All posts by David Gerard

Neanderthals “died of makeup”

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.

Baron Silas Greenback sues Royal Institution for competence discrimination

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.

Google Nexus One failed to revive my dead grandmother

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.

Special trains introduced for the wrong type of snow

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.”

The astounding world of the future! Tech predictions for 2010

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.

     

Vendors: Netbooks “dying, honest”

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!”

Twitter users urged to stay calm during Fry drought

DAILY SMSGRAPH, King’s Lynn, Saturday (NTN) — The international press has urged Twitter users to “keep calm and carry on” during Stephen Fry’s break from the service to write his autobiography.

The 52-year-old author, television presenter, wit, bon vivant, cheese board, Swiss army knife, well-stocked cellar and ineffable genius’s break was occasioned by the promise of “rather large dumptruck of £££ sweeties, toodle pip!” should he manage to finish writing his “book” — an experimental literary form involving a paper printout of several thousands of tweets’ worth of text, intended to be read more than a single time — without exercising his F5-pressing finger. He has also taken time out from television, writing and public appearances, but Twitter was, obviously, the matter of pressing international concern.

President Barack Obama sought to calm the agitated masses in his State of the Twit speech — “We’ll teach Oprah to love again” — and Winston Churchill rose from the grave to bolster Britain’s resolve with stirring oratory: “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Fry! Also, braaains.” Peter Mandelson smiled a little smile that the Internet appeared to be falling apart according to plan.

US actor and comedian Ashton Kutcher, who has 4 million followers, also threatened to quit the site in reaction to talk of a Twitter-fueled reality television show, as opposed to a reality-fueled Twitter show.

Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone asked people to avoid panic tweeting, hoarding of retweets and lurking around Facebook instead, and to maintain faith in a Fry-filled future. “There’s still Neil Gaiman. Stay steadfast! Or we’ll send Warren Ellis round.”

Britain: 5,394 arrested in Internet song crackdown

WHITEHALL, Beijing, Friday (NTN) — British police arrested thousands in the Digital Britain drive against Internet file sharing throughout 2009, which critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.

The British government has run a highly publicized campaign, “Digital Britain,” against sharing of Lily Allen songs, which were “overwhelming the country’s Internet” and “threatening the emotional health of children.”

Lord Mandelson said late on Thursday that the crackdown on Internet file sharing had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009. The announcement on the Digital Britain website said the drive would deepen in 2010. Police would “intensify punishments for Internet operations that violate laws and regulations, strengthen monitoring of information and press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology.”

The ministry did not say how many of the 5,394 suspects arrested were later charged, released or prosecuted. The anti-file sharing drive has also netted many sites with politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in what some see as an effort by the government to reassert control over new media. The ruling Labour Party worries the Internet could become a dangerous conduit for threatening images and ideas.

Britain has banned a number of popular websites and Internet services, including Wikipedia. NewsTechnica passed without comment, however.

Polanski thanks supporters of drug rape as extradition wait continues

HUMBERT, Switzerland, Friday (NTN) — Roman Polanski has thanked creepy rape apologists worldwide in his battle to avoid extradition to the US for the artistically necessary 1977 drug rape of a 13-year-old girl.

“Messages have come from supporters of drugging children and fucking them from across the world,” the Oscar-winning rapist wrote in an open letter published on the website of French intellectual and drug rape apologist Bernard-Henri Levy.

“I would like every one of them to know how heartening it is, when one is locked up in a cold, bare cell — and my luxurious ski resort chalet is a cold, bare cell to me — to hear this murmur of human voices and of solidarity with drugging and fucking young girls.”

The 76-year-old director is now under house arrest in Switzerland and facing extradition to the United States where he could be sentenced for having drugged and fucked a 13-year-old girl he was photographing in 1977. He fled the country in 1978 on the eve of sentencing because he believed a judge might actually dare put him, of all people, in jail on some trumped-up pretext.

“It’s clearly victimisation of an artiste by a judge who just doesn’t understand Hollywood,” said celebrity drug rape supporter Whoopi Goldberg. “Luring in kids, giving them drugs and then sodomising them mercilessly and brutally is what this town was built on. The camerawork on the images of the drugged young girl’s anus skewered on the end of Mr Polanski’s genius cock as she mumbled ‘no, stop, no’ was particularly awe-inspiring. You don’t get work like that for free.”

The “Free Polanski” movement is widely considered even wackier than hip-hop’s periodic “Free Some Guy Who Totally Deserved To Go To Jail” movements.

James Blunt tops decade charts, pop declared dead

PUBLIC ENEMA, The Hit Parade, Thursday (N! News) — James Blunt’s Back To Bedlam was the UK’s biggest-selling album of the 2000s, objectively establishing the final death of pop music after fifty years.

The 2000s were the decade of falling record sales, plummeting profits for the six five four major labels, a number one single requiring only a few thousand downloads as opposed to a hundred thousand physical records twenty-five years earlier and a race to the bottom by the music industry to come up with something, anything, so horrifyingly insipid and stupid as to destroy instantly the mind of anyone exposed to it, like a saccharine Cthulhu, in the quest to find a sufficiently common lowest denominator.

Pop has been replaced in popular youth affection with DVDs, games, Internet pornography, White Lightning, stabbing each other and filling in applications to join al-Qaeda after accidental exposure to James Blunt.

The record industry blames the downfall of pop on the Internet, MP3s, USB hard disks, fanzines, cassettes, radio and player pianos rather than, e.g., James Blunt. The fragmentation of tastes, where people can easily learn of and obtain music they actually like rather than whatever bilge the record companies deign to serve up, is considered a serious problem in need of firm resolution.

Peter Mandelson reassured the record industry that the Digital Britain bill would keep the future firmly reined in and reinstate the culture industries’ tap in the wallets of the young for the benefit of the entire country, or a small portion thereof. “Remember, home taping is killing music! But not James Blunt. You cannot kill that which does not live.”