All posts by David Gerard

Health, Media, United Kingdom

Sex and coffee make strokes “the new cancer”

Leave a comment

GOLDACRE, Moron Piers, Friday (NTN) — New results showing strokes could be caused by coffee, sex or blowing your nose were hailed by the tabloid media as the “new cancer.”

The study on 250 patients identified eight risk factors linked to bleeding on the brain: sex, coffee, nose-blowing, Nick Clegg, Tories, mind-buggering stupidity, the Daily Mail and being related to its readers.

Associated Newspapers have long worried at the decline in the market for things that could possibly cause cancer. Scare stories on strokes — starting at everyday things and progressing to everything — could make up the difference.

“For the general population our findings on strokes do not apply,” said the original researcher, Dr Monique Vlak, though that bit was inexplicably left out of any of the newspaper reports.

The Mail is now seeking out researchers at second-string universities in need of publicity for a mutually advantageous relationship establishing that strokes can be caused by homosexuals, swan-eating Eastern Europeans, declines in house prices and not buying the Daily Mail.

They feel their position is particularly strong with Richard Littlejohn on hand to give their readers’ brains a taste of what might befall them.

Entertainment, Technology, United States

Sony: It was Anonymous, honest guv

Leave a comment

GUTEN TAG, Wii Gehts, Wednesday (NTN) — Sony has revealed that the Playstation Network security breach, which compromised 24.6 million credit cards, was entirely the work of evil hackers from Anonymous, and nothing to do with their own incompetence, honest.

“We discovered a file making a clear reference to ‘Username unknown,'” the company said in a letter to the US Congress on Wednesday, “and a blank user icon which therefore was … anonymous! D’you see what that means? It means George Hotz and his hacker friends are loathsome criminal masterminds! So obviously we can’t be held liable for negligence in the face of forces like these. In conclusion, give us money.”

The letter details the company’s actions over the past two weeks. It says Sony acted with “care and caution” in deciding how to act and how long it thought it could get away without telling anyone. “We did not want to cause confusion and cause customers to take unnecessary actions, such as stopping their credit card payments to us.”

“We have suffered a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyberattack, which has led to people committing the heinous hate crime of jailbreaking their PS3s. In accordance with our campaign contributions, we ask that you impose the death penalty for such offenses.”

The letter concluded that the breakin was quite definitely the work of Anonymous. “We were going to blame Al-Qaeda, but we figured after Monday that you probably wouldn’t buy that.”

Technology, United States

Microsoft Office 365 sees you’re trying to write a letter

Leave a comment

SCHESTOWITZ, Newham, Tuesday (NTN) — Office 365, Microsoft’s pay-as-you-go answer to Google Docs, delivers the same delight you’re used to from Office on your PC, only slower and clunkier and only working on Internet Explorer. Remember Internet Explorer? Of course you do!

Clippy all the wayMicrosoft Online Services have marketed Office 365 directly to your bosses, who have little people like you to do all the bits that involve actually touching a computer. It promises a fully integrated solution to your daily working needs, with the reliability of Hotmail and Sidekick. That is, it promises it to your IT department, who can now inflict ribbon toolbars on your system without you even having to reboot.

The application monitors your daily activity for increased efficiency, automatically timesheeting your use of Facebook or Twitter at work, for your comfort and convenience when demonstrating their business necessity and utility to your company’s social media strategy to your boss. Firefox no longer works, but that’s a small price to pay for this sort of well-maintained elegance.

The final Office 365 release will include a marketplace where Microsoft partners will be able to sell applications for your Windows Phone or BlackBerry. (Android and iPhone are not supported, and will in fact explode on contact.)

The ribbon toolbar will not be present in the next version of Office 365, whose interface will be based on the recently-released hit game Portal 2. “Windows 7 was my idea,” says user interaction consultant GlaDOS.

Asia, Politics

US beheads hydra, saving world from terrorism

Leave a comment

CHRISTIANABAD, Pakistan, Monday (NTN) — President Barack Obama has announced that the hydra has been conclusively beheaded by US forces in Pakistan.

Multi-OsamaMr Obama said it was “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat the hydra. We can all rest safe now.”

