Several tedious Z-list celebrities have demanded Twitter user @injunctionsuper post details of their tawdry and squalid lives too.
[REDACTED] tweeted: "Rumur that I hv super-injunction preventing publication of 'intimate' photos of me n my bank account. NOT TRUE! Also, tits. FER FUXAKE PLS RT"
The revelation that decent British people can read things on Internet services that aren't even based in the UK has left celebrities and politicians shocked, shocked that people actually have ways of gaining information that aren't filtered through the hamstrung UK print press. "Clearly," said minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey, "we need to protect our valuable pop music and football industries with a Great Firewall of Britain without delay."
"In the modern world of the Internet, the secret or super-injunction may no longer be an effective tool in the administration of justice," said BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, in an attempt on the world record for fatuity.
"We tried to bugger the Internet last year," said Peter Mandelson, "but did you listen?"
A spokesman for Wikipedia suggested that journalists looking for space-filler stories just fuck off until August as usual.
"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!"
Neuroscientists have found that religious fervour lights up the same parts of the brain as waiting in line for your devotions at the Apple Store.
The scientists were interviewed by a BBC programme exploring the fantastically lucrative and popular brands springing up around the supernatural. Religions such as "Christianity" parody the story of the semi-mythical Steve Jobs' virgin birth, adoption by a humble Silicon Valley family, founding of Apple, expulsion from the fold, decade in the wilderness and triumphant Second Coming, wherein devotees were led to enlightenment, glory and hipness.
"The scans of 'religion' appear remarkably similar," said one scientist whose name is being withheld for protection from outraged Apple devotees. "The adrenal glands are stimulated and the same areas of the visual regions light up. Somewhat in the shape of an apple. No, really! Shaped like an apple!"
Cupertino's response was frosty. "To have the sacred enlightenment of the products of our saviour Steve maligned by comparison to mere witchdoctor cultist mumbo-jumbo is no less than a calculated insult. One important difference is that our stuff works.... If you hold it right." The spokesman then compared the neuroscientists' mothers to a PC.
"The comparison is ridiculous," said "religious" leader Joe "Happy Heil" Ratzinger. "We're just out to make an honest buck like anyone. Well, fairly honest."
Unity is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”
SCHESTOWITZ, Newham, Tuesday (NTN) — Office 365, Microsoft's pay-as-you-go answer to Google Docs, delivers the same delight you're used to from Office on your PC, only slower and clunkier and only working on Internet Explorer. Remember Internet Explorer? Of course you do!
>Microsoft Online Services have marketed Office 365 directly to your bosses, who have little people like you to do all the bits that involve actually touching a computer. It promises a fully integrated solution to your daily working needs, with the reliability of Hotmail and Sidekick. That is, it promises it to your IT department, who can now inflict ribbon toolbars on your system without you even having to reboot.
The application monitors your daily activity for increased efficiency, automatically timesheeting your use of Facebook or Twitter at work, for your comfort and convenience when demonstrating their business necessity and utility to your company's social media strategy to your boss. Firefox no longer works, but that's a small price to pay for this sort of well-maintained elegance.
The final Office 365 release will include a marketplace where Microsoft partners will be able to sell applications for your Windows Phone or BlackBerry. (Android and iPhone are not supported, and will in fact explode on contact.)
The ribbon toolbar will not be present in the next version of Office 365, whose interface will be based on the recently-released hit game Portal 2. "Windows 7 was my idea," says user interaction consultant GlaDOS.
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 to take on Google.
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! LIKE! LIKE!"
"Some love stories are eternal," said Mr Yang. "Romeo and Juliet. Heloise and Abelard. Leopold and Loeb. Microsoft and Yahoo."
O'GARA UFO FIELD, Armonk, Monday (NTN) — With the final humiliation of the SCO Group and the retirement of Pamela Jones from Groklaw, Microsoft has stepped in with sponsorship to fill "a much-needed gap."
CrockLaw will be "a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's work better," said Sandy Gupta of Microsoft's Open Solutions Group. "We need to crowdsource the work of patent suit production. The attack from Linux is in full swing, and Microsoft's clear ownership of the number 17 must be vigorously defended."
"It is crucial to foster openness and create an environment where a choice of standards is available," said Steve Mutkoski, Senior Standards Strategist. "Specifically, a choice of our standards."
"Also," added Gupta, "we can gather leads on tracking down Mini-Microsoft."
