Mofaluna - Slashdot User

Digital 'smiley face' turns 25-> 0

Submitted by

mytrip

on Tuesday September 18 2007, @05:21PM

mytrip writes "PITTSBURGH — It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.

Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.

"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."

The suggestion gave computer users a way to convey humor or positive feelings with a smile — or the opposite sentiments by reversing the parenthesis to form a frown.

To mark the anniversary Wednesday, Fahlman and his colleagues are starting an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award, sponsored by Yahoo Inc., carries a $500 cash prize."
Link to Original Source

stoners make better programmers/designers? 0

Submitted by mektronik on Thursday August 16 2007, @01:40AM

mektronik writes "I have recently, albeit belatedly, come across a genera of music calling itself Nerdcore. It is essentially hip hop for geeks with rappers such as MCPlus+. The interesting part to note is that MOST of them talk about getting stoned while programming, this is something that I myself have long indulged in as have many friends of mine. On the other hand I have worked with a lot of programmers that do not. I generally find a strong correlation between stoners and better coders/designers, I have historically put this down to "thinking out of the box", but may in fact be a lot deeper. Am I totally off the mark? what do you think?"

Comment: She is pointing at the finger instead of the moon (Score 1) 293

by Mofaluna on Wednesday March 14 2007, @05:18AM (#18344669) Attached to: EU Commissioner Slams Music Lock-In

What she is doing is blaming Steve and friends for the fact that she isn't doing anything about the RIAA cartel. Why focus on iTunes instead of something like SONY connect where the content provider and the distributor are one and the same?