News of the News

KALLIKAK, Gattaca, Saturday (NotScientist) — Genetic testing companies are promising to match couples based on Escherichia coli testing, touting the benefits of biological compatibility and claiming a match means better personality match, better sex and conclusive proof that they match down to the asshole.

“How many dating services can you think of where assholes can meet an asshole they really deserve?” said Eric Holzle, founder of AssholePersonalityDisorderMatch.com.

People tend to be attracted to those whose personalities are appropriately complementary to their own. APDMatch claims to be able to ascertain this by scientifically measuring the characteristics of a prospective couple’s digestive tracts.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) inexplicably fails to detail Asshole Personality Disorder. However, a diagnosis of APD requires five or more of the following to be present for a significant period of time:

• Self-importance

• Refusal to acknowledge or even comprehend social rules
• Delusions of adequacy
• Believes others would do just fine if only they were sensible like him
• Beliefs appear to change to match the situation, but that’s just other people being idiotic
• Pride in their superior people skills
• Recto-cranial inversion
• Projection of all symptoms on this list onto those around them.

“If we can make sure that assholes end up with other assholes,” said Dr Holzle, “we can save the rest of us from dealing with their ridiculous bullshit.”

But don’t put too much faith in this, experts said. Dr. Rocio Moran, medical director of the General Genetics Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic, called the idea “ridiculous,” and said the science of assholism is too complex to work out by looking at a few bacterial traces.

“They are just trying to make a buck,” she said. “Focusing on getting those bucks from assholes is, of course, commendable. But assholism is subtle and endemic. How many times have you heard some asshole proclaim, ‘hah, that really sticks it to those assholes!’?”

Holzle was not able to point to any success stories. “Quite frankly, the site tends to attract assholes. And do you think we ever want to talk to these people again? We have to swab these assholes’ goddamn assholes. What a pile of shit this job is. What the hell was I thinking? Apparently some have bred. This will probably doom the human gene pool. I’m so very, very sorry.”

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MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, Blind Idiot Heaven, Sunday (NNN) — Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, says that “banks are doing God’s work,” comparable to Hurricane Katrina, the eruption of Krakatoa and the Tunguska event of 1908.

“There is a balance to all things,” said Mr Blankfein. “God created Heaven, and He also created the banking sector.”

Mr Blankfein points out that there are always business opportunities, even in the hard times. “The blood, the frogs, the lice, the flies, the livestock diseases, the boils, the hail and — of course — the locusts came about after the deregulation we lobbied for. But market efficiency has been increased, which is good for capitalism and therefore good for everyone. The darkness is strictly temporary for the duration of the mortgage on your firstborns unto the seventh generation.”

Goldman Sachs is set to pay a record £12 billion in salaries and bonuses this year. “It rewards our good work in creating investments so complex that not even we understand them. No blame, no shame! Past Avarice and through Wrath and Sloth, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treason! The suffering will wash away your sins! Praise the Lord!”

Recovery is expected through 2010. “The financial system led us into the crisis and it will lead us out. We have opened the Seventh Collateralised Debt Obligation of the Covenant and a mere one-third of the globe has collapsed, far less than our forecasts. What could possibly go wrong now? The way out is the way through! So if you could spare just a few billion dollars’ spare change, sir, for a latte and a burger, that would help us greatly, and God bless you sir, God bless you.”

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ISLINGTON, Socialist Republic of North London, Tuesday (NNN) — President Barack Obama, Bill Gates and Bono are being invited to back a “vague middle-class interest portal” website, Hope Plus, to promote social politics.

“A global eBay-PeaceCorps-wiki-social-media-network-community-thingy is absolutely the most useful thing the modern world could have right now,” says founder Phil Noble of PoliticsOnline. “We already have lots of pictures of smiling African children.”

