Apple admits using subtle and precise child labour

PROFESSOR JOBS’ SCHOOL FOR GIFTED YOUNGSTERS, Shenzhen, Sunday (NTN) — In its annual supplier report, Apple has admitted that its Chinese factories have employed children to build its gadgets. “Ones with a particularly refined sense of aesthetics.”

Apple revealed the sweatshop conditions inside the factories it uses. The child workers were found in a facility with high vaulted ceilings, elegantly crafted marble work benches and a classical quartet playing in the background in a corner of the floor. Young geniuses sat in their Aerons and levitated components into place with the powers of the mind, burning the famed Apple logo into the back of the assembled device with but a glance of terrifying but controlled power. Some lunches, with only an hour’s break, would involve wines of less than ten years’ vintage.

Competitors were outraged. “We are shocked, shocked to hear of Apple’s ruthless exploitation of the chilll-drennn,” said Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. “But then, what do you expect when they actually ask their suppliers about this stuff. Don’t ask, don’t tell! That’s what made the 360 great!”

Apple’s Chinese manufacturing facilities were the site of controversy last year when one young worker at Foxconn, who had teleported an iPhone home overnight, was found to have committed suicide by leaping from the top of the building, first breaking his own neck, and tearing out all his own fingernails on the way down. He was found with Apple logos carved into his back, obviously also self-inflicted. “A tragedy,” said the report.

Jaron Lanier: Why people should pay more attention to me and not Web 2.0

When I noticed myself getting mean online I thought, “Something has gone terribly wrong.” It was obvious the rest of the ARPAnet had a social problem, not just me being some sort of asshole.

My book You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto is ruffling virtual feathers across the ARPAnet. And so it should, because I invented virtual reality. Wikipedia, which is a tissue of lies, says so. Prospect magazine’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals Poll lists me. Also, my hair is much better than yours. And I’m fifty. According to Wikipedia, so I’d better change my birthday.

Today, the web is a bland place. It’s all user-generated content — silly clips on YouTube, spiteful anonymous comments on blogs about my books, endless photographs of people at a bar with their friends or up a mountain with an ironing board. It was much better back in the early days of the ARPAnet, before we let the commercial users on. These words will mostly be read by numb mobs composed of people who are no longer acting as individuals. You know, the peasants. Virtual reality is far more ennobling, but you never hear people talking about that any more.

The ARPAnet only creates banal mashups of old culture. Salvagers picking over a garbage dump. Only the old-world economy of books, films and newspapers creates original content like Lawnmower Man or Battlefield Earth. Everyone knows that real artists have no influences. This stuff the kids are into these days is just noise!

The ARPAnet is also killing music, according to my good friends at the RIAA. Did you know there’s no music in Spain any more? It’s true!

Will we — meaning I — be able to live off our brains in the future, or will we just have to give our creative works away for free? If we can’t live off our brains then we’ll need a form of SOCIALISM just to survive. WIKIPEDIA IS COMMUNISM! Until the Wikipedia Corporation finally builds a good interface, for goggles and power-gloves.

Open source and open content are a cancer. The dogma I object to is composed of a set of interlocking beliefs and doesn’t have a generally accepted overarching name as yet, so I’m going to call it Digital MAOISM, which is COMMUNISM. Update, five years later: Here is a detailed retcon explanation of why I was not just trolling for headlines by calling Wikipedia COMMUNISM, but was speaking precisely and you just weren’t thinking hard enough: [snip 10,000 words]

Also, you should get into virtual reality more.

You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto is published on papyrus scroll and hand-illustrated by monks. You cannot have a copy until you have fought your way up the mountain and proven yourself worthy.

Socialist Muslim Obama meets Atheist hate groups to destroy US

DEATH PANEL, American Heartland, the End Times (NTN) — As part of ongoing efforts to destroy everything America stands for, foreign-born election stealer Barack Hussein Obama openly conspired at the White House on Friday with his liberal Atheist masters.

I, RobotRepresentatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group which includes American Atheists, the Council for Secular Humanism and a bloodthirsty coalition of Communists, Feminazis, Homosexuals, Evolutionists, Readers and other unAmericans, visited the White House Friday, in “the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community, so as to better ruin the economy, your lives and your community.”

President Barack Obama was not scheduled to make an appearance at the meeting, but it is understood that he was to take clear direction from his French controllers.

“It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints,” said Council Nedd of In God We Trust, “but it is quite another to sit down with one we disapprove of. These are some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation. It is clear that Mr Hussein Obama will send all good, true and decent Americans to concentration camps, where those failing the literacy test will be sent to the gas chamber. The bankers who destroyed the economy were Atheists! Well. Jews. Same thing.”

Over 13 percent of the population is considered “non-religious,” an even greater number than alleged homosexuals and evolutionists. The atheists advocate such destructive notions as separation of Church and State, considered responses rather than gut reactions to crises and a minimum fifth-grade reading level for all. In addition, they are thought to favour the use of logic, consistency and joined-up thinking.

“I was religious before,” said Mr Obama, “but you people are the best evidence I’ve ever seen that there is no God.”

Derby commuter hell named after Lara Croft

SOFT SQUARE, Suburban Bedroom, Friday (NTN) — An impossibly uninteresting stretch of ring road in Derby is to be named after a 3D computer animation with ludicrously-rendered breasts.

Lolo Ferrari’s somewhat disturbing First Life avatarThe new stretch from Osmaston Road to Burton Road will be named after the aristocrat and archaeologist Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, who Toby Gard of Core Design in Derby created by taking an already anatomically-dubious rendering of Neneh Cherry as Tank Girl and then “accidentally” increasing the breasts by 150%, before giggling nasally and nipping off to the bogs to masturbate himself raw.

“Lara Croft was created in Derby,” said councillor Lucy Care, cribbing from Wikipedia, “and deserves to stand with other famous icons of Derby, such as, er, I’ll get back to you.”

89% of automated poll-spamming bots run by fat, unloved, misogynistic and somewhat cat-piss-smelling gamers around the world voted for the name, immortalising Lara Croft in the form of a monument to commuter frustration and carbon monoxide inhalation over wasted hours of human life, dripping away second by second, to taunt the mostly middle-aged males stuck in said traffic with the prospect of perfect, bouncy, computer-generated jubblies, free of any defect or actual personality to get in the way. Then some idiot in a BMW nearly sideswipes you.

“Oh!” said Cllr Care, “Derby County didn’t get relegated from the second first division to the third first division last year! That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Hold on, I’ll keep looking.”

“No, actually, Derby County are shit,” said a councillor for Swansea. “We kicked their arses 1-0 last weekend. And we’re going to have an Internet poll to name our new bypass offramp AOL Blockage, Slashdot Chicane, Numa Numa Nook, Goatse Gap or Tubgirl Pass. And cachau bant ti cachu mes, as we say to the tourists from Derby looking for local colour.”

US builds “loving, caring” fortress in middle of London

COGS’ HOME, Battersea, Thursday (NTN) — The United States has unveiled its new embassy in Britain, to impress visa-seekers with “the core beliefs of our democracy: isolationism, bureaucracy and deep, dark dungeons.”

“Our current embassy is fifty years old,” said Ambassador Louis Susman, “and does not meet modern office needs and security standards. We understand some visa seekers do not feel profound despondency as they queue for a third day. We have hired Guantanamo architects KieranTimberlake to construct a new embassy in Nine Elms which will appropriately reflect one of our most cherished and bilateral relationships.”

Highlights of the visual presence include a landscaped “Embassy Park” surrounding the structure, open to all Londoners. The water feature completely encircling the new building will contain authentic Florida alligators and friendly, polite concrete security staff emplacements nestled amongst the mangroves.

