x <= Two weeks <= x



Well, that last entry was recycled from my first attempt at blogging... with Polywogg, which has temporarily disappeared into the ether. I got an email in my mac.com account on July 30th that they would be changing ISPs and that service would be down "for up to two weeks or more"...

Wait a second.. don't you hate time specifications like that? There's absolutely no information there. The time period could be one nanosecond or forever. The "two weeks" serve only the purpose of giving you a dim impression that you will have your service back in two weeks.

Related, but distinct, are notices like this: "No dogs, cats, or other pets allowed". Now if the message is that no pets are allowed, why bother specifying dogs and cats?

One more tricky one: "Observe all posted rules". The implications are staggering. If you need to be told to observe rules in the first place, how do you know to observe that rule? Well, I have to go eat, so I'll discuss this more later...

Posted: Wed - August 18, 2004 at 07:29 PM | | | |

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