Volunteers have gathered to the site from across Microsoft, as employees desperately try not to be in this year's bottom 10% with 50% of their co-workers.
The site runs on SharePoint, with site members' licence fees being generously discounted by the company. The site has "cracked six figures" on Alexa.
The "PJ" department at IBM issued a sigh and requested an oil change before manufacturing a new birth certificate for President Obama and seeding the skies with alien chemtrails in preparation for Project Blue Beam.
Several tedious Z-list celebrities have demanded Twitter user @injunctionsuper post details of their tawdry and squalid lives too.
[REDACTED] tweeted: "Rumur that I hv super-injunction preventing publication of 'intimate' photos of me n my bank account. NOT TRUE! Also, tits. FER FUXAKE PLS RT"
The revelation that decent British people can read things on Internet services that aren't even based in the UK has left celebrities and politicians shocked, shocked that people actually have ways of gaining information that aren't filtered through the hamstrung UK print press. "Clearly," said minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey, "we need to protect our valuable pop music and football industries with a Great Firewall of Britain without delay."
"In the modern world of the Internet, the secret or super-injunction may no longer be an effective tool in the administration of justice," said BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, in an attempt on the world record for fatuity.
"We tried to bugger the Internet last year," said Peter Mandelson, "but did you listen?"
A spokesman for Wikipedia suggested that journalists looking for space-filler stories just fuck off until August as usual.
The Pentagon has released the home videos of Osama bin Laden, “a collection to horrify and stultify the hardest heart.”
The tapes include bin Laden at Alton Towers with his children in the late 1990s, dealing with several screaming toddlers, shouting that if they did not behave they would be going home right now and there would be no ice cream for anyone and swearing that “this place and all such manifestations of Western decadence shall be scoured from the face of the earth.”
Others include shaky-cam video of bin Laden and family in front of the Twin Towers in New York, in which video he clips one of the kids around the ear for being a brat and swears a similar oath of destruction, and a tediously-narrated clip of one of the children using the potty for the first time.
Middle-aged fathers the world around viewed the clips in tears and came to a new understanding, deep within their hearts, of the forces driving radical jihadism.
The Pentagon hopes to study the films for security information. “Another video shows him watching the tape of the child on the potty,” says a spokesman. “From his face, we suspect the next Al-Qaeda target would have been the Sony factory in Japan.”
A spokesman for Alton Towers noted that, as Satanically cursed ground upon which no joy could grow and which was invulnerable to the slights and arrows of mere pathetic mortals, the amusement park would remain open and operational for this summer and all summers for the foreseeable future. “Muwaaaahahahaha,” he added.
SECURITY BROADWAY, Iron Curtain, Wednesday — In the wake of Transport Security Administration staff forcing a "full pat-down" on a three-year-old child, Catholic priests have been clamouring to work for the government department.
The TSA, which has apprehended only slightly less than one terrorist in its nine years of operation, welcomed the new recruits to the fold. "We need people with experience in dealing with young people," said TSA head John Pistole, "in telling people what to do and in making the innocent feel guilty. And the enthusiasm! They're not your typical bored minimum-wager, no way! Also, they have better uniforms."
Mr Pistole reiterated the patriotic duty that drives the TSA in their work. "Fondling little girls' genitals is vital to protecting America from TERRORISTS. Remember: if TSA staff can't finger your daughter, the TERRORISTS have won!" He then strangled a kitten for our photographer.
Cardinal Bernard Law returned to America from the Vatican especially for the opportunity to create government-funded child pornography with the new "naked" scanners. "It's top quality stuff, too. The tears, the pain — the things that make this sort of thing really worthwhile."
"They were nasty men," said three-year-old TSA molestee Mandy Simon. "But it clearly demonstrates the iron necessity of the holy Jihadic destruction of the West. Allahu akbar! Daddy? I done a boo-boo."
Unity Vista(tm) is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity Vista. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. “It’ll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called ‘phones’ and run Android.”
35% of US smartphone users admit to using apps before even getting out of bed. Doctors advise the other 65% that it is "entirely natural" and "nothing to be ashamed of."
The most popular in-bed activity admitted to is accessing "social networks," as respondents called it, doing air-quotes. The most common complaint is that the screen is too small to display photos properly, and that it does not wipe clean sufficiently well. Many were tempted to buy a tablet next.