The hydra’s head was buried at sea, to prevent the grave becoming a shrine. “But trust us — we got the actual hydra, all right. You know how good we are with getting this stuff right.”

World leaders expressed their relief at the hydra having been utterly and completely stopped by cutting its main head off, except those party poopers at Hamas who dared suggest that there was something quite important about hydras and cutting their heads off that had slipped their minds for the moment.

For many, the bigger question is whether, in the longer run, the hydra’s organisation can survive. “The absolutely final and complete really truly killing of the hydra puts the group on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,” said the President.

“I suddenly feel much better about America and no longer have any thoughts of revenge whatsoever,” said one Afghan teenager whose entire family had been killed as collateral damage by a US bomb. “U-S-A! U-S-A! Coca-Cola! Fox News!”

US citizens are encouraged to apply to hold official celebratory street parties, under the close supervision of the Department of Homeland Security and the Transport Safety Administration, so that their freedoms may stay protected.

“Mission accomplished!” said Accounts Receivable at Halliburton. Donald Trump, meanwhile, demanded the long form death certificate.

Politics, United States

Birthers still unconvinced Obama white enough

Leave a comment

KENYA, Indonesia, Wednesday (WorldNetDaily) — Barack Obama’s alleged long-form birth certificate has been declared fraudulent by the noble and patriotic “Birther” movement, who claim firm evidence that the President is insufficiently white.

I, Robot“I’ve seen a few Photoshops in my time,” said immigrant Birther and world’s oldest emo kid Orly Taitz. “I can tell from a few of the pixels. They’re nowhere near light enough.”

Donald Trump, the next Sarah Palin, takes credit for provoking the release of this initial documentation of the mysterious Obama, and has now asked if Obama’s college transcript is all that, and something about basketball as the President’s favourite pastime. Betting pools are now forming on when Trump will allude to watermelon and fried chicken.

Birthers are routinely outraged at suggestions that blatant racism is at the heart of their disquiet with Obama’s landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election. So it’s really worth saying it to them, every time.

The Birther movement was originally started by Party Unity My Ass, a group of disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2008 Democratic primary. They note that Obama has, on his track record so far, been a first-class Republican president.

Technology, United Kingdom

Ubuntu Vista 11.04 defies expectations

12 Comments

THAWTELESS, Star City, Monday (NNGadget) — Canonical, Inc. has announced the release of Ubuntu 11.04, “Venereal Vista,” based on the Unity Vista desktop, which only 5 out of 11 first-time users managed to crash in final testing two weeks ago.

Ubuntu Desktop BacksidesUnity is Canonical’s response to the GNOME 3 shell, which uses 1 gigabyte of RAM and four processor cores to exquisitely render a single button in the centre of the screen in beautifully anti-aliased text; when pressed, GNOME tells the user to switch off the computer and do something useful with their life, such as showering.

“This was just not up to the user expectations of Canonical’s vision of the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, from his castle high on a crag in West London. “So we added a ‘minimise’ button too.”

Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”

Shuttleworth foresees an exciting future for Linux for the general Internet user. “It’ll be a whole world of Linux devices, which millions of people will use all the time, everywhere! Of course, at the moment those are called ‘phones’ and run Android.”

Politics, United Kingdom

Ed Miliband threatens to tell Scotland’s mum on it

Leave a comment

MILISECOND, Hollyshite, Thursday (NTN) — Labour leader Ed Miliband has warned that Labour is “heading for disaster” if Alex Salmond and the SNP continue their charge towards victory in next week’s elections.

“The SNP will use a victory in Holyrood to press for Scottish independence, threaten the union, cause plagues of frogs and make everything just horrid,” said Mr Miliband. “The stakes are crucial for the whole United Kingdom, particularly the bit with a red rose logo.”

He denied Labour’s campaign was inept and slipshod. “I would characterise it as a good campaign in every possible regard, except the bit where people want to vote for us. Obviously we need better people.”

Addressing an audience at a question-and-answer session in Portobello, Mr Miliband told them their votes could make the difference between a Labour victory or an SNP victory, but stopped when the audience started laughing and cheering.

