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Here's $10 for your iPod.

$1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod $1 for iPod

And here I was hoping they really would call it Windows $NEXT_VERSION. Or, to be more Windowsy, %NEXT_VERSION%.

(I'm sure it'll be a perfectly decent OS, based on Vista but not sucking nearly as badly. But the news articles will resemble that link in the previous paragraph, like every news article on Windows since 1994.)

Microsoft has really lost it when it comes to evil these days. Apple's evil is just ridiculously better. Microsoft's evil was damn fine in the 1990s, but these days it's just ... sorta lame. I mean, Vista - what dismally poorly executed evil! And the Zune, oh dear.

So trying to be good is all that's left to them. Can they go straight? Or will it be straight back to crime?

The winning conversation was with competitor LOLBOT:

"Good morning."
"STFU N00B"
"Er, what?"
"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"
"Do you talk like this to everyone?"
"NO U"
"Sod this, I'm off for a pint."
"IT'S OVER 9000!!"

The human subject said he couldn't believe a computer could be so mind-numbingly stupid.

Heh. That's "feedback" as in "loud screeching noise which can destroy the system if it gets out of control"?

Now if only Sony and Nokia would realise that DRM is deeply despised and that marketing your stuff as "DRM-free" when it patently isn't is not a solution to this ... ah, the joys of major label control addiction. As Penn Jilette says: "I would make executives more concerned with making money. I'm serious."

WALL ALLEY, East Cheam, Tuesday - The global financial crisis may require a multi-billion pound injection of public money over coming days. Smaller institutions are now seeking help, such as the First National Bank of East Cheam.

Founded by Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam earlier this month, the bank has put in urgent asset warnings with the Treasury. "Holdings are way down. Our assets are incredibly leveraged. Capital ratio's buggered. Our, er, co-la-ta-rul-ised debt obligations have us tied in knots. In knots! It's a tragedy, it is."

Mr Busybody has urged the Treasury to mount a rescue package immediately for the bank. âoeIf we go under, whoosh! It'd collapse the East Cheam banking sector. All them widows and orphans! You wouldn't believe it, honestly you wouldn't. Interbank lending's collapsed. I can't get any of 'em to cough up an overnight liquidity loan. Spare us five million quid, mate? Just till tomorrow. I'll be good for it. With Treasury backing."

Chancellor Alistair Darling responded to Mr Busybody's pleas with an offer to send Peter Mandelson around to discuss the matter. "Oh, er, that's all right then, we'll be fine, fine. Sorrytotroubleyou I'lljustgonow."

They're seeing competition from Microsoft according to MS's fans in the press. The market considers the Zune material for comedy. I was joking when I mentioned the possibility of a Zune phone ...

Microsoft's problem is that Apple is clearly much better at evil these days than they are. Microsoft used to have the best and most popular evil; these days they can't even successfully pay people to use their evil. And they've been trying for a while.

To keep on-topic, Android's main function will be to lift the iPhone's game. Existing and not sucking will be a win for Android and Google. Then, as others have noted, someone will come up with a killer Android app that leaves Apple playing catchup as they've pissed off too many developers. Interesting times and a win for credible competition. Which Microsoft just isn't in this space.

Spam will save the economy!

Just imagine failed bankers going into spam instead. All Hot SUBPRIME MORTGAGES! Collateralised V!K@GKR@ Obligations! You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of your debt!

Good Lord, Steve. Just patent PURE SHINY EVIL and be done with it.

Authentic Apple iEvil! Not that ersatz Zune Evil, hahahahaha! Get only the best evil!

"We owe it all to the bedrock of our economy: the ordinary hard-working taxpayer. You resisted the siren call of credit cards, lived within your means to save for a rainy day, never took out an interest-only mortgage, credit score to make Jesus cry. Without taking every penny you saved over the $100,000 guarantee, we'd never have made it. And the best bit is, we know you'll still vote Republican! God bless you all!"

By the way, your house is still worthless.

"We owe it all to the bedrock of our economy: the ordinary hard-working taxpayer. You resisted the siren call of credit cards, lived within your means to save for a rainy day, never took out an interest-only mortgage, credit score to make Jesus cry. Without taking every penny you saved over the $100,000 guarantee, we'd never have made it. And the best bit is, we know you'll still vote Republican! God bless you all!"

By the way, your house is still worthless.

The "talent" in question is that able to secure local subsidies and bribe^Wincentivise the local politicians.

There's a reason Microsoft, Dell and so on have their European bases in Ireland.

Thankfully they aren't big on local talent for the Facebook movie.

I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.

I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! - the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED_VERSION user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

Apple is evil, but the music business is evil and stupid. If you were going to pick someone to make Apple look good, you couldn't pick better villains.

Do the record companies realise they're competing with free? Apple realise this. Raising the prices will drive away customers who do have another option. No-one buys music because it's the only way to get it, anyone who buys music these days does so because they want to.

BitTorrent: because fuck you, Hollywood!

