Tumbling PC Sales Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Recession, Insist iPad Nerds

Plummeting revenues at PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell conclusively prove that the iPad is God and all other technology is false, according to media nerds today.

A computer

“People who think these figures might simply show PC-owning luddites making do with their clockwork abacus for a year or two longer are clearly technophobes living in a mud hut who probably have trouble understanding switches and still buy DVDs,” sneered Josh Geake, who genuinely believes he would throw himself under a train if separated for as little as 24 hours from the gadget which rules his life. “In a shop.”

When his geriatric dad pointed out that both HP and Dell make tablets too, Mr Geake fell off his chair laughing at the very idea that anybody could possibly be so crassly ignorant as to think that a black slab with a touchscreen bears the faintest resemblance to the ineffable perfection of his glorious iPad 2, yet remember to breathe.

“Only the iPad has this vital app which enables me to count simply by tapping the screen,” he insisted. “My life would be absolutely meaningless without that.”

Schoolies To Program Next Generation Of Timewasting Shit

Launching a consultation into the future of ICT teaching in Britain’s schools, education secretary Michael Gove proclaimed a vision where, instead of futile wasted years of trying to learn the basics of the English language, the nation’s teenagers will be encouraged to learn a rudimentary programming language instead so they can code the timewasting successors to mind-numbing crap like Furious Moles, Bread Karate and Incontinent Auntie.

Homework innit

“There’s really very little to be gained by merely showing today’s teens how to use Word because, let’s face it, they’re illiterate,” explained Mr Gove. “English, with its onerous grammar, spelling and vocabulary, has now moved far beyond human comprehension. Let’s dream up a rudimentary programming language instead, with a vocabulary comprising just a handful of simple drag-and-drop icons for operations such as GO, PICK UP, HIT, DROP, USE and BANG, so they can create millions of tedious but addictive new apps for your phone.”

Pupils are already bursting with enthusiasm for Mr Gove’s innovative new approach to computing.

“i gots this brillent ideer were its like Scrabo exep them horibo leters is blow up by mere cats,” budding software engineer Sammi-Jo Potts tweeted the Nev Filter. “mum recons shed nevr git a minits work dun eva agen #crapps”.

Just One More Eye-Wateringly Expensive Supercomputer And We’ll Have This Rain Thing Sussed, Promises Top Weather Idiot

Just 24 hours after falsely promising an unfeasible day of glorious sunshine sandwiched between two days of torrential rain for Plymouth, one of the wettest cities in England, Met Office idiots demanded squillions more out of taxpayers for an even bigger, faster computer capable of making even bigger, faster mistakes.

“We currently own several of the most powerful supercomputers in the UK, yet we couldn’t tell you you’d get wet if you jumped in the sea,” admitted chief idiot Professor Paul Brainaker. “Obviously, the problem is that we don’t have the biggest computer in the world.”

Would have been an option, but they've all been scrapped

“This may seem counter-intuitive to the ignorant layman, who sees a hundred-mile wide wall of black cloud pissing it down all over Devon and Cornwall and guesses that perhaps some sort of coat might be in order, basing his wild stab in the dark on no more scientific evidence than a map which shows Plymouth squatting right between the two counties with sod-all between it and these fuck-off great squalls hammering in straight off the Atlantic,” he scoffed.

“When we bunged the speed and course of this bloody great storm into our wizzo computers, however, and ran them through complex prediction algorithms devised by the best brains government funding can offer,” he explained, “Our declaration that a supernatural oasis of sunshine would suddenly somehow pop into existence over Plymouth to miraculously divert six inches of rainfall seemed eminently plausible. It was only wrong by a trifling factor of 100% because the computers were simply not quite big, or fast, or eye-wateringly expensive enough. Just give us a nice blank cheque with plenty of room room for lots of zeroes, and we’ll be able to forecast the weather for every individual street in Britain. I shit you not.”

