Wikipedia keeps the truth from everyone

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.

Bouncy Wikipedia logoConservative 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.”

Michael Jackson dies, apparently

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 NewsTechnica getting another page hit.

Michael Jackson kicks the bucketMr 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?”

Students to finish degrees by “any means necessary”

REGISTRAR’S OFFICE, University of Bums on Seats, Wednesday (NNN) — The government is to set up an emergency fund to give students at risk of dropping out a chance to complete their degree online through the Open University.

Bleeding penThose who wanted to do something substantive but who were close to failing will be redirected to more practically achievable goals, such as Bachelor of Hairdressing, Master of Building-site Administration or the very popular Diploma in Pub Studies. The ongoing Continuing Ph.D in Welfare Receiving will also be enhanced.

The government has launched a taskforce on online learning to form a committee to commission a study on a team surveying initial approaches to help official goals of 50% of students getting a degree. “British universities will lose their leading international standing unless they become much more radical in their use of new technology,” said Lord Mandelson today. “The blinding flash of inspiration at the heart of the Open University lay in the way it challenged the idea of what a classroom was, and set up a structure such that students could be charged full fees for study without having to run an actual campus for them. Lectures have had their day. The ‘edgeless university,’ which involves a modern and sophisticated fees office, some old textbooks and an email autoresponder, has limitless potential.”

Jobseekers are typically expected to have a University degree for the stringent intellectual demands of modern careers such as call centre operator, receptionist, manure shoveller or embittered bomb-throwing anarchist radical turned local council civil servant.

ASCAP demands payment when your phone rings

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.

Crazy Frog gaggedThe 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.

Sceptics defeat homeopathy with homeopathic homeopathy

CRYSTAL CAULDRON, Surrey, Monday (NotScientist) — In a revolution for the forces of allopathic hatred and the negation of human spiritual potential, a strike force of rogue sceptics has, using the funding of their pharmaceutical death-dealer masters, negated homeopathy with the proving of a new remedy: homeopathic homeopathy.

Homeopathic Bullshit Nitricu 30CThe preparation was initially energised using the explanations for Plutonium Nitricu 30C (homeopathic plutonium), Positronium 30C (homeopathic antimatter) and Rational Sceptic 10C (homeopathic exploded brains of people hearing of the previous two). The succussions of the subsequent dilutions were done using a mechanical potentiser based on the arm of Dr Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of homeopathy, which pounds the mechanical arm against a firm rubber pad from a height of five inches twenty times in two seconds. This is also effective when applied to the patient just before presenting the bill.

The provers found they experienced the complete sensations of every ingredient that had not been added to the solution as, like all homeopathic solutions, it was guaranteed to contain no ingredients whatsoever. This gave them complete understanding of all possible effects of nothing but pure distilled water energised only by a £5.99 price tag from Boots on the bottle. They then proceeded to get new jobs doing something actually useful for a living.

Ravenwoo Granola (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine, University of Bums on Seats) countered that hundreds of years of carefully documented study of homeopathy could not be at error. “I dosed myself with a homeopathic preparation from my own anus before considering your question, thus assuring my brilliance and perspicacity on this subject.”

Internet users, however, heralded the results, suggesting pouring the contents of a homeopathic preparation of Scientology into their DSL modems to protect them from blithering stupidity, and homeopathic goatse to protect them from 4chan.

Police fend off massive summer solstice denial-of-service attack on Stonehenge

A344, Gateway To The West, Sunday (NNN) — Thirty-six thousand revellers, hippies, wiccans and general space cadets have gathered at Stonehenge for the summer solstice, throwing astronomical megalith calculations into chaos.

Stonehenge slashdotted at dawnWiltshire riot police, fresh from the hugely successful G20 operation, kept the fuzzy-brained masses at bay with horses, drug sniffer dogs, an unmanned flying drone and a battalion of level thirty-one family tradition Dawkinsian sceptics, admitting only essential maintenance druids into the fence around Stonehenge itself to handle the load on the ley lines powered by the henge.

“Whooo,” inhaled druid Leatherman Travaglia through his teeth, “yir big-end’s lost cosmic dimensionality and yir astral cabling cannae handle the power. ’S gonna cost ye. I’d try the homeopathic positronium, but the wee glass bottles cannae take it, Captain. Ye cannae change the laws of metaphysics!”

