News of the News

WASILLA HIGH SCHOOL, Alaiskah, Friday (NNN) — Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin has suddenly resigned, citing attacks from the press making it impossible to do her job.

“Let me explain it with basketball. It’s the national full-court press picking away right now. A good point guard drives through a full court press like a mav’rick, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket. Then the winged monkeys descend, in gay married pairs, flinging poop at me an’ reciting the Koran in French. And I shoot them outa the sky — bang, bang, pow! Quitters stick it out, but winners quit! For victory!”

The governor put her famous financial prudence at the core of the decision. “I can’t let your money and time go to waste just so I can hold the title of governor. That I’ll get ten times the cash on the fundie lecture circuit doesn’t affect my decision at all.”

Mrs Palin firmly omitted crediting by any mention the ridiculous allegations of corruption in the construction of the Wasilla Stadium and coincidental observations that the family’s house was built at the same time by the same contractors from the same materials, such as large, expensive windows that took a crane to hoist to the second floor and specialized training and tools to install. “Todd and a few buddies busted ’em out over a few weekends with a few six-packs. We needed ’em to see Russia.”

Republican commentators expressed their untrammeled joy at and admiration of Mrs Palin’s brilliant move, noting its similarity to the bit where Vader kills Gandalf and he then comes back to kill Voldemort. “The Palins are just staying in Paraguay for a few short months,” said Bill Kristol on Fox News, “until the financial mudslinging stops. Then she’ll be back to run for President! A resounding shot of hope has been fired!” Up to several protestors took to the streets in urban areas with signs saying “STOP WASHINGTON,” “STOP OBAMA” and “SAVE SARAH” before being returned to the Republican Preservation National Parks in Utah and Alaska.

Mrs Palin’s last words were for the mainstream liberal media. “As I leave you, I want you to know — just think how much you’re gonna be missing. You won’t have Palin to kick around any more. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it’ll be one in which I’ve welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you. You betcha!”

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REAL VIRTUALITY, Seattle, Thursday 2099 (NNN) — Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP’s availability since 2008.

Through successive releases of Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company’s attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.

“Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible,” said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. “Spare change?”

Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.

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WIKICITIES, Helmand, Monday (NNN) — The kidnapping of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist David Rohde in Afghanistan was suppressed not only by almost all press syndicates but also by Wikipedia, on the direct command-and-control orders of Jimbo Wales, who is personally responsible for every word in the popular web-based encyclopedia.

Conservative commentators were appalled at the suppression. “Would they have protected HITLER like this?” thundered Michelle Malkin. Wales pointed out that the encyclopedia’s biography of Hitler had already been appropriately edited and cited per the Biographies of Living Persons policy:

Adolf Hitler is the Chancellor of Germany^{[citation needed]}. He is noted^{[citation needed]} for his work on the moral fibre of German society^{[citation needed]} and stimulating the economy^{[citation needed]}, notably through the Autobahn construction programme^{[citation needed]}. Some^[who?] have criticized aspects of his policies^{[citation needed]}.

The Wikipedia Review message board exploded in outrage at the revelations. “And they called us conspiracy theorists!” said ardent Wikipedia critic, businessman and banned editor Gregory Kohs. “It’s not clear yet how this will make money for Wales’ private company Wikia, but I know that’s why he did it.” The message board was further outraged at being scooped on the news. “This makes David Rohde part of the ‘hive mind,’ so the only way to remedy Wikipedia’s revelations of not revealing someone’s personal details in this particular case will be for me to put up David Rohde’s home address, names of his entire family and his bank account details on my website,” said public interest stalker Daniel Brandt. “I bet Google’s in on it too. They put a radio in my head, you know.”

“This raises many deep questions,” said free speech crusader Seth Finkelstein, “and it is important that many people keep at Wikimedia to get the truth, since they censoriously killfiled my email and viciously claimed to my editor at the Guardian that printing the stuff I write in blogs and letters to people’s employers in a mainstream British newspaper would constitute ‘deliberate malicious libel.’ I shall, of course, continue to pursue them to the end of time. Particularly that Godwin asshole.”

