Cheap netbooks are too limited and no-one will want them any more, say vendors who wish they still made a profit at the mere 103% increase in netbook sales in 2009 over 2008.
The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. "No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7," said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. "So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This 'internet' thing is just a fad too."
What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition(tm), which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is "thoroughly inadequate" to the task. "Linux, of course, doesn't exist, wasn't the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn't cripple Microsoft's bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it's not like it can do twice as much in half the space."
Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. "Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don't run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft," he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.
Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. "If we carefully define tablets as 'not netbooks,' even though they're made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It's all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you'd like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it's suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9."
"Clap your hands if you don't believe in netbooks," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!"
Illustration: The 1982 netbook. Go anywhere! Do anything!
“The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of complete bollocks,” said project leader Professor Tong Sun of City University, “especially the fear of losing funding for security theatre. If we can reliably detect this fear, we should be able to land some eyewateringly lucrative contracts in the very near future.”
The research is funded by the Home Office. “The project relies on a government with a firm commitment to policy-based science, but the Tories look as craven over David Nutt’s firing as Labour, so we should be coining it in for a good while yet.”
The technology will assist airport security officers in picking out suitable subjects. Sensors can reliably detect if someone is a bit brown, or a bit foreign-looking, or has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or if they might be thinking of giving cheek to security officers. It will work in conjunction with the millimetre-wave “naked” radar, currently used to identify terrorist subjects with large breasts.
The false positive rate will be only 5% on a terrorist detection rate of 1 in 100,000, meaning only 99.95% of subjects flagged will be a complete waste of time to finger up the arse with a latex glove. “But we’re sure the government will agree that mere statistical evidence is meaningless in the face of the vital necessity to send the right message,” said Prof Sun, “that if you make trouble the government will quite literally forcibly fuck you in the arse until you bleed. So just shut the fuck up and keep giving us money.”
ONE INFINITE LOOP, Here We Go Again, Sunday (NNGadget) — Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple’s latest billion-dollar jackpot.
Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.
The ___ is rumoured to be any size and scale between the iPod Shuffle and the Macintosh IIfx. Some have described the ___ as a “___-killer.” Analyst speculation suggests the ___ will use a fantastic new interface. “It will be a whole new paradigm,” said Apple blogger Leander Kahney.
Expectations flared when technology research analysts noted that Taiwanese suppliers had received orders from an unknown buyer for a particular obscure component to be filled by the end of the year. “The only possible conclusion is that Apple will launch a ___ by early next year,” said Kahney. “They’ve been working on the ___ for the past six years. People expect it to be the ultimate Apple surprise. This thing will knock people’s socks off.”
Apple has refused to comment on the ___ speculation. But Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, recently hinted that the company was working on something “very innovative.” Steve Jobs is thought to have been personally involved in the development of the ___ over the past two years.
Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the ___ would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple’s actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, and that Jobs’ Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft’s fault.
And in our particular case, Marketing actually have a business case for Facebook and social network access. So yes, they have access to this stuff and get LARTed when they go overboard.
Corporations are designed to employ and put to good use the mediocre as well as the brilliant. So technological measures are ordered by the mediocre to control the mediocre. And the key point is that they're implemented by the mediocre, using software designed by the mediocre.
... they blocked blogs. All blogs, of any sort. All the developers hit the roof - 'cos guess where developers learn new tricks and find solutions to tricky problems?
Things came to a head when we trumpeted our new advances in outreach, getting our content in several prominent newspaper site blogs! Which were then blocked.
Q. Could you please explain the business case for blocking us from reviewing our own content? A. Blogs have now been unblocked for the technology team.
I can see the point - keeping the workers from being F5-pressing robots is the sort of thing management considers a good idea. It just needs a modicum of sanity applied. This mostly requires time, patience and a solid business case.
"We absolutely promise that we only want to completely screw over Microsoft with this, and certainly not Mozilla Firefox," said Google's Sundar Pichai. "That we put a pile of our sponsored Mozilla developers on the project is completely irrelevant. We're not evil, remember."
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement."
Microsoft was unfazed. "Browsers don't need to be integrated with online apps," said marketing developer Ian Moulster. "Certainly not like the operating system... I'll just get back to you."
Google's new browser will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, office applications that will run in said browser and will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.
Pichai stressed that Google would maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Windows Live."
WHITEHALL, Beijing, Friday (NTN) — British police arrested thousands in the Digital Britain drive against Internet file sharing throughout 2009, officials said, which critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.
