Git is increasingly popular with large Unix-based projects. It's frequently Just The Right Thing if you have a huge monolith of a project which lots of people want to work on. e.g. Xorg, Wine.
Even on Wine - where every single patch goes through Alexandre Juillard - git is highly usable and highly testing-friendly. Turns out one of the killer features for Wine is git bisect for regression spotting:-)
Baron Mandelson, 679, of Transylvania, smiled for the cameras, only having to reconstitute himself twice when the flashes dissolved him into dust. "I only enter where I am invited," he said in sepulchral Eurocratic tones. "When I am called upon, I shall return."
Labour MPs rushed to greet the chief architect of New Labour, many carrying wooden stakes, garlic and crosses.
Mr Mandelson has had a chequered career in office. Previous Cabinet terms have ended with unfortunate resignations due to being beheaded by angry villagers, burnt at the stake, wrapped in chains and thrown to the bottom of the Volga and, in one case, nuked from orbit.
Seven million Britons face having their internet connection cut off and fines of up to GBP50,000 as Steampunk Britain
is implemented.
Lord Carter, the report's author, has now left the Government for consultancies unknown. Lord Mandelson, who has taken over responsibility for digital policy, has been persuaded of the need for a tougher approach after entreaties from starving music mogul David Geffen, who was introduced to him by the Rothschild family. "He warned me in 2001 that these 'MP3 players' would lead to the downfall of civilisation. I understand iPods were popular in the City just before the Great Recession, you know."
Internet piracy is estimated by the movie and music industries to cost them around GBP1.4 million billion squillion a year, ripped untimely from their generous artist-supporting pockets.
Critics have compared the proposals to King Canute, failing to turn back the tide. "So it's up to the Government to supply the sandbags. We have an industry to defend!"
Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, will require Internet providers to record users downloading illegal content. The magical copyright detector, which the music industry just knows the ISPs are being obstructive in not enabling immediately, will be used to send a massive voltage up through serious repeat offenders' Internet connections and into their chairs.
Labour backbencher Tom Watson said the sanctions would attach an "unbearable burden" on an emerging technology with the power to transform society. "Sounds just fine to me," said Lord Mandelson.
Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, will be in charge of the party's Internet campaigning ahead of the general election. "Voters will increasingly be searching the web to find out what we think about the issues. If we haven't cut them off."
In other news, membership of the Pirate Party UK, launched earlier in the week, has been increasing at 100 new members per hour.
The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.
Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. "Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL," said Jimmy Wales.
The change has proven controversial. "It's a slippery slope," said administrator WikiFiddler451 (real name WikiViolin451). "I don't see how we can reasonably keep the Pokemon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page thatâ(TM)s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality."
Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has considered adopting "wiki"-like methods (from the Hawaiian word "wikiwiki," meaning "your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS"), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopedia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed "suppressive" by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because theyâ(TM)re in it for the money.
The Greater London Assembly is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to "predict" if a crime is about to take place and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.
Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. "Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence," said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. ("Consumer confidence" is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)
"Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object," said councillor Jason Fazackarley. "Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays."
The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible cliches copied from other papers.
However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: "++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol."
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future 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(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
Google has released its own Web browser, Chrome, with Linux version Chromium. "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 Bing."
Microsoft has announced its long-rumoured handheld XBox gaming console, to compete with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
"The GameBoy will be wiped out by this!" said marketing marketer Shane Kim. The console, to be named the ZuneX ("we wanted a really evocative brand that would set the tone straight away") will integrate with XBox Live Arcade and the Zune music store and have phone capabilities.
"Weâ(TM)re also looking at instant-on, 1080p high-definition, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix deals, Project Natal, Windows 7, Internet Explorer 6, downloadable rings of death in every possible color... nothing will hold a candle to the ZuneX. Google and Apple will be quaking in fear." The E74 error will also be updated to E75.
The device will be two feet by three feet and weigh twenty-four pounds. "That's an important feature. Wii Fit just canâ(TM)t compete with the rippling abs the ZuneX will give you." The device is fully portable within the length of the twenty-foot three-phase 415 volt power cable.