The building itself will be constructed upon geometric principles (“who says a circle has to have three hundred and sixty degrees?”) and decorated with a cheerful selection of armour plating and anti-aircraft “friendship mechanisms” as well as electrified wiring to decorate the local area, clearly lighting up in lavender to delight the nightclubbers of Vauxhall whenever an escapee is caught on it.

“The visual presence is that of a beacon,” said Mr Susman, “a respectful icon representing the strength of the US-UK relationship. The shining city on the hill that all can aspire to one day visit.”

Lord Mandelson, however, was reportedly somewhat put out at the US plans, muttering something about Westminster now needing a “flying monkey cage” and “sharks with frickin’ laser beams.”

Daily Mail causes, cures cancer

GOLDACRE, Moron Piers, Thursday (NTN) — Taking the Daily Mail once a day, one million times the dose recommended by sensible physicians, will both induce and clear up cancer, a groundbreaking study by the Press Complaints Council has shown.

Richard Littlejohn/John LittlerichardThe latest dramatic results came from a 30-year project tracking the health of 2.2 million allegedly human subjects. Those who took two to five Daily Mails a week were far less likely to die from brain cancer due to the organ shutting down entirely under the strain. The carcinogen content of the output from the brain in question, however, “went through the roof.”

Using standard medical techniques of “psychic journalism,” Dr Paul Dacre found a marked increase in sensitivity to odious waffle, causing one’s DNA to unravel in sheer horror at the content. In some cases the advertisers also fall away, dropping to zero in the most severe and damaging examples.

 TODAY’S POLL 

Jan Moir leading the Daily Mail FrontShould terrorist ME sufferers be tortured with EU vaccine cancer?

Yes
                     102%

Only the gay ones
                     102%

Thank you for voting

The PCC noted that this was entirely due to the presence of gay Muslim asylum-seeking Polish terrorists, destroying house prices by eating swans.

Taking the Daily Mail on six or seven days cut the risk of death by 64 per cent, but only from the neck down.

Previous research suggested that the Daily Mail can protect against bowel cancer by ensuring a continuous and powerful flow through the organs in question and out the mouth.


Google adopts new “Do, however, be stupid” policy

WHEREVER YOU ARE, At All Times, forever (NTN) — In the wake of massive Buzz privacy problems, Google has announced that its slogan “Don’t Be Evil” will be extended for the 2010s with “But Do Feel Free To Be Dangerously Bloody Stupid.”

Google Sauron“I don’t see how people could ever have thought it wasn’t perfect,” said Google marketing marketer Todd Jackson. “We’ve used it in-house for ages, and our test group of white male engineers all working inside a single corporation think it’s the best thing ever! So of course we didn’t see the need for any user testing or opt-in.”

Gmail users have been up in arms at their frequent email contacts and private addresses that forward to Gmail being publicly revealed, their precise GPS location being automatically posted with updates from their mobile phone, photos you didn’t upload being pulled off your Android phone into Buzz and that switching off Buzz doesn’t actually switch it off.

“We have heard of the case of the woman whose violent stalker could track her through the Buzz function she didn’t actually switch on,” said Jackson. “But I’ve reached out and personally reassured her that, should she actually be killed, we will of course apologise for her poor product experience.”

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “Having a bad husband, living a life or whatever. It’s obvious it’s her own fault for not having first found the function hidden behind three panels to untick ‘KEEP MY STALKER UPDATED ON MY EVERY MOVE.’ Some people just shouldn’t be let near computers.”

Jackson emphasised the non-evil nature of Google. “We are most definitely not evil. But if, y’know, evil just sorta happens, well. We just send the rockets up. It’s not our job to think about where they land.”

Facebook pressured to change from old style to old old style

YOUR DESK, Turing Tarpit, Monday (NTN) — Facebook has outraged thousands of obsessive shirkplace F5-pressers by changing its layout from the layout it changed to after the layout before that.