The British government has run a highly publicized campaign, “Digital Britain,” against what officials said were banned file sharing of Lily Allen songs, overwhelming the country’s Internet and “threatening the emotional health of children.”
Lord Mandelson said late on Thursday that the crackdown on Internet file sharing had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009. The announcement on the Digital Britain website said the drive would deepen in 2010. Police would “intensify punishments for Internet operations that violate laws and regulations. Strengthen monitoring of information,” it urged, “Press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology.”
The ministry did not say how many of the 5,394 suspects arrested were later charged, released or prosecuted. The anti-file sharing drive has also netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in what some see as an effort by the government to reassert control over new media. The ruling Labour Party worries the Internet could become a dangerous conduit for threatening images and ideas.
Britain has banned a number of popular websites and Internet services, including Wikipedia. NewsTechnica passed without comment, however.
"Recent years have witnessed a great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father, L. Benedict Ratzinger®," said the statement. "As such, any person or organisation seeking to name, defame or allude to His Holiness®, any of his Bishops or Priests, or any activities of any of said persons in any capacity, shall be deemed to have violated the Sacred Covenant of Berne, to be a 'no case gain' Suppressive Person and to be duly excommunicated and sued into atomic dust. ALWAYS ATTACK, NEVER DEFEND."
Evidence only recently brought to light, "which we can't show you, it's copyright," apparently demonstrates that playwright William Shakespeare was secretly Catholic. "So we're claiming copyright in everything he did too. And Francis Bacon. And the Earl of Oxford."
The Church's lawyers have worked hard to defend their intellectual property rights on such creative works as those of the Irish priests upon their young charges that only recently came to light. "Our determination to protect and preserve the rights to view, discuss or know about these three-dimensional kinetic performance works, and our tour support for the priests to take these works 'on the road' to new parishes, demonstrates the unimpeachable sincerity of our stance — firmly behind the artists. Legs wide, of course."
The Pope himself has been appalled at the reaction to his recent decision to beatify Adolf Hitler, and described his visit to the Pius XII memorial as "an upsetting encounter with cruelty and senseless hatred. I didn't like it much either."
LITTLE BROTHER, Detroit, Sunday -- The American-based terrorist group "Department of Homeland Security" (the Arabic term for "Department of Homeland Security") has successfully hobbled the American economy once more.
DHS stuntman Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab caused a minor conflagration aboard a Detroit-bound plane on Saturday. "It worked spectacularly well," said his father, Nigerian banker Bnkr. Alhaji Umaru MUTALLAB. "He sent TWENTY-FIVE MILLION (25,000,000.00) Twitter messages about it. 'Stuck on runway for 1/2hr oh well catch up on da vinci code should hv time 2 finish b4 destroying USA.' I would have sent the full collection of messages to the authorities, but they were unfortunately unable to forward me a mere three thousand Twitter messages to enable my expenses in doing so."
This year, as every year, Umar had sent his relatives Christmas cards reading "MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU WESTERNISED PIG-DOGS, SLEEP WELL FOR TOMORROW YOU SHALL BURN IN AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY, ALLAH BE PRAISED". However, it appeared he had become "radicalised" by a sojourn in London, during which he read a book about George W. Bush, a close personal friend of the bin Laden branch of the Saudi royal family, and was inspired to take the fight to American soil. "Whenever the infidel appears complacent," he wrote to a friend, "we shall send a DHS operative to do something pathetically stupid and harmless that we may take as an excuse to torture more civilians and make movement within American yet more impracticable. Praise Allah! Praise Jesus!"
The "DHS" has crippled America's economy since its initial attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Air travel has all but ceased in the country and international visits have plummeted. Those few daring to travel find themselves cavity-search, X-rayed and anally probed. Some "DHS" operatives, brazenly working in plain sight, have become celebrities and tourist attractions, such as Big Bertha at Seattle Airport.
Mr Mutallab said the family were relieved Umar had finally made his public debut. "Apart from the obvious gigs selling our story to credulous Western news outlets, we can finally take down that God-awful shrine with the twin towers and the effigies, clean the place up and, who knows, maybe rent out the spare room at last. Are you sure you don't have three thousand (3,000.00) messages you can spare to facilitate the transmission of another twenty-five million to yourself? Please assist, dear one!"
CENTER FOR UNEASE CONTROL, Seattle, -- A federal court has banned Microsoft Word from sale as a poisonous substance, suspected of causing millions of brain-deaths around the world.