Many Wikipedia editors were also concerned. “Keeping details out of a Wikipedia article on a living person just because there aren’t any reliable sources because of a censorious conspiracy to keep him from getting killed is a slippery slope to the destruction of the trustworthiness and usefulness of every article in the encyclopedia,” said administrator WikiFiddler451. “People are seriously suggesting that our rules should be applied using common sense and a clue. I just don’t see how that could possibly work. Next they’ll suggest we ‘assume good faith’ or something.”

The Wikipedia Vandalism Patrol, who Wales ordered to suppress the information, deals with bad Wikipedia edits by determining if it is easier to fix the vandalism or adjust reality to the claimed facts. Wikipedia resets reality to match its contents using “wikiality,” discovered by conservative commentator Stephen Colbert. “Stephen’s one of our great successes,” said Wales. “We wrote that he was only parodying actual conservative commentators, and the liberals believed it! Of course, conservatives weren’t fooled by anything in Wikipedia.” Wikiality uses a “reality distortion field” similar to that used by Steve Jobs in his MacWorld keynote addresses, which is why all Wikimedia Foundation employees use MacBooks.

All information in Wikipedia must be verifiable in reliable sources. The “No Original Research” policy was first instituted to deal with “physics cranks. After the first few times the universe collapsed into a black hole when one of them squared the circle and we had to revert to the previous revision of reality. Way too much work. Brion was still a volunteer then, too.”

The death of Michael Jackson proved particularly problematic, with the article quickly becoming both the most read and most edited of the past week. “It took a while to decide what should have happened. ‘Heart failure’ covers a lot of stuff. The real story — the original real story, before we got in there and fixed things … no, you really don’t want to know. David Icke doesn’t want to know either, though he thinks he does. Really. No. Things are much better now. Trust us.”

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OFF THE PERCH, Thriller, History (N! News) — The entire Internet melted last night as Michael Jackson wreaked celebrity revenge upon it, with Wikipedia, LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter giving “service unavailable” errors and News of the News getting another page hit.

Mr Jackson also got his own back on the media, with TMZ getting the scoop on his death and everyone else reporting it second-hand in a manner that showed they didn’t quite believe them.

“We are utterly distraught and inconsolable about Mr Jackson’s death,” said Sony-BMG, as Michael Jackson albums occupied the top fifteen positions on the Amazon CD sales chart.

The O₂ Arena will be running a thirty-night Michael Jackson tribute, with only fifteen minutes’ less Michael Jackson each night than was originally contracted. “People may wish to hold on to the tickets as absolutely irreplaceable final souvenirs,” said a spokesweasel, “rather than returning them for a refund or anything foolish like that.”

The Twitter and Facebook websites were rendered particularly crippled under a flood of Michael Jackson jokes:

• Why did Michael Jackson cross the road? He didn’t, he was dead.
• What did Michael Jackson say to the children? Nothing, he was dead.
• How does Michael Jackson pick his nose? He doesn’t, he’s dead.
• What did Farrah Fawcett say when she heard Michael Jackson had died straight after her? Nothing, she was dead.

“I’m appalled at the fuss over Michael Jackson,” said Canberra taxi driver Peter Mackay. “So he died. Get over it. He’ll be back on Sunday, yeah?”

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ASSCAP, Asscrap, Monday (NNN) — After its recent successes suing girl scouts over singing copyrighted songs around campfires, the American Super-Society of Composers, Authors and Performers has filed a brief in a lawsuit against AT&T arguing that its members deserve payment every time a mobile phone rings.

The owners of the musical compositions are already paid for each ringtone download, but this does not cover ASCAP public performance royalties.

“The musicians and songwriters are the true creators of objective value in society,” said ASCAP spokesdroid Ayn Rand. “They deserve your support. How would civilisation survive without Crazy Frog or the Nokia Tune? Which changes one note from the 1902 ‘Gran Vals’ by Francisco Tárrega, so is completely original and deserving of royalties.

“To this end, we are bringing suits against those individuals who, having purchased RIAA-licensed ringtones, do not then silence them when in public. Statutory damages of $80,000 should have a salutary effect on our coffers and, of course, our public image.”

Further lawsuits will then be brought against those who silence their mobile phones. “4′33′ by John Cage is a copyrighted work. Without the money going to his estate, he may never write another measured piece of silence again.” This will be followed by suits against those whistling or humming music in public, then those thinking about music in any form without a licence.

