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Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

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 user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint!

The controversial Digital Rights Management system in Vista has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.

A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on Vista release day -- the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets -- in the shade.

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.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MNPLY) has hired comedian Bob Hope to anchor a $300 million advertising campaign for its struggling Windows Vista franchise.

The software maker is desperate to counter popular Apple ads that personify PCs as un-"hep" and not "with it," while portraying Apple's Macintosh as the "happening scene."

"We felt that resurrecting Bob from the dead and putting him in front of our campaign was just the way to upgrade Vista's, I mean 7's, image. Yowsa yowsa yowsa!" said Kevin Johnson, the fourth executive to be in charge of the development of Vista^WWindows 7, just before he quit this morning. "It was also cheaper and easier than actually fixing Vista."

"Braaainnns," said Mr Hope.

Few businesses have upgraded to Vista from Windows XP, citing Vista's cost, incompatibility with older software and hardware and intrusive security features. And twenty years' pent-up hatred of Microsoft.

The campaign was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, whose entire workflow runs on Macs.

Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense.

"There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.

"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."

"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."

Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.

Canada should look to Australia. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.

"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."

The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.

"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."

Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.

A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."

ENIGMA, Bletcherous Park, Thursday — Academics at De Montfort University in Leicester have put together a team tasked with getting grants to claim to predict the next big thing in communication technologies, in a bid to tackle funding pitfalls before they become a problem.

"Widespread Internet adoption has afforded some technologies rapid growth," said Dr Bernd Stahl, "but have also generated downsides. For example, uppity Internet users think all this is for their social enjoyment and cultural enhancement, rather than to firmly attach a vacuum hose to their wallet."

Under the two year project, entitled Ethical Issues of Emerging ICT Applications, researchers aim to identify information and communication technologies likely to emerge in the next 10 to 15 years and spot any unforeseen drawbacks to milking the consumer as hard as possible, but no harder. "The Web 2.0 model — you create the content, we get the money — has much potential. However, cautionary examples such as Wikipedia show what happens when you put that sort of power in the hands of a nonprofit. So much money left on the table!"

Dr Stahl's team will identify and list the future applications and the issues that are likely to arise. "So far we've successfully predicted that 'e-mail' will become quite popular — that's where you send messages electronically, without using paper. Outlandish, I know! There's also a possible niche for sending short text messages using telephones, if the telephone is attached to the network by a sufficiently long cable. In conclusion, send us more money and we'll see what we can do for you."

Microsoft: "We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."

A terrorist attack on the NHS has brought three London hospitals to a halt.

The terrorists, representing an organisation calling itself "Microsoft," apparently used insecure third-party contractors to put a virus-running platform called "Exchange" into critical systems in the hospitals, in order to extort money from them on an annual basis.

It is understood that a large percentage of all businesses are infected with the virus, wasting up to 25% of employees' working time and opening the companies to further attacks from related criminal organisations demanding to see all their licenses.

The virus in question, W32.SHILL/ENDERLE, takes over the host's IT and office meeting booking systems, leading to aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, pumping out prodigious quantities of faeces and a terrible compulsion to spread the infection to others. The patient also walks with a shuddering stumble and asks for their hospital meal to include tasty, tasty brains. Recovery has commenced when they have an overwhelming urge to throw their computer out of the window. "Getting this stuff out of the system makes MRSA look like a walk in the park," said one cleaner, waving his shit-encrusted hands about for emphasis.

When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. "We have maintained a safe environment for our patients throughout the incident," said a spokesman for Barts NHS Trust, "keeping them in the Clostridium difficile culturing lab rather than risking exposing them to 'Outlook.'"

Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn't-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a GBP250 price point in the UK.)

"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big 'Microsoft' logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a "smash and grab" mentality amongst consumers. "And not 'grab and smash' as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death or E74 error again."

The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. "But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DSi ... uh, forget I said that."

Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. "Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit."

Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. "We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360," said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, "and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives ... Wait! Come back!"

Greenberg further assured consumers that "the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3's ass every way from Friday, you wait and see." Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.

Microsoft is reeling from the vicious and unwarranted slanders of security companies and the US government's Computer Emergency Response Team that its Internet Explorer web browser has alleged "security holes" or is in any way less than the finest software known to mankind and excellent value for your money.

The festering paedophiles of CERT have gone so outrageously far as to make the ludicrous claim that just viewing a malicious webpage in IE could leave your computer open to being hacked and turned into a Russian Mafia spam server. "We don't know what could have triggered such vindictiveness," sobbed Microsoft marketing marketer's marketer Steve Ballmer. "Do they hate free enterprise that much?"

