Feature
written by James Baughn
on September 20, 2000
from the digging-through-the-archives dept.
News publications often issue corrections or retractions when they run an article that turns out to be false. Likewise, we here at Humorix are forced to issue corrections when a fake news article we ran turns out to be true. That's the purpose of Crashback, a new feature in which we provide updates for old fake news articles.
Any resemblance between this column and a particular Slashdot feature are merely coincidental. At least that's what our lawyer told us to say.
ICANN't Believe It
Recently we "announced" that every two-letter TLD had been sold to commercial interests. We labeled that article as "fake news", but it's slowly becoming true. We apologize for the confusion.
The Heard and McDonald Islands -- which have no population, no home government, and certainly no DNS servers -- have been granted their own Top Level Domain, .hm. And now this domain joins the swelling ranks of country-code TLDs that are now controlled by Big Evil Companies.
We're outraged. Some worthless Australian possessions in the south Pacific get their own TLD, but Humorixia -- that sovereign geek paradise sitting within international waters -- gets squat. When the Revolution(tm) occurs, all of the people responsible for the current shoddy state of the DNS system will... well, we'll think of something creative.
Karma == Kash
Last year, Humorix broke the fake news that Slashdot regulars were selling their karma-enriched user accounts on eBay for a tidy profit. It's no longer fake news. Some Dothead with the nick of "FascDot Killed My Pr" has placed his virtual property on the eBay auction block.
The bidding is up to US$112.50 on 18 bids, all of which are probably fake. It's hard to imagine anybody -- except perhaps for a retired dotcom billionaire -- would spend that much beer money on something that has no intrinsic value. After all, it would take all of 3 microseconds for Taco Boy to reduce your karma to -10,000,000. Or to increase the karma of all his friends so they can sell their own accounts for big bucks.
Good Move, Linus
Everyone's favorite "conniving bastard" announced that the Linux kernel would only be licensed under the GNU GPL version 2.0 and not any later version. Clearly, this move is designed to prevent Microsoft from acquiring Open Source by way of a "Grossly Private License version 3.0", a calamity we "reported" on earlier.
Does this mean Linus reads Humorix? Well, no, probably not.
No Longer The Worst Portal
Last year we noted that Google.com listed Humorix as the number one result for "worst portal". This is the only real news we've ever published -- and it later turns out to be false. We've been beaten by something called "Portal Of Evil" (no, it's not AOL) and two other irrelevent sites, leaving Humorix as the fourth worst portal.
Obviously, we're not happy about this lower ranking. Hopefully, by using the term "worst portal" numerous time in this article, we can regain our rightful place on Google. We're also working on securing top placement for other queries including "crappy portal", "money-making portal", and "worst website".
Life Imitates Humorix
Of course, some would quibble with the idea that Humorix could be compared to "art". But we do have a knack for predicting the future:
Does MS barcoding of Windows licences make piracy easier?
vs.
Microsoft's Anti-Piracy Policy Promotes Piracy
and
IT Olympics
vs.
The First Annual Nerdbowl
Fake News
written by James Baughn
on September 16, 2000
from the can-anyone-say-job-security? dept.
The Perl Gazette has announced the winners in the First Annual Unobfuscated Perl Code Contest. First place went to Edwin Fuller, who submitted this unobfuscated program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Hello world!\n";
"This was definitely a challenging contest," said an ecstatic Edwin Fuller. "I've never written a Perl program before that didn't have hundreds of qw( $ @ % & * | ? / \ ! # ~ ) symbols. I really had to summon all of my programming skills to produce an unobfuscated program."
The judges in the contest learned that many programmers don't understand the meaning of 'unobfuscated perl'. For instance, one participant sent in this 'Hello world!' program:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$x='unob';
open OUT, ">$x.c";
print OUT <<HERE_DOC;
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
FILE *f=fopen("$x.sh", "w");
fprintf(f,"echo Hello world!\\n");
fclose(f);
system("chmod +x $x.sh");
system("./$x.sh"); return 0;
}
HERE_DOC
close OUT;
system("gcc $x.c -o $x && ./$x");
"As an experienced Perl monger," said one of the judges, "I can instantly tell that this program spits out C source code that spits out a shell script to print 'Hello world!'. But this code certainly does not qualify as unobfuscated Perl -- I mean, most of it isn't even written in Perl!"
He added, "Out of all of the entries, only two were actually unobfuscated perl. Everything else looked like line noise -- or worse."
The second place winner, Mrs. Sea Pearl, submitted the following code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
# Do nothing, successfully
exit(0);
"I think everybody missed the entire point of this contest," ranted one judge. "Participants were supposed to produce code that could actually be understood by somebody other than a ten-year Perl veteran. Instead, we get an implementation of a Java Virtual Machine. And a version of the Linux kernel ported to Win32 Perl. Sheesh!"
In response to the news, a rogue group of Perl hackers have presented a plan to add a "use really_goddamn_strict" pragma to the language that would enforce readability and unobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say:
- Warning: Program contains zero comments. You've probably never seen or used one before; they begin with a # symbol. Please start using them or else a representative from the nearest Perl Mongers group will come to your house and beat you over the head with a cluestick.
