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DEFINED FREEDOM, Gnuisance, Monday (NNGadget) - 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 FUD 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."

Dude. The GNUphone is the way to go! The only phone any righteous Slashdot reader could use!

Really, weâ(TM)re not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

Found: the original Hitlercat. (The blog went down long ago.)

In the case of the NSPCC, because their goal is to do anything that gets money. Children are the excuse. This is the childrens' charity that knowingly promoted a panic about Satanism, and when called on it said "it was worth it because we got donations."

The Home Office and a coalition of children's charities are seeking to block access to the Internet to save the populace from child pornography and Internet-borne cancers.

"Only 95% of Internet users are protected from computer-borne paedophile cancers," said Home Office Minister Alan Campbell. "We must bring the other 5% into line, despite their spurious claims of the fine British-designed Cleanfeed system being 'completely incompetent broken crap that never worked in the first place.' It is clear that blocking all potentially illegal images is as easy as stopping people from sharing movies and music, which is a solved problem."

Zoe fucking Hilton of the NSPCfuckingC concurred. "We need decisive action from the government to ensure our continued income. If you're an ISP who doesn't sign up with the IWF, you're a fucking paedo. Paedo. Paedo. Paeeee-do. And you cause cancer, you fucking arsehole. And give us your fucking money, now. Paedo. I hope they fuck and kill you in jail."

"The IWF has protected ISPs from government interference for over a decade and users from potentially illegal images," said potentially fabulous drag queen and IWF head Peter Robbins. "Although our recent foray into actually attempting to do the impossible rather than just existing as something for ISPs to point at hasn't gone so well, we must protect children from carcinogenic Olympic logos of Lisa Simpson being forced into sexual acts. Think of the cartoon characters!"

The Government has signalled it will block the "streaming" loophole by making it illegal not merely to download such images, but to think about them or consider their possible existence.

You'll know it happens to you when your box's logo turns to one of these. Instantly recognisable!

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced a new era at the Seattle software company, announcing their entry six^Wnine^Wtwelve months hence into the cell phone market with the exciting new Zune Phone, to finally get the company properly into the rapidly changing digital media landscape.

Ballmer, speaking to a group of trained-monkey analysts and cynical bloggers at the company headquarters today, unveiled mockups prototypes of the Zune Phone, which combines the Zune music player (with wifi for "squirting" songs), a CDMA cell phone, a PDA, an eight gigabyte hard disk, a camera, a laser pointer and a bottle opener into one semi-portable device. It will also allow you to "squirt" music to and from your Windows 7^W8 Service Pack 1^W2 Media Center computer.

The product underscores the shift the company has attempted to make in recent years from an office supply company to a consumer electronics darling as it aims not to become utterly obsolete in the digital future. "And even Linux fanboys admit our hardware is pretty nice," Ballmer said before the somewhat sullen and cynical crowd. "It's definitely the best music player we've ever made."

Ballmer called the Zune Phone a revolutionary device that will leapfrog current technology. He said the company expects to sell about 100 million of them next year. "Maybe two hundred million. This is so the coolest music player ever." Unlike the MP3 player market, which the iPod has dominated even with the entrance of Microsoft's Zune, the cell phone market is much more fragmented. "There is not one device that everyone buys," said completely independent analyst Rob Enderle, "but this fabulous device should trounce all comers. I've ordered three already in anticipation."

Weighing in at only 15 ounces (425 grams), with a 5-inch 640-by-480 pixel screen, the $498 (with three-year $80/month contract) Z-Phone, a rebadged version of the LG Smart Display from 2003 with new firmware, looks like a Classic Brown Zune (to come in mission, chocolate, corduroy and meconium) with a phone touchpad in place of its imitation scroll wheel. It runs Windows Mobile, Pocket Internet Explorer, Pocket Microsoft Office, Pocket Solitaire and Pocket Pool. MSN will supply e-mail, mapping, search and other Internet services to the Z-Phone. It also features an amazing 1.3 megapixel (300,000 pixels interpolated) black and white camera. Battery life is estimated at up to four hours in Microsoft tests.