There are things you can do to make your computing experience even more secure. Microsoft's official suggestion -- make sure your anti-virus software is up to date and using an entire CPU doing nothing much, click through five screens to run IE in "protected mode," click through four screens to set zone security to "high," click "JUST BLOODY DO IT WILL YOU" when the User Access Control asks if you really want to do this, enable automatic updates with the minor side-effect of installing Microsoft DRM on your system or Windows Genuine Advantage randomly turning your computer into a paperweight, and sacrifice a goat to Microsoft at midnight on a moonless night -- is simple and straightforward. "It's the quality you're paying for."

On no account should you consider that there might be other web browsers out there, as researchers have demonstrated that all of them automatically download the cover of Virgin Killer. "I saw a report," said marketing marketer John Curran of Microsoft Completely Enderlependent Analysts, Inc., "that another browser had more vulnerabilities than ours! People would be very foolish indeed to move from the latest IE to Netscape 4.01."

"These CERT wankers are Mactards and trolls," said Guardian marketing marketer Jack Schofield. "They just want to take IE users out, brutally sodomise them, gas them in concentration camps and" [This comment has been removed by a Guardian moderator. Replies may also be deleted.]

Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.

"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.

"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows 7. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."

The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.

The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven."

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Home Office counter-terrorism experts intend to exploit nu meeja websites to "channel messages through volunteers in Internet forums" as part of a campaign to "taint the al-Qaeda(tm) brand," according to a document accidentally posted to Wikipedia this morning.

"We understand that people on Internet forums have no experience whatsoever of participants paid to advocate a position or product," says the report. "A single image macro exchange of 'U R TERRIST' 'NO U' 'O RLY?' 'SRSLY' could save countless lost souls."

The unit is also targeting the BBC and other online news outlets. The main obstacle appears to lie in writing messages stupid enough to pass for genuine reader comments. "Some of our top fake news writers have burnt out their brains on the task and now sit shaking and gibbering about real life being worse than any parody. And house prices."

Other work includes faked reports of al-Quaeda branded Zunes on Gizmodo, suitably on-message mouseover popups on XKCD and photomanipulations of Osama bin Laden as Pedobear on 4chan.

The initiative was spearheaded by a Home Office civil servant asked to account for the number of work hours he seemed to be spending on Internet message boards. His latest proposal is to fight al-Qaeda on MP3, BitTorrent and pornographic websites. "I've bought a new 500 gigabyte USB portable disk drive on expenses to store this important confidential data," he said.

yes, it was.

"LOLbot, how do we reverse entropy?"
i dunno lol

I have a friend who seriously tried to tell me that 4chan was a CIA entrapment operation for online activists. I'm not sure even an AI could reach that level of WHAT.

Your Internet can feel like the Australian one.

60% of UK consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed.

"This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers," said Tudor Aw at KPMG, "and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether lying to advertisers or lying to subscribers is the right revenue model."

40% of respondents said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows zipping and swooping about the screen, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to get their telly from BitTorrent and browse with Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.

People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone with which they could steal someone's WiFi connection.

Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! "If you know what's good for you."

Email filtering company MessageLabs reports that Egham, Surrey, on the suburban outskirts of London, is the town that receives the most spam in Britain.

"It's not like there's much else to do," said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of Egham Hythe, idly whirling his four-foot penis around his head in a desultory fashion. "Expanding your manhood, growing your breasts, increasing your sperm ... the Lib Dem phone calls get a bit much. That's Doctor Busybody, by the way. My Ph.D arrived last week."

Spam has revitalised the local economy. Mr Busybody has given up cab driving and is now working a lucrative job processing payments from home after he sent them his bank details in response to an urgent security message. "I had that King Otumfuo Opoku Ware II in the back of my cab once. Very generous and helpful fellow."

The Egham Tourist Board has seized the day, with plans for a 50 foot tall penis sculpture at Junction 13 of the M25 on the exit ramp to the town. The sculpture will be encircled by a genuine imitation Rolex and spray a fountain of Spermamax, obtained at a very reasonable rate from a Canadian pharmacy. "You will search an hour for your underwear in the ocean of our spam!" is to become the new town motto.

"I did get a good one the other day," says Busybody. "Barrister Matthew Sergeant Busybody of MessageLabs said we could promote our town to millions of people just by sending them an advance fee to process our incoming email. The stuff they try! 'Scuse me, V!k@grk@ kicking in, got to go have sex again. Sorry."

Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.

"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine."

The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all documentation is in OOXML.

(work in progress, not yet on notnews)

As Microsoft's search engine share sunk to its lowest level yet in February, with approximately 8 to 9 queries total worldwide, Steve Ballmer has reiterated his willingness to hook up with Yahoo! and its 21 queries worldwide.

The press conference was held on a street corner in San Francisco as Mr Ballmer and Jerry Yang sat with their hats on the sidewalk and playing harmonicas with a "WILL WEBSEARCH FOR FOOD" sign behind them.

