Tasteless and offensive

by | Saturday, May 10, 2008

Checking up on urban legends leads to tasteless and offensive error message.

I recently received a forwarded email from a friend that listed a bunch of top-notch, companies that were filing for bankruptcy. The list included Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Circuit City, Bed Bath and Beyond, Linens and Things, and so on. The email went on to warn me to quickly cash in any gift cards I may have since these cards would not be honored by these companies once they file Chapter 11. I am naturally suspicious of any forwarded emails like this and usually ignore them. But since I was sitting in Kuala Lumpur airport, waiting for a flight to Penang, and having nothing better to do, I decided to check it out.

The first thing I did, was to cut and paste some words from the subject line of the email into Google. A few second later, lo-and-behold out popped pages of links to websites that had used those same words. It seems that there had been quite some discussion on this topic online. But a funny thing happened when I went ahead and clicked on the first search result. Instead of loading a webpage, I received the following error message:

Request denied by
KLIA INTERNET ACCESS SERVICES.

Reason: one or more categories denied
helper=’ZERO-CONF-WEBLOCKER’
details=’Tasteless & Offensive’

It appears that the Kuala Lumpur international airport wireless internet providers had been monitoring my activities and had, in their infinite wisdom, found my search result “tasteless & offensive”

How funny, tasteless and offensive is that!

Anyway, if you are interested in the bankruptcy story check out its truth value here

Topics related to this post: Fun | Technology

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Learner autonomy and creative reflective practice: New journal article

Learner autonomy and creative reflective practice: New journal article

Herbert Simon, famously wrote: Everyone designs who devises courses of actions aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The first two words in this quote are now the title of a recently published journal article (with Danah Henriksen and William...

Academic novels

I have been reading Moo by Jane Smiley, off and on for a while now. It is a satire of academia set in a fictional Mid-western university called Moo U. It has been suggested that Moo U is a stand in for Iowa State, an university I know well since Smita went to school...

BAIS: Implicit Bias in AI systems

BAIS: Implicit Bias in AI systems

Update September 20, 2024): This article is now published and can be found here: Warr, M., Oster, N. J., & Isaac, R. (2024). Implicit bias in large language models: Experimental proof and implications for education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education,...

3 pieces of wisdom, one muddled conclusion

Just came up with this in response to something Leigh had said on Facebook... thought it ought to be saved for the future: Great fools think that birds of a feather seldom differ together! I wonder what it means? Can you identify the three nuggets of wisdom that went...

6 Videos (on the 5 spaces for design in Education)

6 Videos (on the 5 spaces for design in Education)

Learning Sparks is a new initiative at ASU that feature short, 5-minute, videos showcasing the expertise of a range of ASU faculty members. These videos are carefully crafted, with high-production values seeking to capture big ideas in bite-sized chunks. A few months...

Algebra, version 2

I had posted yesterday a new ambigram for the word "algebra." It was a mirror-reflection design i.e. it reads the same when reflected in a mirror. What I liked about the design was the fact that it actually looks like an algebraic equation with a left-hand-side and a...

TPACK in context: Call for papers

TPACK in context: Call for papers

Technology integration in teaching is deeply rooted in specific contexts. One could argue that contextual knowledge is of critical importance to teachers and the absence of it would limit, in significant ways, their effectiveness and success as an educators seeking to...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *