Monthly Archives: January 2010

Technology, United States

Microsoft claims nonexistence of Google “GSpot”

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ADULT AREAS ONLY, Vegas Baby, Friday (AnythingThatMovesTechnica) — The perfect Google experience is a myth, say Microsoft marketing researchers at the Consumer Electronics Show.

“The GSpot is a figment of technologists’ imaginations,” said marketing researcher Andrew Burri, “encouraged by tech news sites and freetards. Even if it did exist, it would be entirely non-standard and unsuited to the needs of an overwhelming majority of users. The ones who buy from us, anyway.”

But Linux users protested vociferously, saying the research was flawed by deliberately excluding the experience of those who could locate their own methods of personal fulfilment with the fantastic ease of long — perhaps excessive — practice, despite difficulty in finding other people with any interest in locating said areas on them.

Apple declined to comment, but were widely rumoured to be bringing out a forthcoming iSpot, for thirty-minute extended sessions of tantric bliss at twice the price.

Microsoft reemphasised their desire to be a player on all relevant platforms, whether that be consoles, desktops, mobile devices, beds or the back of vans. They will be countering with Microsoft WinCock, a “pounding and fulfilling consumer experience.” The demonstration device randomly failed at the crucial moment, but Mr Burri reassured attendees that he was terribly sorry and this had never happened before.

Health, United Kingdom

Now they’re after our butter

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FAT CITY, Formerly Pork, Sunday (NTN) — Panic buying and butter riots gripped the nation’s dairy cabinets after a proposal by heart surgeon Shyam Kolvekar to ban butter for the sake of public health.

Cardboard burger, fries and shake“I realise he’s probably quite disgusted with having to plunger greasy geysers of chunky lard out of the arteries of bloblike creatures that subsist entirely on fried food and cigarettes brought to their doors by home delivery so that they don’t have to risk accidentally doing anything resembling exercise,” said fat celebrity cook Jamie Oliver. “But this is an absolutely unacceptable imposition on the British way of life. I blame the EU myself.”

“It’s the nanny state at work,” thundered dairy farmer David Halfhead. “As if a respected heart surgeon knows anything about what damages hearts. People should take much more notice of the fat celebrity cook and the dairy farmer than the patronising opinions of some ‘expert’ who probably supports climate change. I’ve also got some Celebrity Big Brother contestants who can tell you how good butter is, if you like.”

“Balderdash,” said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam. “I eat nothing but lard with butter on top and a sprinkle of cholesterol, drink seven pints of strong ale and smoke an ounce of shag a day and gargle battery acid in between hitting myself with a crowbar and I’ve never been to a doctor in me life. I credit reading the Daily Mail, so my body doesn’t have to support one of them ‘brain’ things. Nothing but trouble, they are.”

“I only did it ‘cos of fame,” said John Lydon. “You don’t think I actually eat the stuff, do you?”

Politics, United Kingdom

Home Office: UK borders database loss on time and on budget

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THE MEMORY HOLE, Wythenshawe, Tuesday (NTN) — Half of all journeys in and out of the UK are now being centrally recorded by the £1.2 billion e-Borders scheme, with a major data breach scheduled for later this year.

Out of data errore-Borders aims to monitor every person going in or out of the United Kingdom by March 2014. The system is currently gathering data on between 45 and 50 per cent of people crossing the border, with the data being stored for Home Office analysis, action and accidental disclosure. The data is presently transmitted to the Manchester office over the Internet on a web site that only works in Internet Explorer 6. A backup channel sends the data to Manchester on unencrypted USB sticks via second-class post, a secondary backup channel uses outsourced call centre workers in India reading the data over the telephone and a tertiary backup channel involves the data being shouted in the streets of Manchester by random tramps.

Immigration Minister Phil Woolas is pleased with the success of the scheme and anticipates a suitable security failure to occur on schedule by the end of this year. “We’ve taken care to attach fingerprints, photographs and National Insurance numbers to each line of data, so this should be a really good one. It might be one of the classic ones like a USB stick that someone ‘forgot’ to erase, someone using the system to stalk their ex or a skip full of printouts that weren’t shredded properly, or we might come up with startling new innovations in data breaches involving an office kitchen gas explosion raining files down on the streets of Salford or perhaps an alien al-Qaeda spacecraft swooping down and vaporising our security systems with precision laser blasts and letting our precious, precious data dribble forth, free and untrammeled. I’m quite looking forward to finding out!”

The opening of e-Borders’ Manchester office was originally delayed by problems training “match analysts,” who issue alerts to border guards when the system detects possible terrorists, criminals or people travelling while brown, not to mention no-one else in Europe accepting that the much-vaunted ID card is in any way equivalent to a British passport.