Smartphone vendors and app writers have tried to capitalise on the bedroom market. Vibrate mode is particularly popular and is thought to be driving the accessories market for protective silicone cases.
"Social networking" (air-quoted) remains important when people first wake up, since most are alone and will forever stay that way. 20 percent do a last "check-in" (also air-quoted) before going to sleep at night.
Sociologists suggest the bedroom "apping" phenomenon will be self-limiting, given the effects on fertility of carrying a microwave transmitter in your pocket all day right next to your gonads.
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.”
Facebook staff have been amazed to discover that when Facebook passes users' complete details to application developers and advertisers like candy, some of the partner companies might accidentally let slip the information in some manner.
"We are appalled at this information leak," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as he took a break from his personal RSS feed of drunk women's tits posted to his service. "But I can assure you that we have sternly suggested to everyone involved that they take somewhat greater care not to get caught, and maintain a serious demeanor when rolling around in the great big pit filled with money in their basement."
"I'm horrified and outraged," said office worker Brenda Busybody, 43 (IQ), "that stuff I put on the Internet is on the Internet. It violates everything I expect. I want privacy when I'm calling my boss a useless fuckstick to the entire world, all my coworkers and my boss himself. And when I'm playing a bit of FarmVille before we nick off down the pub."
Privacy advocates are working on Diaspora, a security-enhanced social network so far populated by Linux users who cryptographically sign every update about which episode of Babylon 5 they just finished watching alone in their parents' basement. "START PGP KEY BLOCK!" said open source software advocate Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "WE WILL PROTECT YOUR FREEDOMS!" The next version of Diaspora will allow users to list more than three friends, should there be any demand whatsoever for such a feature.
Facebook works on the now-standard "Web 2.0” business model: 1. Brutally sodomise the personal privacy of anyone who comes within a mile of your service and say "hey baby, I'm sorry" every time you're busted. 2. Sell ads.
Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice(tm) Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.
Windows Bing Voice(tm) was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. "Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality," said Steve Ballmer. "Heck, even they didn't know it was Skype until today. That's how, uh, stealth we are."
The new Windows Bing Voice(tm) client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We'll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice(tm) 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure."
Service is expected to remain "at 100%" as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows Updates(tm) and Windows Genuine Advantage(tm) serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were "holding up well" under the influx of new users.
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
THAWTELESS, West London, Monday (NNGadget) — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release later this month of Ubuntu Linux to men.
Project founder Mark Shuttleworth explained that "this stuff is difficult to explain to girls" and thought they'd have gotten the hint when he called 8.04 "Hairy Hardon." "Worrying about sexism in open source just detracts from the battle for Linux. So we've put the tits back into the default desktop. And arses."
Crime-fighting geek Shuttleworth, who dresses as a billiionaire playboy by night, swore that plenty of women liked him lots and that he obviously wasn't unable to get laid or anything, having gotten seriously rich in the dot-com era, not to mention having gone into space. "Chicks dig that stuff. Trust me, I've met lots of girls. More than five!"
Canonical Community Manager Jono Bacon echoed this sentiment on his blog. "We just don't understand how come women are 15% of all computer programmers but only 1% of open source programmers. It must be a bit complicated for them. That's why I've written this spontaneous blog post, completely unrelated to anything my boss may or may not have said, on all the fantastically talented women in free software, even if none of them seem to work much on Ubuntu any more. Also, I'm absolutely confident that saying I'm in a computer geek heavy metal band will get me lots of chicks too, even if their pretty little heads can't understand Linux."
A special women's edition of Ubuntu 9.10 will be released on a bright pink CD. "It doubles as a makeup mirror!" said Shuttleworth.
CUPERTINO, Transylvania, Friday — After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future, "delaying" the release of GPL source code and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil 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 Bing. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my ‘spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
“We discovered a file making a clear reference to ‘Username unknown,’” the company said in a letter to the US Congress on Wednesday, “and a blank user icon which therefore was... anonymous! D’you see what that means? It means George Hotz and his hacker friends are loathsome criminal masterminds! So obviously we can’t be held liable for negligence in the face of forces like these. In conclusion, give us money.”
CASHIER'S DESK, California Senate, Saturday (NTN) — The associations listed on this letter are writing to strongly oppose California Senate Bill 761. It would create an unnecessary, unenforceable and unconstitutional regulatory burden, as our products could get uppity.