Mr Noble was inspired by his previous work for the BBC. “If we can tap into that Guardian demographic, we should be able to get people to really feel they’re doing their bit for the world, reducing their carbon footprint, cutting the poisons out of our air, water and food and feeding and educating the hungry by clicking on a website. People are good at clicking on stuff. We might even have some online petitions!“

The initiative is being bolstered by seed money from Microsoft. “I’ve long held that giving the poor the finest of our technology and the highest quality patented seeds is the way to advance everyone’s interests,” said Mr Gates, “particularly my own. I mean, my charity’s.” U2 has donated another copy of the bassline they have used on their last eight albums.

The Daily Mail will be starting Grumpy Plus, a portal for people to show their support for everything being so much worse than when they were young and everyone was polite and helpful and beat Hitler and you didn’t have to worry about coloured gay Polish asylum seekers ruining the price of your house. The Mail’s demographic is not as Internet-enabled, so the site will work by people mailing in coupons from the paper.

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KARADZIC, Seattle, Tuesday (NNN) — Microsoft has commenced its “Windows 7 Was My Idea” campaign, a series of TV advertisements required of it after its conviction in the International Computer Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against productivity, office workers and the human brain.

The advertisements feature the software developers and project managers responsible for some of the most famous features of Windows. Many had to be tracked down to jungle lairs in Paraguay, where they were hiding under cover of being mere ex-Nazis.

Particular public favourites include a sixty-second spot of the unnamed developer responsible for the system rebooting by itself after a background update, running random programs off a web page automatically, Windows Genuine Advantage and, especially, that fucking paperclip, being whipped by demons with barbed-wire Apple and Tux logos on chains on a live video feed from Hell while Adolf Hitler curled his lip in disgust and Steve Jobs laughed long and deep in the background.

Further punishments for Microsoft have been delayed as the Linux enthusiasts working on sentencing have yet to agree which distribution to run the hanging software on, and can’t get the FreeBSD and OpenSolaris users to shut up for a tick.

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NOWHERE LAND, Seattle, Sunday (NNGadget) — 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.

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HELMAND, Neuschwabenland, Friday (NNN) — Barack Obama, the President of Earth, has controversially launched an attack on the Lunar Imperium the same day he received the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush.

“We closely examined Mr Obama’s record over the past nine months,” said Nobel Prize committee chair Thorbjørn Jagland, “and have established to our satisfaction that he has succeeded in not been George W. Bush in any manner whatsoever. Also, the flying cars, moving sidewalks and robot servants he brought in are pretty cool.”

The committee had initially been concerned that Mr Obama may have been, per investigations by “birther” researchers, a replicant created by the team responsible for the cyborgization of Dick Cheney, to take his place as humanity’s next robot overlord after Mr Cheney’s term had finished. “However, we are now confident that his documentation of Autobot manufacture is entirely in order.”

The surprise attack on the moon came after a CIA report indicated the Taliban had set up shop in the old Nazi moon base, based on intelligence gathered from secret mass phone tapping. The Obama administration denied it was merely an excuse to invade the Lunar Imperium and steal its water.

“It grieves us terribly that our lunar brothers have let us down so,” said Mr Obama today. “But with mutual respect and communication, I am confident we can work through our differences. We’ll teach them to love again DESTROY ALL HUMANS DESTROY ALL HUMANS SOCIALIZE HEALTH CARE I’m sorry, I’m having a minor glitch. I’ll get back to you.”

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YESLER WAY, Seattle, Monday (NNGadget) — Microsoft Windows has once again trounced all comers in security, with a recent survey showing 59% of all Windows machines on the Internet being infected with malware and under the control of botnets. Malware rose 15% just from August to September this year.

Windows users continued to be stupidly complacent Typhoid Marys, telling Mac and Linux users that they were every bit as susceptible to viruses and Trojans, despite the Windows:Mac:Linux virus proportions in the wild continuing at approximately 100%:0%:0% for the fifteenth year in a row, and pumping out gigabytes of spam and denial-of-service attacks from their thoroughly 0wn3d computing cesspits.

“The truth is out,” said Steve Ballmer, taing care not to wash his hands when preparing the food for his Windows 7 House Party. “Mac and Linux users are just too pussy for viruses. Gotta keep your immune system up! What are you, some sort of faggot? Too artsy or nerdy for MANLY food?”