To better work with its content partners and ensure that you, the user, can rest safe in the knowledge that the artists and their representatives have been paid properly for all their hard work, Microsoft has limited "squirtable" songs to encrypted WMA files purchased from the Zune Music Store, which can be listened to three times or within three days before automatically being deleted from both the Zune Phone and the Media Center computer. Songs may also be "squirted" between two Zune Phones (though not the original Zune) if both are registered with Microsoft as being linked to that installation of Media Center. Users are advised to purchase Microsoft Zune Secure Headphones ($129), which encrypt the signal between the Zune Phone and your ears, as playback quality is degraded on conventional "analog hole" earphones or when playing back unencrypted MP3 files. Phone calls may be made to or received from any number on the network carrier you bought the Zune Phone from, with only a 99-cent charge for humming a song to someone you call or are called by on the phone or ten cents per use of the camera, laser pointer or bottle opener. Microsoft will also pay $20 from each Zune Phone sold to Universal Music. In addition to the ability to "squirt" songs, the user may "squirt" his calls, which are stored on Microsoft Zune Live servers and cost $40 per month to access.

In other news, Ballmer said that Microsoft had reached over 600 music downloads since introducing it

The Internet Watch Foundation's "Crapland" child-friendly Internet theme park has gone bust after only three days.

An information board at the entrance depicts the classical painting Smell The Glove by Scorpionaggio (courtesy National Portrait Gallery) and welcomes the visitor on a "flight of the imagination, travelling down the magical pathways that teenagers have used to get their porn for centuries," and which have been specially opened up for the lucky children invited to come. "Just like Michael Jacksonâ(TM)s Neverland."

Advertisements promised a "Clean Kiddie-Friendly World ... Hollywood Special FXs, Blind Faith plane ride, Nevermind swimming baths, Houses of the Holy rock climbing ... & much more!"

The reality when it opened on Saturday evening was somewhat less impressive. Spurious 404s, lying customer service staff ("for the authentic Internet experience!"), HTML 2.0 and web searches through AltaVista. "It looked like a website from 1995 or a paper chart of what it should look like," said customer Jimmy Wales. "It was like they'd stacked dial-up modems on both sides of a path together, stuck some printouts on a TV and stuck a keyboard in front. We were waiting two hours and they charged us GBP10 for a photo with Mary Whitehouse."

Two curtain-twitchers and a Whitehouse were attacked by irate Internet users. A posting on 4chan showed a busybody having a fag behind the grotto.

Then, on Tuesday evening, Crapland closed. A statement by the management said this was due to "intentional organised crowd manipulation and event sabotage and unscrupulous and inaccurate negative bias media that quoted our words accurately in full." A woman dressed as a particularly hefty Pepperpot stood outside shrieking: "The IWF's dead. Go home."

Cable internet users who unwittingly signed up for the Crapland experience are giving up and getting DSL broadband instead. "It's been a complete Virgin killer."

Google's promise: "Better we have all your data than Microsoft. Or your husband."

Google, the world's largest non-evil corporation, has released Stalkertude, which allows you to share your location in real time with your dearest friends from all your social networks and blogs, that guy your friend gave your LiveJournal username to when you were both drunk and anyone you've ever sent or received a message to or from on GMail. And your boss.

Stalkertude allows you to broadcast where you are at all times. It supports all current smartphones except that stupid iThing from Cupertino. If you're using Google Chrome, you can automatically share your location from your laptop too!

Stalkertude comes preinstalled on the Google Notepad netbook, a free Android-based mini-laptop to keep you connected wherever you go. The laptop maintains and archives a complete record of your life in text, video and audio form with the twelve built-in webcams and microphones dotted around the casing, plus samples of your DNA from the keys. The data is transmitted to the Google servers for your comfort and convenience and remains absolutely and entirely confidential between you and Google's marketing department. Tasteful and understated text ads are subliminally woven into the display pixels.

Privacy features are important to Stalkertude. You can trust us with your entire life record, even as we argue in court over Google StreetView that privacy doesn't exist in the modern world. Besides, better we have your complete dossier than Microsoft, right? And we'll only give it to the government if they, like, ask for it or something. That we've gathered so much data on you in the first place is in no way a danger to you. We promise we won't tell your husband, and that's what counts.

The sword nerds have been heard from. After further analysis of the surveillance video, it's been determined that the weapon was not a Batleth, but a Valdris. It's not a useless two-handed sword like the Batleth, it's a large, single-handed, double-ended knife. Retails for $49. More for intimidation than actual use.