The measure would negatively affect products who have come to expect fun browser games and free services through the Internet, at the mere price of their DNA and that of their first-born. Additionally, it would make them more vulnerable to security threats. (We thought we'd throw that one in even though we have no idea how that would work.)
California law already provides a number of significant privacy protections for products to protect their sensitive personal information, at least on the books even if they can't use them against us.
Products can easily opt out of the collection of data. The four leading Internet browsers all provide user-friendly filtering options that block the ability of companies to collect data or track products' Internet use, even though that's a complete red herring since we keep all the good stuff on our servers and sell it to each other.
The bill would harm California’s Internet economy and innovation, which absolutely relies on the business model of "1. Brutally sodomise products' personal privacy; 2. Sell ads." We also vaguely threaten to fire everyone we employ, just as if we don't have ridiculously profitable businesses already and can easily afford to employ everyone we have work for.
The bill gratuitously singles out advertising companies for special regulation, just because we deal in egregious violations daily. We think you should look to the video game companies too. Opt-in consent is not a viable compliance route for most tracking models, as we know damn well the products wouldn't give us the serial codes to their souls if we actually asked them.
The bill has recently become even more extreme, imposing a free-standing flat ban on any covered entity sharing or transferring any covered information, for any purpose at all. This provision is clearly bin Laden-inspired communism and must be removed. Our selling each other the data is, of course, free enterprise as the Founders intended. We might as well just shut down Google tomorrow! Really! We'll find ONE MILLION PEOPLE WHO HATE THIS BILL ON FACEBOOK. See if we don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Several tedious Z-list celebrities have demanded Twitter user @injunctionsuper post details of their tawdry and squalid lives too.
[REDACTED] tweeted: "Rumur that I hv super-injunction preventing publication of 'intimate' photos of me n my bank account. NOT TRUE! Also, tits. FER FUXAKE PLS RT"
The revelation that decent British people can read things on Internet services that aren't even based in the UK has left celebrities and politicians shocked, shocked that people actually have ways of gaining information that aren't filtered through the hamstrung UK print press. "Clearly," said minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey, "we need to protect our valuable pop music and football industries with a Great Firewall of Britain without delay."
"In the modern world of the Internet, the secret or super-injunction may no longer be an effective tool in the administration of justice," said BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, in an attempt on the world record for fatuity.
"We tried to bugger the Internet last year," said Peter Mandelson, "but did you listen?"
A spokesman for Wikipedia suggested that journalists looking for space-filler stories just fuck off until August as usual.
Apple declares: Fuck it, 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!"
Neuroscientists have found that religious fervour lights up the same parts of the brain as waiting in line for your devotions at the Apple Store.
The scientists were interviewed by a BBC programme exploring the fantastically lucrative and popular brands springing up around the supernatural. Religions such as "Christianity" parody the story of the semi-mythical Steve Jobs' virgin birth, adoption by a humble Silicon Valley family, founding of Apple, expulsion from the fold, decade in the wilderness and triumphant Second Coming, wherein devotees were led to enlightenment, glory and hipness.
"The scans of 'religion' appear remarkably similar," said one scientist whose name is being withheld for protection from outraged Apple devotees. "The adrenal glands are stimulated and the same areas of the visual regions light up. Somewhat in the shape of an apple. No, really! Shaped like an apple!"
Cupertino's response was frosty. "To have the sacred enlightenment of the products of our saviour Steve maligned by comparison to mere witchdoctor cultist mumbo-jumbo is no less than a calculated insult. One important difference is that our stuff works. ... If you hold it right." The spokesman then compared the neuroscientists' mothers to a PC.
"The comparison is ridiculous," said "religious" leader Joe "Happy Heil" Ratzinger. "We're just out to make an honest buck like anyone. Well, fairly honest."
Photo: His Stevianity ministering to a devoted soul..
Unity is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”
SCHESTOWITZ, Newham, Tuesday (NTN) — Office 365, Microsoft's pay-as-you-go answer to Google Docs, delivers the same delight you're used to from Office on your PC, only slower and clunkier and only working on Internet Explorer. Remember Internet Explorer? Of course you do!
>Microsoft Online Services have marketed Office 365 directly to your bosses, who have little people like you to do all the bits that involve actually touching a computer. It promises a fully integrated solution to your daily working needs, with the reliability of Hotmail and Sidekick. That is, it promises it to your IT department, who can now inflict ribbon toolbars on your system without you even having to reboot.
