SlashNOT

Matthew writes: SlashNOT has recently discovered that many—perhaps hundreds—of technical news stories that it has posted were invented by one of its most trusted writers and editors. In numerous cases, the incidents described may not ever have occurred.

Michael, the other editor at SlashNOT, became suspicious of Matthew’s submission rate. “He was pumping out one, maybe two major stories per week. Per week. Think about that. With travel expenses, hotels, flights, etc., he would have had to have been on the road constantly covering every corner of the tech industry from Taiwan to the other side of Taiwan.”

“That’s when we found the story generator code on his company computer. This code took the first two paragraphs of a randomly selected news story from google news, replaced all the nouns with the nouns from a randomly selected post from Slashdot, and submited it. Apparently, Mathew would go through the submissions quickly and delete the most of the nonsensical ones, and post the rest. We’re going through the archives now, but it looks like about 50% of the stories we’ve posted may have come from this software.”

“I want to say to our dedicated readership that we are doing everything we can to rebuild trust and re-establish credibility with our core demographic. We also want to see Matthew get the help he needs. He’s still in denial right now, claiming that he thought he was supposed to make up these stories.”

Matthew writes: SlashNOT would like to begin posting daily updates—you want more humor, we want more revenue. It’s win/win. Unfortunately, Matthew (our primary writer) has only been pumping out two contributions per week despite switching to a high fiber breakfast cereal.

The solution is for you to submit! When you have a funny impulse that is related to technology, pull up SlashNOT immediately and post your impulse using the “add story” link. While we certainly appreciate polished, well written, and funny stories, Your submission does not need to be polished or well written–funny is all we need. Our cadre of amazingly formulaic humor writers will be happy to steal your idea and write their own take on it. Most people (not you, of course–everyone else) are crappy writers anyway, so don’t feel like you have to write a bunch of stuff that we may cut. Posts may be as simple as “I just noticed that Microsoft is being sued over the FAT file system, and that reminded me that McDonalds is being sued over fatty foods.” You’ll get all the credit (but none of the advertising revenue), and we’ll do all the heavy lifting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew writes: This year, the rating system kept our best work on the home page, as rated by our beloved SlashNOT Army of Geeks. So instead of posting my absolute favorites, which includes about half of the Top Stories listing, I’m posting “The 10 Next To Best Stories”. Here they are, humbly submitted for your approval.

• Microsoft developing server version of Tablet PC
• Microsoft announces Windows XP Homeless Edition
• DOS attacks on the rise
• Sun CEO announces corporate suicide
• Monkeys take third step in Conquest of Earth
• SlashNOT Interview: Dark Lord Crocktha
• Last Tablet PC user in the wild dies
• Web standards group approves new tag
• Microsoft cert mistaken for rare neurological disorder
• Google arrested while dumping body

Matthew writes: At the beginning of each year, SlashNOT predicts the top 10 tech trends. The 2004 predictions are:

1. Anti-spam software will finally become useful, allowing you to blame it for not getting e-mail from people you don’t want to talk to.

2. Every tech job in America will be outsourced to India. Americans will still be fat and rich, but even less deservedly so.

3. SCO will go down in flames after a federal court rules that they don’t actually own the rights to UNIX. Linux users worldwide will break out in celebration, scaring the crap out of the 99% of the world who have no idea why geeks are running naked in the streets and dancing with stuffed penguins.

4. Microsoft will cut the price of Office in half as it’s hit with four consecutive quarters of its first-ever decreasing sales numbers. Microsoft will put X-Box on the street in smeared makeup and wobbly heels in an attempt to make quick money.

5. Opteron will destroy Itanium, forcing Intel to launch a “64-bits is 32 bits too many” ad campaign. The new era of 64-bit computing will usher in a lasting age of brotherhood, peace, and global harmony.

6. Republicans will begin to purchase Apple computers for the first time.

7. Dell commercials will suck so badly that a few people will actually die watching them.

8. iPods will outsell traditional Pods.

9. Voice over IP will flounder as corporate America realizes that it doesn’t really need phones to be as reliable and expensive as computers.

10. Microsoft will announce that Windows XP Service Pack 2 fixes the major security holes. One month later, the “Reaper” worm will take down every Windows XP machine that isn’t behind a firewall.

Matthew writes: Under pressure from recent media reports, SlashNOT writer Matthew Strebe has revealed that he suffers from Apostrophic Displacement Dysphasia, a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for sufferers to automatically determine correct apostrophe usage in the its/it’s case.

