Microsoft Releases Office 2005 Poll Results

Fake News written by Timm Murray on February 29, 2000

REDMOND, WA -- At a press conference held earlier today, Microsoft announced the results of a poll about Office 2005. Microsoft polled 2,058 people (most of whom were Microsoft employees) if they would like the ability to kill roaches put into Office 2005.

43% of those polled said they would definitely like to be able to squish roaches with the upcoming product, 51% said it would be an OK feature, 2% were nature types that were against killing roaches, and 4% said it was a bad idea.

Upon further investigation, it was found that those 4% were actualy zealots of alternative operating systems, most of whom stated "What the $%*& are you talking about! That would be just another bloated feature!" However, Microsoft labled them fools, since obviously the masses want to squish roaches with just a click of the mouse.

Dubbed "DirectSquish", the new patent pending feature is expected to add 300 gigabytes to the installation and an extra three years of development, thus pushing back Office 2005's release date to sometime in 2008. The extra bloat will hardly be a problem, one Microsoft offical said, since "we'll all have three terabyte hard drives by then anyway".

Quickies Straight From Dave's Twisted Mind

Fake News written by Dave Finton on February 24, 2000

Dave Finton has sent in another round of Quickies. Since both of our regular readers (hi Bob and Eric!) actually like Dave's columns, we decided to run it even though we still have lingering doubts about his sanity.
   -- The Editor

Dave Declares War on Meta-Humor

David Finton, intrepid Humorix reporter, has declared war on the scourge of the internet known as meta-humor, whereby a joke will make fun of itself within itself. "These meta-jokes are going too far, and will cause some serious imbalances in the space-time continuum," said Dave to reporters at a press conference. "All too often, humorists will refer to themselves in the third person or even pretend they're being interviewed at imaginary press conferences just for convenience's sake. These so-called meta-humorists often work out of their basements smoking entire packs of cigarettes at a time while putting off critical tasks that need to be done, like laundry!

"These meta-humorists can be sneaky, too. Often times they'll try to get a good chuckle through self-depracating humor. Watch out for these people; they are a menace to society!"

James Baughn, creator of the Humorix website, has pushed Congress into passing the It's For The Children and Dave Quit Stealing My Jokes Act. This bill, if enacted into law, might be the only thing to get Dave to finally shut up.

"Make no bones about it," said Dave. "The first thing I will do is publish an article on Humorix on this matter. No meta-humorist will be safe from the clutches of my Giant Death Ray(tm).

[Just for your information, it is official Humorix policy to never employ silly editor's notes as a cheap attept at meta-meta-humor. -- The Editor]

Microsoft releases MS BackPedal 3.1

In conjunction with the release of Windows 2000 and the the nearing conclusion to the Justice Department Antitrust trial, Microsoft has responded to the growing market need for back-pedaling by releasing Microsoft BackPedal®, a software package designed to detract statements made by overworked CEO's and overzealous marketing droids.

"We released this product to address the growing needs of our biggest customer, namely ourselves," said Steve Ballmer. "When Bill Gates made those, um, silly comments about open-sourcing our flagship product, well we had to embrace and extend the concept of trying to rewrite history."

So far the BackPedal product has shown amazing success. Already Microsoft has rewritten many of its own misstatements. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" has already been converted to "You might be able to run Solitaire on 640 Megabytes of RAM with Windows NT on a good day". Also, "This court trial will have no impact on how we do business" has been rewritten as "We've split our operations up into 5 completely autonomous units, just in case".

The software is not without its bugs, however. An automatic e-mail form sent to bug-submitters for the Windows 2000 beta program that was supposed to read "Thank you for testing our beta product. While we are certain our product may contain a few flaws, we hope that your experience with our software has improved your life" instead read "This piece of crap already has 65,000 known bugs and you want to tell us about another one? We might look at your bug submission, but by the time we do your descendents may already have evolved into more advanced life forms such as bacteria, loser! Go use a real operating system; see what we care!"