As the druids began their incantations, Wiccan priestesses drew their cowls tight against the damp morning air and half-naked dancers waved their hands in the air and went: “Woo, woo, woo.” “Lookit the fiminine energies on that one!” said Travaglia.

Restrictions were placed on the amount of alcohol revellers could bring in and police said they would not tolerate illegal drug taking or unlawful raves. However, it turned out the most apparently off-their-heads were just like that normally.

Get daily email alerts of new NewsTechnica!

Gordon Brown teases: “I could walk away from office tomorrow”

TOYNBEE, Internationale, Saturday (Mediocre Grauniad) — In an interview with The Guardian, Gordon Brown teased and taunted Britain and the Labour Party with claims that “I could walk away from all of this tomorrow. I’m hurt, terribly hurt by the things people have said.”

Gordon Brown on strong hallucinogensCabinet gritted its teeth and stifled the urge to shout “THEN FUCKING GO,” realising there was no-one on hand who was any less rubbish.

“I’m not as great a presenter of information or communicator as I would like to be. I don’t actually think I’m very good at it at all. That thing you do with your face, where the corners of your mouth go up, that Peter does when he’s dancing on skulls … it’s weird and unnatural.”

He also spoke of the “common purpose” between Lord Mandelson and himself. “I must say, his way with the vertebrae of anyone who crosses him is really quite impressive, not to mention his skills with eye of newt and tongue of frog. People in the Labour Party are coming to appreciate his talents, or at least the ones who enjoy being able to walk. There’s great affection for him now, and hardly any garlic or silver crosses.”

Despite the issues his party had faced in the last month, Mr Brown said he was confident Labour could still win the next general election for two reasons: Labour’s huge successes in handling the economy and MPs’ expenses, and truly stupendous quantities of hallucinogenic chemicals in the water supply for 10 Downing Street.

MPs’ expenses run through experimental Cleanfeed filter

SHOCKED, SHOCKED, Casablanca, Friday (NNN) — Giving in to public pressure, the House of Commons yesterday revealed all MP expense claims for the past five years, heralded on the front page of every newspaper today with pictures of large black rectangles and all cryptic crosswords and Sudokus being replaced with public participatory efforts to go through the raw data looking for the most jawdropping claims.

Gordon Brown as Nicola McLean, blackwashed“I am shocked and appalled,” said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, “that my government would conceal its expenses from its leader, who knew nothing of this at all, and then attempt to conceal the concealing. Don’t they trust me?

The results were fed through an experimental Cleanfeed Internet filter, switched on after the Ministry of Defence had asked BT to block all UK access to Wikileaks.org to conceal the documents showing they had accidentally revealed the location of MI5 as oops, it’s slipped my mind.

“Revealing MPs’ expenses will only grant succour to journalists and paedophiles,” said the Internet Watch Foundation. “Trust us on this.”

“I can categorically assure taxpayers that arse feck we’re busted,” said retiring Speaker Michael Martin.

The Liberal Democrats have signaled their intention to seize the day, look this gift horse in the mouth and completely fail to turn it to anything resembling electoral advantage. As usual.

Get daily email alerts of new NewsTechnica!

Digital Britain to push “culturally British” games

HEY HEY 16K, What Does That Get You Today, Thursday (NNGadget) — As well as attempting to give the major record and television companies whatever they want until the end of time, Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for “culturally British” computer game development.

silencing her knockersPlanned games include Lard Warrior (“the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player’s avatar on the screen. Rated 18+ for explicit neck beards”), CCTV Panopticon (“take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public, defeat final boss with Doctorow Attack”), Bottled Tan Snorter (“get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence, insufficient nipple slips or words of two syllables”) and Cynical Apathist (“write outraged blog posts and comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running, avoid removal by the Guardian moderator”). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone, with a cassette interface emulator that sends Apple 99p every time you get an “R: Tape Loading Error.”

The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister Ed Vaizey has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. “We’ll keep their passports from them until they reach ‘Achievement Unlocked.'”

Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. “Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I’ve just given everything they’ve ever asked for. And a pony.”

Get daily email alerts of new NewsTechnica!

Microsoft Bob Hope and IE8 tighten their grip

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.

Broken Windows XP background“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.”

Get daily email alerts of new NewsTechnica!