The time on the digital clock behind him changed at random as he foamed slightly at the mouth. “Windows — we’re NUMBER ONE! And here you were saying Windows was a load of ‘number two.’”

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YESLER WAY, Seattle, Friday (NNGadget) — Office supply company Microsoft has reassured consumers and industry analysts that its decline will continue with the new video on how to run a Windows 7 house party, whose “viral” nature goes beyond “herpes” or “swine flu” to “SARS.”

Originally thought to be a devastating satirical spoof before being confirmed as genuine, the video features Stepford wives and husbands reading lines off the autocues in each others’ blank eyes on how to hold a party. The digital clock on the cooker in the background jumps around at random. The black guy and the MILF go off to fuck. Finally, everyone drinks the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid and looks forward to being one with Steve Jobs in the next world, before discovering that they have been judged unworthy and will spend eternity with Steve Ballmer instead.

The video was produced by the same team that advertised Vista with comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, working again with abnormal psychology researchers from the University of Washington. “Count the headlines!” shouted one of the marketing department’s several thousand monkeys with video cameras. “Count the YouTube views! It’s clear that my work gets the brand out, and if I don’t get appropriate compensation in my annual review I’ll be suing.” The Polish version of the video features a white face crudely cut-and-pasted over the black guy’s head.

“Windows 7 was getting great reviews,” said completely independent ZDnet marketing marketer Mary Jo Enderle, “even the geeks loved the preview versions, everyone was amazed that Microsoft appeared to have successfully grown past the Vista disaster. But the mind-sodomising cluelessness of thinking this video was actually a good idea has firmly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, blessed Windows 7 with the stench of death, confirmed that it really is just Vista with a coat of paint and set everyone’s mind at rest.

“That’s why my column this week talks about all the great stuff coming in Windows 8. Windows 8, that’s the one to beat! It’ll work on netbooks! It’ll be secure! It’ll have a database filesystem! Snow Leopard can’t touch it! Businesses should definitely move from XP!”

Microsoft has previously shown its deft ability to drop the ball two yards from the end of the field with the XBox 360, in which a powerful and popular game console was manufactured so shoddily that over 50% of machines turned out defective, and the Zune, in which an MP3 player of decent hardware capabilities at a good price point was crippled with bad firmware and unusable software and sold in a package the color of baby shit. “In a stroke of genius, they put in wifi but not a web browser, so the iPod Touch could steal their thunder six months later. You don’t get brilliance like that for free.”

The new, abbreviated Windows 7 house party instructions have been sent to marketing: “Here is a Windows 7 DVD. Here is a bottle of vodka. Here is a gun with one bullet.”

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HECK, Pennsylvania, Friday (NNN) — Leaders of the world’s biggest economies have announced that they have won the financial crisis fight. “It worked,” declared the Group of 20, “and will keep us in power long enough.”

The April G20 meeting declared that the world economy was “facing its greatest challenge in our generation. We must do whatever it takes to shore up the system that has worked so well for our donors and very good friends. And get re-elected.”

Today’s draft statement says that “our forceful response helped stop the dangerous, sharp decline in our credibility and that of the financial markets. The people are still living under bridges and eating boiled shoe leather, but they think we’ve got a plan to get them out of it. God bless ’em and their cute little dreams!”

But there is much to be done. “A sense of normalcy should not lead to complacency. There are 2010 mid-terms to think of as well as the 2012 Presidential election.”

The programme is expected to continue. “As we face the current global and economic crisis, the G20 has proven its effectiveness and usefulness by bringing together leaders of both developed and developing countries in the quest to save their own skins. Gordon’s still totally screwed, of course.”

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OVER 60 MILLION GOT SERVED, Just Over The Border, Wednesday (NNN) — Biotechnology companies banking on a severe swine flu pandemic were shocked this week when US health officials approved four H1N1 vaccines, triggering a selloff in the sector.

“This is outrageous fiscal irresponsibility from the Democrat Party,” said analyst Brian Adams. “A lot of these companies have basically been trading on pandemic concerns. How can the United States possibly lead in the biotech revolution without serious damage from the pandemic? They’re destroying business value!”

