SlashNOT

Matthew writes: To celebrate the sending of the last telegram ever on January 26th, 2006 (145 years after Samuel Morse sent the first one) we thought we’d use the SlashNOT transchronizer to celebrate the death of various other technologies.

• 2008 Last UPC code scanned
• 2009 Last NTSC television signal transmitted
• 2010 Last tape backup completes
• 2011 Last free e-mail message sent
• 2015 Last unchipped baby born
• 2019 Last dial-tone line decommissioned
• 2030 Last router on the IP based Internet shut down
• 2030 Last road-legal manually driven car produced

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

Matthew writes: In an attempt to catch spammers, Microsoft has created a zombie network designed to be attacked and infiltrated by hackers. The network, consisting of 500 million consumer and business grade computers, was specially infected with “Microsoft Windows”—software explicitly designed to attract hackers and allow them to easily compromise the machines.

A Microsoft spokesman explains: “We take typical computers and convince their owners (we call them Zombies) to install Windows. Once the machines have been thoroughly compromised, we take three or four of them and track down the people controlling them. This allows us to prosecute those individuals, thus making the Internet safer for everyone.”

Matthew writes: The body of Rosa parks arrived today at the Capitol Rotunda-an exclusive “men’s only” Washington area mausoleum, where it lay defiantly in honor, refusing to move. The Capitol Rotunda, historically reserved exclusively for the bodies of dead men, was abuzz in activity as first the custodial staff and then the Secret Service attempted to convince or coerce the defiant late Ms. Parks to leave without causing a scene.

The former Ms. Parks would not even acknowledge the attempts, remaining proudly in state without dignifying their efforts with a response. Having apparently learned from the last time Ms. Parks refused to budge, the government quickly jumped on the bandwagon, opening the doors of the Rotunda to visitors and dignitaries wishing to pay their respects.

Matthew writes: NASA has become increasingly vocal about it’s dismay over the longevity of the Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Mars exploration program manager Orlando Figueroa had this to say about the durability of the rovers:

“These rovers were designed to operate for 3 months. We’re over 24 months now—that’s almost ten times longer than they were supposed to last. Yeah, it was all fun at first, what with Spirit’s boot problems at all, and it was great when they lasted longer than three months, you know, in theory, just to show that we can make things that last as long as their supposed to.”

“But seriously, you try maintaining a 24.5 hour long days over the course of two years. My sex life is totally gone man. I leave at what I think is 10:00 p.m., open the back door and get totally blasted by noonday sun. This was supposed to be a few months gig for me, and it’s turning into a damned career.”

“It’s not like the public is going to let us abandon two perfectly good rovers because we’re tired of staring at rocks all day, so our budget is totally blown out of the water. What are we giving up to pay for the continued operations? We could be blowing up asteroids or dropping probes on Venus—you know, going where no rover has gone before.”