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Mathew writes: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the pentagon think tank that came up with the Internet and the smart part of smart bombs, has unveiled a new futures market designed to detect which of its projects might be so politically incorrect that their exposure would cause damage to the agency.

Adm. John Poindexter explains: “Basically, we’ve put up a website where we detail each of our projects in detail. Then, interested parties from the media, politicians, policy experts, and crackpots can purchase shares of each idea, buying if they like the idea and selling if they don’t. Then, we simply stop budgeting the ideas that crash in the futures market, and fund the ones that do well.”

Matthew writes: Maryland released the results of it’s gubernatorial election this morning, indicating that Finnish programmer and author of the Linux kernel Linus Torvalds had been elected mayor in a stunning 100% landslide, especially since Mr. Torvalds was a write in candidate not running for office. A Mr. E. Haxor was elected Lieutenant Governor, and M. Skillz received 100% of the vote for state Attorney General.

The election also heralded the first election run entirely by new Diebold secure vote counting machines. The secretary of state has yet to certify the results, but she has indicated that Diebold’s internal intrusion detection sensors have not indicated any technical problems with the election. Furthermore, Anne Phillips has certified that the machine is nearly flawless because she can’t figure out how it might be hacked.

matthew writes: Sent via the form at slashnot.com
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The Slashnot Response
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matthew writes: Having successfully thrown off the negative mantle of “Mad Science” that dominated public perception of scientists from the beginning of time until March 13th, 1933 by developing amazing products that stupid people could use but not understand, such as radio, television, the microwave oven, and remote control, Scientists have now slipped back off the precipice into the realm of mad science.

“It was Albert Einstein, really, who provided the calming face and presence to science. He combined madness with a nature so non-threatening that he made something as terrifying as nuclear energy palatable to the thronging hordes” says Dr. Egon Frump, Ph. D. “I mean, as soon as he died in the mid fifties, nuclear science went from being the savior of all mankind to, well, the scariest thing imaginable.”

“Who do we have now? Steven Hawking? He’s damned scary. You know he’s working on a cybernetic body to go with that electronic voice gizmo. I mean, he scares me. It’s no wonder people are convinced that their cell-phones are giving them cancer, that genetically modified foods are giving them cancer, and that the Internet will somehow find a way to give them cancer.”

“But this will all come full circle again, as soon as we have nano-bots that can seek and destroy cancer cells inside the body. Then, everyone will feel safe about science again.”

Nazdar writes: According to this article - Orin Hatch said, “damaging someone’s computer may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyright.” The Senator then endorsed “technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, then destroy their computer.” Orin’s own website uses pirated code and will have to be destroyed.

Did you know Orin’s technology already exists? Try it out! Now everyone with a computer please email Senator Hatch twice to warn him that he’s making a bad decision, then move to Utah, and press the nuke button next to his name in the voting booth.