The application monitors your daily activity for increased efficiency, automatically timesheeting your use of Facebook or Twitter at work, for your comfort and convenience when demonstrating their business necessity and utility to your company's social media strategy to your boss. Firefox no longer works, but that's a small price to pay for this sort of well-maintained elegance.
The final Office 365 release will include a marketplace where Microsoft partners will be able to sell applications for your Windows Phone or BlackBerry. (Android and iPhone are not supported, and will in fact explode on contact.)
The ribbon toolbar will not be present in the next version of Office 365, whose interface will be based on the recently-released hit game Portal 2. "Windows 7 was my idea," says user interaction consultant GlaDOS.
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 to take on Google.
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! LIKE! LIKE! "
"Some love stories are eternal," said Mr Yang. "Romeo and Juliet. Heloise and Abelard. Leopold and Loeb. Microsoft and Yahoo."
O'GARA UFO FIELD, Armonk, Monday (NTN) — With the final humiliation of the SCO Group and the retirement of Pamela Jones from Groklaw, Microsoft has stepped in with sponsorship to fill "a much-needed gap."
CrockLaw will be "a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's work better," said Sandy Gupta of Microsoft's Open Solutions Group. "We need to crowdsource the work of patent suit production. The attack from Linux is in full swing, and Microsoft's clear ownership of the number 17 must be vigorously defended."
"It is crucial to foster openness and create an environment where a choice of standards is available," said Steve Mutkoski, Senior Standards Strategist. "Specifically, a choice of our standards."
"Also," added Gupta, "we can gather leads on tracking down Mini-Microsoft."
Volunteers have gathered to the site from across Microsoft, as employees desperately try not to be in this year's bottom 10% with 50% of their co-workers.
The site runs on SharePoint, with site members' licence fees being generously discounted by the company. The site has "cracked six figures" on Alexa.
The "PJ" department at IBM issued a sigh and requested an oil change before manufacturing a new birth certificate for President Obama and seeding the skies with alien chemtrails in preparation for Project Blue Beam.
Photo: The PJ-bot celebrating its victory.
Are you implying Jason Calacanis would ever write sensationalist rubbish for the purpose of attracting attention? The very notion!
Several tedious Z-list celebrities have demanded Twitter user @injunctionsuper post details of their tawdry and squalid lives too.
[REDACTED] tweeted: "Rumur that I hv super-injunction preventing publication of 'intimate' photos of me n my bank account. NOT TRUE! Also, tits. FER FUXAKE PLS RT"
The revelation that decent British people can read things on Internet services that aren't even based in the UK has left celebrities and politicians shocked, shocked that people actually have ways of gaining information that aren't filtered through the hamstrung UK print press. "Clearly," said minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey, "we need to protect our valuable pop music and football industries with a Great Firewall of Britain without delay."
"In the modern world of the Internet, the secret or super-injunction may no longer be an effective tool in the administration of justice," said BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman, in an attempt on the world record for fatuity.
"We tried to bugger the Internet last year," said Peter Mandelson, "but did you listen?"
A spokesman for Wikipedia suggested that journalists looking for space-filler stories just fuck off until August as usual.
The Pentagon has released the home videos of Osama bin Laden, “a collection to horrify and stultify the hardest heart.”
The tapes include bin Laden at Alton Towers with his children in the late 1990s, dealing with several screaming toddlers, shouting that if they did not behave they would be going home right now and there would be no ice cream for anyone and swearing that “this place and all such manifestations of Western decadence shall be scoured from the face of the earth.”
Others include shaky-cam video of bin Laden and family in front of the Twin Towers in New York, in which video he clips one of the kids around the ear for being a brat and swears a similar oath of destruction, and a tediously-narrated clip of one of the children using the potty for the first time.
Middle-aged fathers the world around viewed the clips in tears and came to a new understanding, deep within their hearts, of the forces driving radical jihadism.
The Pentagon hopes to study the films for security information. “Another video shows him watching the tape of the child on the potty,” says a spokesman. “From his face, we suspect the next Al-Qaeda target would have been the Sony factory in Japan.”
A spokesman for Alton Towers noted that, as Satanically cursed ground upon which no joy could grow and which was invulnerable to the slights and arrows of mere pathetic mortals, the amusement park would remain open and operational for this summer and all summers for the foreseeable future. “Muwaaaahahahaha,” he added.