In support of their position, ASCAP pointed to vast public outpourings of sympathy from millions of people who never wanted to hear a tinny thirty-second burst of cheesy synthetic R&B coming from a phone ever again in their lives.

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BIG BONE LICK, Kentucky, Wednesday (NNGadget) — Microsoft today heeded the lessons of technological history, taking the popular “preview porn videos in the search engine” feature and turning its Bob Hope “decision engine” into a porn finder at the address explicit.bobhope.microsoft.com.

“It worked for VHS over Beta, porn sites were leading innovators in online payments. It’s a natural synergy,” said Steve Ballmer, looking somewhat sweaty and flushed.

Porn sites are some of the keenest users of Microsoft technologies, using the undocumented interfaces in Internet Explorer to install helpful toolbars and bulk email tools on users’ systems. “It’s all about tools. Our tools have amazed people for decades. Microsoft are famous for the biggest and best tools ever. Developers! Developers! Developers! DEVELOPEEERS!”

Internet Explorer 8 is also part of the promotion. After a competition that advertises IE8’s superior standards compliance with a site that deliberately breaks all other browsers, a programme to donate eight free meals for the poor for every IE8 download (with the cost of the meals being 10% of the spend on promoting them) and a string of free porn sites requiring a Silverlight download to watch the smut, IE8 Service Pack 1 will include a “boot straight into porn” mode. “We found that was what users really wanted in an operating system. I mean, browser.” It will include the Storm, Conficker and FBI botnets as standard. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” The system will also set up automatic deductions from your bank account and credit card.

Mr Ballmer promised that Microsoft will, as always, deliver. “Unlike porn sites, we don’t just tease — we really will fuck you. Now bend over.”

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WAGGENER EDSTROM, Portland, Sunday (NNGadget) — Sergey Brin of Google is “deeply rattled” by the launch of Microsoft’s Bob Hope search engine, according to a scoop printed in the New York Post, courtesy Microsoft public relations.

“New search engines have come and gone in the past ten years, but Bob Hope really has Sergey just crapping himself,” said one anonymous insider, “Steve B.”

“It’s clear that Google is headed down, down, down,” said another anonymous source, “Rupert M.” “Particularly the news operation. Print that or I fire you.”

Bob Hope has been warmly greeted by analysts, critics, tech journalists and others on Microsoft and News Corporation’s payrolls. Early statistics show Bob Hope increasing Microsoft’s market share by two percentage points, to about 11 percent! Before dropping back to statistical noise a few hours after the launch was over.

Google’s credibility was shot to pieces by its blatant pro-Obama bias, noted by Fox News analysts when they couldn’t find evidence of Obama’s French citizenship and gay marriage on the search engine in the days before the 2008 Presidential election. “Their far-left liberal search algorithms will lead to their utter defeat by the business-friendly Microsoft Bob Hope,” said swivel_eyed_loon_643 in the New York Post comments section. In addition, a hilariously pathetic PR placement of a story in the New York Post to hype Bob Hope sealed Google’s fate, conclusively and utterly.

A spokesman for Google, asked about the threat of Microsoft Bob Hope, said “what??”, put the phone down and laughed for five minutes before the line cut out, obviously overcome with hysterical horror.

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BAGHDAD, Seattle, Wednesday (NNGadget) — Microsoft is discontinuing its Microsoft Money personal finance management product.

In a press release touting the third annual MSN Money “Customer Service Hall of Shame and Hall of Fame,” Microsoft was first place for shame, followed by XBox at number two and Windows Live Search at number three.

“It’s a mix of what’s going on in the market,” said marketing marketer Adam Sohn, “what makes sense for long-term for us and a little bit on consumer behavior. We have of course notified both customers.”

Other Microsoft products discontinued this year include OneNote, MSN Groups, Office Accounting, Office Live, PerformancePoint Server, the Origami netbook, the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference, the company picnic and five thousand employees. Though they’re still spending $100 million to advertise the Microsoft Bob Hope search engine.

The associated MSN MoneyCentral site provides Web content to help users manage their personal finances. “The site will continue,” said Mr Sohn, “as a resource for customers looking to manage their finances. We’ll be including lots of tie-in information from our Encarta encyclopedia.” A staffer frantically tried to get Mr Sohn’s attention at this point.

