SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Queen Elizibeth II has knighted Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the HTTP, HTML, the web server, and the web browser.

From transcripts of the ceremony: “We, being duly impressed with the service of this, our subject, and, having browsed the web on little harry’s marvelous laptop, and having found it useful and entertaining, Do make thee Sir Berners-Lee, Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire, until death, and do confer upon thee the rights, priviledges, and perquisites due said title.”

Sir Berners-Lee, while excited about being able to collect rent from anyone in England upon demand, claimed trepidation about leading troops into battle.

“When I developed the Web, I wanted to steward it to its full potential. I think we’re way past its full potential now, and into the realm of the silly and useless.”

Matthew writes: At the beginning of each year, SlashNOT predicts the top 10 tech trends. The 2004 predictions are:

1. Anti-spam software will finally become useful, allowing you to blame it for not getting e-mail from people you don’t want to talk to.

2. Every tech job in America will be outsourced to India. Americans will still be fat and rich, but even less deservedly so.

3. SCO will go down in flames after a federal court rules that they don’t actually own the rights to UNIX. Linux users worldwide will break out in celebration, scaring the crap out of the 99% of the world who have no idea why geeks are running naked in the streets and dancing with stuffed penguins.

4. Microsoft will cut the price of Office in half as it’s hit with four consecutive quarters of its first-ever decreasing sales numbers. Microsoft will put X-Box on the street in smeared makeup and wobbly heels in an attempt to make quick money.

5. Opteron will destroy Itanium, forcing Intel to launch a “64-bits is 32 bits too many” ad campaign. The new era of 64-bit computing will usher in a lasting age of brotherhood, peace, and global harmony.

6. Republicans will begin to purchase Apple computers for the first time.

7. Dell commercials will suck so badly that a few people will actually die watching them.

8. iPods will outsell traditional Pods.

9. Voice over IP will flounder as corporate America realizes that it doesn’t really need phones to be as reliable and expensive as computers.

10. Microsoft will announce that Windows XP Service Pack 2 fixes the major security holes. One month later, the “Reaper” worm will take down every Windows XP machine that isn’t behind a firewall.

Michael writes: The US Government today announced that it will open its much anticipated Do-not-Sue list to the public on January 1st, to help citizens avoid dinnertime interruptions by spurious lawsuits.

“While we are aware that lawsuits and subpoenas by the RIAA and the MPAA have not yet reached the noise level of telemarketing or spam, they are growing at an alarming rate,” said a Federal Trade Commission spokesman. “We hope the new system will prevent these risks for most consumers.”

Fred Johnson, a Cleveland street sweeper who has been sued several times, says this service couldn’t come soon enough. “I’m 52 years old and don’t even have a computer, but they think I’m illegally sharing Eminem albums and bootleg copies of The Cat in the Hat. Sometimes I get two or three subpoenas during a single dinner.”

Mathew writes: The Advocacy High Command has announced the capture of yet another alien spacecraft, marking the 24th such craft to have been successfully captured and disabled by the high command’s newly formed Alien Invasion Defense Force.

Commander Agfrap Glok explains: “This is another one of the bouncing crawler type ships designed to survey sites for the eventual construction of an alien colony. This one clearly could not have come from a great distance on it’s own, so we believe that there may be a mother ship, perhaps containing an invasion force, orbiting above the planet now.”

“Citizens should remain calm and remember that these landings have been going on for nearly 15 revolutions, when the first landing alien ship was destroyed. Go about your labors, and keep all three eyestalks skyward. Immediately report anything falling from the sky. Remember that it’s far easier for us to destroy these craft than it is for the aliens to send them. Soon, they will realize the futility of their invasion and cease forever.”

Michael writes: After successfully tracking Santa Claus during his Christmas travels this year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has announced that they will expand their tracking facilities to cover other holiday mascots.

“Our new tracking system, launching in 2004, will track the Easter Bunny, Cupid, and several others. We expect this to help our continuing NORAD is Not Scary campaign. In addition, these holiday characters frequently act with a disdain for border and airspace laws, and knowing their whereabouts is critical for the security of the continent,” said a NORAD spokesman.

The Defense Command will begin their new program by tracking Baby New Year next week. “We are hoping to track other mythical characters, including the Tooth Fairy and the Man in the Moon, but this will be difficult since they are active on more than one day of the year.”

BREAKING NEWS: SlashNOT has obtained exclusive photographs that appear to show Christmas spokesman Santa Claus trapped in a high-tech prison of some kind.