SECURITY BROADWAY, Iron Curtain, Wednesday — In the wake of Transport Security Administration staff forcing a "full pat-down" on a three-year-old child, Catholic priests have been clamouring to work for the government department.
The TSA, which has apprehended only slightly less than one terrorist in its nine years of operation, welcomed the new recruits to the fold. "We need people with experience in dealing with young people," said TSA head John Pistole, "in telling people what to do and in making the innocent feel guilty. And the enthusiasm! They're not your typical bored minimum-wager, no way! Also, they have better uniforms."
Mr Pistole reiterated the patriotic duty that drives the TSA in their work. "Fondling little girls' genitals is vital to protecting America from TERRORISTS. Remember: if TSA staff can't finger your daughter, the TERRORISTS have won!" He then strangled a kitten for our photographer.
Cardinal Bernard Law returned to America from the Vatican especially for the opportunity to create government-funded child pornography with the new "naked" scanners. "It's top quality stuff, too. The tears, the pain — the things that make this sort of thing really worthwhile."
"They were nasty men," said three-year-old TSA molestee Mandy Simon. "But it clearly demonstrates the iron necessity of the holy Jihadic destruction of the West. Allahu akbar! Daddy? I done a boo-boo."
Don't be silly. You just edit the configuration XML directly in gconf. Nothing could be simpler!
Unity Vista(tm) is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.
“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity Vista. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. “It’ll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called ‘phones’ and run Android.”
35% of US smartphone users admit to using apps before even getting out of bed. Doctors advise the other 65% that it is "entirely natural" and "nothing to be ashamed of."
The most popular in-bed activity admitted to is accessing "social networks," as respondents called it, doing air-quotes. The most common complaint is that the screen is too small to display photos properly, and that it does not wipe clean sufficiently well. Many were tempted to buy a tablet next.
Smartphone vendors and app writers have tried to capitalise on the bedroom market. Vibrate mode is particularly popular and is thought to be driving the accessories market for protective silicone cases.
"Social networking" (air-quoted) remains important when people first wake up, since most are alone and will forever stay that way. 20 percent do a last "check-in" (also air-quoted) before going to sleep at night.
Sociologists suggest the bedroom "apping" phenomenon will be self-limiting, given the effects on fertility of carrying a microwave transmitter in your pocket all day right next to your gonads.
... Bother. You are, sir, 100% correct. Someone upvote parent.
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.”
You're right. I should have included something about showering.
Facebook staff have been amazed to discover that when Facebook passes users' complete details to application developers and advertisers like candy, some of the partner companies might accidentally let slip the information in some manner.
"We are appalled at this information leak," said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as he took a break from his personal RSS feed of drunk women's tits posted to his service. "But I can assure you that we have sternly suggested to everyone involved that they take somewhat greater care not to get caught, and maintain a serious demeanor when rolling around in the great big pit filled with money in their basement."
"I'm horrified and outraged," said office worker Brenda Busybody, 43 (IQ), "that stuff I put on the Internet is on the Internet. It violates everything I expect. I want privacy when I'm calling my boss a useless fuckstick to the entire world, all my coworkers and my boss himself. And when I'm playing a bit of FarmVille before we nick off down the pub."
Privacy advocates are working on Diaspora, a security-enhanced social network so far populated by Linux users who cryptographically sign every update about which episode of Babylon 5 they just finished watching alone in their parents' basement. "START PGP KEY BLOCK!" said open source software advocate Hiram Nerdboy, 17. "WE WILL PROTECT YOUR FREEDOMS!" The next version of Diaspora will allow users to list more than three friends, should there be any demand whatsoever for such a feature.
Facebook works on the now-standard "Web 2.0” business model: 1. Brutally sodomise the personal privacy of anyone who comes within a mile of your service and say "hey baby, I'm sorry" every time you're busted. 2. Sell ads.
o_0
Um, it's a humour piece.
Microsoft remains on the bleeding edge of innovation with its completely new-from-the-ground-up Windows Bing Voice(tm) Internet phone platform, formerly known as Skype.
Windows Bing Voice(tm) was developed entirely in-house at an acquisition cost of only $8.5 billion. "Our developer teams know the meaning of confidentiality," said Steve Ballmer. "Heck, even they didn't know it was Skype until today. That's how, uh, stealth we are."