Woolas has dismissed claims that the requirement for data on passengers from continental Europe before they travel was illegal and impossible. “We’re sure we can bodge through something that will hold legally for a few months,” he said. “The key point is to leave the Tories a parting gift they can’t quite do without but which guarantees serious embarrassment for them in the second half of the year. It’s the least we can do.”

Education, Politics, United Kingdom

Cameron: “Love of the common people” better for families, cheaper for governments

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THE WILD EAST END, From Hell, Monday (NTN) — Children benefit more from a close family than mere wealth, education or material security, said Eton-educated David Cameron to think tank Demos yesterday evening.

“What matters most to a child’s life chances,” said Mr Cameron, “is the warmth of their parenting. Research I’m not actually citing shows that children from drug-ravaged households subsisting on a pound a week do every bit as well when raised with the style of parenting of upper-middle-class children in Surrey who go to public schools and ride horses in their spare time. Even if their accent is not entirely up to Oxbridge standard, what!”

The Tory leader was quick to emphasise that he did not think that poverty was irrelevant. “Of course there is a slight link between endemic city-wide grinding material poverty and a bleak, fraught existence with no opportunities to further oneself other than getting into gangs, crime and drug dealing. But I think it’s important to put the blame squarely on the parents, where it’s most cost-efficient.”

Mr Cameron said that “active intervention” was needed to help struggling families. “We’ll teach them a proper Cockney accent, not that debased gibberish they speak in east London these days. Can you see Dick van Dyke twisting his tongue around that? Obviously we need a flat cap subsidy. We’ll also teach them suitable dance routines.”

Demos had announced a year-long investigation into the subject of “character,” though not noting precisely who was paying them to do so.

Europe, Science

Neanderthals “died of makeup”

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ANSWERS IN REVELATION, Bob Jones University, Sunday (NTN) — American Conservative archaeologists have unearthed evidence that Neanderthals wore makeup and jewelry, directly leading to their moral decline and eventual extinction.

Researchers say the discovery proves the human subspecies were not the “halfwits” people assume, and were in fact too smart for their own good. “They not only wore makeup, evidence shows they danced in primitive discotheques and, from these Stone Age amyl nitrate bottles, were probably sodomites as well. No doubt they were moral relativists who thought gray areas in thought existed. ‘Oh, those Cro-Magnons are no threat to us, they’re just normal people with weird high foreheads!’ But what do you expect, Neanderthals were a European subspecies. It’s clear that ‘liberalism’ is another word for death.”

Past artistic depictions of Neanderthals, as supplied by the University of Metro, have consistently shown them as masculine, slope-browed, grunting and hairy. These results indicate said depictions were of the female of the race.

Young Earth Creationists have long held that Neanderthals were just as human as modern humans. “However, it is clear from that their disgusting and non-reproductive sexual behaviour that they were evolutionists. This is why they were forbidden passage on the Ark. Further, fossil remains indicate that Neanderthals formed the first manifestations of what we now know as the Democrat Party.”

When football fans behave badly, or politicians advocate reactionary views, their behaviour is invariably referred to as “Neanderthal,” in an allusion to how many are closeted homosexuals.

Science, United Kingdom

Baron Silas Greenback sues Royal Institution for competence discrimination

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BAKER STREET POST BOX, Goldacre, Saturday (NTN) — Baron Silas Greenback will be suing science advocacy organisation the Royal Institution for daring to make him redundant merely for having run the Institution into the ground.

The neuroscientist, peer and supervillain’s job was abolished after a review of the Institution’s managment financial and financial structure suggested that blowing £22 million on an office refurbishment and leaving the organisation in massive debt may not have been the ideal forward-thinking move for the future.

Baron Greenback has been notable for popularising the notions that science claims that video games and computers will rot children’s minds (except his endorsed computer game product, MindFit, a snip at £58), that one puff of cannabis will destroy your mind forever and that the Royal Institution’s most valuable product is the promotion of Baron Greenback.

“As well as contesting the legitimacy of the firing process,” said the Baron, “I will be presenting a claim in the Employment Tribunal which will include allegations of competence discrimination. I am the only supervillain toad to have been appointed to this iconic post in the 211 year history of the Royal Institution, and cannot see how firing me on the flimsy pretext of having sent so much cash up in smoke that the annual report was printed entirely in red ink can be in the best interests of the organisation, its members or fighting that ridiculous rodent.”

“Baron Greenback,” said the Institute, “has played a leading role, not only in the development of the RI, but also in the wider scientific community through his work in popularising science and attempting to rule the world. Over the coming months, the organisation will focus on its many, diverse and renowned activities in scientific research, education, public engagement and attempting to get out of the hole he left us in without shutting up shop. Spare change? Dawkins bless you, sir!”

Baron Greenback is understood to be applying for Sharon Shoesmith’s old position at Hackney Council.

Technology

Google Nexus One failed to revive my dead grandmother

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TEMPLE OF STEVE, Regent Street, Friday (MSBBC) — If you thought the Google Nexus One phone would do your homework, get your girlfriend back onside and fellate you, I’m afraid you’re in for unexpected disappointment.

The Nexus One is Android-powered, does browse the web very nicely and support most feasible applications and is an open platform that anyone can write for without being messed around disgracefully by iPhone Application Approvals. It also claims to be able to transmit real-time “voice chat” to other telephones, though I’ll believe that when I see it. But it singularly fails to knock Steve Jobs into a cocked hat.

It achieves not being vapourware. But consider its deficiencies:

  • Not made by Apple
  • Not blessed by Steve Jobs
  • Not iTunes-compatible
  • Can’t possibly measure up to the Apple Tablet
  • Not restricted to applications blessed personally by the holy urine of Our Lord in Cupertino.

I’m also concerned at the rumours that the Nexus One samples the user’s DNA from fingerprints and sends it to Google’s advertising department for analysis. This seems implausible, but my contact in Redmond assures me this is the case.

Mary-Jo Enderle, reporting for MSZDnet, quite rightly marked the device down for not merely not running Windows 7, but not even trying to. Apparently it runs one of those “ARM” chips that use no power and have incredibly long battery life, instead of running a proper computer chip that lets you use Office 2007, is guaranteed compatible with all your viruses, has a battery life of twenty minutes and doubles as a hand warmer in this weather.

Philip K. Dick’s estate is also suing Google to atomic dust, on the quite reasonable claim that Mr Dick invented the Latin word “nexus” back in the days of the Roman Empire. I can’t see how they won’t win this one — it’s the sort of case that intellectual property laws were created for. If the estate lost this case, it’s quite possible Philip K. Dick would never write another word again.

And my dead grandmother insisted on an HTC Touch. Apparently Windows Mobile is all that will keep her happy where she is now.

Technology, United Kingdom

Special trains introduced for the wrong type of snow

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WE APOLGRPHVM FOR THE DELGHRMFPH, Stopping at Land’s End, Tuesday (NTN) — National Rail has announced new trains specially designed for the possibility of “weather” being warned of by the climate change deniers of the Met Office.

Should the new TGB (Train à Grand Bureaucratie) detect the right type of snow under the wheels, it promptly deploys its measured cargo of the wrong type of snow, carried in a refrigeration unit at all times. The incorrect snow is sprayed onto the track ahead of the train, followed by grit (from another car) and then a blast from the included oxy-acetylene flamethrower to melt the wrong type of snow. At the back of the train is a unit to re-temper the steel tracks the train has just passed after having rendered them brittle with the extreme heat. For summer, the train carries a supply of the wrong type of leaves. The train carries its seventeen cars of supplies and one carriage of passengers, if any can be found willing to travel on it, at speeds in excess of fifteen miles per hour.

Customers remain sceptical. “Back in my day,” said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam, “we didn’t hold with this ‘climate’ malarkey. We had weather and we dealt with it! If an avalanche of boulders and ice buried the engine and front carriage, the passengers would just get out of the train, sacrifice one of the horses to the goddess Eostre, daub their faces with the blood and burn the driver in a wicker man to melt the blockage. Then they’d get back on the train, settle down to reading the Telegraph and arrive home at St Albans as normal, right as rain! And snow, and sleet, and hail, and frogs. That’s how you beat Hitler!”

The greatest ongoing problem for Britain’s train system has been the wrong type of pens, being wielded by the wrong type of civil servants, as directed by the wrong type of government, who had put into place the wrong type of regulatory system, with the wrong type of trains being run by the wrong type of train company, such as to actually make 1970s British Rail look like the right type of idea by comparison.

“But everyone works to the highest of consistent standards,” said Transport Secretary Lord Adonis. “No-one can say the food on Virgin Trains isn’t every bit up to the same quality as the standard Brimmesh Rull sandwich of the 1970s. Scientists say some are in fact original issue.”

Technology

The astounding world of the future! Tech predictions for 2010

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Having nothing to actually report, we asked NewsTechnica’s editorial team to reach deep into their crystal balls to fill space blathering about the year ahead. What they found will shock and appall you.