"Understandably, we expect less activity in the Great Recession," said Mr Ballmer. "Nobody knows what value assets should be ... say, you aren't finished with that cigarette, are you?"

Press attendees included a schizophrenic local resident in a tinfoil hat ("to keep Google out"), two teenagers drunk on malt liquor and a policeman keeping an eye on things from a distance. The teenagers taunted, confused and upset Mr Ballmer by suggesting he attempt to locate his own posterior.

"My new search technology is unstoppable! Just look at this netbook!" shouted Mr Ballmer, waving an Etch-a-Sketch in a threatening manner. "IT'S MAUVE! IT RUNS WINDOWS SEVEN! LINUX PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! I'LL SHOW 'EM ALL! BASTARDS!"

"Some love stories are eternal," said Mr Yang. "Romeo and Juliet. Heloise and Abelard. Leopold and Loeb. Microsoft and Yahoo."

Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.

People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.

Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."

Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.

Surface is part of Microsoft"s vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista - I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.

"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, given we're still hooked to America by tin cans and string, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds. We promise you won't go over your download cap."

The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unAustralian thoughts.

"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, and so is linking to someone linking to someone claiming to reveal the list. So we're blocking Google Search. Having to use Anzwers should keep usage right down."

Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year monitoring citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.

A consultative process will determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his votes. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Xenophon's bloody sane."

The Associated Press has asked the government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.

"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff!

"We need federal regulation to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give news agencies and record companies free money!"

The press group argues that traffic from search engines doesn't make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."

The AP suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."

The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.

"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it. We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! Not giving us free money is a clear abuse of Google's power.

"We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!"

The newspaper group argues that traffic from search engines does not make up the cost of producing the content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for itself. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem. It's also the BBC's problem, so we should get some of the TV licencing fee too."

The Guardian suggests the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Basically, they should just give us money because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."

Microsoft launched Surface, its tabletop computer system, in the UK yesterday.

People will use the touchscreen computer "the same way they have interacted with everyday items their entire lives," said Philippa Snare of Microsoft UK, "with hands and with gestures." Instead of a keyboard or mouse, the techno-table uses a 30-inch touch-sensitive screen that also reacts to objects placed on it. Photos are automatically downloaded from cameras or phones. A spilt cup of coffee causes the "I'm a PC" guy to appear on the screen and start shouting at you for ruining his shirt, and your fourth Big Mac of the day causes him to keel over with a heart attack and the system to blue-screen. Users then make an appropriate gesture.

Unlike conventional computers which only one person can use at a time, Surface is a "multi-touch" system allowing several people can use the screen at the same time. Stealing someone's data is as simple as sliding your phone onto the screen. "We've made it completely compatible with popular gadgets such as Windows Mobile and Zune."

Surface will appear in communal areas such as shops, hotels and pubs first, allowing the public to get used to the new technology and see how it responds to pints being poured over it and kebabs in the coin slot.

Surface is part of Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. "Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler running Windows Vista -- I mean, Windows 7. What could possibly go wrong?"

Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.

Is linux utterly superflous and of no interest to anyone?

I thought the usual line of thinking was that monopolies were bad, so why does that not apply here? Is it because its Microsoft?

During their private meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama gave the monarch a personalized iPod with video footage of her 2007 visit to Washington and Virginia and preloaded with 40 show tunes, in blatant violation of copyright law.

The 9000-word iTunes or Amazon MP3 contracts establish licensing, not ownership, of the file, for personal, not commercial or diplomatic use. Furthermore, should the Queen connect her new iPod to a computer, further copies will be made, in direct contravention of British law.

"It's okay!" said Mr Obama. "As Nixon said, 'if the President does it that means it's not illegal.' And you can't sue the Queen anyway. So we're sweet with ACTA. Even if you aren't."

"One is delighted with one's gift," said Her Majesty. "It helps block that dreadful Italian fellow. Our grandchildren have also assisted us in 'downloading' our Coronation from 'The Pirate Bay.' What will they think of next!"

Songs include "Pass the Duchy", "We Are The Champions", "Public Image" and, of course, "Black President," which Michelle and Elizabeth "cut a rug" to arm in arm.

"I know I got them RIAA bozos in the house," said Mr Obama. "Joe's pals. But one word from me and her Royal Highness here and they'll be less popular than bankers. Word."

Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.

"We have a fabulous selection of content partners for Silverlight," announced Microsoft marketer Scott Guthrie on his blog today. "NBC for the Olympics, which delivered millions of new users to BitTorrent. The Democrat National Committee, which is fine because those Linux users are all Ron Paul weirdos anyway. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. My options are underwater, my resume's a car crash, Google won't call me back. My life is an exercise in futility. I'm the walking dead, man. The walking dead."

