Xkcd has a wonderful comic on map projections in common and not so common use, and what each of them have to say about the personalities of those who like them. A blog post and accompanying conversation at Explain XKCD fills out some of the jokes.

I liked so much I've reworked it into a 10"x12" mini-poster for printing:

I was cleaning out old email and ran across this important message which fell through the cracks. I don't have the time to fulfill this urgent request, but thought perhaps I could help by getting the word out to someone who can. Thus was born the Time Traveller drop points:

A web map service for Time Travellers who need to arrange for pick up and or delivery of specialty goods. On the go and need a supply dump provisioned? Put your drop point and request here.\ \ NOTE: payment and delivery term arrangements are *strictly* between traveller and deliverer. We don't want to know about it and will not …continue.

So what’s the number? Well there is an ongoing legal battle of the Motion Pictures Association of America and the makers of the HD-DVD system against the right of the public to state a simple number. According to them the string “09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0″  contravenes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Many website owners have been given cease and desist orders, and some sites have disappeared entirely from the net.

See Wired's The New HD-DVD/Blu-Ray Hack: What It Might Mean For Us for an in-temporal-context overview  and Wikipedia's AACS encryption key controversy article for the ongoing story.

Check this out:

(XP) start > run “cmd” [enter]

echo dumdididum > a-file_1.txt\ echo dumdididum > a-file_2.txt\ echo dumdididum > a-file_3.txt

echo tweedledee > a-filetoo_1.txt\ echo tweedledee > a-filetoo_2.txt\ echo tweedledee > a-filetoo_3.txt

echo tweedledee > a-filetree_1.txt\ echo tweedledee > a-filetree_2.txt\ echo tweedledee > a-filetree_3.txt

echo justforfun > a-file-with-no-numbers.txt

dir /b *1.txt

a-file-with-no-numbers.txt\ a-filetree_3.txt\ a-filetree_2.txt\ a-filetoo_1.txt\ a-filetree_1.txt\ a-file_1.txt

emphasis added.

what’s going on here?

(I’ll post the answer in the comments later. But it took me and a friend and some generous netizens to get to the root of it.)

Comments {#commentz}

1. Prokhor wrote:

   So what’s the deal with it?

   Posted 27 Nov 2007 at 2:04 pm ¶

2. matt wilkie wrote:

   Hi Prokhor,

   The deal is, dir matches by …continue.