- Warning: Program uses a cute trick at line 125 that might make sense in C. But this isn't C!
- Warning: Code at line 412 indicates that programmer is an idiot. Please correct error between chair and monitor.
- Warning: While There's More Than One Way To Do It, your method at line 523 is particularly stupid. Please try again.
- Warning: Write-only code detected between lines 612 and 734. While this code is perfectly legal, you won't have any clue what it does in two weeks. I recommend you start over.
- Warning: Code at line 1,024 is indistinguishable from line noise or the output of /dev/random
- Warning: Have you ever properly indented a piece of code in your entire life? Evidently not.
- Warning: I think you can come up with a more descriptive variable name than "foo" at line 1,523.
- Warning: Programmer attempting to re-invent the wheel at line 2,231. There's a function that does the exact same thing on CPAN -- and it actually works.
- Warning: Perl tries to make the easy jobs easy without making the hard jobs impossible -- but your code at line 5,123 is trying to make an easy job impossible.
- Error: Programmer failed to include required string "All hail Larry Wall" within program. Execution aborted due to compilation errors.
Of course, convincing programmers to actually use that pragma is another matter. "If somebody actually wanted to write readable code, why would they use Perl? Let 'em use Python!" exclaimed one Usenet regular. "So this pragma is a waste of electrons, just like use strict and the -w command line parameter."
Fake News
written by James Baughn
on September 11, 2000
from the could-you-get-fired-for-choosing-microsoft? dept.
WASHINGTON -- The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't going to be replacing them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters.
The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy against computer games. Microsoft Office, which contains several games in the form of Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators, pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the sub-adjunct administrator second-class, Mrs. Laverne Biehle. "So we can't use Office."
Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many employees wasting time playing Solitaire," said Biehle. "Unfortunately, Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all Windows computers."
The agency could switch to Linux or another system, but such a move would make too much sense. The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype, explained, "We don't want to use anything that's unsupported, so we're going to bring in old abucusses, slide rules, adding machines, and manual typewriters that we found sitting in the sub-basement under three inches of dust and cobwebs."
"Have you ever seen an abucus crash?" he asked. "Have you ever seen anybody have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs."
The agency's move also has another benefit: they no longer need to employ a "Bluescreen Boy". The security cameras in the agency's ten-story building were all pointed at the monitors of each computer. If a PC crashed and displayed a bluescreen, the security cameras picked it up and the B.B. was dispatched to manually reboot that computer. It was a horrible job, but the B.B. did get a nice exercise workout each day.
The former B.B. is now flipping burgers at Google.com's gourmet kitchen.
Fake News
written by James Baughn
on September 2, 2000
from the could-you-get-killed-for-using-windows? dept.
ELKO, NEVADA -- Microsoft's Dancing Paper Clip turned violent last week and nearly killed a university student testing a new Windows-based human-computer interface. The victim, Trevor Erikkson, is expected to make a full recovery, although psychiatrists warn that the incident may scar him emotionally for life. "You can bet this kid won't be using Windows or Office ever again," said one shrink.
The victim, a sophomore at Northeast Nevada Ivy League College, had been alpha-testing CHUG (Computer-Human Unencumbered Groupware), a new interface in which the user controls the computer with force-feedback gloves and voice activation. It's the force feedback part that nearly killed him.
"I was trying to write a term paper in Word," said Trevor from his hospital bed. "But then that damned Dancing Paper Clip came up and started annoying me. I gave it the middle finger, which it didn't like too much. It deleted my document, at which point I screamed at it and threatened to pull the power cord. I didn't get a chance to make good on that threat; the force-feedback gloves activated and started choking me."
It took the effort of several lab assistants to pry the gloves from his throat and put a stop to Clippit's violent rampage. The Department of Public Safety & Parking Tickets immediately arrested the computer.
"We told Clippit it had the right to remain silent, and so on," said Gustavo Warden, the head of DPS&PT. "The paperclip responded, 'Hi, I'm Clippit, the Office Assistant. Would you like to create a letter?' I said, 'Look here, Mr. Paperclip. You're being charged with attempted murder.' At that point the computer bluescreened."
That same computer, along with Clippit, is now sitting in a jail cell. "We had to put this machine behind bars before it could try to kill again," said the county prosecutor.
Legal scholars are divided on whether Clippit can actually be charged with a crime. "It's not human. It's not alive. It doesn't even pass the Turing Test," argued one professor. "How can you possibly put something like this on trial? And what if Clippit is found guilty? Are they going to give the paperclip the death penalty by typing 'FORMAT C:'?"
Some observers, however, agree that Clippit should be put on trial. "No society should tolerate software agents that turn violent. I don't care whether Clippit is really just some crappy algorithm existing as a series of magnetic fields on a hard drive. That doesn't give it the right to kill people."
Clippit isn't the only Microsoft creation with a temper. In 1998, Humorix reported that Microsoft's "Barney" toy would turn violent when exposed to a Tux Penguin doll.
Microsoft has pledged to fix Clippit's "known issue" by releasing a version of Office in which the paperclip is permanently disabled. Unfortunately, the Clippit-free version will cost $100 more than the regular version.
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