I think a lot of that had to do with McNealy's hate-on for Linux - witness Sun's funding to SCO just in time for the lawsuit. Schwartz went furiously open-source as pretty much a Hail Mary pass.
1. OpenOffice.org advertised on television. 2. Java pushed everywhere.NET is now, with auto-conversion tools. 3. Ellison loudly and publicly calls Microsoft FUDsters re: Linux/OOo software patents and tells them to "bring it on".
President Barack Obama has asked Americans not to believe "rumors" that his health reform initiatives will lead to a government-run health care system, push Medicare recipients to die rather than run up their bill or lead to widespread euthanasia of the Republican "base."
"Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, or cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover," said Mr Obama. "That's simply not true. Furthermore, our proposed tests would still rule Sarah Palin as being human and actually alive, despite the evidence from the brain machines."
Sarah Palin has spoken in horror of the centralised "death boards" she says Obama wishes to introduce, instead of the ones that individual hospitals run now to send people home to die when their money runs out. "Scientists like Stephen Hawking would have been killed off by the National Health Service," she said, "if they'd grown up in Eng-er-land!"
Peter Ferrara from Fox News refused to buy Mr Obama's claims. "The Obama health plan is based on evidence -- but evidence leads to science, and science leads to Darwinian evolution being applied to you and yours! He'll raise health costs, make freedom of choice illegal, ration health care and build a machine feeding illegal aliens in luxury on the corpses of aborted Republican babies, sacrificed in a gay Muslim Kenyan ceremony. You can buy my book on it at heartland.org for just $19.99. Call now! Operators standing by!"
Shannon discovering that information density uses the same equations as entropy. To the degree that he called information density "entropy" and that's still the term used for it.
Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn't-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a GBP250 price point in the UK.)
"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big 'Microsoft' logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a "smash and grabâ mentality amongst consumers. "And not 'grab and smash' as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death again."
The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. "But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DS... uh, forget I said that."
Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. "Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit."
Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. "We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360," said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, "and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives... Wait! Come back!"
Greenberg further assured consumers that "the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3's ass every way from Friday, you wait and see." Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.
GAMESCOM, Ichiyaga Camp, Tuesday -- Sony is releasing the new PlayStation 3 Slim across Europe in early September, the company hoping that anyone will remember the PS3 still exists.
The new light-weight version is two-thirds of the size and weight, only requiring a single, much smaller, extra room built onto your house, fitted with 13-amp 405-volt three-phase power. The new, more compact enriched uranium fuel rods are not supplied.
PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai made the announcement at the GamesCom conference in Cologne, in a move widely seen as an attempt to regain momentum in the battle against rival Microsoft and put off having to ritually disembowel himself with a sword. "Our competition is absolutely the XBox 360. That's the one to beat! Thank God they didn't build a box that worked, we'd have real trouble if they had."
The PS3 has struggled thanks to its high price and lack of games, not to mention competition from the Nintendo Wii, which, apart from costing half as much, is actually fun. The Sony console did, however, have spectacular launches in Japan and America, with tens of fans queuing through the night to get their hands on the console, particularly with their Sony employee discount. The machines sold at only half the price on eBay soon after.
Baron Mandelson, 679, of Transylvania, smiled for the cameras, only having to reconstitute himself twice when the flashes dissolved him into dust. "I only enter where I am invited," he said in sepulchral Eurocratic tones. "When I am called upon, I shall return."
Labour MPs rushed to greet the chief architect of New Labour, many carrying wooden stakes, garlic and crosses.
Mr Mandelson has had a chequered career in office. Previous Cabinet terms have ended with unfortunate resignations due to being beheaded by angry villagers, burnt at the stake, wrapped in chains and thrown to the bottom of the Volga and, in one case, nuked from orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
Git is increasingly popular with large Unix-based projects. It's frequently Just The Right Thing if you have a huge monolith of a project which lots of people want to work on. e.g. Xorg, Wine.
Even on Wine - where every single patch goes through Alexandre Juillard - git is highly usable and highly testing-friendly. Turns out one of the killer features for Wine is git bisect for regression spotting :-)
Baron Mandelson, 679, of Transylvania, smiled for the cameras, only having to reconstitute himself twice when the flashes dissolved him into dust. "I only enter where I am invited," he said in sepulchral Eurocratic tones. "When I am called upon, I shall return."