When it was pointed out the RAF used to achieve similar levels of accuracy with a handful of knackered old bombers, a chinless wonder by the name of Corky and a wooden slide rule, Prof Brainaker ranted about global warming for five minutes before stamping off to play Call Of Duty: Black Ops at the second highest possible resolution, with only ‘typical supercomputer’ levels of flying blood and guts.

But We Need £3500 PCs For Crysis 2, Retort Civil Servants

The computer says your benefits are suspended, mate

Civil servants have defended typical expenditures of up to £3500 on desktop computers, revealed today in a report by the Public Administration Select Committee, pointing out that Crysis 2 looks “the dog’s bollocks” on their awesome liquid-cooled Acer Predator Destroyer 2 PCs with 12Gb of RAM and Alienware OptX 3D-ready 23” monitors - adding that, without their Cyborg R.A.T. 9 gaming mice and Evo gaming seats with built-in joystick and gamepad, then they might as well go back to drawing noughts and crosses in ledger books with quill pens.

Parsimonious committee chairman Bernard Jenkin insists that the minimum spec for the dystopian alien shoot-em-up could easily be met by the simplest £400 laptop. However, the government’s head of IT procurement, Josh Geake, 22, pointed out that the likely frame rate of 10fps and minimal resolution would render the game unplayable, resulting in a serious degradation in morale within the civil service.

“Such ill-advised penny-pinching would inevitably result in a massive increase in pulling sickies, as entire government departments realised they might as well just stay at home banging away at the Xbox and PS3 versions,” he predicted gravely. “If the civil service is to maintain its traditional standards of excellence, then it has to – die, die, DIE you alien FUCKERS!”

Government Writes New Community Chest Card

Don't bother taking the wrapping off it

Britain erupted in uproar today when the government produced a pink card proclaiming ‘COMPUTER ERROR IN YOUR FAVOUR - Collect £1500 from every other player’ in black biro, and began sending out tax demands immediately.

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry about this,” smiled a jubilant chancellor George Osborne, who also happens to own the bank. “Cough up.”

The massive PAYE mistake was made by defective socialist software installed by a previous player, insisted Mr Osborne, and was only picked up when tax officials ran a new conservative program which is guaranteed to be 100% error-free.

“Oh, stop moaning,” laughed Mr Osborne, as impoverished players desperately mortgaged their meagre properties to the bank. “Look, here’s another Community Chest card I’ve made up which says, ‘TAX REFUND - All players with two Xes in their surname receive £5’. It’s just a matter of give and take, you know.”

Incomprehensible Torrent of Raw Binary Ushers In New Era Of Open Gvernment

Britain awoke this morning to a new era of open government, with the publication of 840 trillion teraquads of utterly indecipherable data by the Treasury.

The mass of apparently unrelated bytes is thought to be in a modified Excel format, but one which can apparently support pages of such size and number that, if printed out, they would occupy a physical space slightly larger than the known universe. Calculator experts also pointed out that, whereas typical Excel spreadsheets occupy three dimensions, the Treasury appears to have discovered a way to extend fields into several thousand entirely new dimensions hitherto known only to habitual drug users and Professor Stephen Hawking.

Freedom of information campaigners hailed the release of the meaningless bitstorm as a new day for democracy, adding that they hoped to ask the Met Office very nicely if they could perhaps borrow its supercomputer for the next century or so.

Government to Award Huge IT Contracts To Facebook Programming Geniuses

Following today's admission that new tax office software has sent out the wrong tax codes for 2010/11, affecting millions of Britons, the government today announced that it was adding a new company to its list of preferred bidders on lucrative IT schemes.

"We are proud to add Facebook to our prestigious list of quality software specialists," said PM Gordon Brown. "They can look forward to receiving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money, taking their rightful place among the pantheon of highly-skilled IT contractors of the calibre of EDS, Capita, BT and my cousin's neighbour's 17-year-old son."

Facebook's crack programming team celebrated the news with a bumper bag of Doritos and a 3-litre bottle of Coca-Cola.

"Moss had this brilliant idea for combining all of the government's databases into one huge file," said IT manager Jen Barber. "It'll be stored on Roy's Blackberry, assuming he can find it under all the empty crisp packets."

