Drunk PC users beat Mac user, nearly to death

Joey Osborne, in town on business, was jumped and beaten Saturday morning by a group of men who called him a MacUser.

Osborne tells us that he walked out of Clyde Franklin's apartment on East 85th Street between York and East End Avenues, where he'd been staying, at about 4 a.m. to smoke a cigarette on the sidewalk, and five or six fat middle aged men swarmed him.

"It's very blurry," he says, "But yeah, they said 'MacUser.' And the next thing I know I'm in the hospital."

Franklin, an acting coach, heard the fracas and came downstairs to find his friend "in a pool of blood. I thought he was dead. He wasn't moving."

Franklin says neighbors in the building told him, and the police, that they saw a group of five or six fat middle-aged men "with combovers, wearing pocket protectors" drinking Busch beer outside the building just before the incident -- and, drawn to their window by the noise when the beating occurred, heard the anti-Mac epithets and saw the middle-aged men pile into a car and drive away.

"They even identified the make and model," says Osborne. "A gold Chevrolet older model station wagon. They clearly saw what happened." (The witnesses have not returned our calls.)

Osborne says his doctor told him his injuries suggest he was hit with a blunt object. "The mark on my forehead looks like it was made by a power supply," he says.

Osborne has since been released from the hospital, and is convalescing at Franklin's. Both he and Franklin say they've been to the 19th Precinct to follow up on their case, which they characterize as a hate crime, but were told the case has been closed

Google and Microsoft merge to form GoogleSoft - Arnold Schwarzenegger named CEO

It's official. Google and Microsoft have merged to form GoogleSoft. The FTC, expected to use anti-trust laws to stop such a merger, are letting the merger through because of another surprise development.

GoogleSoft's first order of business will be to buy California. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been appointed the new CEO of GoogleSoft. "This is good for California. This is good for the United States." said Schwarzenegger.

"California is broke - we have more than a 20 billion dollar deficit. GoogleSoft will now handle the day to day affairs of California, within the framework of the United States of America, of course." said Schwarzenneger.

GoogleSoft's first move will be to install giant flat panel display billboards along all major thoroughfares. GoogleSoft will sell advertising space on these billboards via their new program, CaliSense.

"The cool part of CaliSense is that each driver will be issued a new license plate embedded with RFID. The RFID will hold general demographic information about each driver obtained from the drivers license application, IRS income tax returns, and a live GoogleSoft search. Based on this information, the billboard will display the advertisment that will appeal to the greatest number of drivers near the billboard at the time. It's ingenious." said Schwarzenegger.

Sobdecode helps end infant suffering

A new research by the Information Technology Futures department of University of Cosmic Blanks have invented a Child Semantic Web software that will enable parents to decode the cries and babbles of their infants and take immediate placating actions. Imagine the troubles and travails of the mothers of newborn babies who are presently unable to understand the reasons behind the cries and blabbering of their kids. Mrs. Limbo often shouts out of exasperation that her daughter child makes so much peculiar noise combined with high pitch crying that she feels like fainting unable to understand what exactly the kid's demand is. Now the newly researched Sobdecode software from the University would provide the much needed relief to those parents like Mrs. Limbo.

The sobdecode works on a very simple principle. Baby cries and blabbering from different parts of the world have been systematically recorded by volunteering data collectors across the globe. A specially designed brain wave sensor has been used along with these recorders to monitor the emission of electromagnetic signals instantaneously from the wailing kids. To provide additional input data, sometimes the volunteers also interview the parents to understand as to how they have been reacting to their kids' sobbing.

Presto! All these billions and billions of bytes of data have been fed to a super computer and an algorithm based on the original mathematical principle of Newton and Einstein is used to bring out systematic correlation between the voice signals of the babies, wave signals of the brains and the intelligent inferences of the parents. The scientists have taken extra care to include differential equations which would compensate for the throat bio systems of the children from different geographical regions. For this purpose, they set out separate biology professors who studied the pattern of cell arrangements in the vocal chords of kids from different regions. Thus has evolved the child semantic web software sobdecode that is likely to revolutionise the "parents care" for the kids.

Imagine the future where you can just keep a tiny microphone in front of your uncontrollable child while he is crying and your laptop or a custom made microprocessor simply displays help commands as to what your child is actually asking for. Sobdecode is possibly the most wonderful invention of this decade and would be recommended for the Nobel peace prize, both by the billions of the parents and their sobbing kids together.

An interesting finding on the sidelines of this study was that the African kids can cry so loud that they can put an elephant to shame!!

Boost your geek street cred - the definitive guid

Want to instantly boost your street-cred in computer geek circles? Follow these steps:

#1 Take the cover off of you computer. Don't actually touch anything, you might break something or yourself. Real computer geeks are always fixing or changing the hardware in their computers, and don't have time for such mundane things as covers on their computers. That would be like, well, a car with the hood on.

#2 Install Linux on a computer. Not on your main computer. You won't be using Linux, but it is cool to say you have it on your computer. Make sure to get an easy to install distro like Ubuntu. Now you can officially call yourself open-source. Having Linux installed on your computer gives you the right to bash all kinds of corporate entities - Microsoft, Adobe, any hardware vendor that doesn't supply Linux drivers for their hardware....almost anyone is fair game. Except for Apple. Nobody talks bad about Apple.