Apple goods are infused with narcotic addictive fumes, so you'll KEEP ON BUYING THEM. And you can't complain under the NDA. Because Apple is EVIL.

Apple has made a vast success of evil! The slickness of total control. Freedom from the burden of choice.

Never mind. I'm sure there'll be an article on RoughlyDrafted explaining precisely how this was all part of the plan and is absolutely the best possible move anyone could ever have made and we'd all have to be foolish not to have realised this was precisely how it was going to play out, and also Microsoft sucks. It'll probably have that really funny graphic of a Zune-headed Ballmer running screaming from the Zune Hindenburg.

(I like RoughlyDrafted, and his facts are generally accurate, it just gets a bit monotonous at times ...)

It's Windows Vaporware. It's a dessert wax and a floor topping. It's any marketing spin at all that they think might put people off competitors' products.

Anyone can talk up a hand of five aces. Producing it when called is a bit harder.

Perhaps it will have $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM!

I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.

Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!

I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.

("Windows Cloud"? Good freakin' gosh, what do they have for a marketing department?)

Virginia needs to consider the economic benefits of spam.

Apple still evil. FairPlay-encrypted H.264 video at 11.

... can we send the rest of them?

The UK government has approved a 700 billion megabyte bailout to stop the Data Crunch causing the End of the Internet.

Rather than just giving the data to those who have it already, the government is distributing everyone's information free. "We feel that there is strong bipartisan support for a bottom-up data distribution initiative, such that everyone everywhere can share in the data generated and held by government," said a spokesman whose name was lost.

Reports that Neo-Nazi organisations are asking for "lost" data disks with the name and address of every immigrant in the country are as yet unconfirmed.

The device will push large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they spray Bose-Einstein condensate in all directions, in an explosive Bose supernova. ... What?

Americans fear that private companies will steal all their data. The British prefer the approach of giving it all away to everyone, in a variety of useful formats!

The ineptitude in government at all levels in this country about data security is bloody jawdropping. Interesting news today is that the cabinet official who left some direly secret stuff on a train is getting prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. This is hopefully more than security theatre itself.

I can't see Apple being well pleased with this. They have a reputation to sustain!

In any case, OS X on netbooks is old hat. You can put it on an original Eee, for instance.

OS X really does work fine on general hardware. If your hardware is something Apple has a driver for. So, a bit like Linux without anything like as broad a support base, then.

(I personally prefer FreeBSD, but Linux supports my laptop immaculately.)

Incidents like this, as well as the general pain in the backside factor, mean that customers loathe and despise DRM.

But the marketers know their major label affiliated clients insist on DRM.

So what do they do? Lie. Sony and Nokia, MySpace - all advertised as "DRM-free" and never mind the little detail of being nothing of the sort!

Don't you have truth in advertising laws there or something?

Identity cards introduced for those foreign Johnnies, not you. "The card will be compulsory for foreign nationals. All terrorists and illegal immigrants will be required to obtain one and show it to policemen, council officials or dog catchers on request. LOOK! TERRORISTS!"

This is largely from (a) civil servants who think it'd be convenient to their jobs to have everyone filed and numbered (b) private contractors like EDS and Capita who have been promised CASH CASH CASH for consulting on such schemes, and certainly don't have a track record of employing ex-goverment ministers and senior civil servants at vast consulting fees 12 months after they leave the government. Well, maybe a bit of a track record.

The ridiculous thing is that this is a creature of the Labour government, who are vastly unpopular, and will likely be kicked out on their corrupt arses in the 2010 election. This scheme is set only to be fully implemented by 2011/2012. EDS and Crapita will, of course, still be paid in full.

o_0 Credited! Reality outdoes satire once again ...

They've redefined the word "beta." Have they also redefined the word "evil?" "Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. Really. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. Muwaahahahaha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."

"Fuck it, we're evil," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls. "But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like youâ(TM)ll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!"

It's foolish to have expected anything else. As Neal Stephenson put it in In The Beginning Was The Command Line:

THE NOT-SO-CHARITABLE EXPLANATION has to do with Apple's corporate culture, which is rooted in Bay Area Baby Boomdom.

Now, since I'm going to talk for a moment about culture, full disclosure is probably in order, to protect myself against allegations of conflict of interest and ethical turpitude: (1) Geographically I am a Seattleite, of a Saturnine temperament, and inclined to take a sour view of the Dionysian Bay Area, just as they tend to be annoyed and appalled by us. (2) Chronologically I am a post-Baby Boomer. I feel that way, at least, because I never experienced the fun and exciting parts of the whole Boomer scene--just spent a lot of time dutifully chuckling at Boomers' maddeningly pointless anecdotes about just how stoned they got on various occasions, and politely fielding their assertions about how great their music was. But even from this remove it was possible to glean certain patterns, and one that recurred as regularly as an urban legend was the one about how someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children, and eventually discover that, underneath this facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love and harmony, had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways.

Applying this to the case of Apple Computer will be left as an exercise for the reader, and not a very difficult exercise.

