Washington DC (AP) — In a speech accepting his party’s nomination, John McCain pledged to wrest control of the Internet from its creator, Al Gore, and turn it into a “God-fearing, gun-filled, sexless, Republican Internet” if elected.

Speaking at the GOP national convention, McCain also promised to introduce a bill requiring every computer on the network to be powered, not by “liberal, Gore-loving electricity,” but by safe, dependable oil.

“My friends, let me ask you, do you know what the Internet really is?” McCain said to the crowd. As no one seemed to know, McCain then went on to talk about Social Security and Medicare.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a joint press conference in St. Peter’s Square this morning, Microsoft Corporation and the Vatican announced that the Redmond software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Microsoft common stock. If the deal goes through, it will be the first time a computer software company has acquired a major world religion.

With the acquisition, Pope John Paul II will become the senior vice-president of the combined company’s new Religious Software Division, while Microsoft senior vice-presidents Michael Maples and Steven Ballmer will be invested in the College of Cardinals, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. Read the rest of this entry »

In an announcement that stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted the Unix operating system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate prank, kept alive over 20 years. Speaking at the recent UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:

“In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T Multics project. Brian and I had started work with an early release of Pascal from Professor Niklaus Wirth’s ETH labs in Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and power. Dennis had just finished reading ‘Bored of the Rings’, a National Lampoon parody of the Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. Read the rest of this entry »

Luxor, Egypt - An Egyptian-Dutch team unearthed a hall in a tomb at Zira Abu al-Naga, on the Westbank at Luxor. The tomb was thought to be another burial site because of its proximity to the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, upon entering the tomb, the discovery of a lifetime was made – an ancient data center, most likely used for the administration of King Tut’s royal society. Most astonishing was how well the data center was preserved with the main AS/400 server still intact. Most Egyptologist have agreed that the Egyptian culture was very advanced, but no one dreamed they had this kind of technology. It is now much easier to understand how the Ancient Egyptians dug their tombs and built their temples.

In an exclusive interview with Mid-Deranged, SCA chief Zahi Hawass, the world’s most renowned Egyptologist, offered the following perspective: “Why is this discovery important? Because it answers so many questions of how the Egyptians were able to do what they have done. Everyone thought the Egyptians had some kind of magical power and now we find this data center in the Valley of the Kings. It was found seven meters away from King Tut! This area has been excavated before and yet we missed this site. What a discovery. So many things about the Egyptian civilization now make sense.”

Otto Schaden, leader of the team that uncovered the find, generally agrees with Hawass’ assessment. Standing in front of the site, Schaden told Mid-Deranged, “For all we know, there may be a S/370 buried here. Who knows? You can speculate endlessly.”

The find will be studied for some time before before all the answers are known. One of the most fortunate discoveries that will help in the research is the fact that the ancient AS/400 fired right up when power was applied to it. Data retrieval is currently underway. Hopefully preliminary results will be available soon.

Armonk NY – Early photos of the prototype version of the famed Batmobile have revealed the real manufacturer as none other than IBM. Who else could pull off making a car with heavy armor plating, a high performance engine, rocket boosters and a weapons system controlled by an IBM Bladecenter running the IBM i operating system?

The Batmobile is depicted in the 2005 film Batman Begins and the 2008 film Batman: The Dark Knight. The film’s production designer described the machine as being a cross between a Lamborghini, a Hummer and an IBM System i.

Believe it or not, we have discovered an amazing and easy technique that will convert your ordinary PC laptop to an Apple MacBook. After much research and trial and error, we have perfected and simplified the technique so that anyone can make the conversion. We actually have one running in the lab at this moment. See the following photo as proof!

Another classic IBM iSeries advertisement. Where were these ads during the Superbowl?

Rochester MN - With the recent announcement of the new IBM Power Systems which will replace the System i hardware, the i5/OS will also be replaced and renamed. Because of the much greater capabilities of the new operating system, IBM has named it the Virtual Universe Operating System – VU/OS.

Running under VU/OS, the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of their own, but an entire universe of their own, in which they can create or remove their own programs, databases, libraries, users, networks, and planetary systems. They need only specify the universe they desire, and the VU/OS system generation program (QGOD) does the rest. This program will reside in the QSYS library. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with VU/OS, all system programs have been replaced by one program (QPROPHET) which will also reside in the QSYS library. This program has no parameters as it knows what you want to do when it is executed.

Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the IT field if an efficient utilization of VU/OS is to be achieved. Frequent calls to non-resident galaxies, for instance, can lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly owned subsidiary, The United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful for the present to stay within the laws of physics. IBM must charge an additional fee for violations above the *NOMAX limit.

VU/OS will run on any IBM Power System equipped with the Extended WARP Feature which is a single-board nuclear reactor that supplies the needed 20 KW of three-phased power for up to 12 years.

Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to VU/OS as soon as their engineers effect one output that is (conceptually) error-free. This will give them a base to develop an even more powerful operating system, target date 2010, designated “Virtual Reality”. VR/OS is planned to enable the user to migrate to a Totally Unreal Universe. Although Apple Computer claims its users have existed in a Totally Unreal Universe for years, IBM refutes those claims.

The IBM Virtual Universe Operating System, coupled with the new Power Systems hardware, is designed to help you consolidate and simplify your IT environment and your universe at the same time.

For more information, contact your IBM Virtual Representative.

:-) Smile
(-: User is left handed. 
%-) User has been staring at a green screen for 15 hours straight. 
:*) User is drunk. 
[:] User is a robot. 
8-) User is wearing sunglasses. 
B:-) Sunglasses on head. 
::-) User wears normal glasses. 
B-) User wears horn-rimmed glasses. 
8:-) User is a little girl. 
:-)-8 User is a Big girl. 
:-{) User has a mustache. 
:-{} User wears lipstick. 
{:-) User wears a toupee. 
}:-( Toupee in an updraft. 
:-[ User is a vampire. 
:-E Bucktoothed vampire. 
:-F Bucktoothed vampire with one tooth missing. 
:-7 User juust made a wry statement. 
:-* User just ate something sour. 
:-)~ User drools. 
:-~) User has a cold.  Read the rest of this entry »

New York, NY - In the relatively modest confines of the Helen Mills Theater in New York City, Mike Daniels, Senior Vice President of IBM Global Technology Services, outlined IBM’s plan to save energy. As part of IBM’s Project Big Green, the services arm of IBM announced today that its 190,000 service technicians worldwide will be using the latest in green, zero-emissions, vehicles. The new service vehicle is called the “Smart Cart” and is produced by Smart GmbH, a subsidiary of Daimler AG of Germany, the same makers of the Smart Car.

This eco-friendly approach will reduce IBM’s overall carbon output by as much as 7,500 tons of carbon emissions per year and save IBM $145,600,000 in fuel costs. In addition to the benefits to the environment, it is estimated the average service technician will lose about 16 pounds, saving IBM an additional $56,000,000 in health care costs.

So that’s what IBM is up to. What’s your company doing today to help protect our environment?