SlashNOT

Farquad writes:

Altavista is branching out to yet more cultures with its recent addition of the ultra-minority language Smurfish, as spoken by the Smurfs to the Babel-fish translation service. "The process of translating to Smurfish was remarkably easy" reports Altavista CEO Mr Alter P Veestar "We developed an algorithm that randomly replaces words with either "Smurf", "Smurfs", "Smurfly", "Smurfette", "Smurfing" or "Smurfed". However, the reversal of the process has posed significant headaches for the tech department, as shown by the following data leaked from the AV labs;

Squid writes: According to an article at geek fashion portal Slashdot, Linux has now become too popular in mainstream circles to be the operating system of choice for the discriminating geek: “Let’s face it - with IBM, Sun, Dell, and even AOL using and supporting Linux, it’s becoming just another Windows. Even Microsoft agrees.”

This announcement has left techies wondering where to go for a truly cool, nonconformist OS. Some have resorted to calling it GNU/Linux to make it sound more geeky. Others are clinging to Yellow Dog, Gentoo, and other more obscure Linux distributions.

According to the article, the remaining cool operating systems include fringe projects like AtheOS and NewOS; unsupported classics BeOS and OS/2 Warp; and anything you write yourself. Mac OS X and FreeBSD are still considered geek chic, but are perilously close to the mainstream.

Matthew writes: A man in New Zealand who lost his sense of smell in a bizarre wood-chopping incident has been given a new lease on life with the implant of electrical stimulators on the nerves normally connected to olfactory receptors.
The patient, who prefers to remain anonymous, had this to say: “After the accident, I couldn’t smell a thing. At first, it was hell, you know, but I learned to compensate with a more acute sense of hearing. I had become resigned to never smelling again, but when Dr. Karloff contacted me about his research, I volunteered immediately. I would give anything to be able to smell again.”
“Of course, it’s no bed of roses. So far, everything just smells like metal shavings, sulphur, or decaying organic matter. But we keep tuning. Yesterday, we hit skunk for the first time. I’m thrilled about the possibilities. Except for the seizures, everything’s going just fine.”

Doug Jones writes: A PC World.com article reads: “Could Bill Gates really be the devil? Some competitors may have thought so for years, but now Google seems to think so too.
Currently, if you type “go to hell” into the Google search engine–you have to include the quotation marks–the No. 1 search result is Microsoft’s home page. (For what it’s worth, AOL.com comes up as No. 3, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill comes in at No. 6.)
When asked about the devilish search result, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said it’s an anomaly that Microsoft ranks ahead of even Hell.com, not to mention AOL and UNC.”
Interestingly, searching on “Gates of Hell” pulls up Microsoft as entry number 4. Clearly, they’re very closely integrated with Hell.

[Note: Stories in the True Stories section are true and highlight current news items that are just too silly to satirize.]

Matthew writes: Major OS vendors Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and Linus Torvalds representing Linux have teamed up to celebrate Berkeley BSD Unix, the OS upon which their products are either based or borrow heavily from, with an all-day rally on the Berkeley campus. Sharing the podium, the CEOs of these most innovative OS developers paid tribute during a “free software and peace” festival style atmosphere.

Festival organizers reported that the companies just wanted to give something back to the students in thanks for the billions of dollars of revenue that their BSD based products have generated for them, and give recognition to the fact that the Internet would be a much slower and less compatible place if every competitive product hadn’t ripped off BSD code.[Continued...] Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew writes: NeXT CEO Steve Jobs announced today that NeXT had completed the acquisition of Apple Computer with the release of Apple Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar”. “We’ve completed the hard work of replacing the traditional Macintosh OS with a re-labled Mac compatible version of the NeXTStep operating system,” said Jobs in today’s announcement.

The Apple acquisition, initiated almost six years ago for -400 million USD, bore immediate fruit for NeXT. “By acquiring a multi-bullion dollar computer manufacturer with millions of fanatically loyal users, we’ve been able to leverage Apple’s name, manufacturing ability, and technical prowess to bring NeXT technology to the forefront.”

“We’ve instructed developers to begin writing to the NeXT (aka “Cocoa”) API and to depricate the Mac (aka “Carbon”) API in their upcoming applications. Within a few years, Mac compatibility will no longer be necessary.”

Jorgen Hansensensen, a noted San Diego cryptographic researcher, has done it again. As reported earlier, Jorgen introduced to the world a new encryption algorithm actually invented by his toddler son, Hans. This time it is his own work, however, that is drawing international attention.

Submitted recently to the Cryptographic Research and Applications Publication, a peer-reviewed journal exploring advances in cryptosystems and their application in society, is his latest paper: The Belly-Button as a Temporally-Limited Biometric Means for Identifying Individuals and for Random Seed Generation in Support of Key Exchange. Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew writes: CNN reports that a copyright on silence has been successful. In 1952, American composer John Cage included a track called 4′33″ on an album he released, which consisted of that length of silence.

The John Cage trust sued Mike Batt for his composition, “One minute of Silence”, claiming that he had plagiarized the earlier work. Mr. Batt settled out of court for hundreds of thousands of dollars, claiming that while the case had little merit, he deeply respected Mr. Cage’s work (and apparently, six figures is chump change for him).

[Note: Stories in the True Stories section are true and highlight current news items that are just too silly to satirize.]

Squid writes: In a surprising move, the California legislature has voted to legalize peer-to-peer file sharing under certain circumstances. Arizona and Nevada are rumored to be considering similar propositions.

While file-sharing services such as Kazaa remain illegal and controversial under federal laws, California now permits file sharing for medical use only. Users must have permission from a doctor and scientific evidence that file sharing may help their condition. The RIAA is already lobbying to repeal the law, concerned that it will be abused. “Frankly, I fail to see how a free copy of the latest Metallica album will cure anything,” said an RIAA spokesman.

Squid writes: Epic Records is trying to combat pre-release CD piracy in a novel way: instead of issuing normal promotional CDs to reviewers, they are issuing portable CD players that have been glued shut. I think even Pearl Jam fans could figure out a way around this.

[Note: Stories in the True Stories section are true and highlight current news items that are just too silly to satirize.]