Santa is being held by an unknown Japanese organization. The criminals have published a list of demands for Santa’s safe return, but US authorities have not yet obtained a translation. An independent investigation is ongoing at MetaFilter.

Matthew writes: Responding to an ever-tougher toy market and the expected summer melt of the North Pole by 2033, Santa Claus has announced that he will be closing the centuries-old North Pole Toy Factory, laying off the non-management elves, and outsourcing toy production to Chinese plastics conglomerate Tin Sow Manufacturer Enterprises.

“I was prepared to weather the Wal-Mart invasion into the toy market (they get 1 of every 4 dollars spent in toys worldwide now) and the dominance of Toys ‘R Us because we’ve got two things going for us: World- wide branding that starts earlier than everyone but McDonalds, and the fact that we don’t have to sell our product—-toys are given away as a Santa Claus branding leader.”

“But the global warming thing is a mega-trend that we just have to get on board with. Our competition is moving to China, so we need to be there as well. Unfortunately, Elves don’t do well at temperatures above 0c, so most of them will be laid off and relocated to refugee centers in the South Pole.”

Matthew writes: When Wilbur and Orville Wright first took flight on a blustery day at Kitty Hawk and subsequently ditched in the soft sand twelve seconds later, they could only dream about the the impact their invention would have on future generations.

“The odds of an individual dying in a major airline disaster are about one in seven million, which are about the same odds as winning a major lottery prize. Every time you buy an airline ticket, you’re playing a macabre lottery. I just tell people to cross their fingers and hope!” says Delta Airlines pilot and great-grand-nephew of the Wright brothers Alex Treeburger.

Many of the innovators of powered flight died in their contraptions. In fact, Wilbur and Orville were inspired to build their flyer by news reports of the death of gliding pioneer Otto Lilienthal. With the competition dropping like flies, Wilbur and Orville persisted, but were eventually out-competed by flight tragedy innovators like Curtiss, who invented the first warplane—adding a whole new dimension to the destructive power of flight. Wilbur, tragically, was killed by Typhoid fever before he could kill him self flying. Orville had to stop flying after badly injuring his back in an airplane accident, and was also unable to see his dream through to fruition.

Matthew writes: Most IT practitioners have long held that heavy users of PowerPoint are almost always blithering idiots, capable of understanding just three to five bulleted points per page. NASA has joined those ranks, accusing PowerPoint of making even engineers stupid.

Edward Tufte, perhaps the most famous information theorist specializing in presentation and author of “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information“—easily the most exciting book on the visual display of quantitative information ever written—has written a scathing 28 page pamphlet on the dangers of PowerPoint. He concludes that PowerPoint weakens verbal and spacial reasoning and corrupts statistical analyses. Thus, it’s a powerful sales tool, but horrifyingly mind numbing for decision-making.

Matthew writes: Dear SlashNOT

I’m writing to you because I don’t know who else to turn to. I’m trapped in an abusive relationship. When I first met Bluetooth, I was very skeptical and ignored the marketing claims. But I knew other people thought Bluetooth was cool, so I figured that there must be something I’m not seeing. I decided to give it a whirl. First I bought a bluetooth wireless headset for my cell phone. The idea of a low-power wireless headset made me giddy with excitement. Af first, it was wonderful. But then it started screeching at me if I went even a few feet away from it. Then, the battery started giving out, and I felt like I was chained to charging it every 90 minutes. I kept having to pair the headset with the transceiver–it would somehow “forget” about it’s relationships. Anyway, I made excuses, like “Well, the audio quality isn’t great, but Bluetooth should work fine for something like a wireless mouse.”

So I had a Bluetooth transceiver installed in my laptop and I picked up a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse. I was excited about having a mouse that didn’t require a cord or a USB dongle hanging of my laptop–who wouldn’t be? But the honeymoon didn’t last long, and this turned out to be an even more painful experience. After I finally got the security setting set up on my laptop to get it to pair with my mouse, the tracking quality was just terrible. The cursor would pause before moving and then continue after the mouse stopped! This made it basically impossible to reliably point to anything. I was so ashamed that I stopped hanging out online with my friends. I didn’t want anyone to see what I was dealing with at home.

I even bought a Mac to try to make things work. Granted, that did end a lot of the annoying behaviors, but the core problems are still there. At this point, I’m so heavily invested in Bluetooth devices that I just don’t know if I have the courage to leave it. I don’t know if I trust myself to even choose a simple, decent wireless protocol that maybe has less features but would be reliable and wouldn’t “forget” about it’s relationships. Is there anything I can do to make my device pairings work reliably, or should I give up and move on to other wireless protocols?

JT in San Diego