Microsoft Office has long been considered potentially hazardous to health, despite advertising claiming that "four out of five CEOs prefer Outlook" and most of the billions of dollars sloshing around in major banks' credit-default swaps before the Great Recession actually having been calculated in macros in Excel.
Workers whose computers are infected with Microsoft Office are advised to press "escape," step slowly away from the desk, break into a run and gather at the official hazardous substances meeting point, in the pub around the corner from the office.
Symptoms include nausea, irritability and short temper, hostility, homicidal impulses, loss of mental clarity, diarrhoea, mental confusion and liver damage from excess alcohol consumption.
Doctors have recommended victims of Word use OpenOffice instead, its "majestic" startup time giving one healthy pause to catch one's breath, make a cup of tea and nip off to the loo, and its fibrous composition providing the same health-giving effects and taste sensation as eating a bowl of sawdust with milk every morning for the rest of your life. Many sufferers have instead opted to write on toilet paper with a burnt stick.
Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple’s latest billion-dollar jackpot.
Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.
christ, we should all know better by now. See here and fill in the rest yourself. Illustration: the new iPod shuffle.
Amazon EC2 runs Ubuntu... as does the Ubuntu on-site KVM-based "internal cloud." The sales point is being able to bounce your stuff from your own internal cluster to EC2 when you need a quick burst of capacity.
So it's as secure as Linux on the Internet... or that the attacker has access to the hardware of.
Microsoft today implemented its 100% Data Confidentiality package for T-Mobile Sidekick, comprehensively protecting users’ contacts, email and messages from any possible attacker.
“Our data security is impenetrable,” said Steve Ballmer, “and will reassure everyone of the data integrity of our Windows Azure Screen Of Death cloud computing and Windows Mobile initiatives.”
Microsoft plans to leverage the new confidentiality mechanism to finally purge the horror of Vista from the face of the earth, in the same manner as firing all the contractors who knew how to build Windows 2000 and having to reconstruct Windows XP from bits of NT 4.
Microsoft Sharepoint users looked forward to a similar denouement as the only safe way to scour their hopelessly incompetent organisations from the world in a manner that would not infect successor organisations.
Microsoft is putting together an outsourcing proposal to the UK government for data protection.
DOCTOROW, Schneier, Sunday — After the Detroit Christmas firecracker incident, the Transport Security Administration now requires all US airline passengers to be strapped into their seats naked with catheters fitted, for their comfort and convenience.
"It's the most efficient way to keep the country moving and let the TERRORISTS know they haven't won," said TSA head Gale Rossides. "We're just trying to work out what to do when the TERRORISTS work out how to set off bombs by clenching their butt cheeks together."
Passengers are advised not to bother with laptops ("You could explode the batteries with your urine!"), iPods or the vile containers of sedition such as "books." "Carriage of any carryon item will result in lengthy security delays for the customer," said a TSA advisory, "but, in response to customer concerns, the TSA officer with the latex glove will give you a box of chocolates and promises to respect you in the morning, and will definitely call you later in the week. Honestly."
US tourism offices have finally given up and shut up shop. "I hear Afghanistan is pretty nice this time of year. Iran's pretty good too."
Officials at Amtrak did not give a comment on the phone, just the sound of dancing around their offices singing "We're In The Money."
The passenger who allegedly set off the firecracker has mounted a stern defense, showing his paycheck from the Department of Homeland Security's Subdepartment of Job Preservation.
Slashdot Mirror
Cheap netbooks are too limited and no-one will want them any more, say vendors who wish they still made a profit at the mere 103% increase in netbook sales in 2009 over 2008.
The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. "No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7," said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. "So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This 'internet' thing is just a fad too."
What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition(tm), which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is "thoroughly inadequate" to the task. "Linux, of course, doesn't exist, wasn't the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn't cripple Microsoft's bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it's not like it can do twice as much in half the space."
Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. "Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don't run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft," he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.
Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. "If we carefully define tablets as 'not netbooks,' even though they're made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It's all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you'd like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it's suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9."
"Clap your hands if you don't believe in netbooks," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!"
Illustration: The 1982 netbook. Go anywhere! Do anything!
We aim to please! You aim too, please!
A device claimed to “smell” snake oil is being marketed as identifying terrorists by detecting “snake pheromones” in sweat.
“The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of complete bollocks,” said project leader Professor Tong Sun of City University, “especially the fear of losing funding for security theatre. If we can reliably detect this fear, we should be able to land some eyewateringly lucrative contracts in the very near future.”