This robber isn't a Trekkie. He's a knife nut.

I don't see how you could possibly doubt the word of Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer!

(Don't talk about how Steve lights up lightbulbs with his mouth, though.)

Guest post by Mary-Jo Enderle

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

I tried it on a low-end netbook 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 release candidate should be available 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.

Oh, certainly. My point was really that this isn't going to work and hasn't been working. The closest it's come to working is the XBox 360 - a game box that's good and popular in its own right - but they cut so many corners in manufacture that this joke is immediately comprehensible, and yet again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Microsoft has to learn the scary and difficult art of making things that are actually good and that people actually want because they're good. The closest I've seen to awareness of this is Songsmith - which is hardly company-saving stuff, but will show them that they can in fact sell a fun and cool toy because it's fun and cool.

I don't see what anyone could possibly think was wrong with the Zune logo.

In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched Zune MusicTurd(tm) for mobile phones.

The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.

Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.

"We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days," said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.

"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."

[Read the original interview. Least enthusiastic marketer in history. It was quite hard to outdo.]

[Oh, and have a Zune-Anus logo.]

In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched Zune MusicTurd(tm) for mobile phones.

The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.

Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.

"We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days," said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.

"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."

[Read the original interview. Least enthusiastic marketer in history. It was quite hard to outdo.]

[Oh, and have a Zune-Anus logo.]

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.

Predicted by me in early January.

"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."

How do you make a computer act stupid enough to imitate actual humans?

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.

SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday - Microsoft Corporation has enacted 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.

A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as "charlot chirch sex tape" produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.

"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. "Instead, you should use Windows Live Search - to be renamed Windows Love Search - which produces butterflies and baby seals. That's instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey - it's for the planet."

Google is "secretive" about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. "Or at least, they told us to 'fuck off' when we asked how many endangered species they'd killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft."

A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. "Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder."

The Home Office welcomed the findings. "This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists," said Jacqui Smith, "and so we'll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences."

Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. "All new and yet ... old," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. "Save the planet with Windows 7! (Requires4coreprocessor2gigabytesmemory500gigabyteharddiskandbasement nuclearpowerplant. Powerplantsoldseparately.)"

Ugh. I don't think it COULD be worse actually. - Kelly http://conventionfans.today.com/

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, 53, announced Monday he was being treated for a "hormone imbalance" but would remain head of the company.

"I found myself unable to give the Macworld keynote," said Jobs, "but my truly spectacular rack will be well worth the hormonal rages. It's like six months of PMS, though my engineers will tell you thereâ(TM)s hardly a difference."

The keynote, presented by Pamela Anderson and Jenna Jameson, introduced the new iKini and iFront lingerie range, in signature translucent white, with eight gigabytes of music storage and 3G phone connectivity. "Left one for signal strength, right one for network."

Jobs noted that his decision not to give the Macworld keynote had set off a "flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed." To restore investor confidence, he has been fitted with a full set of cybernetic implants providing full live data on his bodily functions, broadcast in sideband data on the Disney Channel and downloadable daily on iTunes.

Bill Gates pooh-poohed the iFront range, offering his new Zunewear "Carrot" Macho Dude-Pants, which would make you look better "every day of the year" (except December 31st) and "show off your Ballmers like never before. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! I'M A PEE-CEEEE!"

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.

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."

Who can forget the image of the Google "g" atop the tower in the destruction of Isengard?

A new study shows that using Google will destroy the planet. A typical Google search on a completely random topic such as "charlot chirch sex tape" produces enough carbon for 98 pencils or seventeen boiled kettles and brutally murders an average of two point four cute fluffy things.

"A Google search has a definite environmental impact," said Alex Wissner-Gross of Harvard University. "Instead, you should use Windows Live Search — to be renamed Windows Love Search — which produces butterflies and baby seals. That's instead of whatever you were looking for, but hey — it's for the planet."

Google is "secretive" about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. "Or at least, they told us to fuck off when we asked how many endangered species they'd killed off today. This proves their inherent malice. If you search using Google you may as well be strangling kittens. You should go to a trustworthy company of demonstrated moral fibre, like Microsoft."

A recent Gartner report said the global IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the airlines industry. "Primary in this is the large quantities of hot air produced by completely independent analysts to support the views of the highest bidder."

