SlashNOT

French routers went on strike today demanding better working conditions and shorter work hours. Planning to strike through New Years day, the routers have taken down the entire .fr ccTLD as well as .com, .org, and .net gTLDs that are hosted in France.

A spokesman for Fraternité internationale des ordinateurs et des couteaux d’Internet, the French computer union, claimed that the strike was necessary to remind the major French ISPs that routers were no longer simply willing to be taken for granted and essentially forgotten.

“These routers perform a critical economic function and have not seen the reduction in work hours and other benefits that other industrial sectors have received.”

The routers are demanding ambient temperatures no higher than 25 degrees centigrade in equipment rooms, cleaner supply power, and a 35-hour workweek consisting of hours no longer than 48 minutes each. They are also demanding that any decisions to begin routing of the forthcoming IPv6 protocol be approved by a union vote before implementation.

Matthew writes: At the beginning of each year, SlashNOT makes a series of ten predictions for the coming year. Here are the official SlashNOT predictions for 2003:

1. Sun will sue somebody over Java.
2. Linux will continue to gain market share while Microsoft continues to wonder what to do about it.
3. Bill Gates will say something inane.
4. Yet another Slashdot parody site will appear.
5. HP will “merge” with a large rival as a method to gain marketshare in a stagnant sector.
6. Miss Cleo will start “Miss Cleo’s Psychotic Hotline”, which clients can call to have incoherent insults and rants screamed at them in the comfort of their own homes.
7. Hard disk drives will double in size without increasing in price.
8. Intel will release x86 processors that are 25% faster.
9. The Itanium processor will fail to gain significant inroads in the server market.
10. At least one journalist will use the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” when talking about the tech economy.

Matthew writes: At the beginning of each year, SlashNOT makes a series of ten predictions for the coming year. Our surprising accuracy rate continues undimmed — 90% of our predictions for last year came true! Here is a recap of the predictions we made at the beginning of 2002.

1. Sun will sue somebody over Java.
2. Linux will continue to gain market share while Microsoft continues to wonder what to do about it.
3. Bill Gates will say something inane.
4. Yet another Slashdot parody site will appear.
5. HP will “merge” with a large rival as a method to gain marketshare in a stagnant sector.
6. Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of North Korea, will invite Disney to create “Disneyland-Pyongyang”, an offer which Disney will decline citing a lack of significant tourism to the region. North Korea will retaliate by producing weapons of mouse destruction.
7. Hard disk drives will double in size without increasing in price.
8. Intel will release x86 processors that are 25% faster.
9. The Itanium processor will fail to gain significant inroads in the server market.
10. At least one journalist will use the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel” when talking about the tech economy.

Michael writes: Microsoft today launched a surprise assault on Java, a small Indonesian island near Southeast Asia, in an attempt to counter the recent court order forcing them to include the Java language in Windows XP.

“While we are planning an appeal, we feel this direct approach is our best bet,” said CEO Steve Ballmer. “We know that Java is affiliated with Sun, and after a successful takeover of the island, we will have a powerful copyright claim against Sun’s use of the name. We’ve always wanted our own island anyway.”

“Microsoft is crazy,” said a confused Scott McNealy at Sun. “We have no office in Indonesia, and although we do like to sue Web sites that use the word Java, we certainly don’t own the island.” The Indonesian government, having a much smaller budget than Microsoft, is hopeful that a peaceful settlement can be reached. If not, it will deploy its small army of Linux users against Microsoft.

Michael writes: Just in time for the holidays, we’ve received answers from Santa Claus for our interview questions. We thank Mr. Claus for answering promptly despite his impossibly busy schedule. Read on for the answers…

Matthew writes: White house spokesman Ari Fliescher has indicated that the administration will not approve Santa Claus’s request for unrestricted over flight of the United States on December 25th.

“This is not a happy day for us, or anyone else. Unfortunately, Mr. Claus has not provided the required documentation required by newly enacted security protocols for over flight. Also, he has indicated that he will be visiting countries on the state supported terrorism list. We know that Mr. Claus wouldn’t knowingly attack the United States, but there are numerous problems with his current application.”

“We don’t have clearances and identity information for the Elves, and they’ve refused to be interviewed outside the North Pole. We know that some of the reindeer were born in countries in the former Eastern Bloc. North Korea shares a word with North Pole. The President has decided that it’s just too risky for the American people, and requiring parents to purchase presents might be just the economic stimulus we need.”

Matthew writes: The Business Software Alliance has opened a formal investigation into the software licensing practices of the Holy Trinity.

“We have information from a disgruntled former employee that the Holy Trinity has been inappropriately licensing just one copy of our various clients’ software rather than the three that the End User Licensing Agreements would require.”

“We recognize that some controversy surrounds the legal status of the Holy Trinity, but that’s no excuse to exploit our clients. We are just trying to get our clients their just deserts.”

The spokesman indicated that to date, the BSA had not been able to get any agents into the offices of the Holy Trinity to investigate the allegations, apparently due to unusually high security at the gate.

Michael writes: Continuing the trend set by the beta release of their new shopping search engine, Froogle, leading search engine Google announced today that it will rename its popular Google News offering to Noogle.

“This is just the beginning,” said Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt. “Everyone loves our name, and attaching it to our other properties will increase their brand association.” Their next planned change is for the Google Groups newsgroup archive, which will now be called Groogle. “We’re thinking of renaming the image search as Viewgle, but we’re not sure people will get that one,” said Schmidt. “We’ll also be releasing Zoogle later this year, but we’re not sure what it will be.”

Matthew writes: Microsoft has recently revealed that it is engaged in a massive internal audit of file drawers, cabinets, and hard disk drives searching for suddenly abandoned mottos and catch phrases.

CEO Steve Ballmer reports: “Three days ago, Bill and I were headed to lunch when he asked ‘So, where do you want to go today?’ It sort of rang a bell, and after a few minutes I though ‘Oh man, that’s supposed to be our slogan! What the heck happened to it?’ I made a note in my Pilot—er, PocketPC to check it out.”

“It wasn’t two hours later in the limo on the way back from Taste of Thai that Bill said “Yeesh. Looks like it’s going to be another hailstorm today—Boom, another epiphany hit me. Hailstorm was some kind of initiative we were working on a few months ago.”

“It was déjà vu all over again. So I’ve ordered all hands to dredge up all of our old mottos, slogans, and catchphrases, and then study the press releases to try to figure out what we were talking about at the time. Then we’re going to apply those slogans to new product releases. For example, we’re going to rename .NET Server to Digital .Nervous Server.”

Matthew writes: The Reverend Gerry Fallgrace, a pastor at Landover Baptist, has revealed that Google is actually the Search Engine of the Beast.

“We first noticed something was wrong when Google directed queries about going to Hell to Microsoft.com. We then determine that Google frequently led searchers after truth astray.”

“Direct proof came when we realized that you can type www.466453.com into a web browser and reach Google. Everyone knows that 466453/700 (the number of the club) yeilds 666 (the number of the Beast) and some change. It’s an obvious sign.”

“The final sign was when we found the evil mirror image of Google, Elgoog. As most people know, the Beast frequently perverts the purity of divine symbols by portraying them either upside down or backwards. If Elgoog is not the work of the Beast, then what is?”

“And to think, even one such as I had been deceived into setting Google as my home page.”