The World Health Organization said it could infect as many as one-third of the world’s population, or 2 billion people. “Most of these are in the Third World, of course. If they got all their drugs cheap — or, God forbid, free — that would cut our gross takings by as much as five percent. Just what the hell do they think they’re doing in there? We’ve spent quite enough time and money on onerous intellectual monopoly laws. That money is our right as creative individuals, as the true creators of objective value!”

Businesses in the US will give the swine flu vaccine to their workers, on an “as needed” basis — those being the ones whose insurance they are paying for. “At least the illegals won’t get health care, so they’ll still be a good breeding ground for new and profitable bugs. Thank God.”

Adams said there was still a chance that H1N1 would mutate, rendering vaccines less effective. “Failing that, we’ll just have to see what we can do to push it along. You didn’t write that down? Good, good.”

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COLORING SECTION, Bush Presidential Library, Monday (NNN) — President George W. Bush’s former speechwriter Matt Latimer reveals all in a new book, Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Apologist, about what George W. Bush was really like in power.

“His perception and ability were truly amazing,” said Latimer. “He got so much stuff so right:”

• Sarah Palin, August 2008: “She’s not remotely prepared. I bet you she’ll mess up the VP debate, scare people stupid, lose us the election and then spring a weird and embarrassing surprise resignation on us six months later.”

• Hilary Clinton, January 2008: “She won’t get the nomination. That Obama guy from Chicago will. But he’ll give her and Bill good jobs to make up for it if he gets in.”
• Hank Paulson, May 2006: “You sure we should have him in Treasury? He’s good, but if there’s a real crisis he’ll help his Goldman Sachs buds along and I bet he can’t wait to screw Lehman Brothers over.”
• Kanye West, February 2004, playing his advance copy of The College Dropout: “I’m really happy for him, I’ll let him finish, but Melle Mel was one of the best rappers of all time. One of the best rappers of all time!”
• Osama bin Laden, August 2001: “Hey, the bin Ladens are old family friends. But that Osama. Man, I was never sure about him. Weird guy. We should keep an eye on him.”

The Bush administration was famously fixated on loyalty and message control, and past tell-alls have been severely critical of Mr Bush and his team. “But I haven’t got a bad word to say,” said Mr Latimer. “Not one. And it’s absolutely not the case that Karl Rove called at three in the morning to discuss my entire family and where they live, and it certainly isn’t true that Dick Cheney called at four in the morning offering to take me hunting with him. Absolutely not.”

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WHAT’S ON THE SLAB, Steampunk Seattle, Monday (NNGadget) — Microsoft is improving its stratospherically successful “decision engine,” Bob Hope, with a feature that allows you to “visual search” on “web” “sites.”

“This is what happens at the cutting edge of research, y’know,” said marketing marketer Yusuf Mehdi at the Tech Crunch 50 conference yesterday. “You can use Microsoft Search™ to ’search’ for any page on the Information Superhighway! And it’s really quite amazing what’s out there. Man. That’s actually our slogan — ‘Microsoft Search™: It’s Really Quite Amazing What’s Out There. Man.’”

The “search” feature is part of technology acquired in the deal with Yahoo! “We bought this fantastic thing they were working on. It’s a directory of links to web pages. People put stuff into classifications. You can ‘crowd-source’ it, you know! You visualise what you’re looking for, type it in words and this stuff shows up. Amazing! I don’t know how anyone never thought of it before. We have about fifty precomputed ’searches’ in there at the moment, with more to come. Windows 7! The ‘wow’ starts now! You know, sometimes I wonder how people even managed to use computers before Windows 7.”

Search™ requires installing Microsoft Silverlight, .NET 3.5, the latest service packs and Windows Genuine Advantage. Office 2007 is also recommended. It runs best in Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 computer. “We don’t see how Goog— that other company can possibly compete. Theirs doesn’t use anything extra. How the hell are you supposed to get people hooked like that? They just don’t have a business model.”