#3 Speaking of Apple - buy one, NOW. Ok, now that you have bought an Apple computer - you will automatically feel compelled to justify it's ridiculously high price by using it solely for the purpose of making fun of the Wintel box buyers that "don't get it." Buying the Mac will raise your IQ by at least 10 points and you will immediately be seen as a more caring, more creative and more just-fun-in-general-to-be-around guy.

#4 You must always claim to use Notepad. Whenever a conversation breaks out in your favorite geek forum about "What do you guys use to make web pages with?"....sit back and wait for around 10 replies to go up. Then you strike...."I just use notepad". When they start asking "What IDE do you use to develop your code?"....again, just go with "I use notepad.". All the other guys that claim to use Dreamweaver, or Frontpage or whatever other WYSIWYG web tool they use, will immediately feel inadequate. "I use notepad" is only 3 words, but it speaks volumes about the depth of your coding knowledge and disdain for some other guys "fancy schmansy GUI". If your use of notepad is challenged in any way, make sure to throw the term "bloatware" around liberally in your counter-attack.

#5 Along the same lines, whenever anyone talks about doing anything using icons, claim that it can be done faster at the command line. It doesn't matter that you don't know how to do anything from the command line. Just claim that the task it faster using the command line instead of the GUI. Your opposition will immediately feel like GUI little sissys.

#6 Always be on the lookout for chances to "one-up" the opposition. Here are a few key phrases:

Them: I bought a new Dell.

You: I just built my own.

Them: I use Photoshop.

You: I use GIMP, it's so open source and just as powerful.

Them: I use Windows.

You: I use Linux.

Them: I use Linux.

You: I use Mac. (Remember - Apple trumps everything.)

Them: I use Mac.

You: (Don't say anything, just give them a hug. Your mutual Apple use obviously makes you smarter, more compassionate and just generally-in-a-higher-tax-bracket than everyone else, and the two of you should celebrate that together.)

...This list is not meant to be exhaustive. This is just to give you a start on your way to super-geek-wannabedome.

***This was written using WINE in Slackware so that I could enter the text using nothing but notepad.

GOOGLE UNVEILS NEW MARVEL Revolutionizes Modern Writing Industry!

Google today unveiled their newest creation, the Google Writer, allegedly decades in production.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, claimed at the press release that: "This one was long in the making, but we are finally satisfied that we have created the finest in-hand manual writing product the Western World has ever seen!"

The blogosphere was atwitter with praise for this new product: it never required an ink refill, and came equipped with integrated error correction hardware. It self-reflectively informed the user as to the continued usefulness of its lifespan, and came in a multitude of colors!

Brin added "They are less expensive than most modern pens, and are produced from 100% natural products and processes!"

Signing his name using the new Google Writer on an oversized 'Guarantee to the Public,' Brin left the stage to uproarious applause from the assembled Press Corps.

With the recent releases of their smart phone, an alleged iPhone killer, and the recent announcement of their intent to create an all-new operating system, many in the IT industries have predicted Google's next step into the profit stratosphere: it would seem that, with the release of Google Writer, these predictions have been flouted. Stationary, it would seem, lies in Google's future.

When reached for comment, Jules Ivanov, the Media Contact for Bic, Inc, the largest pen manufacturer in the world, told our reporter, "It's just a pencil, people. It's just a pencil that says 'Google Writer' on it." Our calls to Google were not returned.

Nintendo announces release of WiiFornicate

In a shocking move, Nintendo has announced the September release of the adult software title "WiiFornicate".

"Just in time for Christmas! " said Hiro Nagoya, new Nintendo CEO. "We are excited to begin our transition from a kids only console, to one that can stimulate our older audience.

The WiiFornicate comes with an interesting assortment of hardware. There are velcro straps to attach the WiiMote and nunchuks to various parts of the body. For single-player mode there is an assortment of rubber dongs known as "WiiNers" which plug into the nunchuk port on the WiiMote. There are also several sleeve, known as "WiiVags".

"In pilot testing, the WiiFornicate has increased fornication 57% in the 20-45 year old target audience group. Men are reporting a 22% increase in stamina." reported Nagoya.

"Stay tuned! A patch will be released soon that offers network play via the single-player sleeves. Mii's are also being revamped to not look so childish." said Nagoya.

WiiFornicate sounds like a fucking good time!

Greenpeace protesting Beowulf cluster of 1,024 Commodore 64's

Cash-strapped, computer science students at Thomas Jefferson Community College in Wabash, Mississsippi have managed to construct their own super-computer.

"It's a Beowulf cluster comprised of 1,024 Commodore 64 computers." says senior Art Russell. "The computers were uncovered in an old QVC warehouse and donated to the school."

QVC's president Ross Nippleman is an alumni of the 800 student community college.

"Basically, we have 1,024 Commodore 64's networked together. We also have a storage array of 500 1541 floppy disk drives." said Russell.

Greenpeace protestors arrived shortly after completion of the project.

"These rednecks have doubled the energy consumption of this town to run a computer that is less powerful than this!" said Greenpeace protestor Alan Watts, as he gestured towards his iPhone.

Greenpeace protestors are picketing Jefferson CC's Center for Supercomputing, which was the gymnasium a week ago. Things are peaceful now, but local police are keeping a watchful eye.