Jeremy Stribling was in the news recently because he pulled a hideously funny prank. His story kicks off when Stribling, a computer science student at MIT, was invited to speak at the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI). Much as the conference sounded impressive and the delegates heavy weights, Stribling figured something was not right. Working on a hunch, he teamed up with two friends and created a piece of software that generates gibberish while sounding sufficiently scientific.

The outcome was Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.

No prizes for guessing. The tub of crock was accepted and the organizers wrote in asking Stribling to make a presentation.

That was all the evidence Stribling needed to prove this conference only pandered to the delegates' vanity. He didn't waste much time in letting the media know what rubbish passed off in the guise of academia. To make matters worse for the organizers, he put the software online. I'm not sure what the fate of the conference is. But from whatever I've read in various reports, the organizers have ducked for cover.

Incidentally, when I tried out the software, here's what it came up with:
'A case for Semaphores' by Charles Assisi, Marco D'Souza and Sveta Basraon.

Abstract: Compact modalities and Scheme have garnered minimal interest from both security experts and cryptographers in the last several years. Given the current status of pervasive modalities, biologists compellingly desire the emulation of fi ber-optic cables, which embodies the appropriate principles of operating systems. In this paper, we verify that despite the fact that SMPs and scatter/gather I/O are rarely incompatible, the well-known heterogeneous algorithm for the improvement of the Turing machine is optimal.
Interested? Try this link http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scigen/

That pretty much explains why I've stopped attending conferences. The monotony apart, the whole thing fits into an incestuous cycle.

# Smart alecky venture capitalist/investment banker makes presentation on one of the following - India will be the center of the world by 2010 creating 500 million jobs and $10 trillion or some such arbitrary number, or - How to leverage core competencies by utilizing BPOs effectively or some such assorted rubbish

# Idiots in the audience raise their hand and ask inane questions. If the speaker is a fi rangi, questions are fired in a faux Punjabi/Gujarati/Tamil-Bay Area accent.

# The media jots all of this diligently and reports the next day of how Indian IT is conquering the world. Idiots in the conference read these reports and feel good they were there. The VCs and investment bankers smirk at having taken everybody for a ride. And the reporters gather at the Press Club every weekend to exchange notes on who was the stupidest of them all.

I say, give me the New Economy Bullshit Generator any day. Available on http://www.dack.com/web/ bullshit.html, I've been a regular here for a few years now. Each time you click on 'Make Bullshit', it generates lines I can swear I have heard over the years. Sample this: 'syndicate real-time schemas', 'empower robust web services', 'benchmark vertical infrastructures', 'transition revolutionary schemas', 'incubate out-ofthe-box markets', 'redefine bleeding-edge paradigms','productize ubiquitous applications'.

Déjà vu anyone?