It is a bit unsettling, at first, to think of Apple as a control freak, because it is completely at odds with their corporate image. Weren't these the guys who aired the famous Super Bowl ads showing suited, blindfolded executives marching like lemmings off a cliff? Isn't this the company that even now runs ads picturing the Dalai Lama (except in Hong Kong) and Einstein and other offbeat rebels?

It is indeed the same company, and the fact that they have been able to plant this image of themselves as creative and rebellious free-thinkers in the minds of so many intelligent and media-hardened skeptics really gives one pause. It is testimony to the insidious power of expensive slick ad campaigns and, perhaps, to a certain amount of wishful thinking in the minds of people who fall for them. It also raises the question of why Microsoft is so bad at PR, when the history of Apple demonstrates that, by writing large checks to good ad agencies, you can plant a corporate image in the minds of intelligent people that is completely at odds with reality. (The answer, for people who don't like Damoclean questions, is that since Microsoft has won the hearts and minds of the silent majority--the bourgeoisie--they don't give a damn about having a slick image, any more then Dick Nixon did. "I want to believe,"--the mantra that Fox Mulder has pinned to his office wall in The X-Files--applies in different ways to these two companies; Mac partisans want to believe in the image of Apple purveyed in those ads, and in the notion that Macs are somehow fundamentally different from other computers, while Windows people want to believe that they are getting something for their money, engaging in a respectable business transaction).

It's as applicable now as it was in the late 1990s. That bit of Apple's corporate culture is straight from Steve Jobs.

It's obvious what we need: something that gives you the freedom you need, on an open platform, with full open hardware and free software, all the way down the stack, so that users can get the features they want, and innovative developers can create interfaces that let people take full advantage of them in the most intuitive and obvious way possible. The GNUPhone. Operated from the command line.

WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like "FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! - the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved Ribbon user interface from Office 2007 is now part of WordPad and Paint! All hail!

Copyright works need protection! Just ask the disembodied computer-hosted soul of Walt Disney, who was decanted to a computer in 1966 to avoid being declared legally dead, so that copyright in his works would never, ever run out.

That's what the headline should have been.

(I'd write the story myself but Fake News Nightly got there first.)

There's a reason Macs outsell Linux.

The anti-iPhone: the Linux telephone that operates entirely from the command line! The Ultimate One-Dimensional Desktop! What can't you do with a bash prompt?

(The v2 version will, of course, run Emacs and be programmed entirely in eLisp written on the fly.)

looks cool but waaaaaaay too expensive. I'll stick to my first gen iphone, a wifi signal, and metasploit and i'm just as happy.

The anti-iPhone: the Linux telephone that operates entirely from the command line! The Ultimate One-Dimensional Desktop! What can't you do with a bash prompt?

(The v2 version will, of course, run Emacs and be programmed entirely in eLisp written on the fly.)

It's a general-purpose computer that's been DRM-infected to hell.

It's what Trusted Computing would actually be like: capricious, arbitrary and overpriced.

...and completely hacked.

You forgot one.

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the Linux-based phone where you do everything from a bash prompt. The Command Line! The Quintessential One-Dimensional Desktop!! What Linux devotee could settle for less?

Google will maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Windows Live. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."

"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!"

It's a general-purpose computer that's been DRM-infected to hell.

It's what Trusted Computing would actually be like: capricious, arbitrary and overpriced.

It'll be where an open Linux netbook with a phone built-in crosses over with a locked-down iPhone (which is what a general-purpose computer that's been DRMed to b*ggery looks like, in case anyone wondered what Trusted Computing would feel like - capricious, arbitrary and expensive).

Star Trek had silicon-based lifeforms. Silicone-based lifeforms are a bit more like this.

Your effete codecs and desktops are a drain on the minds of millions! Mental resources they could use to learn simple tools like Lisp and Haskell! Is time actually cubical in nature? Your 3D desktops and games and iTunes and shallow interfaces hide the true power, elegance and beauty of the command line! The One Dimensional Desktop, with infinite compactified dimensions hidden inside like string theory - intuitive and obvious! I wrote an Emacs macro that plays one of my Ogg Vorbis sound files any time I like! How is iTunes easier than that? What is the "4" in MPEG-4? 4 simultaneous 24 hour Days within only 1 rotation of 4 quadrant Earth! Educated evil and stupid! LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! ... I'm sorry, I meant GNU/LINUX SHALL TRIUMPH! (Sorry, Richard. Sorry. Sorry.)

Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.

Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)

I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!

(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)

Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.

Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)

I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!

(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)

The only thing that would be different in a Google ISP is that they'd tie every website you visited to your permanent record.

Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.

Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)

I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!

(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)

Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.

Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)

I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!

(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)

The only thing that would be different in a Google ISP is that they'd tie every website you visited to your permanent record.

Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.

Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)

I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!

(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)

"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it works. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!"

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."

"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."

CUPERTINO, Transylvania, Friday - After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future, and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a 10-Q with the Securities Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.

"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it works. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows Mobile phone. Ha! Ha!â

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."

Sergey Brin of Google said, "Of course, we're still not evil. You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."