SlashNOT

Matthew writes: Infamous tech satire site SlashNOT has announced the imminent publication of “The Best of SlashNOT”, a 450-page book of the funniest of SlashNOT from the inception of the site until the posting just before this one.

Lovingly annotated with exclusive, never before published sardonic footnotes about the stories, comments, and commentators, the book provides detailed insights into the strange minds behind SlashNOT. Best of all, it’s presented in funniest to least funny order according to the scientifically accurate SlashNOT rating system—so you can stop reading when the book stops being funny, secure in the knowledge that you haven’t missed a thing.

The book includes stories submitted by our readers as well as comments from the SlashNOT commentary choir (with last names and e-mail domains removed for your privacy), except the ones we deleted because they were stupid, because we didn’t like the author, were spam, or because we needed to fit a specific page count. So if you’ve contributed, you’ll definitely want copies of this amazing keepsake of your ridiculous SlashNOT handle. And if you haven’t contributed, simply pick a handle in the book and tell your progeny that you were that person! They won’t know the difference, and we will never tell—that’s our promise to you.

The best of SlashNOT is the perfect gift for both technical satire lovers and for beautiful people, as it will also make a decorative and customizable table leg prop that will last for generations to come.

The Book of SlashNOT will be available for order from this site, from Amazon.com, and at Barnes & Noble in the coming weeks. Be sure to by numerous copies, as we’d hate to have to shut the site down out of spite like the SatireWire guy did.

Oh, and we’re on hiatus for a few weeks while we port the site to a different and more online-casino-spam-proof back-end and prepare the book for publication. But don’t worry: We’re still writing humorous shorts, and will unleash a torrent of sarcasm the likes of which the world has only infrequently known upon our return in January.

Michael writes: The winners of the 2005 International Obfuscated C Code Contest have been announced. J. G. Tillman, an aspiring writer in Naples, Florida, was surprised when he was notified of his winning entry.

“I had been trying desperately to write 50,000 words of my unfinished novel, Death Comes to the Armadillo, by the end of November for NaNoWriMo,” said Tillman, referring to the National Novel Writing Month competition. “At some point, after 28 hours without sleep, I started experimenting with parentheses and other punctuation in an attempt to evoke e. e. cummings. I awoke to find my screen covered with what I thought was complete gibberish, but apparently I wrote a recursively subdividing radix sort algorithm by mistake.”

Tillman had no prior experience with the C language, but after discovering a working Naive Bayesian Classifier in one of his other unfinished novels, he is considering a career in programming.

Matthew writes: Seeking to quell twelve consecutive nights of rioting, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has offered an unconditional surrender to whoever will accept it.

“We have done our part, we have offered this olive branch. But there seems to be nobody in charge of this army of youths. We cannot determine to whom we should surrender. It’s a unique situation.”

“We are advising French citizens to stay indoors, say goodbye to your cars, and wait until the rioting has become organized enough to show signs of a hierarchical organization. This may take another week or two. Once a strong-man has appeared, or at least a media spokesperson, the government is prepared to surrender unconditionally.”

Matthew writes: Lawyers for the Dover Board of Education, which is defending itself against charges that its policy to require a statement on science textbooks promoting intelligent design violates the separation between church and state, have closed their arguments by pointing to common examples that they say prove that intelligent design is at work in the world.

“Just look at this remote control. It fits my hand perfectly. When I point it at the television and push this button, the television comes on instantly, as if by magic. How could a device like this have evolved to control a television? Are we to believe that somehow the television and the remote control both evolved in lock step, in some sort of symbiotic relationship? Hogwash. Only intelligent design by an intelligent designer can possibly explain this sort of complexity.”

Reinhard Gantar writes:

1. Motorcar Publishers Association of America Sues Nanopster Over Car-Sharing
2. Duke Nukem Rollout Delayed to Q4 2098
3. Bill Gates-Sighting at Vegas-Hotel: Long Fingernails, Long Beard, Paranoid
4. Redmond-Gate: CEO Linus Torvalds Faces 15 Years in Low-Earth Orbit
5. Pimp Up Your ANSI-Compliant Sex-Surrogate
6. Ask Slashdot: Best Telepathy-Implant for Geeks?
7. Nanomatics-CEO Smears Open Spores as “Doubleplusungood”
8. Paula Graham: The Case For Lisp
9. Hurricane Zeta Tracked to Romanian Weatherpunk
10. Windows QOQ Fails Turing-Test — Again

Reinhard Gantar writes:

1. Morse In Your Questions For Jules Verne
2. How To Electrify Your Home For 20 Bucks
3. Sheet Music Publishers Assiciaton of America Sues Edison Over “Phonograph”
4. Michelson And Morley Screw Up Luminiferous Ether Experiment Pretty Good
5. Italian Geek Transmits Signal Without Wires
6. “Alternating Current” — Just A Pile of Hyperbole?
7. Ask Slashdot: How to Recover From Modernist Shock?
8. Gothic Novels Not Eroding Society, Scientists Say
9. Lighter-Than-Air-Flight vs. Heavier-Than-Air-Flight Controversy Rages On And On And On
10. Crazy Psychic Predicts Geeks’ Epic Battle Against Evil Empire, Finnish Saviour