SlashNOT

Michael writes: Four students who were sued last week by music-industry watchdog RIAA have admitted, after intense questioning, that they deliberately conspired against the RIAA.

“We met one evening in our secret lair and talked about what we could do to vanquish our arch-enemy, the music industry, and file sharing was the obvious answer,” said one of the remorseless students. “We realized that four college students could single-handedly crush a billion-dollar industry just by swapping a few Blink 182 songs.”

An RIAA spokesman announced today that charges will be filed against all four students. “We’re pleased to have found the source of the music industry’s troubled history, and now that their plot has been foiled, we can restore the music industry to its former glory.”

Matthew writes: Viewsonic has announced a new monitor for the blind, that, when combined with Viewsonic’s Braille font and the removal of all other fonts on the computer promises to make computers accessible for thousands of vision impaired users.

The monitor works much like a “bed of nails” toy that uses an array of tiny pins…

[Editor's note: I was half way through writing this when I found an actual press release in a Google search. Slashnot apologizes for any inconvenience this juxtaposition between reality and satire may have caused.]

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.”

C. O'Nuallain writes:

Microsoft is once again a step ahead in the race to discover and fulfil the needs of its customers. Their newest device, which they hope to release early this summer and discontinue by 2004, will hopefully replace the mouse or touchpad for laptop users.

“It’s funny we haven’t thought about this before,” one customer service representative commented. “We realize that space is a crucial issue in computers, especially laptops. The Beetle will save at least six cubic inches of space, and if your laptop comes in a skin-tight case, that’s a significant amount.” Touchpads and trackballs, she said “are no longer status symbols; everyone knows how annoying they are.”

The Beetle is sturdy and sleek, combining the accuracy of a mouse and the size of a lima bean. So far, testing has been remarkably successful. The only drawback is that it can be very hard to avoid clicking both right and left buttons simultaneously. Large-fingered testers have reported an added inability to use the scrolling wheel between the buttons without moving the whole device. A prototype for a future cordless Beetle has been made, and Microsoft plans to advertise it as “small enough to accidentally swallow.”

Microsoft hoped to name their new product “The Beatle,” hoping to appeal to baby-boomers, but the owners of that registered name would only permit it to be used if the device were packaged with a full-sized poster of Paul McCartney that polled customers found offensive. According to their latest press release, Microsoft will continue to use the name “Beetle” and hope that no one asks about the spelling.

Matthew writes: Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the Fox media companies including Fox News, has accused Google News of biased coverage in general and especially with regard to the U.S. led invasion of Iraq.

“Google News automatically summarizes all the English daily news websites in the world. As you all know, left leaning commie sympathizing peacenik socialists run 90% of the American news outlets. And 100% of the foreign ones. So that means that 95% of the coverage they’re searching is liberal biased. And because their algorithm for determining what goes on the front page is based on how many sites are reporting the story, Google winds up being just as left biased as the media in general. It’s pathetic and it’s got to stop. Google News should be weighting balanced coverage of the sort provided by Fox News by a factor of 100 in order to balance this slant.

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.