Automated robot Facebook browserThe change has met a storm of protest from users going so far as to click “Join This Group,” with nearly two million people with, apparently, nothing whatsoever to do that they’re actually being paid to stepping forward to demand that Facebook switch back to the layout before the last one, or the one before that.

“This new format makes absolutely no sense at all,” said aggrieved office administrator Brenda Busybody, 43 (IQ), who had said the same thing each of the last three times it changed. “There’s, like, all this stuff all over the place. It’s not like the old one at all … ooh, that’s interesting, I hadn’t seen that before.”

The users vowed to continue their campaign assiduously for at least a day or two, in between working on their imaginary farm or joining “I Bet I Can Find A Million People Who Believe In Facebook Petitions Before June” or observably not giving two hoots about handing their personal details, fingerprints, DNA and probably first-born to Facebook’s advertisers if it meant they could get thirty coins on Petville.

Facebook engineer Jing Chen explained on the company blog how the changes had been extensively tested on the 599.5 million Facebook users who hadn’t joined such groups, and that he hoped everyone who wasn’t a whiny little bitch would appreciate the new experience. “There’s really nothing quite like the complaints of someone getting something for free that what they’re getting for free just isn’t perfect enough. It’s what makes Monday Monday.”

Nokia frees Symbian code, three or four overjoyed

HEY HEY 16K, Need To Know, Thursday (Big K) — Nokia, through the Symbian Foundation, has made the code for the Symbian smartphone OS open source, putting several aging geeks in raptures of delight.

GNUPhone“The Symbian OS will delight those of us who fondly remember EPOC on the Psion NetBook,” said Larry Berkin, Symbian’s head of global alliances. “God, that was an OS. Best PDA ever. Finest of British engineering. Sixteen whole kilobytes! You could run a truck over them. I bet an open source Symbian OS will let you run a truck over your phone.”

The Foundation hopes to pit Symbian against Windows Mobile. “There’s no way it can compete against our superior features, like WAP browsing, infrared connect to your laptop and, of course, the serial port.” It also hopes to set the stage for a march on the USA. “The Americans will fall before our superior engineering! Psion worked on the ZX81, you know.”

There are currently about 330 million Symbian devices in the world, at least fifteen of whose owners can actually use the web browser without wanting to throw the phone through a window and just get an iPhone. “Just think,” said Berkin, “now anyone can improve their phone! Well, they could if Nokia made phones the user could flash. But still!”

The Foundation issued a press release about how the open-sourcing of Symbian was welcomed by free software advocates and other aging hippies. “Developers everywhere will want to study Symbian,” said Eben Moglen, “to hack on it, and to write applications for it. This could be even bigger than the Amiga.”

AFACT v iiNet: Statement in full from the losing party

TIN PAN VALLEY, The Matrix, Wednesday (N! News) — Film companies today expressed their disappointment that the Federal Court found that iiNet was not using orbital mind control lasers to encourage copyright infringements by its customers on its network.

Sad toilet in snowDespite findings of copyright infringement by iiNet customers, pirate flags in their front yards and downloaded cars in their driveways, iiNet did not authorise the acts of its customers, merely sitting back and watching the tens of dollars rolling in to feather their own nests at the expense of the poor beleaguered major record companies and film studios.

Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft executive director, Neil Gane, said he was disappointed by the Court’s decision. “Today’s decision is a setback for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry, who work hard to send money to America as fast as possible. But we believe there’s something not quoite roight about this ruling — it was based on a mere technical loophole centred on the court’s interpretation of what the law technically says in actual words and original intention, rather than what it should say. That the judge told us several separate ways in which our case failed utterly to make any sense at all is clear evidence of radical judicial activism and dangerous legislating from the bench.

“We are confident that the government does not intend a policy outcome where zombie hordes of drooling open source copyright terrorists led by the evil genius Michael Malone are allowed to continue feasting upon the flesh of the living via the iiNet network.

“We will now take the time to review the decision before seeing if we can bribe enough federal politicians to get a law more to our liking.”