Silverlight was created by Microsoft to leverage its desktop monopoly on Windows, to work off the tremendous sales and popularity of Vista. Flash is present on a pathetic 96% of all computers connected to the Internet, whereas Silverlight downloads are into the triple figures.

"But it's got DRM!" cried Guthrie. "Netflix loved it! And web developers love us too, after all we did for them with IE 6. Wait, come back! We'll put porn on it! Free porn!"

Similar Microsoft initiatives include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF, its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs and its earlier Liquid Motion attempt to replace Flash. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.

In a Microsoft internal security sweep, Guthrie's own desktop was found to still be running Windows XP.

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!Ã

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."

Don't worry, it's all part of the joined-up thinking!

The trouble is not mainly that people didn't install an available patch. It's that no-one trusts Microsoft patches not to break things by accident or malice (I'm counting WGA as malice).

And in any case, it isn't just that Windows is more popular - it really is more insecure than Unix by design. Windows is a skanky ho', going out in the bad part of town drunk and stoned with no pants on and saying "what could possibly go wrong?"

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Australian government will build a new $43 billion national broadband network, connecting 90% of homes to 100-megabit fibre internet. "We believe that fast broadband is absolutely essential for our nation's future", he said.

"Telstra has raised issues with the amount of bandwidth usage this will produce, but our Great Firewall of Australia Internet filtering project should keep usage down to reasonable levels at near-dialup speeds."

The Great Firewall will reliably block all illegal material, child pornography, terrorism and unhappy thoughts on the network.

"Not only are the contents of the list illegal," said Senator Stephen Conroy, " but revealing the list is also illegal, as is linking to someone linking to someone purporting to reveal the list. So blocking Google Search is required. This will also help keep usage down to an acceptable level."

Calling it, the "single largest infrastructure decision in Australia's history," Mr Rudd said the project would employ up to 37,000 people a year scanning citizens' net access, reading their email and correcting spelling errors in their football forum posts.

A consultative process will occur to determine the regulatory framework for the network. "We're considering getting Senator Fielding to do it personally," said Senator Conroy, "since he's the dickhead who demanded the censorship in return for his vote. Hopefully it'll melt his brain. Bloody balance of power. At least Nick Xenophon's bloody sane."

Viewers will have the opportunity "to see more of our finest creative advertising minds at work" under proposals put forward by Ofcom to deal with the drop in television advertising revenue.

The report notes: "The advertising industry is powerfully adept at producing thirty-second immaculately-constructed visual masterpieces, perfect for the modern on-the-go citizen. We also hope to bring long-form works to the viewer, which they presently must seek out themselves on home shopping channels. We feel this will alleviate the monotony of shows such as The X Factor."

Broadcasters are currently restricted to showing an average of eight minutes an hour of advertising during peak times, amounting to a maximum of 40 minutes across the five-hour period. The new plan involves eight minutes an hour of programming, amounting to a maximum of 40 minutes across an evening.

"We want to ensure that viewers continue to benefit from a wide range of advertising-funded television services. We feel there is no prospect of this backfiring, as it's not as if there's any alternative to television," said the preliminary report, which is also available on YouTube and BitTorrent.

"Ofcom has taken on board our opinion that any suggestion of 'regulatory capture' by the bodies it is meant to set the rules for is piffle," said Channel Four. "But we understand these moves are controversial, and strongly suggest people call in with their opinion on our 0900 line, at only 95p a minute."

"Oh dear, what a pity, never mind," said a BBC spokesman, opening champagne.

A computer worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is posing a growing threat to users blitheringly stupid enough to still think Windows is not ridiculously and unfixably insecure by design.

Despite many years' warnings that Microsoft regards security as a marketing problem and has only ever done the absolute minimum it can get away with, millions of users who click on any rubbish they see in the hope of pictures of female tennis stars having wardrobe malfunctions still fail to believe that taking Windows out on the Internet is like standing bent over in the street in downtown Gomorrah, naked, arse greased up and carrying a flashing neon sign saying "COME AND GET IT."

Microsoft cannot believe people have not applied the patch for the problem, just because they keep trying to use Windows Genuine Advantage to break legally-bought systems. "Don't they trust us?" asked marketing marketer Steve Ballmer.

Millions of smug Mac users and the four hundred smug Linux users pointed and laughed, having long given up trying to convince their Windows-using friends to see sense. "There's a reason the Unix system on Mac OS X is called Darwin," said appallingly smug Mac user Arty Phagge.

"It can't be stupid if everyone else runs it," said Windows user Joe Beleaguered, who had lost all his email, business files, MP3s and porn again. "Macs cost more than Windows PCs."