"Whoops," replied Ballmer when notified of this. "Looks like an upgrade is already in the works. Cha-ching!"

EFNet Reaches 7th Straight Year of Nonfunctionality

IRC users across the world celebrated the 7th anniversity of the last known time EFNet, a network of Internet Relay Chat servers across the internet, was actually operational. The nonfunctionality of EFNet and IRC in general has become a mainstay in many internet users' lives.

Jim Smith, system administrator in charge of one such IRC server, lovingly patted the machine in the back corner of the server farm room. "This machine hasn't even been turned on in 4 years. Does that stop anybody from trying to connect to it during netsplits and heavily lagged periods of time? Nope! Boy, are these IRC users dumb! We've got three of these babies, and none of them have been working properly in the past decade or so. Just for fun we turn one on and hook it up to the network for a while, but when, say, a thousand lusers connect to it in the vain hope an IRC server is actually running, we pull the plug just for the hell of it!"

EFNet was once the main vehicle of communications in the early years of the internet but is now mainly used either for SPAM purposes or for transmitting messages to IRC users that a netsplit has occurred.

When one IRC user was asked why he just didn't go to another IRC network, he replied "No way d00d! This is where all my l33t friends are! Well it's either there or on AOL Instant Messenger...". AOL is in fact the only other internet service that has broken EFNet's record by being non-operational since the very beginning when the power switch was first turned on in Steve Case's garage back in the 18th century B.C.

Redmond Roundup

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 21, 2000

Back in the early 1990s, Bill Gates promised that Microsoft would finally produce an enterprise-level operating system that worked perfectly. Ten years and 63,000 bugs later, that dream is still five Service Packs away. Nevertheless, Redmond's latest creation, Windows 2000, is now officially available. Public reaction has been mixed. Below is a roundup of events and responses surrounding the Win2K launch that our Vast Spy Network(tm) has collected.

I want my bugs!

An entymologist in Georgia is threatening to sue Microsoft over false advertising in Windows 2000. "According to Microsoft, Win2K contains 63,000 bugs," he explained. "However, the shrink-wrapped box I purchased at CompUSSR only had one cockroach along with some worthless papers and a shiny drink coaster. I got ripped off."

The entymologist hoped that the 63,000 promised bugs would greatly add to his insect collection. "I had my doubts that Microsoft could deliver 63,000 insects in one small box for only US$299," he said. "However, with a company as innovative as Microsoft, the sky is the limit. Or at least that's what I thought." He then asked angrily, "Where do I want to go today? Back to the store for a refund!"

Publicity gimmicks generate publicity

Microsoft teamed up with electronics superstore Conductor City to provide promotional specials to buyers who pre-ordered Windows 2000. All copies of Win2K were bundled with a specially designed Microsoft keyboard attachment containing only three keys: CTRL, ALT, and DEL. One happy customer said, "This is great... On my old keyboards, those three keys were the first to fail. Now with this attachment, I won't have to replace my main keyboard every month."

Conductor City also offered a special program to offset the high price tag of the full Windows 2000 product. CC partnered with the Third Bank of Timbuktu to offer a Rent-To-Own program to people who couldn't afford to pay cash upfront for the operating system. The store advertised, "Now you too can own the most innovative Microsoft product ever for only one dollar down and 10 cents a day!"

Another publicity stunt called ActiveXXX generated much publicity -- and tremendous sales. People who pre-ordered Windows 2000 and signed up with the Microsoft Network for one year received a special password allowing them access to MSN's new ActiveXXX site, featuring live video feeds from cameras placed on the chests of scantily-clad waitresses at Hooters restaurants.

Failure is not an option. It comes standard with every Windows installation.

Even though Win2K has only been on the market for less than a week, one high-profile failure of a mission-critical system has already occured. A Win2K machine at the US Postal Service went on a "cyber" killing spree over the weekend taking out several sub-servers (rumored to be running Linux) on its own network. Officials had no explanation for the violent outburst, saying that the computer had always been friendly and out-going to its fellow routers and hubs.