Meanwhile, industry analysts are wondering why the software responsible for paying billions out to useless IT providers seems to work just fine.

Microsoft Excretes Latest Sodding Version of Hated Operating System on Long-Suffering Public

People all over the world are holding street parties to celebrate the launch of the latest version of its wonky operating system, apparently, according to Microsoft.

The legendary wonky software giant has prepared party packs for groups of people who are so ecstatic over the launch of Windows 7 that they feel the urge to fling open their doors and dance into the street. Police forces across Britain report that, so far, traffic in residential and business districts appears to be moving normally, unhindered by crowds of enthusiastic PC users - but add that they are monitoring the situation carefully, should the need arise to send in riot squads and mounted crowd-control officers to restore order.

Windows 7 is, of course, the tenth wonky version of the legendary wonky operating system, after Windows 3.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows CE, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Claims of even earlier, wonkier versions of Windows have occasionally surfaced, but seem to be based on nothing more than the irrational assumption that - unlike Microsoft - most people start counting with 1.

PC owners are said to be mildly keen, after almost twenty years, to finally have an operating system that does what it's told, doesn't do what it isn't told, starts up in less than five minutes, has some basic level of resistance to malware, is compatible with the software they've spent a fortune on, leaves some CPU resources free to run programs and manages not to crash, hang or forget what JavaScript is.

"Ho ho," chortled Microsoft boss Steve Ballsup at the product launch in New York. "If I had a dollar for every time I've heard some dim user trot out these completely unrealistic expectations, I'd be almost as rich as I am now. And I didn't get rich by selling products that work."

"A personal computer is the most horrendously complicated bastard thing you'll ever have the misfortune of owning," he explained. "If you don't believe me, try installing and configuring Linux on a clean computer. Anyone out there remember trying to get DOS4GW patches to work, and all those IRQ conflicts? Yeah? Well, shut the fuck up, then, and thank me for making your life slightly less hellish."

"On your knees," he added.

Several meaningless new wonky features are being promoted with Windows 7 which were already available, if you were that interested - such as touch-screen compatibility, cloud computing and the ability to recognise and ignore multi-core processors.

"One of the problems that featured prominently in our user feedback - which we look at from time to time, when we feel like a good laugh - was the fact that Vista makes the average PC run so slowly you wish to God you'd kept that old Commodore 64," said Ballsup. "And now that the fashion is to spend a small fortune on a horribly slow PC because it happens to be quite dinky and available in pink, that's more relevant now than ever.

"So, for the discerning customer who values style over functionality, a special cut-down version of Windows 7 will be available which will boot up like shit off a shovel. Then you'll realise that it doesn't actually do anything - but holy crap, you'll tell all your trendy friends, is that sucker fast."

New Met Office Supercomputer Dies Laughing

The Met Office has revised its forecast for the rest of the summer, after its brand new supercomputer exploded whilst laughing at its predecessor's previous prediction of a "barbecue summer'".

The new supercomputer, which was the size of two football pitches and capable of 750 trillion calculations per second, was reduced to a smoking heap of electronic junk. The smouldering wreckage is being hosed down by Exeter firefighters.

Moments before its unfortunate mirth-fuelled demise, the supercomputer revised August's earlier forecast from "barbecue summer" to "great weather for ducks".

Chief technology officer, Steve Forecast told reporters that the old computer system - a Commodore 16 wired up to a piece of seaweed - had been reactivated as an emergency backup, and was predicting dry weather with temperatures in excess of 35 degrees for the next six months.

"And snow," he added confidently.

Apple CEO Undergoes Cool Transplant

Apple has today revealed that its chief executive, Steve Jobs, underwent transplant surgery several weeks ago.

Mr Jobs, who co-founded the computer company in 1976, is understood to have had his soul removed and replaced with a cold block of granite.