The research is funded by the Home Office. “The project relies on a government with a firm commitment to policy-based science, but the Tories look as craven over David Nutt’s firing as Labour, so we should be coining it in for a good while yet.”
The technology will assist airport security officers in picking out suitable subjects. Sensors can reliably detect if someone is a bit brown, or a bit foreign-looking, or has a non-Anglo-Saxon name, or if they might be thinking of giving cheek to security officers. It will work in conjunction with the millimetre-wave “naked” radar, currently used to identify terrorist subjects with large breasts.
The false positive rate will be only 5% on a terrorist detection rate of 1 in 100,000, meaning only 99.95% of subjects flagged will be a complete waste of time to finger up the arse with a latex glove. “But we’re sure the government will agree that mere statistical evidence is meaningless in the face of the vital necessity to send the right message,” said Prof Sun, “that if you make trouble the government will quite literally forcibly fuck you in the arse until you bleed. So just shut the fuck up and keep giving us money.”
The columnists are NOT happy about not being read and will stop writing for them.
That's what Apache presently does with the Win32 versions for deprecated Windows releases.
(Note the unsubtle hints that Apache for Windows never was a good idea.)
ONE INFINITE LOOP, Here We Go Again, Sunday (NNGadget) — Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple’s latest billion-dollar jackpot.
Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.
The ___ is rumoured to be any size and scale between the iPod Shuffle and the Macintosh IIfx. Some have described the ___ as a “___-killer.” Analyst speculation suggests the ___ will use a fantastic new interface. “It will be a whole new paradigm,” said Apple blogger Leander Kahney.
Expectations flared when technology research analysts noted that Taiwanese suppliers had received orders from an unknown buyer for a particular obscure component to be filled by the end of the year. “The only possible conclusion is that Apple will launch a ___ by early next year,” said Kahney. “They’ve been working on the ___ for the past six years. People expect it to be the ultimate Apple surprise. This thing will knock people’s socks off.”
Apple has refused to comment on the ___ speculation. But Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, recently hinted that the company was working on something “very innovative.” Steve Jobs is thought to have been personally involved in the development of the ___ over the past two years.
Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the ___ would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple’s actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, and that Jobs’ Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft’s fault.
Illustration: The generic Apple product. Fits everyone!
And in our particular case, Marketing actually have a business case for Facebook and social network access. So yes, they have access to this stuff and get LARTed when they go overboard.
Corporations are designed to employ and put to good use the mediocre as well as the brilliant. So technological measures are ordered by the mediocre to control the mediocre. And the key point is that they're implemented by the mediocre, using software designed by the mediocre.
... they blocked blogs. All blogs, of any sort. All the developers hit the roof - 'cos guess where developers learn new tricks and find solutions to tricky problems?
Things came to a head when we trumpeted our new advances in outreach, getting our content in several prominent newspaper site blogs! Which were then blocked.
Q. Could you please explain the business case for blocking us from reviewing our own content?
A. Blogs have now been unblocked for the technology team.
I can see the point - keeping the workers from being F5-pressing robots is the sort of thing management considers a good idea. It just needs a modicum of sanity applied. This mostly requires time, patience and a solid business case.
"We absolutely promise that we only want to completely screw over Microsoft with this, and certainly not Mozilla Firefox," said Google's Sundar Pichai. "That we put a pile of our sponsored Mozilla developers on the project is completely irrelevant. We're not evil, remember."
"We are so, so happy with Google Chrome," mumbled Mozilla CEO John Lilly through gritted teeth. "That most of our income is from Google has no bearing on me making this statement."
Microsoft was unfazed. "Browsers don't need to be integrated with online apps," said marketing developer Ian Moulster. "Certainly not like the operating system ... I'll just get back to you."
Google's new browser will give you their web and email services, photo processing, mapping, office applications that will run in said browser and will make you a cup of tea. This is all paid for by personally-directed text ads in your tea leaves, based on analysing a DNA sample taken when you sip the tea and sending your genetic code back to Google for future targeting.
Pichai stressed that Google would maintain complete confidentiality within the marketing department of whatever the browser accessed concerning your confidential business data, bank account details, medical information and personal preferences in pornography. "We're Google. We know where you live. In a completely not evil way. Sponsored link: Get Chrome Browsers on google.com. Or we'll make you use Windows Live."
(link)
WHITEHALL, Beijing, Friday (NTN) — British police arrested thousands in the Digital Britain drive against Internet file sharing throughout 2009, officials said, which critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.
