SlashNOT

matthew writes: Dr. Mark Roth has discovered that adding 80 parts per million Hydrogen sulfide to normal air will cause mice, and perhaps any mammal, to enter a hibernation state.

“Think of the potential uses for this. This would revolutionize ground based long distance travel by bus or Train. Imagine no longer being the only scientist at the convention who is haggard from six days on a Greyhound Bus, when all the other scientists are fresh from risking their lives on an airplane. With this new hibernation technology, those forced to travel by Amtrak and Greyhound will be just as fresh- faced and jaunty as their airborne counterparts. You’d be freed from having to wear noise canceling headphones, a light mask, and an ionic air purifier around your neck. In fact, one could simply UPS (Ground, of course) oneself to the destination, thus freeing oneself from even having to wake up to change busses in Ogden, UT. Just imagine it.”

Matthew writes: English poetic divas Ann and Jane Taylor have re-united and released a new verse of their nursery mega-hit “The Star” to update it for modern audiences.

Originally published in 1806 in the volume “Original Poems for Infant Minds, Volume 2″, the breakout crossover hit has been used to lull small children into complacency for two hundred years. By combining the fresh “couplet” stanza with a novel theme that didn’t involve death or punishment, the sisters unleashed the first megahit–some even credit the hit for coining the term “Star” to refer to fame.

Dogged by critical reviews for their second major work, “The Cut”, which reads in part “Well, what’s the matter?/There’s a face/What! Has it cut a vein?/I see it bleeds, but never mind/that tiny little drop”, the sisters blamed poetry anthology editors for forcing them back into the studio to capitalize on the sudden fame of their first hit.

Cracking under the pressure to produce, the duo went the way of so many other poetic collaborations. While claiming that they would always be sisters, Jane and Ann struck out on their own with solo careers.

Unfortunately, neither was able to achieve anything even remotely like their initial success with “The Star”. Jane’s first solo offering, “The Orphan”, fell even flatter than “The Cut”. Editors warned her that “The Orphan”, whose first verse reads “My father and mother are dead/No friend or relation I have/And now the cold earth is their bed/And daisies grow over the grave” would perhaps not strike the receptive chord with the kids that she was looking for.

Ann’s “Baby Dance” did considerably better, even topping the dance charts momentarily in 1808, but faded rapidly from the public consciousness.

Older, wiser, long dead, and past their differences, the sisters have reunited to recapture their former glory with a new verse that updates the physics behind “The Star”

“We wanted something fresh, for the new audiences. Not a complete remake, you know, but just a little twist. Because let’s face it, we actually do know what stars are these days. It goes something like this:”

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
Now we know just what you are
A giant ball of hydrogen gas
fusing to helium because of your mass
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
we even know how far you are

matthew writes: Following their string of mediocre sequels to “Star Trek: The Series That Didn’t Used To Have To Be Subtitled”, Paramount/UPN has announced that they are ending the run of Enterprise� and replacing it next season with a series set in the same time period as ST:TSTDUTHTBS.

Titled “Star Trek: The Same Generation” or “ST:TSG”, the series will be set on the Starship Exeter in the same time period as the original series, even occasionally running into the USS Enterprise in its travels.

The first episode will feature a gimmick return trip to 21st Century earth, where the primitive inhabitants have become enslaved by a giant globe spanning computer network, having lost the ability to obtain food, pair-bond, procreate, or satisfy their need for moderately funny satire without computers. After destroying the nexus of the computer network known only as the enigmatic “Cisco”�, the crew is surprised to find that rather than being grateful, the inhabitants are enraged and their economy has fallen into ruin. Smug with their success, the crew beams back into orbit, while the primitive inhabitants vow never to let Rick Berman or Brandon Brega produce a series again.

Matthew writes: The editors of SlashNOT have announced that they lack the technical capability to fix the infamous ‘$’ bug that has afflicted the site since it’s initiation.

Principle editor Matthew explains. “See, we stole the code that runs this site. We don’t really know anything about it. And, we hacked the server it runs on, so we don’t actually know much about it either. The administrator of that site long ago secured it but apparently doesn’t know that SlashNOT is hosted on it. So basically, we’ve lost administrative access to the server and couldn’t repair the code even if we knew how to, which we don’t.

“Of course, the bug only expresses when a $ is followed by a number–and how often does that really happen? We have figured out that if you include the HTML escape sequence $ the system will display a $. We don’t know why that works either.

Paul writes: Windows chief Jim Allchin of Microsoft corporation has announced that Microsoft will be officially changing the code name of its upcoming Longhorn operating system development effort to “Shorthorn”.