The new Windows Bing Voice(tm) client will be included with Windows Phone 7, Office 365, Kin and Zune. "Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms! On a case by case time and availability basis, of course. We'll give our Mac Business Unit developer details for Windows Bing Voice(tm) 2011 Ultimate Edition by 2013, for sure."
Service is expected to remain "at 100%" as the server infrastructure is moved from Linux to Windows, though Microsoft has not specified what that will be 100% of. The peer-to-peer functionality of Skype will also be harnessed to distribute Windows Updates(tm) and Windows Genuine Advantage(tm) serial number blacklists.
Google said that the Google Voice servers were "holding up well" under the influx of new users.
Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”
THAWTELESS, West London, Monday (NNGadget) — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release later this month of Ubuntu Linux to men.
Project founder Mark Shuttleworth explained that "this stuff is difficult to explain to girls" and thought they'd have gotten the hint when he called 8.04 "Hairy Hardon." "Worrying about sexism in open source just detracts from the battle for Linux. So we've put the tits back into the default desktop. And arses."
Crime-fighting geek Shuttleworth, who dresses as a billiionaire playboy by night, swore that plenty of women liked him lots and that he obviously wasn't unable to get laid or anything, having gotten seriously rich in the dot-com era, not to mention having gone into space. "Chicks dig that stuff. Trust me, I've met lots of girls. More than five!"
Canonical Community Manager Jono Bacon echoed this sentiment on his blog. "We just don't understand how come women are 15% of all computer programmers but only 1% of open source programmers. It must be a bit complicated for them. That's why I've written this spontaneous blog post, completely unrelated to anything my boss may or may not have said, on all the fantastically talented women in free software, even if none of them seem to work much on Ubuntu any more. Also, I'm absolutely confident that saying I'm in a computer geek heavy metal band will get me lots of chicks too, even if their pretty little heads can't understand Linux."
A special women's edition of Ubuntu 9.10 will be released on a bright pink CD. "It doubles as a makeup mirror!" said Shuttleworth.
CUPERTINO, Transylvania, Friday — After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future, "delaying" the release of GPL source code and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil 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 Bing. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my ‘spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
“We discovered a file making a clear reference to ‘Username unknown,’” the company said in a letter to the US Congress on Wednesday, “and a blank user icon which therefore was ... anonymous! D’you see what that means? It means George Hotz and his hacker friends are loathsome criminal masterminds! So obviously we can’t be held liable for negligence in the face of forces like these. In conclusion, give us money.”
CASHIER'S DESK, California Senate, Saturday (NTN) — The associations listed on this letter are writing to strongly oppose California Senate Bill 761. It would create an unnecessary, unenforceable and unconstitutional regulatory burden, as our products could get uppity.
The measure would negatively affect products who have come to expect fun browser games and free services through the Internet, at the mere price of their DNA and that of their first-born. Additionally, it would make them more vulnerable to security threats. (We thought we'd throw that one in even though we have no idea how that would work.)
California law already provides a number of significant privacy protections for products to protect their sensitive personal information, at least on the books even if they can't use them against us.
Products can easily opt out of the collection of data. The four leading Internet browsers all provide user-friendly filtering options that block the ability of companies to collect data or track products' Internet use, even though that's a complete red herring since we keep all the good stuff on our servers and sell it to each other.
The bill would harm California’s Internet economy and innovation, which absolutely relies on the business model of "1. Brutally sodomise products' personal privacy; 2. Sell ads." We also vaguely threaten to fire everyone we employ, just as if we don't have ridiculously profitable businesses already and can easily afford to employ everyone we have work for.
The bill gratuitously singles out advertising companies for special regulation, just because we deal in egregious violations daily. We think you should look to the video game companies too. Opt-in consent is not a viable compliance route for most tracking models, as we know damn well the products wouldn't give us the serial codes to their souls if we actually asked them.
The bill has recently become even more extreme, imposing a free-standing flat ban on any covered entity sharing or transferring any covered information, for any purpose at all. This provision is clearly bin Laden-inspired communism and must be removed. Our selling each other the data is, of course, free enterprise as the Founders intended. We might as well just shut down Google tomorrow! Really! We'll find ONE MILLION PEOPLE WHO HATE THIS BILL ON FACEBOOK. See if we don't.