  1. The holographic DVD gives you 2000-line super-high-definition images and seventeen hours of video, or eight Libraries of Congress, on each five-inch silver disc. All movies come with a copy of the Library of Congress just thrown in, because they can. Throw away your thousands of horrible, obsolete old Blu-Rays! The new discs are DRM-locked to your retina for the protection of the artists. Piracy detected during the scanning is dealt with by blinding the pirate. But the quality is so incredibly amazing that everyone repurchases their movie collection at twice the price and no-one bothers with YouTube ever again.

  2. Super-High-Definition Television presents you Katie Price’s individual nostril hairs and perked-up nipples in 2000-line 3D as she chows down on a kangaroo’s anus. Sky offers to block such images from your television for a small surcharge.

  3. The old media giants work out the secret of business success on the Internet: be blatant, unrepentant, sperm-burping syphilitic gutter whores and proud of it, as has worked so well for the tech press over the past decade. The New York Times sells sponsorship for individual editorial paragraphs.

  4. Microsoft Windows 8 fixes all the problems with that icky old Windows 7. It has a database file system! And no virus problems! And a cute fish on the desktop! XP is discontinued in 2011, for sure, definitely. Someone accidentally looks for something with Bing.

  5. Google continues to be the quintessence of not evil. The new services you can gain access to by giving a DNA sample for their targeted advertising department to analyse are completely optional and the DNA remains entirely your property.

  6. Linux runs your television, microwave, toaster, car, camera, phone, garage door opener and dildo, but geeks still fail to comprehend why you want a Macintosh for the computer you actually use in front of you.

  7. People who get laid already get laid more by using the Internet. You keep reading 4chan.

  8. A device to reach through the Internet and slap people for being bloody idiots will, despite massive customer demand, still fail to be invented.

  9. Record companies rebound as blogcore, the older brother of MySpace indie, is declared a creeping plague and sufferers are quarantined away from their keyboards, though Neutral Milk Hotel outbreaks are reported treatable with Zovirax. Lady Gaga announces a hostile takeover of Ticketmaster and Live Nation and forces Madonna’s back catalogue to be rereleased with all vocals autotuned. Several new audio formats with ridiculously higher quality than MP3 are introduced, none gaining any significant following. Apple continues to sell the only MP3 players anyone actually wants.

  10. Earth President Barack Obama introduces a bill to subsidise the realisation of the great American Dream, the flying car, with a set of jet packs for the whole family. The bill is filibustered by Republicans hotly maintaining that to leave the surface of the earth is a heretical defiance of Our Lord that can only lead to socialised flying car death panels staffed by climate change Muslims. The Democrats back down on the plans, having been convinced by the behaviour of the Teabaggers that too much of humanity is too damn stupid to be trusted with any technology more complicated than scissors. Rounded plastic ones.

     

Technology

Vendors: Netbooks “dying, honest”

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DAS BUNKER, Redmond, Friday (MSBBC) — Cheap netbooks are too limited and no-one will want them any more, say high-ticket vendors at the mere 103% increase in netbook sales in 2009 over 2008.

The small, portable computers sold in stupendous numbers in 2009, but industry watchers have been convinced by Microsoft and Intel to say that their popularity is waning. “No-one is buying a 10-inch netbook that costs £500 and runs Windows 7,” said Stuart Miles of Pocket Unit. “So everyone will go back to expensive iPhones and full-sized laptops, any day now. This ‘internet’ thing is just a fad too.”

What people are looking for now, he believes, is a machine that can keep up with the demands of contemporary web users. A small netbook running Windows 7 Dumbass Edition™, which runs up to three applications at a time and holds your data hostage until you cough up eighty quid to run a fourth, is “thoroughly inadequate” to the task. “Linux, of course, doesn’t exist, wasn’t the impetus for cheap netbooks and didn’t cripple Microsoft’s bottom line for the last three years by providing actual competition for the first time in decades. So it’s not like it can do twice as much in half the space.”

Ian Drew, spokesman for chip designer ARM Holdings, also believes netbooks are in for a shake-up. “Apparently, netbooks that weigh nothing, run twice as fast and have an all-day battery but don’t run Windows are a problem for ARM, not for Microsoft,” he said, lighting a cigar off a fifty-pound note.

Mr Miles believes tablets will take up the mantle from the netbook. “If we carefully define tablets as ‘not netbooks,’ even though they’re made by the same companies with the same technology running the same software, we can claim the netbook is dead even though people are suddenly realising how stupidly huge, unwieldy and heavy even a fourteen-inch laptop is. It’s all about picking your terms rather than, e.g., selling what people actually want instead of what you’d like them to want. Also, if you whack in a 3G modem it’s suddenly a phone instead, and never mind the Mini 9.”

“Clap your hands if you don’t believe in netbooks,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “Marketers! Marketers! Marketers! Marketers!”