Labour MPs rushed to greet the chief architect of New Labour, many carrying wooden stakes, garlic and crosses.
Mr Mandelson has had a chequered career in office. Previous Cabinet terms have ended with unfortunate resignations due to being beheaded by angry villagers, burnt at the stake, wrapped in chains and thrown to the bottom of the Volga and, in one case, nuked from orbit.
Seven million Britons face having their internet connection cut off and fines of up to GBP50,000 as Steampunk Britain
is implemented.
Lord Carter, the report's author, has now left the Government for consultancies unknown. Lord Mandelson, who has taken over responsibility for digital policy, has been persuaded of the need for a tougher approach after entreaties from starving music mogul David Geffen, who was introduced to him by the Rothschild family. "He warned me in 2001 that these 'MP3 players' would lead to the downfall of civilisation. I understand iPods were popular in the City just before the Great Recession, you know."
Internet piracy is estimated by the movie and music industries to cost them around GBP1.4 million billion squillion a year, ripped untimely from their generous artist-supporting pockets.
Critics have compared the proposals to King Canute, failing to turn back the tide. "So it's up to the Government to supply the sandbags. We have an industry to defend!"
Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, will require Internet providers to record users downloading illegal content. The magical copyright detector, which the music industry just knows the ISPs are being obstructive in not enabling immediately, will be used to send a massive voltage up through serious repeat offenders' Internet connections and into their chairs.
Labour backbencher Tom Watson said the sanctions would attach an "unbearable burden" on an emerging technology with the power to transform society. "Sounds just fine to me," said Lord Mandelson.
Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, will be in charge of the party's Internet campaigning ahead of the general election. "Voters will increasingly be searching the web to find out what we think about the issues. If we haven't cut them off."
In other news, membership of the Pirate Party UK, launched earlier in the week, has been increasing at 100 new members per hour.
Not necessarily. The bearing lubrication can seize up in that time.
A fork would be good - the more the merrier. Mind you, Citizendium tried it and eventually deleted most of the ported articles.
Noam Cohen has taken of late to ad-banner trolling. I suppose it's the way the press ends up going.
The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable Encyclopædia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.
Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. "Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL," said Jimmy Wales.
The change has proven controversial. "It's a slippery slope," said administrator WikiFiddler451 (real name WikiViolin451). "I don't see how we can reasonably keep the Pokemon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page thatâ(TM)s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality."
Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has considered adopting "wiki"-like methods (from the Hawaiian word "wikiwiki," meaning "your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS"), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopedia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed "suppressive" by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because theyâ(TM)re in it for the money.
Illustration: The hammer of Wiki crushes j00!
The Greater London Assembly is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to "predict" if a crime is about to take place and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.
Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. "Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence," said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. ("Consumer confidence" is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)
"Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object," said councillor Jason Fazackarley. "Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays."
The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible cliches copied from other papers.
However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: "++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol."
Apple, i.e. Steve Jobs, have always been psychotic control freaks. It's their strength and failure.
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future 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(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
"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 Bing."
It'd go something like this ... (and this would be the logo)
Microsoft has announced its long-rumoured handheld XBox gaming console, to compete with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
"The GameBoy will be wiped out by this!" said marketing marketer Shane Kim. The console, to be named the ZuneX ("we wanted a really evocative brand that would set the tone straight away") will integrate with XBox Live Arcade and the Zune music store and have phone capabilities.
"Weâ(TM)re also looking at instant-on, 1080p high-definition, Facebook, Twitter and Netflix deals, Project Natal, Windows 7, Internet Explorer 6, downloadable rings of death in every possible color ... nothing will hold a candle to the ZuneX. Google and Apple will be quaking in fear." The E74 error will also be updated to E75.
The device will be two feet by three feet and weigh twenty-four pounds. "That's an important feature. Wii Fit just canâ(TM)t compete with the rippling abs the ZuneX will give you." The device is fully portable within the length of the twenty-foot three-phase 415 volt power cable.
I think a lot of that had to do with McNealy's hate-on for Linux - witness Sun's funding to SCO just in time for the lawsuit. Schwartz went furiously open-source as pretty much a Hail Mary pass.