Windows 2000 isn't the only failure-prone Redmond system. Microsoft CuteJo®, the software giant's answer to Sony's $2,500 robotic dog AIBO, has been recalled due to a recent incident in which the Windows Powered(tm) pup mauled its owner. The company released a statement saying this issue does not reflect any critical defects in its product, and that it was the owner's fault when, in reading its users guide, the person said out loud in disbelief: "You can fetch? My ass!"

"It did exactly what the customer demanded," the release said.

Pigs are flying

Satan was forced to dawn a parka this week when a large number of people, including some Linux longhairs, admitted that "Windows 2000 doesn't suck [that much]". One Linux hacker said, "Let's be honest, certain Microsoft products do provide a quality unmatched by any competitor. Those Windows 2000 manuals make excellent doorstops. Linux books just don't work well in this regard; they aren't thick and heavy enough. Also, when it comes to drink coasters and skeet shoot targets, nothing even comes close to a Microsoft produced CD-ROM."

The new found respect for Windows 2000 is even evident on Slashdot, that bastion of anti-Microsoft zealotry. For instance, last week somebody posted a favorable comment about Win2K that actually got moderated up! This has never happened before in the history of Slashdot.

Even Usenet is turning slightly pro-Microsoft. One anonymous coward posted on alt.linux.finnish.conspiracy, "Windows 2000 rules... even the webmaster of LinuxBeacon.com, a new Linux portal site, prefers Win2K." Several people agreed, although one Linux advocate reponded, "So what? Linux rules... even the webmaster of WindowsBeacon.com, a new Windows site, prefers Linux and Apache."

The Linux Forecaster

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 16, 2000

Another day, another portal opens. Today's latest get-rich-quick portal is called "LinuxForecast.com". Operated by a former meterologist, this site uses complex models to predict trends in the Linux world. "We can predict short-term weather events pretty well," he said, "So why can't we forecast the next Linux vs. FreeBSD flame war on Usenet or predict the duration and intensity of the dreaded Slashdot Effect?"

As the founder of LinuxForecast.com, Eric "Stormy" Jones is living out the American Geek dream: he just built his very own Beowulf cluster. "After getting 'The Letter' from Red Hat and VA Linux, I made enough money to buy my own Beowulf cluster," he boasted. "My old co-workers at the National Weather Service are so jealous; my cluster rivals those new supercomputers they just installed. They'll have trouble keeping up with this Jones."

Eric's cluster certainly is impressive. It accurately forecasted a Slashdot Effect 24 hours in advance, allowing Eric to send this warning email to the victim before the storm hit:

NOTICE: LinuxForecast.com has issued a Slashdot Effect Watch for your domain effective for the next 48 hours. Forecast models indicate that Taco Boy is planning on posting an article about your "Penguin Porn" site. The models disagree on the timing or duration of the storm, although we can say that a moderate risk of server crashes, excess bandwidth usage, and increased website hosting bills are possible.

Please take appropriate action by mirroring your site. It might be too late now, but you might also want to consider purchasing Denial Of Service insurance.

Eric Jones hopes to expand his portal website so that Slashdot Effect advisories are automatically issued. "It's a public service," he explained. "I mean, look at all the publicity those (cr|h)ackers who launched an attack on Yahoo got. What they did is a pittance compared to the daily firestorms that Andover.Net is responsible for."

The former weatherman is also using his personal Beowulf cluster to predict other trends. "Did you see that massive trollfest on Slashdot Monday when somebody used an automatic comment poster? I saw that coming days in advance," he boasted. "I can predict the signal-to-noise ratio on Slashdot, Usenet, and other forums days in advance with a margin of error of only 5%. Of course, with Slashdot that's easy: the S/N ratio is always less than 1:10,000."

