SlashNOT

Reinhard Gantar writes:

Santa Cruz, CA. Yesterday a large flying object landed on Thompson Square in Santa Cruz. The passengers identified themselves as ambassadors from Zulu IV, an earth-like planet in a small solar system in Sagittarius, and they ceremoniously passed a gift for president Bush (an elaborately braid-knitted pullover made of nano-carbon fibers) with the words “I’m Klatuu. This is a gift for your president.”

After the ceremony, they turned to business, inquiring to meet Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum and Richard Stallman. As they explained in a press conference, the people of Zulu IV is plagued by an evil emperor who is also the CEO of the only manufacturer of software and has been consistently abusing his monopoly power in order to enslave the planet’s populace for more than two-hundred wardoks (about 700 earth-years).

“We can’t bear no more” said Hm, the spokes-person of Zulu IVs delegation. “The blackmailing, the taxes, the suppression, the deportations, the licenses, the protocol pollution, the blue screens of death squads… we will put an end to all that, but we have to empower our people with software they can control themselves. We need Linux, gcc, python, mySQL and sendmail to overthrow the ancient regime.”

Larry Wall, creator of the perl programming language, volunteered as abductee in order to teach the good use of perl on Zulu IV. Hm politely rejected the offer, explaining, that their alphabet has not enough characters to handle perl-code gracefully.

Matthew writes: IBM has “A method and means for the protection of Intellectual Property through exclusive license by a governing authority based on primacy of registration”. According to IBM, this novel approach stipulates the creation of a government agency which would record the application of protection for an invention by individuals (corporate entities could only be assigned rights). Once an application of protection has been registered, anyone wishing to create the same or substantially similar device or process would have to license the right from the inventor for a period of seventeen years. Using the system would require a licensing fee paid to IBM in the sum of per application.

Can’t say I like the licensing fee, but it’s great that this protects individuals against corporations. Has anyone heard of any similar efforts???

Matthew writes: Perceiving Linux as a growing threat, and with no serious strategy to cope with technologies that can’t be purchased, Bill Gates has challenged Linus Torvalds to a winner-take-all street fight. Dubbed “The Battle in Seattle”, both contestants have agreed that the looser will shut down development of their operating system. The fight, to be held in the P1 parking garage of building 36 at Microsoft’s Redmond campus, will be simulcast via streaming video from MSNBC and Sourceforge.

A noticeably beefier Gates announced the fight from the home page of his personal website: “He’s got no effective attack against my Access Control List defense, assuming that I’m patched up to date of course. He’ll be in a kernel panic by round two.” Gates has been training and hot fixing in anticipation for the match, and now weighs in at 134 lbs.

Torvalds, weighing in at 125 lbs., held a news conference to respond to the challenge: “I’m going to remote root hack his backdoors. I’ll overrun every buffer he’s got. His threading model is inefficient, his memory allocation is weak, and his protection model has holes you could drive a truck through. That geek’s kernel is no match for mine.”

Squid writes: A scientist at MIT claims he has developed the world’s first completely unbreakable encryption method. According to his paper, “while a long enough one-time pad provides good encryption, it can still be decrypted by anyone with a copy of the pad. This system eliminates that last vulnerability.” The new system uses a random number generator, and instead of transmitting encoded data, it transmits the random numbers themselves. The resulting message cannot be decrypted by anyone, including the recipient.

Reaction to this development has been swift, with the US government restricting export of the encryption scheme and the usual crowd trying to fit the algorithm onto a T-shirt. Meanwhile, Microsoft is claiming that the algorithm violates their software patent for a feature already included in Microsoft Word.

Squid writes: As predicted last month by Google, a recent highly scientific SlashNot Poll has confirmed that Microsoft is considered the greatest evil of modern times.

Microsoft led the poll with 39% of the vote, followed closely by the RIAA with 29%. Perennial favorite Satan received only 14%. Apple led in the Least Evil category with zero votes, and Intel received only one vote. Newcomer Winona Ryder walked away with a respectable 10%.

Squid writes: The Mozilla Project, Netscape’s open-source underdog browser, announced six new security holes today. According to their press release, “These new security holes should go a long way toward closing the gap between Mozilla and Internet Explorer.”

This is just part of the Mozilla Project’s plan to become a serious competitor for IE. “Along with many more bugs and security flaws, we plan to add features that make it impossible to remove Mozilla from a computer,” according to a source within the project. Microsoft is not worried: “Thanks to ActiveX and a tighter integration with Windows, no software can match the insecurity of Internet Explorer,” said a Microsoft spokesman. “Except perhaps IIS.”

Matthew writes: “She’s a Watercooler Warrior. She spends more time yacking with her co-workers than getting useful work done. And, she can’t type. She would rather use a yellow pad, but she has to be seen as technologically competent. But how do you digitize a pad of paper?“

So begins the advertising blurb for Microsoft’s new Tablet PC, aimed squarely at the 20% of corporate employees who perform no useful job function and therefore do not require useful computer hardware.

“With her deft Crayon of Enlightment, she scribbles handwritten notes on the otherwise pristine and lucid spreadsheets and word documents of her collegues, making comments that are as unsearchable as they are incomprehensible.”

“Her work is assisted by helpful dialog boxes that pop up after every few words, allowing her to input text at nearly 20% of the speed of a poor typist. Plus, the digital ink cannot spill out and stain your clothes.”

Matthew writes: U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly decided not to impose togher penalties than those already negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice against Microsoft, ordering only that Bill Gates repeat the Hail Mary holy rosary 15 times and “promise not to do it again.“

Microsoft Chairman and Cheif Software Architect Bill Gates pledged a personal commitment to abide by the judge’s instructions, which he called “a good compromise and good settlement.” He is expected to spend the weekend in prayerful meditation and penance before next week’s launch of the Tablet PC featuring a new and even more highly integrated version of Windows XP that modifies Microsoft Word and Excel to allow them to run better in the new form factor.

The Tablet PC also represents the first time that Microsoft will brand the computer hardware, cutting out other hardware manufacturers. “We like the Apple model of not having to put up with other people’s crap.” said CEO Steve Ballmer. “Frankly, I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before. I guess having this case finally settled has really opened up the creative flow.”

Squid writes: Earlier this month, Dell spokesdude Steven was put on indefinite leave as Dell focuses on new dude-free ad campaigns. In a similar story, Gateway’s Holstein spokescow, Bessie, was laid off last week. In a surprising development, the two have joined forces to start their own PC manufacturer.

“Bessie has worked for those Gateway dudes since 1989,” said Steven in a press conference, “and getting fired so soon after her road trip with the CEO was a major bummer. When she called me with this new idea, I was like, Awesome! We should totally do it!”

The new company, DudeRanch2000.com, will officially launch in early 2003. Details on their new product line are sketchy, but the computers will be “like way cooler than Dell,” according to Steven. “And the boxes will have cow spots.”

Daniel writes: A Long Beach, California, man was arrested last night in a spectacular commando raid. A police SWAT team stormed the home of Erwin Schrodinger at about 9:30 PM after receiving tips from his neighbors about sinister activities on the property. A local judge issued a warrant when police presented geiger counter measurements taken from the sidewalk showing the presence of radioactive materials somewhere on the premises.

Police have released very little information, but so far it appears the elderly Mr. Schrodinger faces felony charges of cruelty to animals, possession of fissionable materials, and possession of lethal toxins.

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