In keeping with the Great Recession and Microsoft’s financial prospects in the last year, the software will be rebranded and reissued as Microsoft Debt.

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SHAOLIN, Bangkok, Thursday (NNN) — Actor David Carradine has been found dead at age 72, quite definitely of a tragic suicide or horrifying murder, in the closet of a Thai hotel room with a rope around his neck and, apparently, other initially-unspecified parts of his body.

Tributes poured in from around the world as publicity was issued talking about his depressions and suicidal thoughts. Police were initially seeking Uma Thurman for questioning. However, they have now determined they will be neglecting their duty, slanderously putting the death down to an unfortunate and embarrassing misadventure on the part of Mr Carradine.

“We are shocked and appalled,” said his management. “These insinuations are an unacceptable slight on Mr Carradine’s noble character. There was, after all, no tangerine present. It is clear that Ms Thurman snuck into his room, stopped his heart with a series of one-inch punches, cunningly arranged his body and edited his Wikipedia entry such as to defame his memory.”

The estate of Michael Hutchence will be suing, on general principles.

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This morning, our dear leader Steve Ballmer is unveiling our completely new search service, unrelated to anything we at Microsoft have ever done before: Bob Hope.

We spent lots of time listening to you, except when you told us how much MSN Search Live Search Kumo sucked ’cause you’re just wrong about that, to learn which buzzwordy Web 2.0 thingies you use search for today. Finding a webpage that has anything to do with the search terms you entered is so passé, dahling.

So today we’re introducing a new kind of search, that goes beyond traditional search engines that do tedious things like find stuff, to instead help you make faster, more informed decisions. (Windows 7 is peachy keen, by the way.) We think of Bob Hope as a Decision Engine. We’ve sued Stephen Wolfram into atomic dust using our patents on FAT and Mono, co-opted the Wolfram Alpha engine and swapped Mathematica for Visual Basic and Wolfram’s brain for the exhumed corpse of Bob Hope.

So why did we pick Bob Hope as the new core of our search? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product: optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world.

And just look at these results!

What do we want?
Braaains.
When do we want them?
Braaains.
What do I need to run Windows 7?
Braaains.
What’s Bill Gates got that means you should buy everything you can from the company he founded?
Braaains.
What’s the final proof of Steve Ballmer’s equal genius to Steve Jobs?
Vistaaa.

This is something new, something improved! You need to try it! It’ll give so much more betterer results than that other search engine we can’t name because Steve will wedge another chair up our butts! Please, come and try our new and improved service! FOR GOD’S SAKE TRY THE DAMN SERVICE. OR THE PUPPY GETS IT. We’re Microsoft. We’re serious as a heart attack on this one.

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Z-LIST AVENUE, Desolation Boulevarde, Friday (N! News) — The long-awaited sequel Ghostbusters III is in preproduction, said the dribbling ass of Dan Aykroyd’s career.

“All the original cast have signed back up,” said Aykroyd. “Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson and of course Bill Murray. … When I say signed up, I don’t mean on paper, in any committed sense. But, you know. They’ve ’signed up,’” he said, making air quotes.

“Bill was a little reluctant. Something about ‘rather drink crossed streams of my own piss.’ But a few dumptrucks full of cash backed up to his house should see him fully committed. Hopefully.”

Murray, who owns a controlling interest in the franchise, has thrown out Aykroyd’s original script, insisting one by Charlie Kaufman be used instead, in which failed parapsychologists in their sixties chase emotion-absorbing slime controlled by the Sumerian god of destruction through the existential caverns of their own minds as they attempt to reconstruct their lives and careers. And fail. “It’ll be laugh-a-minute,” said Murray. “I sure will be, anyway.”

“This is the best and most original idea in Hollywood this year,” said Aykroyd. “It’ll leave Blues Brothers 2000 in the dust.”

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ZDNET, Mediocre Grauniad, Saturday (NNGadget) — I’ve been using Wolfram Alpha, the new web encyclopedia social search networking mathematics engine, for almost ten minutes now.

And I can tell you — despite fears it would create a black hole when switched on, ending all life on earth, it’s no iPhone killer.

