SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Panic has begun to build amongst Internet users as Google approaches the fabled “32-bit barrier”–also known as Y32b–in the number of web pages that it caches.

“Today, Google is caching 4,285,199,774 web pages. The 32-bit barrier, 2^32, is 4,294,967,296. So as you can see, we’re just 10 million web pages from Armageddon.” Says Idaho based Internet researcher Ed McGillis.

“See, Google’s index uses 32-bit pointers to reference each unique page. It’s based on 32-bit Linux machines. They did it for speed optimization. So they can’t index a single page beyond the 32-bit barrier. Once they hit that barrier, there’s no telling what might happen.”

“I’ve got three doomsday scenarios: Worst of all, Google overruns its buffers and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Second, they stop adding new sites just before the barrier, and the web basically freezes at that point—no further growth of the Internet. Third, the souls of the dead will no longer pass into the now full Google cache, causing an apocalyptic confrontation between the living and the dead here on Earth. That would sort of be the best-case scenario.

Officially, Google claims that no problem exists. “Our indexes aren’t simple 32-bit integers. That’s not how we’re doing it. I don’t know where these rumors came from or why people believe them, but there’s really no issue.”

While most Internet users are simply hoping for the best, some are taking things into their own hands. Charles Perkins has begun caching his own web pages in a dugout shelter behind his home. “I’ve got 2500KV/A of UPS powering a cluster of 16 linux boxes, and I’ve downloaded every Google web search I can think of onto these servers. I should be able to keep searching for about six months after the end comes. Hopefully, civilization will be getting back to normal by then.”

Matthew writes: According to a study conducted at the United Nations University, satirical shorts consume an average of 55 kilograms of raw materials each—a dramatic environmental cost basically equivalent to the weight of an adult human female.

While most of the material weight is in the form of water contained in the massive 64-ounce Mountain Dew fountain drinks consumed in the production of satire, an unexpected amount of petroleum products are consumed in the trip to the gas station to acquire the requisite Mountain Dew. Trace chemicals such as caffeine, glucose, and whatever the crumbly coconut coating on mini-donuts is made of compose the remainder of the raw materials.

“This report shows just how important it is to re-use and recycle satire, rather than simply forgetting about it or letting it get stale when the news is parodies is no longer current.” Says Eric Williams, a researcher at the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo and one of the report’s co- authors. “We need to get used to hearing the same gags multiple times, and we should all do a lot more e-mail forwarding of links to joke sites to reduce the amount of new satire that we need to produce.”

Matthew writes: NASA has announced today that the Spirit Rover has found evidence of naturally occurring Weapons of Mass Destruction in the crater that it is exploring.

“We know this is quite a bombshell, and frankly, it’s not what exactly what we were looking for, but we’ve found evidence of WMDs all over the surface of Mars.”

“Of course, we’ve only found trace amounts of rocky materials. But this same material, if accumulated in a large mass and ejected from the surface of mars towards earth, would cause major devastation to whatever area it hit. In fact, a large enough accumulation of Martian rocky material impacting earth could end life as we know it.”

In reaction to the news, President Bush has announced that he has ordered NASA to invade Mars, and is increasing funding for the space agency to develop and test the technology to do so.