The British government has run a highly publicized campaign, “Digital Britain,” against what officials said were banned file sharing of Lily Allen songs, overwhelming the country’s Internet and “threatening the emotional health of children.”
Lord Mandelson said late on Thursday that the crackdown on Internet file sharing had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009. The announcement on the Digital Britain website said the drive would deepen in 2010. Police would “intensify punishments for Internet operations that violate laws and regulations. Strengthen monitoring of information,” it urged, “Press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology.”
The ministry did not say how many of the 5,394 suspects arrested were later charged, released or prosecuted. The anti-file sharing drive has also netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in what some see as an effort by the government to reassert control over new media. The ruling Labour Party worries the Internet could become a dangerous conduit for threatening images and ideas.
Britain has banned a number of popular websites and Internet services, including Wikipedia. NewsTechnica passed without comment, however.
The Vatican® has stated that the rape© of children by Catholic priests is protected by a "special and unique" copyright, and anyone attempting to discuss the matter will be sued, excommunicated and declared a Suppressive Person.
"Recent years have witnessed a great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father, L. Benedict Ratzinger®," said the statement. "As such, any person or organisation seeking to name, defame or allude to His Holiness®, any of his Bishops or Priests, or any activities of any of said persons in any capacity, shall be deemed to have violated the Sacred Covenant of Berne, to be a 'no case gain' Suppressive Person and to be duly excommunicated and sued into atomic dust. ALWAYS ATTACK, NEVER DEFEND."
Evidence only recently brought to light, "which we can't show you, it's copyright," apparently demonstrates that playwright William Shakespeare was secretly Catholic. "So we're claiming copyright in everything he did too. And Francis Bacon. And the Earl of Oxford."
The Church's lawyers have worked hard to defend their intellectual property rights on such creative works as those of the Irish priests upon their young charges that only recently came to light. "Our determination to protect and preserve the rights to view, discuss or know about these three-dimensional kinetic performance works, and our tour support for the priests to take these works 'on the road' to new parishes, demonstrates the unimpeachable sincerity of our stance — firmly behind the artists. Legs wide, of course."
The Pope himself has been appalled at the reaction to his recent decision to beatify Adolf Hitler, and described his visit to the Pius XII memorial as "an upsetting encounter with cruelty and senseless hatred. I didn't like it much either."
LITTLE BROTHER, Detroit, Sunday -- The American-based terrorist group "Department of Homeland Security" (the Arabic term for "Department of Homeland Security") has successfully hobbled the American economy once more.
DHS stuntman Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab caused a minor conflagration aboard a Detroit-bound plane on Saturday. "It worked spectacularly well," said his father, Nigerian banker Bnkr. Alhaji Umaru MUTALLAB. "He sent TWENTY-FIVE MILLION (25,000,000.00) Twitter messages about it. 'Stuck on runway for 1/2hr oh well catch up on da vinci code should hv time 2 finish b4 destroying USA.' I would have sent the full collection of messages to the authorities, but they were unfortunately unable to forward me a mere three thousand Twitter messages to enable my expenses in doing so."
This year, as every year, Umar had sent his relatives Christmas cards reading "MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU WESTERNISED PIG-DOGS, SLEEP WELL FOR TOMORROW YOU SHALL BURN IN AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY, ALLAH BE PRAISED". However, it appeared he had become "radicalised" by a sojourn in London, during which he read a book about George W. Bush, a close personal friend of the bin Laden branch of the Saudi royal family, and was inspired to take the fight to American soil. "Whenever the infidel appears complacent," he wrote to a friend, "we shall send a DHS operative to do something pathetically stupid and harmless that we may take as an excuse to torture more civilians and make movement within American yet more impracticable. Praise Allah! Praise Jesus!"
The "DHS" has crippled America's economy since its initial attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Air travel has all but ceased in the country and international visits have plummeted. Those few daring to travel find themselves cavity-search, X-rayed and anally probed. Some "DHS" operatives, brazenly working in plain sight, have become celebrities and tourist attractions, such as Big Bertha at Seattle Airport.
Mr Mutallab said the family were relieved Umar had finally made his public debut. "Apart from the obvious gigs selling our story to credulous Western news outlets, we can finally take down that God-awful shrine with the twin towers and the effigies, clean the place up and, who knows, maybe rent out the spare room at last. Are you sure you don't have three thousand (3,000.00) messages you can spare to facilitate the transmission of another twenty-five million to yourself? Please assist, dear one!"
Good Lord. We need to cut to the chase and just ban Windows from the Internet as unsafe at any speed.