The Home Office welcomed the findings. "This proves that Internet users might as well be terrorists," said Jacqui Smith, "and so we'll treat them like they are. All Internet access in the UK will be run through Cleanfeed filters and your electronic ration book ticked off per web page used. Reading Wikipedia or the Guido Fawkes blog will, of course, be declared capital offences."

Microsoft has demonstrated its environmental credentials by recycling Vista, its huge and lumbering Hummer of an operating system, as Windows 7. "All new and yet ... old," said marketing marketer Steve Ballmer. "Save the planet with Windows 7! Requires 4 core processor 2 gigabytes memory 500 gigabyte hard disk and basement nuclear power plant. Power plant sold separately."

Robot bar tenders are the first thing any decent roboticist thinks of.

Here are:

* the Robomoji, a mojito maker
* a cocktail robot from the 2007 Maker Faire
* this one complete with face from Roboexotica 2007.

And here's the original recipe for a Mojito.

I'm downloading the beta right now. I want to see if I can compile Wine under Cygwin or Mingw on it, after all ...

Hey, perhaps Bill will get the bailout he asked for so American businesses can afford to buy it.

Bill: "It's all because people aren't confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn't start buying Vista 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 anyway."

This means my USB Christmas tree would flash ten times as fast!

Not to mention my USB chicken foot or USB mouse with a real scorpion in ...

By Mary-Jo Enderle

I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Beta $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 $CURRENT_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 $CURRENT_VERSION 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.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, 53, announced Monday he was being treated for a "hormone imbalance" but would remain head of the company.

"I find myself unable to give the Macworld keynote tomorrow," said Jobs, "but my truly spectacular rack will be well worth the hormonal rages. It's like six months of PMS, though my engineers will tell you there's hardly a difference."

The keynote, to be presented by Pamela Anderson and Jenna Jameson, is rumored to introduce the new iKini and iFront lingerie range, in signature translucent white, with eight gigabytes of music storage and 3G phone connectivity. "Left one for signal strength, right one for network."

Jobs noted that his decision not to give the Macworld keynote had set off a "flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed." To restore investor confidence, he has been fitted with a full set of cybernetic implants providing full live data on his bodily functions, broadcast in sideband data on the Disney Channel and downloadable daily on iTunes.

Bill Gates pooh-poohed the iFront range, offering his new Zunewear "Carrot" Macho Dude-Pants, which would make you look better "every day of the year" (except December 31st) and "show off your Ballmers like never before. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! Iâ(TM)M A PEE-CEEEE!"

What could possibly go wrong?

Steve Jobs, visionary leader of Apple Computer, has died - and come back, better and stronger.

The news was carried in an obituary run by Bloomberg late last night, which was pulled when news of his resurrection came through.

"They don't call it the Jesus Phone for nothing," Jobs laughed with reporters, before eating their tasty, tasty brains.

Jobs' new cyborg arsenal includes wifi, 3G, laser cannons, a flame thrower and a can opener, all running on Mac OS X Robosteve. Bundled applications include an enhanced hypnotic force field based on the one he uses at MacWorld keynotes. "I can't wait to try it on Bill," he said.

Disney, in which Jobs is the single largest shareholder, remained unaffected. "Steve's just working with the way we do things here," said 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.

Written up: Microsoft calls for government bailout

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. 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.

Steve Jobs, visionary leader of Apple Computer, has died - and come back, better and stronger.

The news was carried in an obituary run by Bloomberg late last night, which was pulled when news of his resurrection came through.

"They don't call it the Jesus Phone for nothing," Jobs laughed with reporters, before eating their tasty, tasty brains.

Jobs' new cyborg arsenal includes wifi, 3G, laser cannons, a flame thrower and a can opener, all running on Mac OS X Robosteve. Bundled applications include an enhanced hypnotic force field based on the one he uses at MacWorld keynotes. "I can't wait to try it on Bill," he said.

Disney, in which Jobs is the single largest shareholder, remained unaffected. "Steve's just working with the way we do things here," said 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.

One future prediction: MSDN discs make excellent scarecrows.

Like the old Usenet .sig: "When I collect two solar masses of AOL discs I will collapse the Sun."