Alex Salmond’s campaign has revolved around promises of a Scottish economic revival, with the possibility of an economy based on oil, fish or perhaps magic beans. “If we play our cards right,” he said, “we could be the next Iceland! Er, don’t broadcast that bit.”

Politics, United Kingdom

Support for monarchy at all-time high with sunny eleven-day weekend

Leave a comment

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, The Beach, Monday (NTN) — Support for the monarchy has increased over the last three days, with three quarters of people saying the Royal Wedding will cheer up the country, provided the weather holds out.

“The Royal Family unites the country,” said Boris Busybody, 77 (IQ), of East Cheam. “Prince Wilberforce and whatserface, Di Middlething. God love ’em!”

The majority of people believe that the Royal Family is still relevant to the country and that we would have less holidays without it. 49 per cent have firmly booked plans to do nothing whatsoever on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday even if they bother showing up at the office.

However, the possibility of rain, lightning strikes on Westminster Abbey, hails of frogs and plagues of boils on Friday has led to formerly loyal office workers breaking out the pitchforks and torches and putting in for al-Qaeda membership, and the planned Royal Wedding street party for Glasgow has been cancelled due to lack of interest. “But see if we can get Thatcher to die on the Thursday and it should be on again in style.”

Entertainment, Technology, United Kingdom

Mind-buggeringly useless expensive gadget delayed

3 Comments

HAMMERSMITH ODEOUS, Android Market, Friday (NTN) — The £500 LG Optimus 3D, the world’s first 3D smartphone, has been delayed until June, possibly due to 3D on a phone being stupendously pointless rubbish that doesn’t work.

3D technology has been the next big thing for only the last sixty years and is readily available on television, movies and video games. It offers amazing improvements over ordinary moving images: darkness, muddier colours, blurriness, headaches from watching for more than twenty minutes and slower action sequences so the viewer doesn’t throw up.

In video games, the Nintendo 3DS has been a huge hit with tens or even hundreds of end users, some of whom have left the 3D on for a whole day before switching it off forever. 3D on a phone has been heralded by manufacturers, mobile operators, the entertainment industry, the technical press, optometrists drumming up business and everyone else except the actual consumer.

“Five hundred quid for this tremendous advance in telephony?” said industry analyst Mobile Salestwat. “Who wouldn’t bootleg Avatar onto their phone for that! It’s worth every penny for the athletic catgirl boobs to actually poke out the screen at you.”

The phone’s dual five-megapixel cameras also offer the opportunity to drunkenly send grainy 3D photos of your tits to precisely the wrong person, and not remember until you get copies forwarded to your work email via ten other people three days later. “With 3D, people can take the photos and turn them into a 3D-printed plastic sculpture. Just the thing for your desk. Or theirs.”

Health, United Kingdom

British girls’ drinking culture just not up to scratch

Leave a comment

MISS PRICE’S FINISHING COLLEGE, Essex, Thursday (NTN) — British teenage girls have “the worst binge drinking culture in the Western world” and need better advice on getting smashed with style and elegance.

Drunk Facebook girlHalf of all 15-year-old girls cannot distinguish Merlots per region, while more than a quarter of 16- and 17-year-old girls are unable to tell a genuine French champagne from méthode Champenoise sparkling wines made in other regions. The bankruptcy of several chains of off-licences has led to a terrible information deficit, with local corner shops unable to reliably advise which superlager best goes with a kebab and chips.

The Demos report sets out recommendations for a youth policy to “empower” young women. “Ministers need to address the underlying problems of low self-esteem and poor parenting during younger girls’ early years, with wine appreciation lessons added to the National Curriculum and annual standardised testing on cork extraction with a flick-knife.”

Drunk Facebook girl 2

The report also addresses the damage binge drinking can do, with the risk of camera phone photos showing up on Facebook of girls puking in the gutter while wearing Claire’s Accessories tat.

The government has responded to the report by mooting a special tax on “underclass” alcohol, thus giving people the get-up-and-go entrepreneurial business incentive to make bathtub moonshine and cost the NHS a fortune due to methanol poisoning.