Stock prices and business events are also tracked by Jones' cluster. "My site is going to be acquired within a month by some media conglomerate; it'll have an IPO within six months and I'll be a multi-millionaire by Christmas." When I asked about the future prospects for Humorix, he replied, "Both of your regular readers will be joined by a third reader by the end of the year. Otherwise your crappy site will remain crappy and you'll have to break down and get a day job. Nobody will find your pathetic attempts at self-referential meta-meta-humor funny."

Jones also made some dire predictions for Linux portals. "There's just too many of them. The daily amount of new open source code written will drop by 22% next month as people stop hacking and start working on Linux websites, hoping to get-rich-quick by selling out to Andover and VA Linux. In years past start-up companies dreamed of being acquired by Microsoft; now everybody wants to be acquired by VA Linux or Red Hat."

"The bubble will burst," he continued, before I could get a word in edgewise reminding him that his own site is a get-rich-quick sellout-bound portal site. "Take, for example, the new LinuxBeacon.com portal. The site runs Microsoft IIS 5.0 and Windows 2000! The webpages were composed using Windows software, and they urgently need to be demoronised. Within 48 hours the webmaster is going to be on the receiving end of a flamewar initiated by outraged Linux zealots. That site is doomed to fail, just like many others."

He then added quickly, "Except mine."

At this point his beeper went off and he exclaimed, "Oh, crap! One of my forecast models indicates that my site is about to be hit by the Slashdot Effect. Oh dear Lord! I gotta run."

Brief History Of Linux (Part 2)

Feature written by James Baughn on February 7, 2000

After we published Part 1 of this series, both of our regular readers sent flames complaining that this "Brief History of Linux" was neither brief, nor a history of Linux. Whatever. It's now time to present Part 2 of this series in which we describe the invention of computers, Unix, and Al Gore's Internet.

Let's all holler for Hollerith

The US Constitution mandates that a census be held every ten years. In 1890 the US Congress extended the census to collect exhaustive demographic information on each citizen that could be resold to marketing companies to help pay for the newly installed gold-plated toilets in Capitol Hill bathrooms. With the sheer amount of data to be collected, some people estimated that the 1890 Census wouldn't be completed until 1900. It was hoped that an electronic tabulating machine using punchcards designed by Herman Hollerith would speed up the process.

It didn't quite work out that way. First, an infestation of termites ate their way through the wooden base of Hollerith's machines, and then a wave of insects devoured several stacks of punchcards.

Second, some Hollerith models had the propensity to crash at the drop of a hat... literally. In one recorded instance, the operator dropped his hat while standing nearby, and when he reached down to pick it up, he bumped the machine, causing it to flip over and crash. (Incidentally, the hat in question was a blue hat, not a Red Hat as a certain Microsoft-owned encyclopedia has claimed.)

These flaws meant that the census was delayed for several years. However, the system was, in the words of one newspaper reporter, "good enough for government work", a guiding principle that lives on to this very day and explains the government's insistence on using Windows-based PCs.

The company that Hollerith later founded merged with two others to form C-T-R (Calculating-Tabulating-Recording, one of the most hideously named companies of the time, only to be surpassed years later by Bill Gates' "Traf-O-Data"). C-T-R was later renamed to IBM in 1924.

Edison's most important invention

One of Thomas Edison's most profound inventions was that of patent litigation. Edison used his many patents on motion pictures to monopolize the motion picture industry. One could argue that Edison was an early pioneer for the business tactics employed by Microsoft and the MPAA/DVD-CCA.

Indeed, Edison's company, the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), formed in 1908, bears a striking resemblance to the modern-day Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Similar intitials, different people, same evil. The MPCC, with the help of hired thugs, ensured that all motion picture producers paid tribute to Edison and played by his rules. The MPAA, with the help of hired lawyers, ensures that all motion picture producers pay tribute and play by their rules.