Yeah, Sun already made MySQL fork all over the place ;-)
Yuh. Looking at eight years' Solaris on my resume and looking forward to my next job with Debian only.
Sun's x86 server hardware is quite competitive with Dell, in my experience.
Larry Ellison hates, hates, hates Microsoft.
1. OpenOffice.org advertised on television. .NET is now, with auto-conversion tools.
2. Java pushed everywhere
3. Ellison loudly and publicly calls Microsoft FUDsters re: Linux/OOo software patents and tells them to "bring it on".
It's hardly the Holy Grail. It is, however, unencumbered.
If software patents disappeared tomorrow, everyone would swoop upon H.264 with great glee.
President Barack Obama has asked Americans not to believe "rumors" that his health reform initiatives will lead to a government-run health care system, push Medicare recipients to die rather than run up their bill or lead to widespread euthanasia of the Republican "base."
"Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, or cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover," said Mr Obama. "That's simply not true. Furthermore, our proposed tests would still rule Sarah Palin as being human and actually alive, despite the evidence from the brain machines."
Sarah Palin has spoken in horror of the centralised "death boards" she says Obama wishes to introduce, instead of the ones that individual hospitals run now to send people home to die when their money runs out. "Scientists like Stephen Hawking would have been killed off by the National Health Service," she said, "if they'd grown up in Eng-er-land!"
Peter Ferrara from Fox News refused to buy Mr Obama's claims. "The Obama health plan is based on evidence -- but evidence leads to science, and science leads to Darwinian evolution being applied to you and yours! He'll raise health costs, make freedom of choice illegal, ration health care and build a machine feeding illegal aliens in luxury on the corpses of aborted Republican babies, sacrificed in a gay Muslim Kenyan ceremony. You can buy my book on it at heartland.org for just $19.99. Call now! Operators standing by!"
Shannon discovering that information density uses the same equations as entropy. To the degree that he called information density "entropy" and that's still the term used for it.
Yes, and when he was called out on his BS and FUD ... he promptly disappeared.
Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn't-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a GBP250 price point in the UK.)
"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big 'Microsoft' logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a "smash and grabâ mentality amongst consumers. "And not 'grab and smash' as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death again."
The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. "But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DS ... uh, forget I said that."
Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. "Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit."
Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. "We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360," said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, "and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives ... Wait! Come back!"
Greenberg further assured consumers that "the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3's ass every way from Friday, you wait and see." Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.
Illustration: the new official Xbox 360 logo.
That's because for a Unix-based toaster, you need NetBSD.
GAMESCOM, Ichiyaga Camp, Tuesday -- Sony is releasing the new PlayStation 3 Slim across Europe in early September, the company hoping that anyone will remember the PS3 still exists.
The new light-weight version is two-thirds of the size and weight, only requiring a single, much smaller, extra room built onto your house, fitted with 13-amp 405-volt three-phase power. The new, more compact enriched uranium fuel rods are not supplied.
PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai made the announcement at the GamesCom conference in Cologne, in a move widely seen as an attempt to regain momentum in the battle against rival Microsoft and put off having to ritually disembowel himself with a sword. "Our competition is absolutely the XBox 360. That's the one to beat! Thank God they didn't build a box that worked, we'd have real trouble if they had."
The PS3 has struggled thanks to its high price and lack of games, not to mention competition from the Nintendo Wii, which, apart from costing half as much, is actually fun. The Sony console did, however, have spectacular launches in Japan and America, with tens of fans queuing through the night to get their hands on the console, particularly with their Sony employee discount. The machines sold at only half the price on eBay soon after.
Baron Mandelson, 679, of Transylvania, smiled for the cameras, only having to reconstitute himself twice when the flashes dissolved him into dust. "I only enter where I am invited," he said in sepulchral Eurocratic tones. "When I am called upon, I shall return."
Labour MPs rushed to greet the chief architect of New Labour, many carrying wooden stakes, garlic and crosses.
Mr Mandelson has had a chequered career in office. Previous Cabinet terms have ended with unfortunate resignations due to being beheaded by angry villagers, burnt at the stake, wrapped in chains and thrown to the bottom of the Volga and, in one case, nuked from orbit.