“This forward-looking name change implements our new emphasis on expectation management.” said Mr. Allchin. “We’ve been ripping announced features out of Longhorn nearly as fast as we’ve been missing development milestones. By changing the name, we’re creating a set of customer expectations that we have a chance of meeting by mid 2007.”

Mr. Allchin took the opportunity to explain the remaining features of Shorthorn.

“People thought that a simple folder hierarchy was hard to understand. So we’ve eliminated that in favor of a file-system meta-data query subsystem that enables virtual folders based on multiple user selected criteria. End users will be able to create virtual folders, for example, that are based on a set of per-node features such as the date-time stamp or the first three letters of the name. This way, files will appear and disappear from virtual folders based on their changing membership in the domains that result from these file system queries.”

“That’s going to be way less confusing.”

Mr. Allchin went on to explain that other than the changes to make the file system harder to understand, Shorthorn would be a set of security patches and will include better support for the never-to-be-implemented second version of the Internet called IPv6, as well as a set of snazzy new graphical features stolen from Mac OS X.

“Of course, getting Shorthorn out on time is more important than actually improving anything, so this list of feature may be shortened if we hit any snags.”

Matthew writes: While Thursday’s much anticipated launch of the PSP didn’t quite meet expectations with big retailers like K-Mart and Target failing to sell out, the PSP has nonetheless probably sold enough units to survive.

But will it?

By launching a device with an integrated proprietary mini-DVD reader (called UMD), Sony has shown that they simply don’t understand what consumer’s want and that they didn’t learn their lesson with the Minidisc format that took years of not selling to flounder. Movies on UMD will cost about $ 20 each and can only be played on the PSP. Why buy them when you can get the DVD cheaper and play it on anything? UMD games cost $ 40 to $ 50, and the unusual format guarantees that only mega-hits will be available. There won’t be any porting of classics that could have sold for a few bucks each to dedicated users.

The PSP can connect to the Internet directly via its built-in WiFi adapter. If you don’t have broadband and wireless you can just go to one of the many available public WiFi hotspots and use theirs. The purpose for wireless? Head to head gaming, apparently.

Imagine a Sony that had thought about the entire process. The process of integrating their hardware with their content. Imagine if the PSP had come with a 40GB hard disk drive like an iPod instead of the UMD drive.

When you turned it on, it could have automatically brought up “The Sony Store” where users could have purchased games, music, and movies for download to the device immediately, to be stored on the 40GB hard disk, with no PC required (or complicated synchronization, cables, requirement that you be at home, etc.)

That amount of space would be sufficient to store about 50 movies and games—far more than anyone is ever going to buy for their device. And it could store many thousands of MP3s. Because it uses WiFi, there would have been no bank-busting monthly contract that plagues cell phone based devices like N-Gauge. Players could have gotten together and decided which games to play, with those not having the game able to buy and download it immediately. Welcome to the world where you sell an end user twenty videogames at $ 20 each on impulse in six months instead of two $ 50 video games when you happend to find something you like at the store–and then abandon the device because you’re tired of those two games and trying to justify spending $ 50 on a videogame.

Sony had a chance to kill Apple and the iPod with an easy-to-use compelling competitor that Apple could not technically match. Sony owns a major game studio. They own a major record label. And they own a major motion picture studio. They own the rights to al the types of actual content that the PSP can utilize. By using direct digital download they could cut out the middle man and offered a wide range of titles that wouldn’t be subject to the vagaries of inventory, stock, and distribution. Titles could have remained online forever, instead of going through the “bang-bust-disappear” cycle of traditional media publishing–whic means that users could get exactly what they want, when they want it, for a reasonable price. Without having to have a computer, a monthly contract, or even their own Internet access.

Imagine if Sony had put a hard disk in the PSP instead of a UMD reader. Imagine if Sony had vision.

April Fools! Just kidding!

Noted technology satire portal SlashNot disappointed loyal readers by posting neither a scathing caricature of traditional news nor an unexpectedly serious article on April 1st, the traditional day for pranks and spoofs.

“Well, what can we do?” replied Slashnot spokesman Matthew, when queried about the site’s lack of new material. “We’re supposed to be a parody site. That doesn’t work if the thing I’m trying to lampoon of is already fake, and with the Internet so full of crap today it’s hard to find a good story to make fun of.”

“Take the top story on SlashDOT right now–EU to Ban Macs. Like THAT’s going to happen. The EU might ban English, or the Dollar, but not the Mac. Steve Jobs is half French, after all.”

“Even the traditional media is getting into the act,” Matthew continues. “The San Francisco Chronicle has announced that Wolfowitz has been confirmed as World Bank chief. Now that’s a little off our usual topic, but it shows just how far things have gone.”

“What it comes down to is this–on April 1st, everybody else is doing our job for us.”