"When you think Apple, you think Steve Jobs," said a cool dude spokesman. "To many of our customers, Apple stands for stylish design, instant street cred and a feeling of superiority. However, the fact is that Steve's soul began withering away to nothing as early as 1997, when we threw him a huge salary to tempt him back and give people the impression that we weren't really being run by a bunch of corporate suits. As we've relentlessly reduced what used to be a quality alternative to beige boxes to nothing more than a flashy PC with a garish, headache-inducing operating system and an eye-watering mark-up, Steve has been there to reassure you all that you are the creative elite."

"Just when some of you were starting to suss it, along came Steve with the iPod, a wonky white hard drive with a headphone socket that wasn't any different from any other MP3 player, except it forced you to pay through the nose for our iTunes downloads," he went on. "Then we fixed a couple of the bugs and sold it to you again. Then we made a smaller one that was so attractively thin it snapped if you put it in your pocket, and you still loved us. On the back of that, we relaunched our sluggish laptops by making a big issue of the fact that they were an incredibly stylish 1mm thinner than anything ever seen before - and when the batteries exploded in flames, you just went out and bought a new one. Clever, clever you. All your friends are in awe of you.

"Now Steve has managed to flog you three iPhones, just by launching them with half an operating system - and not once, but twice. You're all so hip and trendy, it hurts. I'm sure you all wish him a speedy recovery - and we hope that, with the last vestiges of his soul ruthlessly excised by the surgeon's knife, he will continue to pull the wool over your eyes for many years to come."

However, it was later reported by doctors that Mr Jobs' new granite soul had been found to have several chips and cracks, and would be replaced by slightly-improved, thinner versions on Tuesday and Friday.

We Need Cyber Control, US General Tells House Sub-Committee

The Pentagon has identified a need for a digital warfare force, says Lt Gen Keith Alexander, head of America's National Security Agency, in a report to the House Armed Services Committee.

The Cyber Command general - who said that the prominent handles on either side of his head were a top-secret communications device keeping him in permanent contact with his department - warned the government that Osama bin Laden was just the type of embittered loner likely to enter into a sinister pact with the Daleks, enabling him to download the entire internet in seconds.

"I urge the government to fund the development of a digital warfare force to counter this unprecedented threat," intoned the general. "America needs an unstoppable army of what I choose to call 'cyber men'. Now if you'll just put these headphones on, I'd like to make a short audio presentation which will change your minds forever, as well as correcting certain weaknesses."

Representatives came out of the briefing later and, speaking in unison, told the nation: "The general is correct. All conflict is caused by emotion. You will become like us. All enemies will be deleted."

Along with Lt Gen Alexander, the converted politicians marched off to brief President Obama, who has already ordered a review of cyber security.

"He will become like us," said the blank-faced general. "He is the logical choice for the position of Cyberleader. The cyber race is accustomed to taking its orders from a machine-being with a black face."

World’s Longest-Running Farce Set To Continue Indefinitely

Britain’s longest-running farce, the computerisation of NHS patient data, is likely to have its run extended beyond the current closing date of 2015, according to the Public Accounts Committee.

The National Programme for IT - known to its fans in government and the computing industry as NfIT – has seen takings of £12bn over its record-breaking 62-year run, and audiences say it is still as uproariously shambolic as it ever was.

“I can’t imagine NfIT ever coming to an end,” said laughing data-coder Tim d’Orque. “It’s been running for generations of programming languages now, and it’s seen off government after government over the years. The jokes are absolutely timeless – look, this module was written in COBOL! When it came to the part where the minister in charge said it was the largest IT project in the history of the entire world, we just fell about laughing at the thought of comparing a simple database of 65 million records with, say, the US federal tax records system. And, in terms of complexity, a program like World of Warcraft makes NfIT look like 10 PRINT “BOLLOCKS”, 20 GOTO 10. Ha ha ha.”

The long-running comedy has, in the course of its dead-end run, featured many household names in starring roles of comical ineptness, including Siemens and British Telecom.

Smaller parts of the system have gone on tour around doctors’ surgeries up and down the country, with side-splitting scenes as harassed practice managers try to work out how to feed punch-cards into the cassette recorder.

