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.

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.

Rochester, MN - In order to better compete with the growing competition from PC Windows Servers, IBM plans to install a reset button on the newly announced Power Systems and change all IBM i operating system error message text to read “General Protection Fault – Press RESET.”

This new feature will give IBM customers the ability to compete head-to-head with Microsoft Windows servers. There is additional talk of adding another feature that will randomly cause the system to restart or lockup for no apparent reason. Because of the stable nature of the IBM i operating system it will be difficult to quickly implement this feature and therefore will have to come at a later date. However, with features like these it will give customers no reason to move to Wintel servers.

(Note: The AS/400 Geek originally wrote this piece as an April Fools joke in April of 1997 for a local AS/400 user group newsletter. Notice how close this humorous article has become reality. The text is exactly as published in 1997.)

When IBM recently announced that it was moving its Austin, Texas-based RS/6000 assembly operations to its 3.7 million square foot facility in Rochester, Minnesota, the same production line the AS/400 is built on, rumors flew about what this move meant. IBM publicly denied any convergence of the two machines and that the move was simply to consolidate manufacturing. But sources inside Rochester have confirmed there are AS/6000 machines running inside the IBM lab with the intent to produce them in the near future.

Because of recent advances in technology with the AS/400 and RS/6000, they both have PowerPC RISC processors and share the same DASD and tape subsystems. It finally became evident that the only difference between the two machines was the operating system.

The new AS/6000 will sport a new operating system named OS/6000 which can emulate either AIX or OS/400. When running in AIX mode the system requires 6 or 7 operators, a network manager, a security engineer, a database manager and four C programmers. When running in OS/400 mode the system requires a dark cool room to run in but may need a janitor or errand boy to change the backup tapes once in a while.

Washington DC - The AS/400 Geek, the creator of Mid-Deranged.Com, was recently kidnapped by masked gunmen. The kidnappers reportedly stormed Mr. Geek’s home and forced him to close down the Mid-Deranged.Com web site, then took him to an unknown location where he was held against his will.

Millions of fans gasped when they clicked on their favorite website and found it gone. A public outcry was heard to return the AS/400 Geek and his website.

Only after a daring escape was the AS/400 Geek able to return to freedom and pursue his warped pastime of poking fun of IBM and the AS/400. In a statement from the AS/400 Geek, he mentioned that he only got a glimpse of his captors and that they were wearing blue suits. There are few other leads for the police to go on.

The AS/400 Geek vows to rebuild the web site and defend his right to tell it like it really is.

Washington DC -  Not long ago we all went through the Year 2000 crisis. If you were in the computer and software industry you recall the many headaches in converting and changing databases and software so the Year 2000 would be a smooth rollover. No one thought 20 years earlier that their software would still be around, but it was and the two digit year fields caused big problems.

Well, how do we know our software isn’t going to be around for the year 10,000? All our 4 digit year fields will have to be converted to 5 digit fields. It’s never too early to start planning for this major event.

What happens when the year 10,000 hits? Can your systems handle a year of 0000? Most systems will crash and burn if left unchanged. The task of converting every date and changing every program that uses date logic is huge. This is one project that has a deadline set in stone! It can’t be moved or missed! You need to start now in planning for the Year 10,000 Crisis.

ARMONK, NY - Samuel J. Palmisano let the cat out of the bag at the recent Annual IBM Stockholders Meeting held in Knoxville, Tennessee. He announced that IBM is in the process of acquiring Nintendo Corporation. In an attempt to shake the reputation that IBM sells old technology and to lure the younger generation to IBM products, IBM plans to merge the System i, the System p, and the Wii gaming console into a single product. Since each system already uses the PowerPC processor Mr. Palmisano said it was a no-brainer. The new product will be named the IBMii.

Power = i + p + wii

IBM Power Systems unifies IBM’s highly successful integrated platform, IBM System i™, with its fast growing UNIX operating system platform, IBM System p™ and with the wildly popular Nintendo Wii platform. Now you can take advantage of this single platform for all of your Wii, UNIX, Linux and i applications, with mission-critical virtualization provided by PowerVM™.

Mr. Palmisano remarked, “To truly understand how IBMii revolutionizes computing, you have to try it for yourself. Quite simply, IBMii is for everyone. The ease of use and interactivity of the IBMii Remote and Nunchuk allows for a unique social computing experience for the whole family. You don’t just play IBMii, you experience it. Taking a cue from the power equation in physics — where power equals the time rate of doing work with the time waste of doing play!”

We don’t know which is more fun – to poke fun of Microsoft or IBM. What’s best is when they both are talked about in the same article. This was on the front page of the November 2000 issue of Midrange Technology Showcase. Enjoy.

Rumors have abounded for years that the false religion of Microsoft, who touts that large parishes can be run using Windows servers, actually runs their organization using more than a few iSeries systems. The heathens have always officially denied it, but the rumors don’t go away. The story also goes that some time in the 1990’s they tried to replace their iSeries systems with 1,200 Windows servers in a year-long project that was eventually scrapped because A) they couldn’t process the data as fast as the iSeries and B) they had problems keeping so many servers operational.

If you have Windows XP then click this link (or cut and past it into an open browser window):
file:///C:/WINDOWS/Help/Tours/htmlTour/best_secure.htm
It’s a web page that exists on every Windows XP machine as part of the Windows introductory tour. Read the rest of this entry »