Ironically, filmmakers that found themselves facing Edison patent litigation (or worse) fled to Texas, California, and Mexico. Those same filmmakers outlasted Edison's monopoly (broken up in 1917 by the courts) -- and eventually banded together to form the MPAA! History has a tendency to repeat itself; so it seems likely that today's DVD lawsuit victims may well come to power in the future -- and soon become the evil establishment, thus completing another cycle.

The AnyQuack Computer

The days of Hollerith's mechnical tabulating machines were soon replaced by electronic machines. One such device, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody at Bletchly Park knew how to read German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages.

Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument quickly ensued, in which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer! The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes."

One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack! I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate 1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology. Surely you jest," one responded.

Eckert, with the help of others, did build such a device. As a joke, he called the machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym.

Birth of Gates and the Anti-Gates

October 28, 1955 saw the birth of William H. Gates, who would rise above his humble beginnings as the son of Seattle's most powerful millionaire lawyer and become the World's Richest Man(tm). A classic American rags-to-riches story (with "rags" referring to the dollar bills that the Gates family used for toilet paper), Bill Gates is now regarded as the world's most respected businessman by millions of clueless people that have obviously never touched a Windows machine.

Nature is all about balance. The birth of Gates in 1955 tipped the cosmic scales toward evil, but the birth of Linus Torvalds in 1969 finally balanced them out. Linus' destiny as the savior of Unix and the slayer of money-breathing Redmond dragons was sealed when, just mere hours after his birth, the Unix epoch began January 1st, 1970. While the baseline for Unix timekeeping might be arbitrary, we here at Humorix like to thank the its proximity of Linus' birth is no coincidence.

Bill Gates hasn't changed a bit

The early Gates childhood is best summed up in this excerpt from a note his second grade teacher wrote to his parents:

Billy has been having some trouble behaving in class lately... Last Monday he horded all of the crayons and refused to share, saying that he needed all 160 colors to maximize his 'innovation'. He then proceeded to sell little pieces of paper ("End-User License Agreement for Crayons" he called them) granting his classmates the 'non-transferable right' to use the crayons on a limited time basis in exchange for their lunch money...

When I tried to stop Billy, he kept harping about his right to innovate and how my interference violated basic notions of free-market capitalism. "Holding a monopoly is not illegal," he rebutted. I chastised him for talking back, and then I took away the box of crayons so others could share them... angrily, he then pointed to a drawing of his hanging on the wall and yelled, "That's my picture! You don't have the right to present my copyrighted material in a public exhibition without my permission! You're pirating my intellectual property. Pirate! Pirate! Pirate!"

I developed a headache that day that even the maximum allowed dosage of Aspirin wasn't able to handle. And what I've described happened only on Monday. On Tuesday, it was worse... he conned several students out of their milk money by convincing them to play a rigged game of three-card Monty...

Wanted: Eunuchs programmers

Everything you know about the creation of the Unix operating system is wrong. Research by our Vast Spy Network(tm) has uncovered the truth: Unix was a conspiracy hatched by Ritchie and Thompson to thwart the AT&T monopoly that they worked for. The original system -- code-named EUNUCHS (Electronic UNtrustworthy User-Condemning Horrible System), a play on Multics, was horribly conceived, just as the co-conspiractors had planned.

The system, quickly renamed to a more respectable "Unix" to downplay rumors about the author's private lives, was adopted first by Ma Bell's Patent Department and then by the rest of the monopoly. AT&T saw an inexpensive, multi-user, portable operating system that it had all rights to; the authors, however, saw a horrible, multi-crashing system that the company would become hopelessly dependent on. AT&T would go bankrupt trying to maintain the system, and the Evil Empire of Ma Bell would collapse just as the authors had hoped.

That, as we all know, didn't happen. Ritchie and Thompson were too talented to create a crappy operating system; no matter how hard they tried the system was better than they wanted. Their last ditch effort to sabotage the system by recoding it C (a newly developed language so obfuscated and complex that only Kernighan and Ritchie could read it) was unsuccessful. Before long Unix spread outside of Bell Labs and their conspiracy collapsed.

Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969

The network that eventually became the Internet was formed in 1969. It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET, a rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto, "The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)".

In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith" Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al Gore invented the Internet years later.

While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly. Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup, was created by Steve Walker when he sent a message containing the text "First post!" to it. In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars. Some things never change.

Too many hyphens: Traf-O-Data and Micro-soft

Bill Gates and his classmate Paul Allen attended an exclusive private school in Seattle. In 1968, after raising $3,000 from a yard sale, they gained access to a timeshare computer and immediately became addicted. After depleting their money learning BASIC and playing Solitaire, they convinced a company to give them free computer time in exchange for reporting bugs -- ironically, an early form of Open Source development! It should be noted that this company, Computer Center Corp., went bankrupt in 1970, primarily because Gates & Allen kept crashing their central computer while trying to program a Minesweeper game in BASIC.

The two then founded a small company called Traf-O-Data that collected and analyzed traffic counts for municipalities using a crude device based on the Intel "Pretanium" 8008 CPU. They had some success at first, but ran into problems when they were unable to deliver their much hyped second-generation device called "TrafficX". A civil engineer in Spokane, Washington is quoted as saying that "Traf-O-Data is the regional leader in vaporware", the first documented usage of the term that has come to be synonymous with Bill Gates.

Soon thereafter, the two developed their own BASIC interpreter, and sold it to MITS for their new Altair computer. April 4, 1975 is the fateful day that Micro-soft was officially founded in Albuquerque, NM as a language vendor. (Remember that date if you do happen to stumble on a time-machine during your life.)

Closed source, opened wallets

In 1976 Bill Gates wrote the famous letter to Altair hobbyists accusing them of "stealing software" and "preventing good software from being written". We must assume Bill's statement was true, because no good software was being written at Micro-soft.

Bill Gates did not innovate the concept of charging megabucks for software, but he was the first to make megabucks from peddling commercial software.

If only Gary had been sober

When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979 (leaving behind the hyphen), most of its revenue came from sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti looked more orderly than its code did. (BASIC has ruined more promising programmers than anything else, prompting its original inventor Dartmouth University to issue a public apology in 1986.)

However, by 1981 BASIC hit the backburner to what is now considered the luckiest break in the history of computing: MS-DOS. (We use the term "break" because, well, MS-DOS was -- and always will be -- broken.) IBM was developing a 16-bit "personal computer" and desperately needed an operating system to drive it.

Their first choice was Gary Kildall's CP/M, but IBM never struck a deal with him. Historians to this day still argue why Kildall got the shaft, although, after extensive research, we've discovered the true reason: Kildall was drunk at the time the IBM representatives went to talk with him. A sober man would not have insulted the reps, calling their employer an "Incredibly Bad Monopoly" and referring to their new IBM-PC as an "Idealistically Backwards Microcomputer for People without Clues". Needless to say, Gary "I Lost The Deal Of The Century" Kildall was not sober.

We all know what terrible calamity happened next: IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of $50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines -- which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it really wasn't that shabby).

Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts.

But, as we shall see in next installment, Bill Gates was not without his enemies. Richard M. Stallman set in motion the GNU Project -- a snowball rapidly rolling down the mountain and poised to bury Microsoft. Linus Torvalds, of course, comes on the scene in 1991 when he sets in motion the Linux kernel -- a boulder rapidly rolling down the mountain and poised to bury Microsoft as well.

Check back soon for Part 3 which chronicles the rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire -- and the beginnings of the Open Source and Linux revolution.

That Could Have Been Me!

Fake News written by James Baughn on February 3, 2000

Thousands of Linux zealots are kicking themselves in response to the VA Linux/Andover.Net MegaPortal merger. "I had this brilliant idea for a Linux portal website back in 1997," said "Bob16", a poor college student. "But I decided to drink beer instead of working on 'Bob16's Linux Homepage'. I could've been a billionaire like Taco Boy!"

