We are sorry to inform you

As far as I know the page/brin pagerank paper was also rejected by SIGIR (the main information retrieval conference) before being published in WWW.

It would be VERY interesting to know if that's the case.

The meme of what seems to be a brilliant idea being pooh-pooh'ed by the then-current intelligentsia is almost as common as funny cat pictures with silly quotes.

"In 1962, Smith entered Yale University. While attending Yale, he wrote a paper for an economics class, outlining overnight delivery service in a computer information age. Folklore suggests that he received a C for this paper, although in a later interview he claims that he told a reporter, "I don't know what grade, probably made my usual C", while other tales suggest that his professor told him that, in order for him to get a C, the idea had to be feasible. The paper became the idea of FedEx (for years, the sample package displayed in the company's print advertisements featured a return address at Yale)."

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith

Although this is satire, let's not confuse the quality of the idea or it's implementation, with how well the paper is written. Those are very different criteria.

I really hope so. The notion that someone might be serious about the first one is rather depressing.

Are those real, or should I hold back my AMAZEMENT?