Correct. We actually have OOo on our *server* and use it to batch-convert MS Word files to PDFs.
CENTER FOR UNEASE CONTROL, Seattle, -- A federal court has banned Microsoft Word from sale as a poisonous substance, suspected of causing millions of brain-deaths around the world.
Microsoft Office has long been considered potentially hazardous to health, despite advertising claiming that "four out of five CEOs prefer Outlook" and most of the billions of dollars sloshing around in major banks' credit-default swaps before the Great Recession actually having been calculated in macros in Excel.
Workers whose computers are infected with Microsoft Office are advised to press "escape," step slowly away from the desk, break into a run and gather at the official hazardous substances meeting point, in the pub around the corner from the office.
Symptoms include nausea, irritability and short temper, hostility, homicidal impulses, loss of mental clarity, diarrhoea, mental confusion and liver damage from excess alcohol consumption.
Doctors have recommended victims of Word use OpenOffice instead, its "majestic" startup time giving one healthy pause to catch one's breath, make a cup of tea and nip off to the loo, and its fibrous composition providing the same health-giving effects and taste sensation as eating a bowl of sawdust with milk every morning for the rest of your life. Many sufferers have instead opted to write on toilet paper with a burnt stick.
I use the Chromium daily dev PPA on Ubuntu Karmic and it's great. I'm using it now. I use Firefox for work browsing and Chromium for personal.
But, uh, yeah.
That's why I didn't post the whole thing. It is after all the same Apple story.
Apple is reportedly close to launching its long-rumored ____. It could be Apple’s latest billion-dollar jackpot.
Analyst speculation says the ___ will be launched in September and be in the shops by Christmas. A new mention of the ___ crops up on Twitter around every eight minutes.
christ, we should all know better by now. See here and fill in the rest yourself. Illustration: the new iPod shuffle.
Amazon EC2 runs Ubuntu ... as does the Ubuntu on-site KVM-based "internal cloud." The sales point is being able to bounce your stuff from your own internal cluster to EC2 when you need a quick burst of capacity.
So it's as secure as Linux on the Internet ... or that the attacker has access to the hardware of.
OpenBSD anyone?
Microsoft today implemented its 100% Data Confidentiality package for T-Mobile Sidekick, comprehensively protecting users’ contacts, email and messages from any possible attacker.
“Our data security is impenetrable,” said Steve Ballmer, “and will reassure everyone of the data integrity of our Windows Azure Screen Of Death cloud computing and Windows Mobile initiatives.”
Microsoft plans to leverage the new confidentiality mechanism to finally purge the horror of Vista from the face of the earth, in the same manner as firing all the contractors who knew how to build Windows 2000 and having to reconstruct Windows XP from bits of NT 4.
Microsoft Sharepoint users looked forward to a similar denouement as the only safe way to scour their hopelessly incompetent organisations from the world in a manner that would not infect successor organisations.
Microsoft is putting together an outsourcing proposal to the UK government for data protection.
DOCTOROW, Schneier, Sunday — After the Detroit Christmas firecracker incident, the Transport Security Administration now requires all US airline passengers to be strapped into their seats naked with catheters fitted, for their comfort and convenience.
"It's the most efficient way to keep the country moving and let the TERRORISTS know they haven't won," said TSA head Gale Rossides. "We're just trying to work out what to do when the TERRORISTS work out how to set off bombs by clenching their butt cheeks together."
Passengers are advised not to bother with laptops ("You could explode the batteries with your urine!"), iPods or the vile containers of sedition such as "books." "Carriage of any carryon item will result in lengthy security delays for the customer," said a TSA advisory, "but, in response to customer concerns, the TSA officer with the latex glove will give you a box of chocolates and promises to respect you in the morning, and will definitely call you later in the week. Honestly."
US tourism offices have finally given up and shut up shop. "I hear Afghanistan is pretty nice this time of year. Iran's pretty good too."
Officials at Amtrak did not give a comment on the phone, just the sound of dancing around their offices singing "We're In The Money."
The passenger who allegedly set off the firecracker has mounted a stern defense, showing his paycheck from the Department of Homeland Security's Subdepartment of Job Preservation.
"Once they lock down AP and Reuters (and add those contract requirements to individual newspaper webpages) Google will be hard pressed to find news."
The BBC has already stated it's not going to paywall. All it takes is one outlet of reasonable quality.
The problem with Freenet is that no-one uses it. Wikileaks kicks real-world arse because it's on the World Wide Web, where everyone else is.