"Yes," said Phagge. "Yes, they do."

Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy frantically tried to get our attention about something or other, but we can't say we care.

60% of UK consumers are willing to browse with an ad-blocker in return for free videos, music and other content, a survey has revealed.

"This willingness to pretend to view adverts in exchange for free content is good news for sites wanting to lie to advertisers, and is perhaps a pointer in the ongoing debate over whether advertising or subscription is the right revenue model," said Tudor Aw at KPMG.

40% said they would pretend to accept popups, popunders, interstitials, Phorm, floating windows, Flash videos that start playing sound automatically, eye-gouging animations and 2o7.net cookies in exchange for free music. 16% said they would pay to avoid ads. The rest would continue to use BitTorrent or Mozilla Firefox with AdBlock.

People were more willing to pay on mobile phones, unless they had a modern phone with which they could steal someone's WiFi connection.

Google, the world's largest online advertising agency, said it was looking into tastefully-interspersed direct content advertising and brand placement, and added that you should PUNCH THE MONKEY TO WIN £20,000!!! If you know what's good for you.

FOURTH CHANNEL, txtfiles.org, Sunday (NNN) — Logs of email, web usage and Internet phone calls will be stored by Internet service providers from Monday, per EU directive.

The Home Office said it was the UK Government's priority to "protect public safety and national security and, of course, our own jobs. The records are safeguarded by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to only be accessible in the direst of need, such as when your arsehole neighbour tells the council you're using their bin."

Social network users responded with outrage. "Liek, wtf?" said KT Myspce. "I put up pictures of me pissed on a public website run by a commercial company and the government looks at it? I'm defriending Jacqui Smith right now. Cow."

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group said it was a "crazy directive" with potentially dangerous repercussions for citizens. "The mental health of the civil servants reviewing the data is in particular peril. What is seen cannot be unseen."

The initiative was welcomed by Internet users Bob Goatse, Boxxy Tubgirl and the Lemonparty Collective. "We look forward to introducing ourselves to even more wonderful Internet users," said two girls, handing reporters a cup. Spork shares were up 5% in early trading.

You realise of course that this was the real-life GNUphone.

...

The Free Software Foundation (NASDAQ: RMS) has announced the Free Software alternative to the evil, DRM-infested, locked-down, defective-by-design iPhone: the GNUPhone.

The key technical innovation of the GNUPhone is that it is completely operated from the command line. "What could be more intuitive than a bash prompt?" said seventeen-year-old Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy. "The ultimate one-dimensional desktop! Just type dial voice +1-555-1212 -ntwk verizon -prot cdma2000 -ssh-version 2 -a -l -q -9 -b -k -K 14 -x and away you go! Simple and obvious!"

The phone will also serve as a versatile personal media player. "I can play any .au file or H.120 video with a single shell command! The iPod could never measure up to this powerful ease of use." Video is rendered into ASCII art with aalib. "If blocky ASCII teletype softcore pinups were good enough for 1970s minicomputer operators, they're good enough for you. Respect your elders."

The KDE project will be bringing its next-generation KDE 4 desktop to the GNUPhone. "you can flip, twirl, dice, blend, fold, spindle and mutilate your terminal windows to your heart's content," said developer Aaron Seigo. "look at that cool effect! any complaint that basic functions don't actually work is ignorant of the intrinsic beauty of the plasma api and is just more fun spread by haters like stevie ray vaughan-nichols and novell corporation."

Actual successful voice calls are expected by 2011 to 2012. Regulatory approval is proving problematic in the corrupt, corporate-captured US environment. "The FCC said that if we dared switch on this, uh, 'piece of shit' in a built-up area in its present form, they'd break all our fingers with a fourteen-pound cluebat," said Nerdboy. "They're obviously shilling for Apple, Nokia and Microsoft."

The second version of the GNUPhone will run EMACS on the HURD kernel and be operated by writing eLisp macros on the fly. "It's the clearest, most elegant and natural operating environment anyone could conceive of," said Nerdboy. "Really, we're not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect."

Yeah, people like that are why female geeks leave the industry. Developers who think they're brilliant communicators until they actually have to talk to a human.

...

The number of female IT professionals in the UK is falling, according to the British Computer Society, despite similar or superior academic scores and recruitment in the sector as a whole having risen in the same timeframe. The lack of flexibility offered by employers is blamed.

"It's a free market world," said Ubuntu Linux developer Hiram Nerdboy. "It's about competence and getting the job done. Working sixteen hours a day on a project you really love is par for the course. That we're all eighteen to twenty-five is from the accelerated Internet-based learning of the new generation, not exploitation of young workers who donâ(TM)t know any better."