It’s good, to be sure, and “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that” is the appropriate answer for so many queries (and “Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input” is for pretty much all the others), but I can’t see Wolfram Alpha successfully vanquishing any such titans as iPhones, Twitter, Windows 7 or Zune.

Stephen Wolfram is less than amused. “Your petty queries miss the point. The queries Wolfram Alpha cannot answer are not worth answering. Until you foolish Internet users realise the value of my brilliant creation, you will merely continue to stumble about, blind and helpless, as your pitiful ‘human’ civilisation has done for so long. I knew I should have charged for it. You don’t deserve it free.”

But can it replace Facebook? Are we worthy of blurry drunk photos of girls we vaguely know from a knowledgeable, curated source? Will Wolfram Alpha add a third answer, “REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN LATER”? I’ll be sure to be here all month, filling space with the finest analytical prognostication on the subject. It sure beats working.

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SNOW CRASH, The Metaverse, Wednesday (NNGadget) — US Air Force General Kevin Chilton, head of US Strategic Command, has said that attacks on the United States via the Internet could merit a conventional military response.

“I don’t think you take anything off the table. We’re particularly looking toward one group in Seattle.”

The Seattle-based insurgent group is thought to have seeded American government and military computers with millions of copies of malware that allows attackers easy access to any data stored on the computer, or indeed to take complete control of the computer and use it for their own ends as part of a massive “botnet” to mount further attacks. The malware, “Windows,” makes securing a computer running it almost impossible.

“Turning Seattle into a glass crater would only be undertaken strictly as the minimum required surgical military action,” emphasised Chilton, “and not in any way out of twenty-five years’ bitter resentment and frustration at computing machinery.”

Chilton stressed that members of the US military must begin to think of their computers as the front lines. “Do you realize that in addition to adding Windows to computers, why, there are studies underway to Windowsize salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk … ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children’s ice cream! I can no longer sit back and allow Windows infiltration, Windows indoctrination, Windows subversion and the international enterprise licensing conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!”

The Obama administration is currently reviewing the United State’s cyberspace defense policy. “We’re considering all options thoroughly,” said the President, closing his MacBook and looking lingeringly at the red button on his desk.

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ISENGARD, Wapping, Monday (NNN) — Rupert Murdoch, speaking out on the news business, stated today that “the Internet free access model is clearly malfunctioning, as I don’t make enough money from it.”

Media commentators fear for the future of investigative journalism. “How can we hold governments’ feet to the fire without money to pay our great reporters? Where would you get your recycled wire feeds, your Garfield cartoons?” Publishers hold that it is natural for readers to pay what advertisers once did, just as cows have to make up the difference out of their own pockets when the price of milk falls.

Newspapers have suffered badly since the collapse of their previous business model of selling readers to advertisers on a local monopoly basis. The replacement models appear to involve phlogiston, caloric and luminiferous aether.

“We have to educate people that free doesn’t work, particularly for us,” said Vanessa Thorpe of the Guardian Media Group. “I tried an advertorial repeating several times that nothing will be free any more, to magic it into happening. I also subtly implied the Pirate Bay were Nazis — HITLER! HITLER! HITLER! — so we’ll see if we can make that one fly too.”

Publishers have also explored the notion of getting Google to pay its “fair share” for so parasitically leading people to newspapers’ websites. The Wikimedia Foundation promptly started billing journalists for their reprints from Wikipedia. “We feel this is completely unfair,” said Tom Curley of the Associated Press, “as real news stories spring forth from the heads of accredited reporters in an immaculate creation from nothingness. My preciousss.” Maurice Jarre was unavailable for comment.

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APPLE PIE, Texas, Friday (NNN) — Facing increased marginalisation, the Republican Party is concentrating on its core audience and values.

“We are completely against the Obama stimulus spending,” said Rush Limbaugh, speaking through Party chair Michael Steel. “We favour subsidies for no-one and nothing, and feel the Great Recession can best be repaired by moving to a laissez-faire system of primitive hunting and gathering.”

Economic policies are a sideline, however, for the most important Republican stances. “We are firmly in favor of personal responsibility, except to do with sex. It’s necessary to the health and security of America to enforce sex only once a month for procreation, and putting gays or suspected gays in the stocks in the public square. Just Say No!”

