Archive for October, 2007
Gizmodo first picked up this story that may make the Mattel toy recall sound quaint: some copies of the Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” install discs are actually portals to other dimensions. The DVDs, which show a shiny “X” in front of a vortex, appear to connect to other parallel universes almost at random. A reader in San Antonio reports seeing a waterfall through her disc, while another in London, Ontario had a much worse experience:
I tried to take the disc out of the packaging, but whenever I reached for it, my hand passed through the plastic. I thought I must be hallucinating, but my friend Joey had the same thing happen. Except… when Joey stuck his hand through, he got his finger bit off by this little purple monster that trashed my living room, shouting “Gnap! Gnap! Gnap!” Still, a better experience than Vista.
Reps from Apple declined comment on the story, saying only “Apple does not comment on unannounced… uh… features”, on the way to a secure bunker in the Himalayas.
Shares of Apple were up $5.10 on NASDAQ and $15.35 on NASDAQ2^13.2.
We’re getting early word from New Hampshire election officials that Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert may have won that state’s primary, and is on track to trampling the competition in the race to the White House.”It certainly makes you stop and think about our chances,” said Luigi DiMatteo, assistant campaign manager for the Clinton campaign, “I’m not going into specifics, but when you look at the pie chart cut up and the only name you can read is ‘Colbert’, it sends a message.”
Indeed, sources inside Fred Thompson’s campaign have already started asking for their jobs at Law and Order back, after hearing the news. “There’s only room for one fake candidate in the race, and America’s decided,” said one staffer who declined to be named.
When asked about the rumours of an early win and choices for a running mate, Colbert ‘08 strategist Rhonda Mercer was coy: “We don’t find any of the other candidates very interesting, frankly. Maybe if you did some kind of mash-up experiment with Barack Obama and Ron Paul, that’d be compelling. We could call him Ronbama. That’d get some votes, I can tell you.”
The Obama campaign declined comment, and a spokesperson for the Paul campaign told PTTBT: “As long as Ron gets to choose his own doctor for the procedure, free of government involvement, we’re open to anything.”
Outspoken conservative blogger Dorion Appleby made a shocking pronouncement in his latest posting this evening, claiming to have inside information from a source inside the Department of Homeland Security:
The reason you and I and so many respectable red-blooded Americans aren’t seeing IMAP support in their GMail accounts while those commie-loving liberals are, is that Google is working with DHS to effectively wiretap the computers of all the folks out there who subscribe to the IMAP service. So if you’re like me and haven’t got the IMAP option in your settings yet, you can take that as a sign that Uncle Sam knows you’re A-O-K.
PTTBT take: I don’t have any hard evidence to refute this claim, but when I called my own contact at DHS about Appleby’s theory, his exact words were “Ahahahahaha haha hahahahaha haha ha oh that hurts ahahahaha haha ha oh oh yeah ha.”
The LA Times may have been closer to the mark than they thought when they said President George W. Bush should be put in a straightjacket … but the orderlies charged with keeping him in his “happy place” say it’s not easy keeping the leader of the free world under control.
“That thing with World War III and bombing Iran? That’s my fault,” said Tony Wilshaw, First Executive Orderly to the President. “I gave him his anti-psychotic pills in the morning but forgot to make sure he hadn’t hidden them under his tongue. Fool me once, y’know…”
Aides to the President say it’s increasingly difficult to get the business of the nation done when the walls in the Oval Office are being padded to keep Mr. Bush from hurting himself. One senior official who declined to be named told PTTBT that he couldn’t deliver the day’s security briefing before playing a round of “people pong” on the south and north walls off the room. Former Deputy Secretary of Transportation Jimmy “Rubberbutt” Wagner has been hospitalized since June after suffering a hip fracture.
There is no definitive diagnosis for what ails the President, but some members of the American Psychiatric Association have taken to calling it “Barmy Bush Disease”, with major symptoms including inability to speak clearly, delusions of grandeur, extreme paranoia, and psychotic compulsive tendencies. The recommended treatment is typically shock therapy, but officials at the APA refused comment on this story, citing Guantanamo Bay.
Still, sources inside the Office for Presidential Psychiatric Oversight claim the situation in the White House has improved greatly over the last year: “Last fall he suffered perhaps his greatest break with reality, claiming he was the King of America, and trying to launch a nuclear strike against his imagined nemesis, Skeletor”, said an aide familiar with the President’s condition. “Luckily we had the launch button removed from his desk in 2002, or Tijuana would be a smoking pile of radioactive ash right now.”
Kevin Rose and Joshua Schachter
Uploaded by bradley23
Intrepid PTTBT reader AJ Cole writes in with this mind-blowing question:
“I read on Robert Scoble’s blog that PodTech is firing Fake Steve Jobs. I thought that FSJ worked for Forbes. How can the Scobelizer fire someone at a company he’s not associated with?”
Well, AJ, the answer is a bit convoluted, but I think I can piece it together for you.
Firstly, I can confirm that PodTech has fired Fake Steve Jobs, so you will no longer be able to catch his daily podcast “PodTards” on their network (go ahead, check the site, it’s already removed!). FSJ is apparently preparing to sue for the $2.95 in unpaid advertising revenue (but it’s hard to say if PodTech can even afford it).
The real questionis whether Forbes will be pressured by parent company PodTech to follow suit and fire FSJ. Shares of Forbes were down $5.21 on rumours the troubled zine might lose their star (peripheral) contributor, and also dragged down PodTech’s stock from its 52-week high of $0.31 to almost $0.04. Forbes shareholders, who were never very happy at last summer’s hostile takeover by the podcasting “giant”, may balk at this request, despite the ongoing threat by Scoble to shave the heads of any dissenters so they look as silly as Kevin Rose in the photo above.
What is certain is that after PodTech announces its collapse next Tuesday, insiders tell me Robert Scoble and FSJ will team up with tech billionaire Mark Cuban for a traveling interpretive skating revue called “Tards on Ice”, which has been described as “blisteringly funny, and sometimes on purpose”.
Got questions? Send them in and we’ll see what we can dig up. Please note that PTTBT reserves the right to edit, trim or otherwise improve submitted questions.