Evil Sorcerers Imbue Lennon Zombie With Travesty of Life

The lifeless corpse of former Beatle John Lennon has been dug up and reanimated by the sinister One Laptop Per Child Foundation, as part of an inhuman plot to transform an entire generation of African children into the call-centre slaves of the future.

Lennon's leathery cadaver - which is badly decomposed after 28 years in the grave - is being manipulated by malevolent sorcerers into urging the public to buy the brightly-coloured, but almost totally useless, £135 XO laptop for their children. For every cute-but-inadequate computer sold, another will be forced on an impoverished child in Africa.

The foul necromancers say their aim is to create a generation who have the barest level of computer literacy needed to perform simple, repetitive tasks for just enough of a pittance to keep them hovering indefinitely on the brink of starvation.

"Despite our best efforts, the average Indian's standard of living is rising steadily," hissed a serpent-like spokesman for the magicians' unholy cabal. "Soon they will be able to free themselves from the curse of stultifying wage-slavery. We have, however, discovered a huge, untapped stock of humans in Africa - and, as many of its nations offer the added bonus of being run by corrupt, easily-bought governments who care nothing for the lot of their people, these lost souls will be bound to us for the whole of their worthless lives. To get them used to the idea of serving the computer constantly, the human hatchlings will find that they must wind a handle constantly, just to supply it with electricity. Now begone with your insignificant questions, puny man-thing, lest you awaken our cosmic lord's insatiable thirst for blood-sacrifice."

The rotting, soulless Lennon-travesty is set to claw its way into the nation's homes this evening, when the stars are right, dully shrieking its sinister, but seductive, message: "Brains! Brains, brains, brains, brains, brains."

Net Fraudsters Finally Target Smug Mac Users

Apple users are being told to install anti-virus software, in the wake of increasing online attacks directed against Mac users.

“Until recently, Mac owners could laugh at the plight of lowly, common Windows users and their constant battle against cyber-criminals,” said an Apple spokesman. “However, it seems that the world has finally had all it can take of Mac users’ insufferable smugness. Even previously law-abiding net users are feverishly writing viruses that will wrest control of a Mac and write “Wanker” all over the screen.”

Apple are recommending McAfee VirusScan and Norton Anti-Virus to their army of self-satisfied customers.

“These security programs cost way over the odds, just like your Macbook did - so don’t worry, you can still sneer at your scummy, proletarian PC-owning friends who are so unspeakably poor that they have to rely on charity handouts of free anti-virus software like AVG,” said the spokesman. “We would also like to reassure our discerning, creative users that we are working day and night on launching a dinky little lapbook Mac, because we realise how galling it must be for you to have some chavvy underling banging on about how their stylish little ultra-portable that runs on Windows or even - ugh - Linux makes your treasured MacBook Air look like a ruddy great, overpriced brick.”

Inverness Chosen As First UK Site For Mass Storage of Souls

In a joint venture with Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Microsoft has chosen Inverness as the location for the UK’s first cloud computing centre. Central to the revolutionary concept is the idea that people should give Microsoft unrestricted access to their souls, rather than having to go to all the bother and expense of storing them on their own computers.

“Personal soul storage has never been so expensive,” explained a fork-tailed spokesman for Alchemy Plus. “Why go to all the trouble and cost of a memory stick or a pack of DVDs when, just by signing a simple contract with a tiny drop of your blood, you can let us keep your soul totally secure forever on a giant, multi-user web?”

Inverness was chosen partly because of its chilly climate, which will help to cool the vast banks of computers needed to store all the souls.

Stewart Nicol, chief executive of Inverness Chamber of Horrors, said: “This project will really put the city on the map for developments in damnation technology. And living in Inverness is pretty close to hell anyway.”

“Ow! Careful with that pitchfork, ye wee red bastard,” he added.

Profit and Data Loss

Following yet another security lapse - in which a computer sold on eBay was found to contain the financial details of a million Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest customers - the government has announced that computers are to be banned in Britain as of midnight.

