am. Hopefully they won't. Notoriety based on extreme lameness is the sort of thing you hope will get forgotten eventually.
Usenet newsgroups are still out there but a lot of internet service providers don't make access to them available any longer and hence you've got to access them via an interface like Google Groups (for example: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.appalachian). If you're REALLY REALLY BORED you can search the Google Groups archive for my name (but be aware, I went by 'Joel Furr' in those days).
You can read more about ROFLCon and see a full schedule at http://www.roflcon.org.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-30 02:47 am (UTC)I can't make up my mind what to wear, though. Maybe the Munition shirt, just to see if anyone recognizes it.