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DRAGON’S DEN, Cheyenne Mountain, Tuesday (NNGadget) — Despite months of negotiations to get a Commodore 64 emulator approved for the iPhone, Apple has pulled the application after just two days after a hack was found that enables the BASIC interpreter.

“Anything capable of allowing programming — any programming — could be a security risk to the iPhone and its users,” said Apple in a statement to the Library of Congress on copyright. “As such, it is absolutely vital for the safety of the nation that we vet every single application and collect 30% on each one.”

Apple software reviewers, who are generally moonlighting from day jobs as TSA airport security policy writers, fear a wave of 1980s-style “hackers” using the iPhone to “dial” into NASA or National Security Agency computers using the accompanying 300-Baud Acoustic-Coupled Modem application. “We had our suspicions when the app lit the user’s face from below in just the right shade of green to show off their cheekbones really photogenically.”

Reviewers were particularly concerned that the BASIC interpreter was originally written by Microsoft. “Of course, their security is famously terrible,” said one reviewer in a break from torturing kittens. “We’d probably get a Commodore 64 virus. And their sense of aesthetics! No way Steve would ever let that through.”

A similar Commodore 64 emulator that gives ten cents to AT&T every time a user runs a game has passed approval in two days.

“A strange phone,” said NSA correspondent “WOPR.” “The only winning move is not to buy.”

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OLD GLORY HOLE, The Castro, Wednesday (NNN) — Michael Duvall, California Republican state assemblyman representing Orange County, has resigned his seat after being caught vividly describing lewd details about his trysts with a female lobbyist.

Duvall has insisted he is “not sexual” and that the female lobbyist he spoke of is “really a guy”. “I made up all of these stories! I have two children, so I’ve had sex, uh, that’d be twice. Republicans get married and we only think about money from then on. I swear.”

Many Republican groups are outraged. “If you’re going to break God’s covenant, do it good and hard,” said the Rev Ted Haggard. “None of this pussy-footing around. Geddit? See what I did there?”

Others were less concerned. “These people are implying that fucking a lobbyist with business in front of your committee looks like some sort of ‘corruption,’” said Mark Sanford. “Honi soit, dude. Honi soit.”

Gay groups welcomed the news, having long begged conservative politicians, ministers and commentators to, for the love of God, stop being gay. “Bathroom gropers,” said spokesfag Elle Lucius, “glory hole cocksuckers with herpes sores around their concealed mouths, shadowy men in tight Levis doing unspeakable things in piss-stinking alleys and on massage tables that light up like Christmas under blacklight … these things are all very well in their place. But those suits! That polyester! Dear God, can’t they afford better tailoring? Don’t these people have suburbs to go to?”

The Democratic gay contingent, the Log Cabin Democrats, have long had trouble pushing their point of view in their own party, with their strange and antisocial predilections for decades-long committed relationships rather than the furtive liaisons in airport bathrooms favored by the GOP.

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THE MANCUNIAN CANDIDATE, Kenyawaii, Tuesday (NNN) — Republican fears over Barack Obama’s back-to-school speech to students have not been quelled by the release of the text.

Mr Obama tells students to work hard, set goals, take responsibility for their own future, be self-reliant and diligently pursue the fruits of capitalism and free enterprise. “To hear this coming from a Democrat is obvious Communism,” said Glenn Beck on Fox News. “Obama is literally Stalin.”

“The speech was reasoned, sensible and apolitical,” said Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell. “This is just an attempt to propagandise Obama as sane and normal, not as the slavering destroyer of humanity we know he is. They might see what he actually looks and talks like, not just what Fox says about him! You’d think we were in socialist North Kenya.”

Others have protested that Mr Obama’s advice to students to stay in school will only increase the possibility of exposure to liberal propaganda. In Minnesota, the state’s Association of School Administrators recommended against showing the president’s speech. “He didn’t scream abuse off-camera, swear unholy vengeance against his opponents or burst into tears once! What happens if students see a politician being calm and low-key talking about the future? They’ll think that’s how you talk about political matters! They’ll think there’s reasonable discussion with the enemy, grey areas, moral relativism. It’s just a short step from there to death panels voting on Kenyan gay marriages.”