“This data is only of use if anyone has the technology to read it,” said a Home Office spokesman with a current account balance of £872.94, a £450,000 mortgage with 204 months to run and a total credit card debt of £5,022.48, and whose mother’s maiden name was Watson. “So anyone who has not handed their computer into the local police station by midnight will be looking at a five-year stretch, minimum. If nobody has a computer, it doesn’t matter how many lost CD-Rs, hard drives and memory sticks are floating around, does it? Job done.”

He stressed that companies and government departments would not be affected by the ban, as these were highly reputable organisations which could be trusted with information of a sensitive nature. However, he added, all debit and credit cards should be handed in as well in order to prevent unauthorised account access.

“From now on, people will enjoy complete peace of mind as they collect their cash in person from the bank’s cashiers,” he explained, “Provided they take along their solicitor, doctor or local vicar to verify their identity.”

When asked about the risk from fraudsters overseas, the spokesman laughed and said that the government understood that computer technology was unknown in other countries.

Viva La Digital Revolution

Cubans are set to experience a digital revolution, as home computers go on sale in Havana for the first time as part of President Raul Castro’s ongoing relaxation of restrictions on everyday life.

Crowds formed at the Carlos III shopping centre to look at the £400 systems – although, with an average wage of only £10 a month, most Cubans will be looking for quite some time. Even the few who can afford a PC - generally those with relatives abroad sending them money – will find themselves twiddling their thumbs after the initial thrill of switching on, as internet access is restricted to schools, universities and some workplaces. The Cuban government blames the US trade embargo for preventing the island nation from connecting to undersea fibre-optic cables, limiting it to expensive satellite links to the worldwide web.

It is also unclear how the Cubans will actually operate their computers, as Windows and most software will also probably come under the embargo. However, President Raul recommended one solution based on Cuba’s history.

“Back in the heady days of the Spanish Main, this island of Hispaniola was famous for being a haven for daring anti-fascist pirate freedom-fighters,” he announced, in a three-day long speech. “I urge all techno-Cubanos to hoist the Jolly Roger and plunder the digital treasures of the Microsoft oppressors. Windows 98SE is dead in the water and defenceless - it is ours for the taking! There are even rumours of the existence of a fabled Vista Home Edition, with which we will be able to destroy the running-dogs of virtual capitalism using their own weapons, such as the fearsome Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV. Our brave avatars shall hack the evil arch-plutocrat Gates to death! Viva la digital revolution!”

He then carried on playing Evil Genius, the game in which a Blofeld-style tyrant tries to take over the world from a tropical island base while fighting off inept secret agent infiltrators.

Cuban computer enthusiasts we spoke to were eager to plug their new PCs in and enter the information age, just as soon as they had a regular daily mains power supply.

Hands Up If You Owned A BBC Computer - No, Didn't Think So

The Computer Conservation Society has reunited the twerps responsible for the goddamned BBC microcomputer, as part of goddamned ill-considered celebrations to mark the goddamned launch of the goddamned thing, which took place 26 goddamned years ago.

The goddamned BBC computer was the result of a search by the goddamned government and the goddamned BBC to find a computer that could be used by schools and families to teach the new science of computing to a generation of pupils and their parents.

Unfortunately, what they chose was a goddamned overpriced, beige doorstop from goddamned second-raters Acorn, who hastily cobbled together some sort of goddamned prototype in five days which used the wrong goddamned processor, the wrong goddamned programming language and the wrong goddamned operating system, resulting in a generation of schoolchildren who knew how to use a goddamned computer that didn’t exist anywhere outside their classrooms, then having to unlearn the goddamned BBC-specific rubbish they had been taught and find out how real computers actually worked.

“It’s a typically British success story,” said the organisers. “This goddamned thing cost schools a fortune to buy in the first place, and another fortune to replace when they eventually cottoned onto the fact that it was a goddamned blind alley that impeded computer literacy in the UK for years. They might as well have bought Spectrums at a quarter of the price - at least that used a recognisable version of BASIC, not goddmaned Pascal with line numbers, and had decent games. But with the BBC a small number of people made a lot of money in return for very little effort, and isn’t that the very essence of modern goddamned Britain in a goddamned nutshell?”