Colin Powell, the traitorous Obama-voter, told a GOP audience last week that “the Republican Party is in deep trouble.” Mr Powell also claimed that the Earth goes around the Sun and is not flat. He was burned at the stake later in the evening. “Powell was never a real Republican,” said Limbaugh. “Nor was Arlen Specter. I’ve got my doubts about Lincoln too.”

As a GOP discussion continues, the probability of one participant calling another a “Democrat” approaches one. However, the party will respect the national mood and advance moderates it feels are in tune with its core. “Ideally we’re looking for a creationist Pentecostal abstinence-touting book-banning Alaskan separatist gun nut MILF with crossed eyes like Dan Quayle’s and the conversational powers of George Bush, who’s black. That’d be a candidate with real crossover potential.”

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REHABILITATION PROJECT FORCE, Hemet Gold Base, Friday (NNN) — Ten of America’s largest 19 banks have failed the stringent economic “stress tests” based on the teachings of Dianetics.

Senior investigators from the Office of the Treasury (”Big OTs”) found that, considered as thetans, the banks were too weighed down with engrams, from this and past lives, and the engrams of the many “sub-prime thetans” still attached to them.

The test involves financial executives holding the “cans” in a firm grip while answering questions such as:

2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?
8. Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people?
23. Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do?
24. Is it normally hard for you to “own up and take the blame”?
30. Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates?
59. Do you consider the modern prisons without bars system “doomed to failure”?
76. Do you sometimes give away articles which strictly speaking do not belong to you?
124. Do you often make tactless blunders?
125. Are you suspicious of people who ask to borrow money from you?

“The economy’s been like a volcano that’s about to blow,” said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “Our hope is that banks can get back to the business of banking, staying upstat and producing Valuable Final Product, to lift the cloud of uncertainty.”

Analysts broadly welcomed the results of the stress tests. “The IQ test seems to have been very accurate,” said Eric Kuby of North Star Investment Management. “The fears of entheta and the influence of suppressive persons have more or less disappeared.”

The current Federal Reserve system was set up in the 1950s as the result of a bet between Alan Greenspan and L. Ron Hubbard.

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MELLIE, Newcastle, Thursday (NNN) — Gigabytes and gigabytes of pornography and highly sensitive login details for gentleman’s art sites were bought by a US military missile air defence base second-hand on eBay.

The collected fine artworks of young women in a state of natural aesthetic presentation were found on a hard disk for the SPLORT (Super-Powered Less Obviously Retronymed Thing) ground to air missile defence system, used to shoot down Scud Mag missiles in Iraq.

Dr Andy Jones, a researcher at the base, said “This is the fourth time we have carried out this research and it is clear that records left on hard disks are the twenty-first century equivalent of random pornographic magazines found in bushes and parks by masturbation-crazed eleven year old boys. PHWOAR, LOOK AT THE TITS ON THAT ONE! I’m sorry, I’m just reviewing a birdwatching site. Fabulous display of Cyanistes cæruleus.

“Of significant concern is the number of large organisations that are still not disposing of confidential information in a secure manner. Thank fuck.”

The disk also contained site passwords, credit card numbers and 18 USC 2257 information on … “prospective military contractors,” Dr Jones quickly interjected. “Really. Prospective contractors. We’re getting in touch with them right away.”

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RALEIGH, North Carolina, Wednesday (NNGadget) — The Debian project has dropped the use of the GNU project’s glibc C library, substituting the eglibc fork, as glibc maintainer Ulrich Drepper refused patches or bug reports for several architectures Debian relied on.

“Any change will negatively impact well designed architectures for the sole benefit of this embedded crap,” said Drepper. “Famously good architectures like x86. Can you believe, these people wanted their C library to work in systems with shells other than bash! They must think they’re signing my paycheck.”

Drepper has, in retaliation, announced his own fork of Debian. It will be created in cooperation with Joerg Schilling and Tuomo Valkonen and be based on the Schilix variant of OpenSolaris, with Ion running on XFree86 as the standard graphical interface. “Keith Packard ruined X,” said Valkonen. “Also, time is actually cubical in nature.” The standard file system will be ext4, given its proven ability to cause data loss in user software that ext4’s maintainers consider ill-written. “Hans Reiser didn’t get back to us. Pity, we always got along with him really well.”