“He credited the XBox and iPhone,” said Sarah Palin. “This is a clear attempt to further the Marxist agenda of Democrat Party liberals who’ve used evilution to grow thumbs.”

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CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Goldacre, Monday (NotScientist) — The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the news that more and more new drugs do no better than a placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in research and development, the FDA approved only 19 new drugs in 2007 and 24 in 2008.

The placebo effect has been little-understood. Trials in different countries and cultures can show different results. Ratings by trial observers can vary significantly from one test site to another. Advertising has conditioned people into thinking a little branded pill will make them all better.

“This throws R&D spending into significant doubt,” said Cylon Number Six of GlaxoSmithPfizerMonsanto. “It’s clear that marketing has always been the way to go, and that spending four times as much on marketing as research was the best thing we could possibly have done for humanity.”

Researchers are now going full steam to discover new forms of nothingness to apply to new diseases. Explorers have been sent into the Amazonian rainforest to find new plant species to dilute to the point of no molecules of the original being present. Traditionally ineffective tribal remedies from around the world have been patented in Western countries. “If ‘4′33″’ can be copyrighted, we can patent the placebo gene!” The treatments will be publicised in the new Elsevier journal, The Australasian Journal of Nothing Whatsoever.

Homeopaths are up in arms at the pharmaceutical industry “muscling in on our territory,” said Ravenwoo Granola of the Specialist Homeopathic Institute of Technology. “We developed the finest, most refined and provably harmless snake oil in existence! There’s nothing homeopathy can’t cure! Er, there’s nothing that isn’t brought to us for consideration and helping the patient trigger the placebo effect themselves. A snip at £5.99 a bottle and fifty quid a consultation! And we absolutely proved it harmless! We did double-blind tests against placebo … Bugger.”

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LAKE WASHINGTON BLVD. E., Seattle, Friday (NNGadget) — In preparation for the stupendous launch of Microsoft Windows %NEXT_VERSION% in October, Microsoft is organising a detailed word-of-mouth push.

“Astroturfing word of mouth is routine, don’t worry,” said Cylon Number Six from Waggener Edstrom. “We’ve been careful to get all our partners and MVPs on the case. Here’s the invitation:”

Dear INSERT NAME HERE,

Come to our supar l33t party! It’ll have “balloons” and “games” and “family friendly” fun and really easy setting up, nudge nudge, wink wink! Plug and play, my friend. Plug and play. Don’t forget your … anti-virus. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

The hosts of the best Windows 7 House Parties will win a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition. The runners-up will get a leftover copy of Vista.

The Windows 7 drinking game will include:

• One shot for every “ethnic” face in an install graphic.

• An extra shot if it’s pasted over the head of a white person.
• One shot for every white face pasted over the head of a non-white person.
• One shot for every program with the Office 2007 “ribbon” toolbar stuck on it completely inappropriately.
• One shot for every exciting “new” feature that’s been in Mac OS and Linux for the past five years.
• An extra shot if the exciting “new” feature’s been in Mac OS and Linux for the past ten years.
• One shot every time you reboot during the install.
• One shot every time the system asks to reboot just because it feels like it.
• Two shots every time it reboots even though you said “no.”
• Drain the bottle if there’s an actual feature that makes Windows 7 so much better than sticking with XP that you’ll spend actual money to get it.
• A bitter mouthful every time the system blue-screens.

“There’s a party in your ass,” said Number Six, “and we’re going to … I’m sorry, I picked up the wrong cue sheet. The Wow™ starts NOW! Hold on … Windows 7! It sucks less! Honest! Yeah, that’s the one.”

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I’M A BLIGHT ON HUMANITY, Get Me Out Of Here, Saturday (NNGadget) — It’s August, the best of times when you’re a space-filler generator in IT journalism, as every other media outlet turns into a gaping void at least as bad as ourselves. This leads to the inevitable debate: which is the best operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard?

