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Ho, Ho, Ho
neutron_p writes "Every Christmas, calculations circulate that cast doubt as to whether Santa Claus could possibly deliver gifts to all the world's good children - and still remain within the laws of physics. To deliver gifts to all who deserve them, they assert, Santa would need to move so fast that he would vaporise due to air resistance, be torn to pieces by gravitational forces or suffer other terrible fates we wouldn't wish for Santa Claus. Now a team of four top researchers looked into the case and concluded: Santa can do the job and Christmas is saved! They concluded that Santa has an ion-shield of charged particles, held together by a magnetic field to solve the heat problem and he probably travels in more than four dimensions." jgaynor writes "Inspired by an old slashdot article , I decided this year to create a 'christmas lights frontend' to our Network Management System. It came out well and has had a definite impact on response times. Videos of the results are here: WMV, AVI, REAL." Mrs. Claus writes "The NORAD Santa Tracker is up and running and ready to track the Big Guy on Christmas Eve. They've got photos of 50 years of catching Santa in the act." And if you didn't listen to the Blizzard Christmas tale we mentioned in the previous post, you're missing out.
Okay guys... what's up?
Did Santa take away your Net connection or something?
I'm pulling 115k/sec on the video downloads and 200k/sec from Blizzard's ftp site...
He knows when your are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
You better not breathe, you better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!
It's easy. There just aren't that many kids who deserve presents. Bah. humbug.
Santa only delivers presents to kids who have been GOOD ALL YEAR.
That brings it down to like 4 or 5, so he really isn't all that rushed.
Santa really needs to consider selling that authoritative list of "naughty" girls. He could make a killing with that thing.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Not anymore. Dumbledore gave it to Hermione to save Sirius Black.
Santa has been outsourced. We had to do it. For the price of one Santa we got 3 guys from India. The elves have been outsourced, too, from China. Which is actually a good thing. Now we'll all get electronics.
He's actually a Q.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
No, no, no. Windows computers are purely used as portal into peoples homes. This has been going on since the 90s. That's why all us UNIX and Apple users don't get any presents. At least, that's what my parents told me.
Informative?
(f/x: shakes head in despair...)
They are, Havent you heard, Santa is an anagram of Satan, because of that, Bush is having NORAD track Santa because he's a Pinko-Liberal-Commie-Terrorist. ;)
Well, I don't anymore.
No kind, gift-giving soul would require RealPlayer to track him!
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
Echelon system, wiretaps, mail tampering. He deals in the black arts. And then, when the new year rolls around, he sells his list to spammers and the US government. That's how he manages to pay for everything.
Sorry, kids, but NORAD will not be tracking Santa this year. A suit filed in federal court on Tuesday by the ACLU and the People for the American Way alleges that any use of government computers to aid the fat man this year constitutes a clear violation of the separation of church and state.
In a related filing, the ACLU and PFTAW are bringing a class-action lawsuit against Santa, citing numerous cases of unlawful entry, breaking and entering, trespassing, as well as a civil complaint alleging illegal operation of a flying craft without proper inspections, piloting without a license, and flying through restricted airspace without proper security clearance and prior authorization.
Sorry, kids, Christmas is cancelled this year, and for the forseeable future. It looks like Santa will be spending the rest of his life in the pen, making big rocks into little rocks.
The elves spend most of the year compiling data on all children. School records, criminal records, first hand surveillance and the like. It was becoming increasingly clear that no one was being good, and Santa was losing his primary asset, that of the ultimate arbiter of good behavior. To solve this, he restructured his parameters and created a system in which every child would be assigned a normalized value. This allows him to simply, a fairly, decide who is naughty and nice. The closer the normalized value is to one, the more nice.
Next Santa throws all children more than two standard deviations out into the naughty pile. This may sound harsh, but if you are nice enough to get above a 0.95, you probably just playing the system, and Santa does not like players. Either group is without merits.
Next Santa takes those in the center, that is one SD out, and subcontract to Wal*mart or Amazon. Since these are just average kids, they can live with average presents.
Finally there are the kids between one and two standard deviations. These are the ones that merit personal, or almost personal, reward or scolding from Santa. The good kids gets a personal visit and a personal gift from Santa. The naughty kids get a Santa branded piece of coal delivered by the special class of santa-like elves.
This system keeps the number of trips that Santa much make to aroud a few hundred million, assuming only about half the world celebrates christmas. This is the most that he can make, which is around five deliveries every millisecond. The implication of this system is that every child must be on their guard to be exactly good enough every year. Any mistake could bump you into the larger class of no Santa visit. This is going to be more important as the world population grows, even if the Christmas celebrating population declines. Certain cost cutting measure have already been instituted, the most significant was in the 1999 season when Santa stopped visiting those that were in the first SD of being 'good'. As the world economy falters, Santa may no longer be able to afford a full night of support, or the gear that allows him to visit all the houses. Any season now, cost cutting and unfair taxes on corporations might force him to visit only those areas in that are friendly to the independent spirit.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
merry holidays
Damnit, that sounds so contrived. Just call the damn holiday Christmas like everyone else on this planet! Hell, even the Japanese manage to call it Christmas without their heads bursting into flame, and 95% of them aren't even Christians! More people celebrate Christmas than there are Christians. In fact, I'm pretty certain if someone is not busy hunting for enough beetles to live another day or Jewish, they're either giving or getting presents, or wishing they could afford presents to give (or a friend rich enough to get one from).
So to conclude, please quit trying to be politically correct about our holiday and go buy yourself some Christmas presents. And if you're Jewish, its never too late to claim your Hanukkah presents were delayed in the mail!
Thanks,
Director of Corporate Holidays
Wal-Mart
Ok, smart guy, if Santa is a lie, who have I got bound and gagged in my basement? Huh?
...oh crap!
Santa gets the job done the same way most Slashdotters do: Through distributed networking.
By that token, his personal existance is irrelevant, as the network continues to exist and operate without the central hub.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Now, go read the Holy Bible, Dt 13:13-17, lest you are not killed also.
Amen
Yeah, right.