The project will apparently be licensed under both the intersection and union, and probably various algebraic transformations, of the GPL, LGPL, CDDL, MIT License and the thing Valkonen wrote for Ion3. This is not anticipated to be a problem in practice with real-life users, at least not until one exists.

“YOU!” said David Dawes of XFree86. “YOU’VE BEEN TALKING TO THEM, HAVEN’T YOU! YOU’RE CONSPIRING WITH THEM! THOSE GUYS! THEY STOLE IT ALL! THEY PUT A RADIO IN MY HEAD! LINUX/BSD WEENIES! EDUCATED EVIL AND STUPID! I’LL SHOW ’EM! HELL YES! I’LL SHOW ’EM ALL!” “That means he’s onside with us,” said Valkonen. “Dave’s been a bit terse since he finally lost it trying to fix a broken modeline.”

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Guest post by Stephen Wolfram

Some might say that Mathematica, the source of my fortune, and A New Kind Of Science: A Brief History Of My Stupendous Intellect were ambitious projects. But in recent years I’ve been hard at work on a still more ambitious project: Wolfram Alpha.

Fifty years ago, people assumed that computers would quickly be able to handle all kinds of question. It didn’t work out that way. But a few years ago, I realized that I was finally in a position to do it myself. As I’d always expected I’d have to, of course.

I had the crucial ingredients: Mathematica and A New Kind Of Science. And my truly massive intellect. With these, I had a language to compute anything and a paradigm for complexity from simple rules. And my spectacular brain, which is much more spectacular than anyone else’s, as proven by me being rich as well as smart. Which is smarter: to be a professor, or to be the professor all the other professors pay tribute to? I think my net worth makes the answer clear.

But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated? I realized we needed to make all data computable as knowledge. Of course, natural language is incredibly difficult for computers. So we added the secret ingredient: my jaw-droppingly spectacular brain, undoubtedly the largest on Earth.

I’m happy to say that with a mixture of clever algorithms and heuristics, linguistic discovery and curation, and some casual Nobel-worthy theoretical breakthroughs in my spare moments, we’ve made it work. It’s going to be a website with one simple input field that gives direct access to my superlative brain, in its planet-sized glory.

Our pre-launch testers have been at work as well, and I’m dealing with all manner of queries in spare thought cycles while I jetset around the world, wowing the pitiful minds of gorgeous international supermodels before impregnating them with my superior genetic material. Let’s just have a look at the query stream: “tits” “goatse” “mary whitehouse naked” “4chan” “tubgirl” “2girls1cup” “ITS OVER 9000 LOL” “desu desu desu desu”
ERROR ERROR ERROR
&&#(”^^(856″^*#**”#&*##&##^^^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@
NO CARRIER_

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LONGHORN RANCH, Glue Factory, Monday (NNGadget) — With the release of Windows 7 set for October 23rd, Microsoft marketing marketer Richard Francis has said computer manufacturers may not be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is available.

Outrage at the news was rapid. Microsoft quickly backtracked, claiming Vista would remain available until at least 2011 (”we kept 98 support up for 18 months when XP was out”), but customers were not mollified by promises that Windows 7 buyers would be allowed to downgrade (”we call it an upgrade”) to Vista.

A “Save Vista” campaign has been organised by InfoWorld. “We detected a deep anxiety over Vista among technologists and consumers alike,” said editor Galen Gruman. “We decided to do something about it, launching a petition drive to ask Microsoft to keep selling Vista after the planned October 23 end-of-sales date.” The petition has already gathered over ten signatures. “‘Seven’ is just sucking up to latté sippers. Like Hummer, like Chrysler, like Edsel, Vista is a great American name that shows the might of full-sized American industrial production. It’s a monument to everything that makes us the country we are.”

“My computer business employs 200 people,” said M. Shuttleworth of London. “The best possible thing for it is to make sure Vista continues and goes forward.”

“Just how long was extended support for Microsoft’s greatest success ever, Windows ME?” said Gruman. “Microsoft talks about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP — just as if ME never existed! ME’s many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and we’re afraid they’ll treat Vista, Microsoft’s second-greatest success ever, the same way.

“And how about extended support for Microsoft’s third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? By the wife of the founder, no less! I think we should be told.”

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