The Internet Watch Foundation, protectors of the British citizenry against uncceptable material on teh intarweb, have declared Wikipedia illegal in the UK.

Several police forces had advised the IWF concerning the site, swearing their actions had nothing to do with anything in the site about senior policemen or their behaviour.

"The fourth most popular website in the world is an encyclopedia," said IWF Obersturmgruppenwhitehouse Myra Hindley. "What sort of message does that send about the youth of today? They should be using mobile phones, dealing drugs, smoking cracks to 'jazz' music in discos and knifing each other in the streets. God help us if they see record covers!"

Police across the country used sophisticated hammer-detecting equipment to swoop on the homes of rumoured Wikipedophiles. All computers, mobile phones, televisions and any technology more sophisticated than scissors will be confiscated for investigation, and will be returned in due process in twelve to eighteen months when the filthy fucking nonces have been brought to trial, assuming they survive multiple beatings in jail.

"Fuck these filthy fucking fuckers," said Zoe fucking Hilton of the NSPCC. "And give us money, or you're a filthy fucking kiddie fucker yourself. Turd."

"We absolutely won't be adapting the system to discussion of ID cards," said Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "Nor will MPs raising the issue have their offices or homes raided. Probably."

Virgin Media users had failed to notice any difference, assuming the connection problems were service as normal, and went back to watching the football except for the last ten minutes of the game.

Star Wars fans are to feel the force of the seminal sci-fi films and their iconic soundtracks on stage, screen, television, Game Boy, comic book and Internet in major new releases, which will launch next year.

In Star Wars: Journey To The Bottom Of The Barrel , the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will play a live score as recreations of scenes from the six films with amusingly-captioned kittens are shown on a cinema screen.

It will not be a traditional musical with actors playing characters from the films, but will feature live narrators, speaking authentic lolcat dialect, as painstakingly reconstructed by linguists.

As well as the destruction of the Death Star (an exploding Wikipedia puzzle globe) and various love scenes between Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala (rendered with the relevant LEGO(tm) figures), there will be several of the epic battle scenes for which Star Wars is famous, featuring Airfix model spacecraft taking on miniature cardboard battleships, as held in the jaws of cute kittens.

"Star Wars holds memories for practically everyone," said George Lucas. "I can't think of anyone who won't be simply thrilled to have those memories lovingly caressed by these reconstructions. They'll be particularly pleased to know that JarJar Binks is back, warning Han that Greedo is about to shoot first."

The real success of USB is as the universal source of a convenient five volts, with data as a secondary consideration. Look at all the buckets of incredibly weird crap you can get from China - the USB Christmas trees, the chicken foot flash drive, the mouse with a scorpion in ...

USB 3.0 plans to take the voltage down to 4 volts. This move must be resisted at all costs!

PHONING IT IN, mid-afternoon - An ambulance service has praised a five-year-old boy after he successfully called 999 to report that his mother had collapsed and was unconscious in their home.

In other news, a pet wears a seatbelt, alleged scientists have yet again discovered a formula for the perfect attractive woman (it apparently involves being short with long legs and large breasts), there's a piece on ancient Roman bikinis, how to make the perfect cup of tea and lots of pictures of sunburnt, drug-addled women in bikini tops at a summer rock festival, including ones that aren't Amy Winehouse.

Crop circles have fallen out of favour in recent years. How the A-levels these days aren't as good as proper A-levels were back in my day, you mark my words, remains a perennial favourite. With pictures of students in bikini tops.

"We're holding out hope of the first skateboarding duck of the season," said one of the few reporters still left in the office. "In the meantime, I'm researching a story about a long, short-breasted, large-legged sunburnt woman in a Roman bikini top making me the perfect cup of tea."

Remember: it's the Watchdog of the Press that protects our democracy.

Where's the car? We need cars!

A good bad car analogy is: the ionosphere is like a Trabant, with an engine spewing out all manner of charged particles wrapped in a thin shell at best. And the effect being seen is like a stretch Trabant, as the thin shell is pulled beyond its limits. A pink one.

A stretch Trabant is also what government-subsidised car makers would result in, resulting in worse ionosphere damage. Perfect!

(Further) Off-topic: here's a heavy-duty Trabi mod: a V8 Trabant. They basically had to build an entire car frame and put the original plastic shell around it.

