SlashNOT

Mearzuh writes: The world-famous shoe and apparel producer Adidas displayed to the world its next generation shoe last week in hopes of reviving the long lost days of what we call Sneakernet.

Adidas promises that unlike the olden days of Sneakernet, the next generation Sneakernet will have much more processing power and throughput capabilities. With the chips actually integrated into the shoe, one would not need to carry anything in one’s hand. One simply puts the data into the shoe, then puts the shoes on, goes to wherever this data is needed, and leaves the shoes at that destination.

“This opens up many doors to the world of communication” says a spokesman for Adidas. “We can have people running marathons and world’s fastest atheletes transport data between people in no time.”

The smart shoes are going to be available for government and educational purposes only initially, and will be available to the general public for $ 299 later this year.

Dud writes: Latest news in Linux development: The popular Linux distribution, Ham95, can now be installed on most mathematical sliderulers. The kernel was ported by Mr Ham String. It requires a slideruler with a logarithmic scale (it scales very well on these devices). Sliderules can be clustered together for greater power. A slideruler with Ham95 can be used in complex string theory and is used by rocket scientists everywhere.

Copies of Ham95 will be distributed on paper stickers, and download demand is currently exceeding server capacity.

MongooseMan writes: After several weeks spent researching the motor industry, head designers at Microsoft have come to the conclusion that the X Box 2 needs to be at least four times the size of its predecessor to win the console race.

A spokesman said “We can see how SUV’s equal power in cars, and we think that by creating such a powerful image, we can sell even more X box 2’s than PS3’s.”

The awaited new controllers for the machine are believed to have 105 keys, and have a revolutionary movement sensing device which insiders are calling ‘el raton’.

Blitzenn writes: AMD annouced on Friday that they will begin using a new naming convention to represent their CPU’s processing speed in an attempt to further distance themselves from Intel. Instead of the current convention that gives the buyer a relative number that represents the computational power as it relates to an Intel Processor, they are introducing a new gauging system that they are calling ‘BiggaHertz’.

AMD Rep: “Our Processors simply have ‘bigga’ hertz than the Intel versions. So whereas a Pentium 4 may run at 3.2 Gigahertz, our chips are currently pushing 2.2 Biggahertz. We process twice as many bits per hertz, so we needed nomenclature that made that apparent. Intels chips just Hertz more.”

Blitzenn writes: In a surprise move the White House admits that they haven’t any idea where Osama Bin Laden is currently hiding, but has revealed intelligence suggesting that he is illegally downloading MP3s. RIAA (Recording Industry Artists Association) has announced that they intend to sue Osama Bin Laden in an attempt uncover his where-abouts. Mr. Bush stated in his recent address that RIAA now has more far reaching powers to uncover wrong doers than the government does and is calling on the organization to pursue one of the Oval Office’s most wanted.
In a statement to the public on the issue, the White house has published the following;
“RIAA has demonstrated that they are willing to go to any lengths to find individuals who deserve prison time for their wrongful actions. Just look at the number of children and young adults they have been able to find and prosecute in our own country. We feel they are the right people for the job.”
RIAA followed up with their own press release;
“We believe that we will be victorious in our hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The DMCA, (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), has given us the ability to completely wreck the livelihood of thousands of otherwise law abiding young men women and children across this great country. We feel it is now time to take those abilities and exercise them abroad. We are sure that we will have Osama within our crosshairs before the week’s end. Downloading music illegally is absolutely the most heinous crime we think of, and we will severely punish him as we have done to others here in our own country.”

Matthew writes: SlashNOT has recently discovered that many—perhaps hundreds—of technical news stories that it has posted were invented by one of its most trusted writers and editors. In numerous cases, the incidents described may not ever have occurred.

Michael, the other editor at SlashNOT, became suspicious of Matthew’s submission rate. “He was pumping out one, maybe two major stories per week. Per week. Think about that. With travel expenses, hotels, flights, etc., he would have had to have been on the road constantly covering every corner of the tech industry from Taiwan to the other side of Taiwan.”

“That’s when we found the story generator code on his company computer. This code took the first two paragraphs of a randomly selected news story from google news, replaced all the nouns with the nouns from a randomly selected post from Slashdot, and submited it. Apparently, Mathew would go through the submissions quickly and delete the most of the nonsensical ones, and post the rest. We’re going through the archives now, but it looks like about 50% of the stories we’ve posted may have come from this software.”

“I want to say to our dedicated readership that we are doing everything we can to rebuild trust and re-establish credibility with our core demographic. We also want to see Matthew get the help he needs. He’s still in denial right now, claiming that he thought he was supposed to make up these stories.”

