Cereal port

What's to be done about the calamitous state of affairs concerning the technical knowledge of the blogging community? I'm used to being just about the only one in the office these days who knows not only what CP/M was but that such a thing existed in the first place, and quite relish my status as the weirdo who knows about RS232 and AT command sets.

But this takes the biscuit. Rather, it takes the cornflake. Gizmodo is beside itself with delight at the idea that someone's invented a tape which you can scratch with your fingernails to hear. It's a fine novelty, that's for sure, but it ain't 2006 vintage.

I remember getting these tapes free with breakfast cereal in the early 1970s. The idea was you ate the cereal (no problem there), made a small slit in the empty box, then pulled the tape through it to hear the ghostly, low-bandwidth message. Can't remember much more than that - hell, I can't remember yesterday's breakfast - but I suspect the cereal in question may have been Golden Nuggets, with Klondike Pete and Pardner, as that was a staple of the young, soon to be tooth-decayed, me. Doubtless, it was invented back in the shiny plastic 50s boomtime.

Likewise, betcha don't know the original integrated circuit was invented in Germany in the late 1920s, as a tax dodge. What about Gopherspace? Veronica?

What should I do? Write the definitive book of tech history trivia? A Schott's for nerds?

R