[humorix] Their Trash, Our Chance To Make Billions

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Their Trash, Our Chance To Make Billions
June 28, 1999

It's time to let the cat out of the bag.  This Humorix
portal website is actually a cover.  Humorix World
Domination, Inc., is really a full-scale, top-secret
research & development firm with subterranean labs teeming
with hundreds of dweebs dressed in white labs coats
attempting to unravel the mysteries of science -- and beat
our archrival American Computer Company[1] at their own
game.

It all started in Roswell.  Not Roswell, New Mexico, but
Roswell, Georgia. Just outside the city limits is a sewage
lagoon left over from an abandoned trailer park (the area
was hit by a tornado).  This is no ordinary  sewage lagoon;
indeed, there's a government conspiracy to hide its
existence from the residents of Roswell: it now sits within
a non-descript US government "storage facility".

This sewage lagoon, code-named ASL5 (Anomalous Sewage
Lagoon Number 5), is a portal to the future... or rather, a
portal from the future, since it's a one-way passage.  In a
similar vein to the "toilet vortex" Humorix reported[2] on
in January, ASL5 periodically spits out items from the
future, evidently trash that has been thrown into the
lagoon in the 25th century.

To make a long story short, some of this "trash" from the
future represents scientific breakthroughs that might take
four centuries to achieve.  A tiny unknown bureaucracy in
the US government has kept this fountain of cool stuff all
to itself -- even the Echelon Project doesn't know about
this (well, they will now). However, thanks to the power of
our orbiting spy satellite (another thing Echelon doesn't
know about) and the cunning utilization of RFC 1149[3], 
Humorix's R&D department was able to obtain an
item-from-the-future about three months ago without the
knowledge of the government conspirators.

After three months of intense research consisting of
scientists scrathing their heads and asking, "What the hell
is this thing?", we've finally been able to determine what
our item-from-the-future really is, and most importantly,
how to mass produce it and make lots of money from it.

Our chief scientist, Dr. Bubba Joe Conner, calls our
mystery item a "trielectric megaconducting cerebral
integrator with an Ethernet port". Folks familiar with the 
ramblings[4] of Rob Malda on Slashdot might know it better
as a "neural implant".  The device enhances brain power and
memory storage, and also comes with wireless Internet
access.  Our NIFF(tm) (Neural Implant From the Future, a
tentative brand name) is small enough to be "installed" by
poking it up the user's right nostril.

Just look at the specs on this baby:

* The raw processing power on this device far outranks the
power of a puny K7 (or "Athlon", or "Decathlon", or
"IntelSucks", or whatever the marketing geniuses at AMD are
calling it this week).  Indeed, a Beowulf cluster
containing 1,000 K7's would only have 0.25% the raw power
of a single NIFF.  Take that, American Computer Company!

* Memory storage: how does 100 terabytes of storage sound?
(Well, actually, a lot more is theoretically possible, but
the filesystem allocation scheme of the average human brain
is quite wasteful; even a defrag-like program wouldn't help
much.) The technology that American Computer Company
supposedly stole from those "green men" (military officers
in the process of puking after a full night of drinking) at
Roswell can only hold a mere 90 terabytes. Just look at
this chart to see the significant difference this makes:

NIFF: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
        |              |              |
        |              |              |
 ACC: XXX              |              |
        |              |              |
        |              |              |
      90 Tb          95 Tb         100 Tb

* Ethernet: The NIFF contains an Ethernet jack so you can
plug your brain directly into your computer or network. 
Or, more importantly, the NIFF can send and receive
electromagnetic signals to cell towers and/or orbiting
satellites, allowing easy Internet access from the comfort
of your own brain.  With NIFF, you can browse Slashdot
while mentally blocking those irritating
adfu.blockstackers.com advertisements.  

* Linux and the BSD variants have all been ported to NIFF,
allowing Unix-like system administration of your thoughts
and memories. While Unix's multiuser paradigm may encourage
multiple-personality disorders, we certainly feel Unix is
far better than Windows for mental functions.  We won't
belabor all of the funny jokes we could make about the Blue
Screen of Death.

* It eliminates those annoying headaches that are caused by
eating ice cream too fast.

* It features a built-in fusion power generator, which can
provide emergency power for the brain during a heart attack
or stroke.

We are in the process of refurbishing the fifth floor of
Humorix World Headquarters into an assembly line to mass
produce NIFFs.  Sales will commence after the successful
completion of our upcoming IPO[5] in August (be on the
lookout for NASDAQ ticker symbol FAKE).  We expect the
retail price to be  around US$25,000, but we might offer
discounts to frequent Humorix visitors (all three of you).

I would like to close by saying to the idiots over at
American Computer Company: suckers!  Alien tech is a waste
of time; the really cool stuff comes from the future. As
Nelson says on the Simpsons, "Ha ha!"  You should have
focused all of your attention on the *other* Roswell.

Oh, and one final thing: While the public release of our
product might create an unresolvable temporal paradox that
will implode the universe, it will be well worth it.


[1] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/06/27/1346209&mode=thread
[2] http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/jan99.shtml#RH10
[3] http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
[4] http://slashdot.org/articles/98/10/15/1437257.shtml
[5] http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/jun99.shtml#Humorix-IPO 

---

James S. Baughn
http://i-want-a-website.com/about-linux

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