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>> MARK: Aloha, viewers!
Recently, somebody sent me a link to an editorial that appeared in a certain newspaper
which shall remain nameless --
because being a newpaper in 2010 is punishment enough --
that was published on said newspaper's website.
However, before I could read this article,
which consisted of fewer than 270 words,
I had to click a link to go back to the first "page",
because these scant 268 words were split into TWO FREAKING PAGES,
and the link that I was sent was to the SECOND page,
and for some ungodly reason, the pages had to have separate URLs.
That is to say, after but 132 words --
less than two Lord's Prayers --
this website decided to stop
and make the reader click a link
to read the rest on a new page.
Now, here's the thing:
as I sit here,
it is the 2010th Year of Our Lord.
It is not, as you might be given to assume --
based on the abundance of amazing space-age appliances in your home
and the Life Magazine™ in your bathroom --
the 1960s, where news articles are still published on dead trees
for the benefit of museum patrons of the far-off future
with finite, miniscule blocks of print that have to be split up across multiple pages
("See TOTAL WASTE OF TIME, Page A7").
This failure to adapt to the times is understandable,
as those fancy teevees that the journalists' paperless typewriters are plugged into
still have a finite amount of space on them,
but the thing they might have missed is this:
when one types enough that one reaches the bottom of the screen,
a little bar pops up on the side of the page that,
if one pulls on it with one's little rolly-clicky thingamabob,
it lets one keep on typing on a virtually-lengthless page,
like magic!
But the common method, obviously designed so as not to frighten
the types of people who still read newspapers
when they have to use that deviltry-box,
solves absolutely no technical problems,
while in fact introducing those of wasted bandwidth and extra coding required to break up the text
(unless, of course, the editors are in fact BANKING ON the fact
that their articles are so poorly-written
that enough readers simply give up after a hundred or so words,
and save the bandwidth of having half of their articles never read).
And for that matter:
Fax Machines
Again, it being 2010,
and e-mail being essentially free --
and ubiquitous --
and every computer having the ability to print a document to a lossless PDF file --
you'd think we'd be beyond the need to keep using a device that was invented over 160 years ago
(in fact, 30 years before the telephone),
other than the simple reason that the idiots running our nation's economy into the ground
used it to close a deal on a crate full of Sony™ Walkmans™ 30 years ago
and because EVERYTHING's a great idea when you're on a decade-long *** spree!
Fax machines are as useful -- and necessary --
to today's world as AM radios with integrated eight-track tape decks,
fourteen-pound cellular phones,
and VHS cassette rewinders.
I'm Mark Adams, and (insert generic sign-off line here!)