April Fuel

Hey, it's a holiday, so I can't resist running some real news-type stories in the newsletter here...

SCO, known for decades as the acronym for Santa Cruz Operation, has changed its name to PO, for Provo Operation. "It kind of goes better with our attitude, don't you think?" Said Darl McBride, the company CEO. Asked if the new name reflects a change in the nature or the strategy of the company, McBride said, "If anything, it expresses a renewed sense of commitment. Recently we noticed that we hadn't pissed off everybody yet. That's still our goal." In a related move, McBride was also named CLO, or Chief Litigation Officer. His other titles remain.

As a company-wide exercise in rhetorical restraint, Microsoft has challenged its employees to go "just one day" without using the words "smart" or "threat". Said CEO Steve Ballmer, "Y'know, after twenty years of chanting the same damn things to ourselves, I just got freaking tired of it " As part of a long-term plan to change the hyper-competitive culture of the company, Microsoft's HR department has quietly dropped its requirement that applicants submit their high school SAT scores, or to take the tests again if the original scores failed to meet company threshold requirements. "But we're still going to grade everybody on a curve," said a company press release.

In a surprise move, Linus Torvalds for the first time issued a policy statement regarding the pronunciation of both his first name and that of the operating system he launched almost fourteen years ago. "I'm 'eenus'", he said. "The operating sytem is 'eenux'. The L is silent in both cases. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that before."

AOL, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN group today announced their joint intention to "jump ahead into the Nineties" and open up their instant messaging clients to servers running XMPP and other open IM transport protocols. "We finally realized it was flat-out nuts to keep users locked in proprietary silos," the four companies said in a joint press release. Nobody at any of the companies could be reached for comment.

Reuters reports the discovery of a wi-fi hot spot "about the size of Turkey" in the Atlantic ocean west of the Canary Islands. The dimensions of the spot were determined by combined reports of communications officers on board container cargo and cruise ships. Asked to comment on the quality of the connection through the hot spot, Ozmo Zdilmidgi, who works with the Maersk Sealand company, said "I dunno. It was WEPped and we couldn't get on."

Acting swiftly after passage of the Communications Decency Enforcement Act, the FCC ordered broadcasters to cease operating on the AM band. "We just got tired of it", said FCC Chairman Michael Powell. "We were going to fine everybody, but it was easier just to wipe the whole thing out." Asked if the Commission would offer an alternative band for broadcasters to start over, the weary Powell just said, "Why?"

Responding to threats by Senator John McCain (R-Mars) to mandate "a la carte" pricing for worthless channels that cable and satellite providers feel forced to carry for subscribers, DishTV announced the development of a "reality channel reduction policy" in which the number of channels on the service would be reduced by viewer call-in votes. "Each week viewers will vote one channel off the service," said Charles Ergen, Chairman and CEO of DishTV parent EchoStar. "And they'll pay to vote, too, which is cool." He added, "Dropping one channel per week, we should be down to the original 100 channels in three or four years."

Ending a complete absence of speculation about who would end up buying Red Hat, it surprised analysts to learn that the winning suitor was Red Flag, the official Linux of the People's Republic of China. "The red thing is important to us," said Matthew Szulik, Red Hat's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and now Chief Propaganda Minister. "It wasn't happening with IBM's blue theme or Oracle's whatever-it-is. Plaid? I forget. Anyway, the hat goes well with the flag." Asked to comment on the sale, a Red Flag spokesperson said, "We did? Really. Oh. That's really nice."

Sorry, I couldn't resist. See ya next round.