SlashNOT

kpu writes: Unexplained disappearances of people worldwide have caused panic as people try to understand and cope with the loss of loved ones. Some users are reported to have gone as long as a day without logging in. This beats the previous record of 7 offline hours held by Microsoft exec Bill Gates before admitting that nobody uses MSN. User SexyCheyanna lamented “no1 online.” In a telephone interview, oddguy002007 said that had not actually disappeared however his aim account was disabled. His claim could not be verified at press time. The government has made counseling available to those suffering from aim withdrawal.

showardkid writes: In a surprise move by spammers worldwide, solicitors of such products as Cialis and representatives from companies such as “Free porn, inc.” have banded together to sue Internet Service such as Earthlink, America Online, and Yahoo! inc.

“We’ve had enough of this,” said a representative from enlarge-it.com. “Our legitimate industry of selling this junk is going down the toilet. How hard is it for a user to simply click the ‘delete’ button and remove the offer that we’ve sent them?”

Lawyers of the Pro-SPAM coalition say that they plan to file a lawsuit and prosecute the companies “to the fullest, hardest, and longest extent of the law.”

Mearzuh writes: The internet is a very large place. You can go anywhere you want, but don’t you sometimes miss that special place where your path has started?

Techs and geeks all across the globe have been surveyed with the question of whether there is any place like 127.0.0.1. Ninety-five percent of them said that there is no place like 127.0.0.1, whereas the other four percent claimed that there is no place like “loopback”.

The remaining one percent could not be reached because the ping signal was lost on all five attempts. We presume that they haven’t left their 127.0.0.1 in a long time.

sH_ writes: Today researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they have teamed up with LiveJournal to harness the abundant angst that is being generated hourly in massive amounts by LiveJournal’s members.

Scientists believe that angst (or EMO for short) has the ability to solve the imminent energy crisis that will arise from the depletion of the world’s easily accessible oil reserves. According to scientists, a group of about 50 LiveJournal users can generate enough angst to power a large metroplolis almost indefinitely and seemingly without output degradation, provided that they are 12 to 19 years of age.

LiveJournal users could not be officially reached for comment, although a user named “xXDarkRavenXx” was reported to have said “U ALL SUK”, promptly after which he collapsed in a fit of self-loathing which powered the laboratory’s lounge soda machine for a full 2 weeks.

Matthew writes: Panic has begun to build amongst Internet users as Google approaches the fabled “32-bit barrier”–also known as Y32b–in the number of web pages that it caches.

“Today, Google is caching 4,285,199,774 web pages. The 32-bit barrier, 2^32, is 4,294,967,296. So as you can see, we’re just 10 million web pages from Armageddon.” Says Idaho based Internet researcher Ed McGillis.

“See, Google’s index uses 32-bit pointers to reference each unique page. It’s based on 32-bit Linux machines. They did it for speed optimization. So they can’t index a single page beyond the 32-bit barrier. Once they hit that barrier, there’s no telling what might happen.”

“I’ve got three doomsday scenarios: Worst of all, Google overruns its buffers and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Second, they stop adding new sites just before the barrier, and the web basically freezes at that point—no further growth of the Internet. Third, the souls of the dead will no longer pass into the now full Google cache, causing an apocalyptic confrontation between the living and the dead here on Earth. That would sort of be the best-case scenario.

Officially, Google claims that no problem exists. “Our indexes aren’t simple 32-bit integers. That’s not how we’re doing it. I don’t know where these rumors came from or why people believe them, but there’s really no issue.”

While most Internet users are simply hoping for the best, some are taking things into their own hands. Charles Perkins has begun caching his own web pages in a dugout shelter behind his home. “I’ve got 2500KV/A of UPS powering a cluster of 16 linux boxes, and I’ve downloaded every Google web search I can think of onto these servers. I should be able to keep searching for about six months after the end comes. Hopefully, civilization will be getting back to normal by then.”

matthew writes: [From SlashNOT, Jan 14th, 2005] Visibly upset, and drinking heavily, Yahoo today expressed serious regret over dumping Google a year ago.

“We were Yahoo and Google, man. Everyone knew us, loved us–wanted to be Us. Then I had to go mess it up. Why do I always do that, man? We really had a good thing going—the best portal plus the best search—it was like we owned the web.”

“I guess I wanted different things—you know, some variety. So I started going after paid links. When google found out I was doing paid links, it was like something died between us. But why shouldn’t I? This isn’t 1995—it’s not all free browsing and happiness.”

“And yeah, there were major control issues. I wanted a partner that would be more submissive to my demands.”

“So I broke it off with Google. Things went down hill fast. As it turns out, people seem to want relevant links rather than paid inserts when they search for something. All of our friends sided with Google in the breakup. I’ve lost so much money that I’m sharing bandwith with AOL, and I’ve alienated pretty much everyone else.”

“I’ve tried to call Google a bunch of times, but I guess Google is doing just fine without me. I just wish I had a chance to apologize. I still do Google searches all the time.”

Matthew writes: Queen Elizibeth II has knighted Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the HTTP, HTML, the web server, and the web browser.

From transcripts of the ceremony: “We, being duly impressed with the service of this, our subject, and, having browsed the web on little harry’s marvelous laptop, and having found it useful and entertaining, Do make thee Sir Berners-Lee, Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire, until death, and do confer upon thee the rights, priviledges, and perquisites due said title.”

Sir Berners-Lee, while excited about being able to collect rent from anyone in England upon demand, claimed trepidation about leading troops into battle.

“When I developed the Web, I wanted to steward it to its full potential. I think we’re way past its full potential now, and into the realm of the silly and useless.”

Matthew writes: Federal Agents have busted a major spam sending ring that was apparently working with the support of SpamCop. The Spam senders, using IronPort Senderbase spam flooding software, were apparently working in collusion with SpamCop, which had recently taken bribes from IronPort to continue operations. In what amounts to a protection racket, IronPort would on one hand flood unsuspecting customers with Spam, and then SpamCop would shake them down to eliminate the spam.

While collusion has long been suspected in the anti-virus racket, no direct evidence has linked the two sides.