Originally published at: Is The Pornitor the worst-named computer peripheral in history? - Boing Boing
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It’s a modern day Gift of the Magi! Can’t wait to watch it on the Hallmark Channel!
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Isn’t Gift of the Magi O Henry? Not Poe?
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I tell you what I’d use a device like this for if I had one
[reads product name]
Oh, uh, you’re way ahead of me
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The best named invention since the Pornograph.
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YAY!!!
I’ve missed being able to comment on BoingBoingShop products!
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I want the Pornitor and the Burninator to do a buddy road trip together.
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Just slap one of those privacy screen protector thingies on and the thing would sell itself.
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Always wonder if the “reviews” on an amazon item are real, or even just extremely ‘curated’, and behold if one checks out the reviews for this particular named item not a one makes reference to any double entendre or other.
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To answer the question posed by the headline: yes.
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snicker VESA snicker
I guess this is only poorly named if the target audience isn’t looking for a device for watching whatnot. If it was targeted for that specific use, however, I’d assume some sort of specialized feature list, but I have no idea what that would be. Optimized for displaying skin tones? Water-resistant? Easily cleaned? Has an emergency toggle switch for displaying a spreadsheet?
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Oh, I don’t know: I think SCSI is still in the running as the Worst-Named Peripheral Named by Native Speakers of English.
Said native speakers figured it would be an acronym pronounced “sexy,” but if course users immediately started saying "scuzzy,” instead. And the rest, as they say, is history.
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Or perhaps the greatest name of all!
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Uh, where?
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Sold in combo with the Trouser Mouse.
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I can’t really blame this device, because the transition occurred well before; but there seems something especially awkward about the use of such an…active…word as “PORNITOR” for the display rather than for the operator.
Sure, the meaning of “monitor” slid from the vigilant system programmer or audio engineer to the front panel or speakers they were monitoring decades before this thing; but “monitor” at least has those connotations of being a deliberately neutral reflection of system state, whether framebuffer or waveform; a posture at least partially shared between peripheral and user. That just doesn’t work here: there can be no commonality of posture between something as placid as a low end LCD and something as fervently visceral as the user of the “PORNITOR”.
Either the term must refer to the operator; or the peripheral must be something more robustly haptic.
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