Bob16 isn't alone. "I was going to create this cool free software repository called Freshbeef.org," said another IPO-less Linux zealot with 20/20 hindsight. "But I had second thoughts about the idea. Why would anyone visit my site when they could just browse the Linux Software Map?"

One hacker has founded a small Support Group for other people that missed the portal bandwagon -- and the accompanying riches. "Not everybody can be Rob Malda," Mr. Eric Poor, the founder of the People Without Portals Support Group, admitted. "Still, if we had played our cards right, we could've been raking in the stock options now. Besides, unlike Rob Malda, I can actually write a full article without making a dumb spelling or grammatical error."

Mr. Poor then added, not realizing who he was talking to, "One thing is sure, though, I'm glad that I never bothered to found a Linux humor site. That market segment is going nowhere fast!"

Actually, Linux humor is looking more and more lucrative. Humorix's Investor Relations Liason (Mr. G. E. Trich) calculated, on the back of a napkin while eating lunch today, that the total net worth of the Humorix website is US$3,380,000!

"I'm not making that number up," he said. "You see, Andover.Net is being acquired for US$813 million. Now, Andover.Net handles 2.4 million unique visitors per month. That comes out to around $338 per visitor. In January, Humorix received about 10,000 unique visitors. So, $338 multiplied by 10,000 yields $3.38 million!"

He then added a disclaimer, "Nobody would acquire Humorix unless we claimed a dot com domain name. Unfortunately, humorix.com is already taken by some Swedish guy that actually has the first name of 'Humorix'. I discussed the matter with our lawyer Noah Morals; he doesn't think we can snatch the domain from him without spending millions on legal fees. All of the other good domains -- LowBudgetLinuxPortal.com, LinuxMoneyMakingPortal.net, LinuxFakeNewsAndPropaganda.com, LawyersAreEvil.com, and NonStopBillGatesJokes.com -- have already been snatched by domain squatters trying to resell them unsuccessfully on eBay for $1 million a pop."

Any megaportals wishing to acquire this hot Linux PORTAL property may send their offers to give-us-money@i-want-a-website.com. Other corporations unable to afford our asking price may still be interested in our Advertising Rate Schedule; we'll refrain from poking fun at your company if you give us enough money.

Scientists Discover Network-Based Lifeforms

Fake News written by Jonathan Day on February 2, 2000

Researchers in the field of Cryptonet-Zoology issued the following announcement today, after several years of painstaking research into the phenomena of "Network Lag":

"We have successfully identified three new species of life within the Internet, and two new habitats. Our research indicates that these are having a significant impact on the usage of the Internet.

Extensive studies led to the discovery of Network Buffalo, a species of buffalo which now exists entirely within analog and digital networks. Our research indicates that a technician at MIT left the back of a computer open, in the early 60's, which allowed the buffalo to enter. Since then, they have been grazing on clumps of packets and substantially changing the electronic ecosystem. Some buffalo also broke into the old analog phone system, prior to the installation of cattle grids on Internet gateways. By supersampling the sound of so-called 'phone static', we have shown this to be the animal calls between the buffalo.

Additional research led us to the discovery of Router Swamps. Drinks spilled onto keyboards drip down the wires and collect in pools at the bottom of the routers. These eventually become swamps, which unwary connections can fall into. Inhabiting these swamps is a species of digital alligator, previously unknown to science. These alligator feed off the trapped connections, and other nearby prey. Extensive tests with traceroute indicate that connections sometimes do escape these swamps, but injuries can be severe.

Lastly, we wish to introduce to the world a third species, an electronic penguin. It has long been known that in the aquatic depths of the Electron Ocean, there exist schools of red herring, which confuse and mislead the unwary voyager. The penguin (scientific name Tuxus Tuxus) eats these in large quantities. Voyagers are advised to have several of these penguin aboard, for safety."