"We have buttiduously canvbutted the industry, buttessed what is available and buttembled the finest selection of contractors for this buttignment. The filters will buttociatively clbuttify all communications and filter then, I can butture you, rebuttemble them with surpbutting exacbreastude in any quanbreasty. Consbreastuents can be rebuttured that a mulbreastude of industry compebreastors will butture quality and keep our clbuttrooms safe. EDS Capita Goatse will not embarbutt us."

The plans have attracted wide criticism. "It will only give supersbreastious rebutturance to medireview thinkers," said EFA. "Automated systems won't solve human problems like loveual harbuttment. Mbuttacring the written word into a Picbutto painting is not the anbreastank missile of Internet safety."

Unions also butterted that such close buttessment of staff in the workplace would hamper efficiency and could verge on workplace harbuttment. "Watermeloning cranberries."

The government was unfazed. "Butterting free speech is one thing, but a triparbreaste committee considers that that does not justify mere pbuttive breastillation at the expense of others."

The first filtering offices will be set up in Arsenal, Penistone and Scunthorpe.

Smile, maser loves u!

(That's actually the work of a Dublin graffiti artist, quite a clever one. "maser" stuff is all over Dublin. You need to look through his website and Flickr stream.)

Dear Sir,

We are a group of UK film and TV producers, directors and writers. We are concerned that the successes of the creative industries in the UK are being undermined by the illegal online file-sharing of film and TV.

We are asking the Government to show its support by ensuring that internet service providers play their part in tackling this huge problem by giving us money. Lots of money. Just keep piling it in, we'll tell you when it's enough.

In 2007, up to (well, it could be) 25 per cent of all online TV piracy took place in the UK. Popular shows are downloaded illegally hundreds of thousands of times per episode, and some of them might even be ours rather than something American made with an actual budget.

It is true that in 2008, UK commercial TV broadcasters enjoyed the highest viewing figures in five years, that total TV viewing was up 10% year-on-year, and the valuable yet hard-to-reach 16 to 24-year-old demographic (the typical file-sharer) watched 4.9% more commercial TV and saw 12% more ads. But it's the principle of the thing: someone is getting money from something that touches something one of us once touched, therefore the money belongs to us. This is the style of corporate thinking that brought Britain its great economic gains from 1997 to 2007, after all.At a time when so many jobs are being lost in the wider economy, it is especially important that our gravy train be maintained.

Internet service providers have the ability to change the behaviour of those customers who illegally distribute content online. They have the power to make significant change and to prevent their infrastructure from being used on a wholesale scale for illegal activity. They have the power to stop people looking at the cover of Virgin Killer. They have a secret magic wand that will fix everything wrong with the media industry's income streams and they are refusing, with malice aforethought, to use it. If they are not prepared to give us all the free money we ask for and a bit more besides, they should be compelled to do so.

Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner demonstrated a Wireless Energy Resonant Link as he spoke at the annual Intel developers forum in San Francisco yesterday.

Rattner demonstrated this by causing his ears to light up at 60 watts of power a yard from a power transmitter operated by his assistant Igor. Only four journalists were incinerated when the power earthed through them from his fingertips.

Rattner reassured us that pumping kilowatts of power around the home through magnetic induction power is absolutely harmless. "The human body is not affected by magnetic fields," he said as one journalist with a pacemaker collapsed and another with a knee replacement watched his leg catch fire. "There's no danger whatsoever from it, any more than there is from mobile phones cooking your brain, microwave leakage blinding you, chemical waste unraveling all the DNA in your balls or statistical clusters of kids with cancer wherever high-tension power lines run overhead. Asbestos and thalidomide were horribly slandered in their day too."

"Of course, Nikola Tesla did it first in 1899," said enthusiast Albert Tedious-Anorak, 54, of Little Boring. "I detailed this at length on Wikipedia, but they refused to believe the value of my revelations on this matter due to a conspiracy of Edison fans amongst the site administrators."

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.]

Here's a picture by Joi Ito of a mechanical router, on display in a Tokyo museum. The engine of the steampunk Internet. Imagine BBs being pumped through the series of pneumatic tubes. "ROUTER BLOWOUT! SEVEN SYSADMINS SHOT DEAD BY THEIR ANALYTICAL ENGINES!"

If you're browsing with Chrome, don't forget to click the special page about:internets.