Operating system name: Windows 7 gets lots of page hits and comments from individual Microsoft fans who, it’s true, just happen to be employed by Microsoft’s PR company, but are completely independent in their thinking. Snow Leopard attracts Apple cultists, freshly charged from reading a novel-length apologia at RoughlyDrafted and all set to refute perceived calumnies and smite the unbeliever. Either is great for the ad banner exposure. Tie.

Upgrading: Windows 7 has an insanely complicated upgrade graph, whereas Snow Leopard’s is: “put the disk in the computer.” The former is way better for extended articles on how it’s even easier to do a complicated Windows upgrade process by hand than it was going from XP to Vista and saves us lots of work thinking of things to write. Apple just fail to provide us material. Advantage: Windows 7.

Presentation: Windows 7 has the thoroughly reworked taskbar and the beautiful fonts and polish of Vista. Mac OS X has minor variations on the same interface it’s had for eight years. Windows 7 looks just way more exciting in screenshots in tech press articles. Advantage: Windows 7.

Improvements: Microsoft made Windows 7 as backwards-compatible with Vista as possible, down to application performance and memory usage. They did dazzling things with the presentation of all this functionality, putting everything you use every day into exciting new places, with helpful new names. Apple, on the other hand, focused largely on internal plumbing and security. It’s just dull, boys. How are we supposed to puff this up? C’mon, meet us half way here. Advantage: Windows 7.

Price: The Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is $120 on Amazon, whereas Snow Leopard is $29. Apple just aren’t putting enough value on their products. Do you want people thinking it’s just cheap garbage? Advantage: Windows 7.

Enterprise readiness: No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. If you get a Mac, however, your co-workers will conspire against you and probably steal it. With Windows 7, you can be sure no-one else will ever want to touch your computer. Advantage: Windows 7.

System configuration: Microsoft gave me this laptop with only eight CPU cores and 16 gigabytes of memory to show just how good Windows 7 was on such low-end hardware. We had to buy a Mac to do this test on, because Apple just didn’t understand the promotional advantages of giving me a shiny new 17″ MacBook just because I wanted one. So I got a second-hand Mac Mini for a fair comparison. It’s clear that Microsoft understand the needs of modern information technology journalism perfectly. They also sent over their PR people Candy, Brandi and Bimbi to help me with my Windows setup all last night. Apple just completely don’t get it. Advantage: Windows 7.

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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.

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THE BLACK HOLE OF LOCKERBIE, The Great Game, Saturday (NNN) — FBI Director Robert Mueller harshly criticized the release of Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, as “a mockery of the rule of law” and “detrimental to the cause of justice engineering.”

Al Megrahi had been serving a life sentence for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. After many years of appeals over blatantly tampered evidence, in which the British government tried to keep relevant documents secret from the defendant and his lawyers on national security grounds until the judge threatened to throw the conviction out, Al Megrahi was finally released due to terminal prostate cancer and having three months to live.

Al Megrahi was told he could either go home to Libya or stay and die clearing his name. The government declined an option to free al Megrahi and allow him to live in Scotland after senior police officers cited the severe security implications of him opening his mouth where people might listen.

“Obviously, the sight of a mass murderer getting a hero’s welcome in Tripoli is deeply upsetting, deeply distressing,” David Miliband told BBC radio Friday morning. “Since of course he did it, as shown by none of his appeals getting through.”

The Libyan government had accepted that paying $2.7 billion and taking the rap for the bombing was a business requirement of selling oil to the West. But Thursday, after al Megrahi’s return, the Libyan official news agency JANA issued a statement from the government saying that al Megrahi had been “a political hostage,” showing that Gadaffi was obviously a terrorist nutter and a bad loser to boot.

Peter Mandelson pooh-poohed the notion that the release was in any way to sweeten upcoming oil deals. “The idea that the British government and the Libyans would sit down and somehow barter about the freedom of this Libyan prisoner to form some sort of business deal … it’s not only wrong, it’s completely implausible. Furthermore, any such deals in the very near future will be merest coincidence.”

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