Dr. Yuri Sakhalin explains the disorder. “Like many people with grammar affective disorders (GADs), those with ADD are of course aware of the rules of grammar regarding the correct use of the possessive pronoun ‘its’ and the contraction ‘it’s’. But in individuals with ADD, the mind is confused by the fact that all possessive nouns except pronouns also use an apostrophe ’s’ to indicate possession, so they automatically write both the contraction and the possessive pronoun with the apostrophe. Sufferers are literally unable to see the incorrect apostrophe usage on the page, and must rely on unaffected editors and software aids to remediate their writing.

“What is unusual in the case of Mr. Strebe is the fact that he’s a well published author, and that he uses a word processor capable of automatically marking up the incorrect usage. It seems as if he intentionally uses the incorrect case to exhibit his condition, or as some sort of protest against a rule of grammar that sufferers see as being unfair.”

Mr. Strebe has indicated that he is seeking treatment for the disorder at an inpatient grammar treatment facility. He notes that his condition has been especially difficult for his family members to deal with, and he is grateful for they’re support.

Matthew writes: SlashNOT unexplained but apparently increasing popularity has led many of our dear readers to heed our call to submit stories. Many, such as the recently posted story about Word 2003, are clever, insightful and well written.

Many other posts are not.

We call these “Crappy posts”. But, while they are as a rule poorly written, inane, and usually include blatant attempts to fool our readers into linking to what must be a poorly written and inane website of the poster’s creation, they usually are funny in their own bathetic way. So, because they’re as funny to laugh at as with, we’ve decided to make a regular feature of the best of the worst. Here they are. [Note: It is SlashNOT's policy to remove links to crappy websites.]

Matthew writes: SlashNOT Editor-is-Large Matthew was found in good health today in Germany and is on his way back to the United States.

“Matthew hadn’t posted anything on SlashNOT in two weeks.” Says Editor-is-Large Michael. “He had mentioned something about a gig as an embedded reporter and then just dropped off the face of the earth. When the war started and I realized what an embedded reporter was, I was terrified. We started checking with the Military authorities to try to get in touch with him.”

“But he finally checked in today. As it turns out, he had simply gone to Las Vegas to cover the Embedded Systems Conference, which covers the state of the art in computers that are embedded in every-day devices like microwaves and cars. Anyway, during the conference, he accidentally revealed proprietary information about a forthcoming Motorola micro-controller and was ordered to leave the state. He wound up hitchhiking to the Arizona border with a biker gang and was subsequently sold to a retired European couple who were traveling the west in an RV. He is now safely on a plane back from Germany, and we expect him home any time. A welcome home parade has been scheduled for Sunday afternoon.”

Michael writes: Happy April Fool’s Day! We are proud to welcome CNNot to the SlashNot conglomerate of aspiring world-controlling media entities. CNNot will focus on US and World news, Entertainment news, and other less geeky topics.

Matthew writes: SlashNOT.com is proud to announce that is has completed a leveraged buyout of rival website SlashNOT.org for US100.00.

“Having ownership of the highly valuable SlashNOT name in both the .com and .org memespaces is a major coup for SlashNOT.” Said co-founder Matthew. “We’re vectoring people who would have been going to a competitor straight to our brand.”

SlashNOT.org had been operating a small site operation indicating that the name had been registered and parked.

“The negotiations were tough—they came to us asking for US13.00 dollars. By the time we sealed the deal, we had them up to US100. We’re tough negotiators. I think they saw that.”

“We’re now in a position to expand into other memespaces, such as .biz and .info. Once we dominate those markets for the SlashNOT brand, there can be no possibility of confusion in the satire consumer’s mind about who the premier Slashdot ripoff site really is.”

SlashNOT is currently in negotiations to register their famous brand in the .net namespace, pending balance reduction measures against current leveraged debt instruments to first-round financing partners VISA and MasterCard.

Matthew writes: In this article, posted December 5th, 2002, SlashNOT editor Matthew predicted that Microsoft would in three months time announce an epiphany concerning the use of DRM technology as a mechanism for securing Office Documents. That date would have been March 5th, 2003

Sadly, Microsoft’s DRM Epiphany was announced today, a full two weeks earlier than SlashNOT had predicted.

SlashNOT editor Matthew explains: “Well, it’s hard to explain to someone who is not a metaphysicist, but precognition is not an “exact science” per se, in that it’s neither exact nor science. It’s more or less like fuzzy logic, of course without being either of those as well.”

“I inherited my knack from my maternal great-grandfather, who was able to predict with great accuracy the day that steel file cabinets surpassed wooden file cabinets in total installed units, and nailed the rate at which automated postal metering machines would increase in speed from the twenties through to the sixties (Oddly, his name was Moore as well). Unfortunately, he was a four days off on the timing of the stock market crash of ‘29, and vowed never again to use his powers of prognostication thenceforth.”