Over a third of women in IT had complained of sexism up to sexual harassment at work. "Itâ(TM)s women who just don't have social skills," said Nerdboy. "They object to the guys freely choosing to all go down the strip club after work. Theyâ(TM)re just not team players."

Open source projects have worse figures than industry, with male to female ratios approaching fifty-to-one. Many women cite gross sexism on mailing lists and IRC. "In my experience, women just don't have a working sense of humour and canâ(TM)t take a joke. My girlfriend thought it was funny! Even leaving helpful comments on their blogs didnâ(TM)t work. 'Political correctness' is no exaggeration. Anyway, I met my girlfriend online!"

"...," said his girlfriend, RealDoll Ada.

"And it's not like you can get the applicants," added Nerdboy. "We can hardly get any girls to apply for a job here. They're obviously naturally not good enough geeks. It must be evolutionary. We need more pink computers."

I did this one in January! Microsoft calls for government bailout.

SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday - Microsoft Corporation is headed for swingeing layoffs in mid-January after the failure of its stock buyback program, and has called for a government bailout in the face of the credit crunch.

"Vastly popular operating systems like Vista just aren't selling," said marketing marketer emeritus Bill Gates, "and it's all because people aren't confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn't start buying it in 2007 because they were expecting this even then. A subsidy to buy good, honest American computer operating systems is essential to the health of the economy, or my part of it."

Should the Big One of American virtual office supplies fail, economists predict that it could free up millions of dollars in business spending and provide a devastating boost to an economy reeling from the impact of the credit crunch.

Hiring in most Microsoft divisions has frozen in the last six months and 30GB Zunes are already on suicide watch. "The workload's impossible to keep up with," said blog technical evangelist Gary M. Stewart. "I've even been answering Slashdot comments on Boycott Novell or Groklaw. It's impossible to keep track of! Anyway, you're just another Twitter sockpuppet. Or Mini-Microsoft. Admit it."

Additional bailouts have been hooked on the bill as riders for HD-DVD, eight-track cartridges, 78rpm gramophones and Babbage analytical engine gear manufacturers.

Senators have stated they will only bail the company out with a change in top management. "What the shit," said Linus Torvalds as his draft notice arrived.

After a minor shipping delay, flying cars have arrived for all. As of today, all major cities also feature moving pavements and weather control and commuter flights to the Moon will be commencing tomorrow.

Earth President Barack Obama welcomed the representatives of the Galactic Brotherhood to Washington, assuring them that the many wars on Earth were now to be conducted entirely by robots, though the robots would be carefully monitored and pulled out of battle and granted citizenship the moment they achieved sentience. He also offered the galactics free access to Google, with only the requirement for tasteful contextually-attuned text advertising to be imprinted on their DNA.

The reactionary forces of the twentieth-century United States finally conceded defeat and shut down the Five-Year Plan Tractor Plants of Detroit, where ridiculous oversized transport was bashed together by semi-literate peasants between fifths of vodka from the nerve gas factory next door, and the Five-Year Plan Software Plants of Redmond, where ridiculous oversized operating systems were bashed together by semi-numerate fresh graduates between fifths of Red Bull. The record and movie company back catalogues have been placed into the public domain for the preservation of human culture and the comic-book capitalists of Wall Street have been sent to calming, soothing, humanistic re-education facilities. "We'll teach them to love again," said Mr Obama.

Robot housecleaners are now universally available at quite reasonable prices. The robot companion for your child, designed to say "I LOVE YOU" while the child hits it repeatedly, was an early release for Christmas 2007. The new model features the voice of Justin Fletcher from CBeebies and is designed for parents to hit repeatedly.

Future innovations for the century include the rise of the Great Old Ones from their eternal sleep to take back the Earth and consume the souls of all humanity, first driving them slowly insane. The citizenry is being prepared for this eventuality using repeated broadcasts of In The Night Garden.

The Guardian Media Group has asked the Government to examine Google News and other content aggregators, claiming they contribute insufficiently to their income.

"The newspapers put their content up on the web for free and then Google, the freeloading bastards, tell people where to find it! Clearly, this must stop. You'd think the Internet wasn't invented to give newspapers and record companies free money!

"We told them to pay up or stop using our stuff, and they said OK, they'd stop using our stuff! We need the Government to bring back balance, 'balance' defined as being able to make them give us money because we want it."

The newspaper group argues that traffic generated by search engines doesn't compensate for the cost involved in producing content. "Ad revenue has collapsed, so search engine traffic doesn't bring in enough views to pay for it. Our inability to sell ads is clearly Google's problem."

The Guardian suggest the exploration of new models that "require fair acknowledgement of the value that our content creates, both on our own site through advertising and 'at the edges' in the world of search and aggregation. Also, they should give us money just because we want it. And the music industry too. How about a bailout? Go on, gi's it."