Matthew writes: They are usually titled something like “God’s Perfect Timing”, and the generally start something like this:
“On Thursday, October 16, 2003, I received a phone call from my sister in Hawaii. At the time, I was at work at the Hospital in Dallas, Texas. My sister sounded hysterical and said that my mom was at the hospital dying. My heart sank and I asked my sister to tell me what happened. My sister, who is a nurse, mentioned an ‘aortic dissection’ and that my mom had to be taken to the emergency room. As a physician, I knew aortic dissections were often fatal.” They go on for another 2500 words or so, and mom always winds up living in the end.

The mystery is why they get submitted to SlashNOT, considering that SlashNOT is a tech parody site that tries to avoid religion as a topic. But, fearing eternal damnation, I’ve also been loath to simply delete them. So they pile up in the administrative inbox, stuck in a digital limbo between submission and publication, damned to wait for armature-ageddon, when the server’s hard disk fails. But I always felt vaguely unsettled about the situation.

And so I said to myself, “What would Jesus Blog?“

And a still, small voice came to me and said “Seek and ye shall find. Ask, and it shall be given unto thee. Google, and ye shall be feeling lucky.” In a flash of inspiration, I realized that I could repost all these submissions on blogs appropriate to the topic.

A weight has been lifted from me for the first time since Michael and I started SlashNOT. I feel like I’ve been given a new chance–a new life. And now I’d like to invite all of you to post your testimonies there. And not here.

Matthew, Jim McKeeth, and Glen Richards writes: Following on the heels of the commercially stalled IP over Avian Carrier (AC/IP) and based on Sony’s new 25GB Paper format, the IETF has released a request-for-comments (RFC) on the proposed “PA/IP” format. The RFC is backed by Sony, HP, and Hammermill.

The format specifies devices that convert digital information into hardcopy on paper (essentially an HP LaserJet with the duplexing and fold/staple option tray). The paper is printed using Sony’s Blu-Ray format, and are then folded into an aerodynamic shape and launched using low-pressure air towards the vicinity of the target receiver, which captures the flying paper, unfolds it, and inserts it into a Sony Blu-Ray drive for decoding.

At maximum throughput of one launch every 5 seconds, the transfer rate is well over 5GB/sec, outperforming both Gigabit Ethernet and FiberChannel at distances of nearly 15 feet in controlled environments. The IETF is actively seeking ways to improve the distance limitations, but does not expect them to be a serious barrier for early adopters.

The transmitter/receiver pair costs about US25,000 per node initially, but costs are expected to drop to the commercially viable US650 per node when mass production begins.

Matthew writes: Continuing in the grand tradition of posting “mail from people who don’t get satire”, consider the following submission from a man confused by our post on Google News .

Subject: “You are correct in your analysis of Google News”

“I sent the following email to Google News:

“Google News continues its propaganda march to the extreme left under the guise and excuse of the use of computer algorithms. People need to know that you are obviously and intentionally biased and that you continue to do as much damage as you can to this great country and its leaders during this time of peril. All one has to do is to examine your headlines each day and the truth leaps out. Your continued daily bashing of Bush and portrayal of the United States as the enemy of the world makes your organization one of the top internal threats to this country.”

“SlashNOT, please continue to get the truth out about these type of organizations.”

“Thanks”.

Mister, we at SlashNOT will continue to proudly do our part.

Matthew writes: Well, it had to happen sportsfans. Yours truly built my first watercooled PC today. O’course, it’s got all the trick metal you’d expect, like a 2.8 liter Pentium 4 HT, 2 gigs of dual overhead RAM spinning at 800MHz, and independent front and rear RAID 1 SATA disks (250GB, o’course).

But what you didn’t expect (’cept I told you) was the water cooling. That’s right, this baby is liquid filled, with a radiator right out front and center and three fans pulling a big 0.5 cubic feet of atmosphere per second past its gleaming aluminum fins. Watercooling might not be here now, but it’s the future baby, and here’s why: This stuff is just getting hotter all the time, and we’re driving past the mile marker in the road where aircooling gives out like a thirty year old Volkswagen in Mexico City, whatever that means.

It must o’ took Earl n’ me about sixteen hours to get this baby spinning, which is pretty long considering I can field strip a Pentium III in about 20 minutes. It was awful hard to frost those brand new 250GB disks with the heat conducting foam—went against nature, if you ask me–but that was child’s play compared to getting the hoses for the processor, chipsets, and both drives hooked up in serial to the radiator. We thought we had her, but when we filled the reservoir and fired that puppy up, something sprung a leak. Turns out antifreeze is conductive, and motherboards don’t like it. So, after a new motherboard, a few more hose clamps, and some bondo, we were ready to try again. This time, she spun up nice and dry.

The front panel indicator shows all systems cool at a low five degrees above ambient. And besides that fact that we had to take E.J. (Earl Junior) to the hospital for ingesting antifreeze that he thought was Mountain Dew, everything went well. But I hope nothing ever breaks, ’cause I have no idea how to drain this thing to disconnect parts without watering down the motherboard again. But hey, when do PCs ever break, right?

So that’s the future folks. Hope you like it!