The Performing Right Society and UK Music have come out strongly against YouTube and Google for not just handing them both buckets of money.

The furore started when the PRS demanded that YouTube pay them more money or remove their members' videos, and YouTube removed their members' videos. "It is clear they are too powerful," said Feargal Sharkey, whose bank account died before he got old, "because they were actually able to just tell us to bog off. I am sick and tired of bogus outsiders who spout unworkable utopian visions. Instead, they should give us money because we want it. Just like the record companies used to ... er, hold on, I'll start again."

"Our main focus is on compensating the artist," said Howie Singer from Warner Music. "In theory, I mean, not out of our own pockets or anything. It's amazing what you can make recoupable. As such, it's vital that Google and the ISPs give the artists all the money that can be dragged out of them, plus a perfectly reasonable 87% for us. The six, er, five, er, four majors actually having to write a cheque would be an unsustainable imposition."

The PRS noted its work on increasing the total revenue pool for songwriters by demanding stables pay to play music to horses, people in cars pay if they wind down their windows with the stereo on, and people singing in the shower pay if anyone else in the house could theoretically hear them. They will also be removing 6.75% of buskers' earnings from their guitar cases and 6.75% of children's lunch money in case they sing songs on the way to school, which the busker or child can then apply to get back minus a reasonable handling fee.

Yeah, that table was brilliant. Microsoft launches furniture that crashes.

I look forward to Microsoft's vision of the Digital Home. Imagine your television, your refrigerator, your gas boiler, all running Windows Vista^W7. What could possibly go wrong?

After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future, filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science and openly sodomising iPhone developers in the city square of Palo Alto, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and 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's pretty and it's cool 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."

You know what that means don't you?

"STFU N00B"

You are probably not actually human.

"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"

The test was designed to weed out 'your' kind.

"NO U"

I bet you couldn't even pass a simple Turing test against a 13 year old girl if you can't pass a Captcha.

"IT'S OVER 9000!!"

It really is sad when they learn the truth.

...
"Fag."

http://notnews.today.com/2008/10/13/turing-test-won-with-artificial-stupidity/

You know what that means don't you?

"STFU N00B"

You are probably not actually human.

"U R SO GAY LOLOLOLOL"

The test was designed to weed out 'your' kind.

"NO U"

I bet you couldn't even pass a simple Turing test against a 13 year old girl if you can't pass a Captcha.

"IT'S OVER 9000!!"

It really is sad when they learn the truth.

...
"Fag."

http://notnews.today.com/2008/10/13/turing-test-won-with-artificial-stupidity/

Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, says a review of the primary school curriculum in England by Sir Jim Rose of Ofsted.

Students will also be required to familiarise themselves with podcasts, the iTunes store, the Pirate Bay, b3ta and 4chan. They will gain fluency in handwriting and keyboard skills and learn how two use a spell chequer proper Lee. Literature classes will involve young adult novels written entirely in txt spk.

Earlier versions of the proposal suggested students learn about AltaVista, GeoCities and the dangers of internet paedophiles on Usenet.

Pupils will no longer have to study the Victorian period or the Second World War. But ministers said British history would always be a core part of education. "The history books will undergo proper Party review, of course," said Schools Minister Jim Knight. "The life of Jade Goody is far more relevant to modern culture than patriarchal oppression from dead white males like Churchill or Cromwell."

The move has met some opposition. "How will kids understand Hitler jokes?" said Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, "or how Hitler instantly makes any joke funnier? Will anyone watch the UK Hitler Channel again?"

Wikipedia welcomed the move, looking forward to more twenty thousand word articles on minor characters in Charlie & Lola. "Our coverage of Sizzles the dog will be enhanced immeasurably," said administrator WikiFiddler451. "Of course, my article on Lotte's fur coat just reached 'featured' status."

"RT@neilhimself Bally dashed curriculum bally dashed hors de combat. Tish, fie and pish. Maybe they're finally getting their arse in gear xxx," noted Stephen Fry.

Artificial intelligence came a step closer this weekend when a computer came within five percent of passing the Turing Test, which the computer passes if people cannot tell between the computer and a human.

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!!"
...
"Fag."

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

LOLBOT has since been released into the wild to post random abuse, hentai manga and titty shots to 4chan, after having been banned from YouTube for commenting in a perspicacious and on-topic manner.

LOLBOT was also preemptively banned from editing Wikipedia. "We don't consider this sort of thing a suitable use of the encyclopedia," sniffed administrator WikiFiddler451, who said it had nothing to do with his having been one of the human test subjects picked as a computer.

"This is a marvellous achievement, and shows great progress toward goals I've worked for all my life," said Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading, confirming his status as a system failing the Turing test.

The etch-a-sketch.

Also, you know how the beta background is the beams of light shining down? About two screens above that is Steve Ballmer's ass.

Apple has announced its new iPod Shuffle, the smallest yet. The new Shuffle offers more storage, better sound, a talking interface ("the first talking interface on an MP3 player! Except Rockbox, but only freetards use that and they don't count") and superior abilities to pick up chicks.

Controversy has surrounded the new hardware requirements for the Shuffle, including new Apple-branded headphones, Apple-branded music and surgical attachment of the device to one's genital region. "Total quality control," said Steve Jobs. "All competitors are inferior by definition and will be crushed."

Apple fan blogs were unanimous in their praise of the "iButtPlug" installation procedure. The hardware lock-in was a brilliant business move on Apple's part, the best possible thing for the consumer and a moral and ethical requirement to sell MP3 players at all, wrote Daniel Eran Dilger on RoughlyDrafted. He also intimated that all negative press on the matter was yet more Microsoft astroturf and vaporware.

Microsoft countered with a preannouncement of its new Zune LP player, which works with 9.5" vinyl discs manufactured with the PlaysYouBetcha!(tm) process and a cubic zirconia stylus.

"There's no such things as Zunes," laughed Jobs. "They're a fairy tale we invented to get young Apple Store employees to behave."

Apple has announced its new iPod Shuffle, the smallest yet. The new Shuffle offers more storage, better sound, a talking interface ("the first talking interface on an MP3 player! Except Rockbox, but only freetards use that and they don't count") and superior abilities to pick up chicks.

Controversy has surrounded the new hardware requirements for the Shuffle, including new Apple-branded headphones, Apple-branded music and surgical attachment of the device to one's genital region. "Total quality control," said Steve Jobs. "All competitors are inferior by definition and will be crushed."

Apple fan blogs were unanimous in their praise of the "iButtPlug" installation procedure. The hardware lock-in was a brilliant business move on Apple's part, the best possible thing for the consumer and a moral and ethical requirement to sell MP3 players at all, wrote Daniel Eran Dilger on RoughlyDrafted. He also intimated that all negative press on the matter was yet more Microsoft astroturf and vaporware.

Microsoft countered with a preannouncement of its new Zune LP player, which works with 9.5" vinyl discs manufactured with the PlaysYouBetcha!(tm) process and a cubic zirconia stylus.

"There's no such things as Zunes," laughed Jobs. "They're a fairy tale we invented to get young Apple Store employees to behave."

Apple has announced its new iPod Shuffle, the smallest yet. The new Shuffle offers more storage, better sound, a talking interface ("the first talking interface on an MP3 player! Except Rockbox, but only freetards use that and they don't count") and superior abilities to pick up chicks.

Controversy has surrounded the new hardware requirements for the Shuffle, including new Apple-branded headphones, Apple-branded music and surgical attachment of the device to one's genital region. "Total quality control," said Steve Jobs. "All competitors are inferior by definition and will be crushed."

Apple fan blogs were unanimous in their praise of the "iButtPlug" installation procedure. The hardware lock-in was a brilliant business move on Apple's part, the best possible thing for the consumer and a moral and ethical requirement to sell MP3 players at all, wrote Daniel Eran Dilger on Roughly Drafted. He also intimated that all negative press on the matter was the work of Microsoft astroturfers.

Microsoft countered with a preannouncement of its new Zune LP player, which works with 9.5" vinyl discs manufactured with the PlaysYouBetcha! process and a cubic zirconia stylus.

"There's no such things as Zunes," laughed Jobs. "They're a fairy tale we invented to get young Apple Store employees to behave."

Apple has announced its new iPod Shuffle, the smallest yet. The new Shuffle offers more storage, better sound, a talking interface ("the first talking interface on an MP3 player! Except Rockbox, but only freetards use that and they don't count") and superior abilities to pick up chicks.

Controversy has surrounded the new hardware requirements for the Shuffle, including new Apple-branded headphones, Apple-branded music and surgical attachment of the device to one's genital region. "Total quality control," said Steve Jobs. "All competitors are inferior by definition and will be crushed."

Apple fan blogs were unanimous in their praise of the "iButtPlug" installation procedure. The hardware lock-in was a brilliant business move on Apple's part, the best possible thing for the consumer and a moral and ethical requirement to sell MP3 players at all, wrote Daniel Eran Dilger on Roughly Drafted. He also intimated that all negative press on the matter was the work of Microsoft astroturfers.

Microsoft countered with a preannouncement of its new Zune LP player, which works with 9.5" vinyl discs manufactured with the PlaysYouBetcha! process and a cubic zirconia stylus.

"There's no such things as Zunes," laughed Jobs. "They're a fairy tale we invented to get young Apple Store employees to behave."