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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate February 2002 |
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WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate February 2002 |
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OFFICIAL
NEWS |
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What was in February 2002's Official News:
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Lovestory was the special planet for Valentine's Day, and Fancy solved it! Speaking of things romantic and valentinian, read what Diesel has to say about such matters. What's this? Diesel speaks - or rather, writes? You betcha! Before there was a Fed, when DataSpace was just a twinkle in Our Illustrious Leader's eye, Diesel was the handle I used to write humorous articles and publish them on a computer network (kind of the forerunner of the Internet). I have archived those articles on a web site called Diesel's Dump, and I've just added a long-lost article which I thought was gone forever, but which turned up on an obscure floppy disk that I found when doing a clear-out. Read My Funny Valentine at http://www.chezdiesel.demon.co.uk/valentine.html.
I've got a handy little admin tool where I type in a Fed character name and it spits out the account ID. I need this for my work. But the gadget doesn't just search for exactly what I type in, it searches for any Fed character name containing what I type. This is a relief when I need to look up someone with a terribly long name, like Risadeamoconia - I just have to type the first 4 or 5 letters, and the computer will do the rest for me. But sometimes this flexibility produces unexpected results. For example, typing in Andy also brings up Brandy and Candy and Dandy and Gandy and Mandy and Randy and Sandy... which you would probably guess would happen. But who would guess how many names would pop up when I type in Star? There's Angelstar, Battlestar, Bigstar, Darkstar, Dogstar, Dragonstar and so on and so forth right up to Wildstar and Xenostar. And all manner of names that begin with Star: Starbuck, Starbaby, Starbug, Stardemon, Starfish, Starslider... and on the list goes. Then there's the really surprising names: Fatbastard, for example. Or Istaro. Or Starving. Or take the name Angel. Very popular in Fed, from our very own Navigator Myangel through Angelbaby (and Babyangel), Angeldevils, Angeleyes, Angelheart, Archangel, Darkangel, etc. But in the middle of the list is Strangelove, a name with a very different feel to it. But perhaps the one that startled me the most was when, last week, I had caused to look up the account belonging to Ron. I type Ron into my gadget, and got back 133 names. Who'd have thought that Ron was so popular? First on the list was Aalderon; last was Zorron. Along the way we find Astronutcase, Baron (and Redbaron), Biotronik, a whole load of variations on Chrono, Dearone, Drone, Ironbutterfly, Moron, Petronius, Positron, Saffron, Sauron (very topical), Stormfront, and Veronique. To name just a very few. But you know what's really galling? I typed my own name in there - Hazed - and discovered that even I don't have a unique name. There's two other Fed names that contain the word Hazed: Demihazed and Mhazed. Mind you, both of those are locked out, so I don't think they will be troubling me any more!
Diesel has announced that as from next week, Chez Diesel will be known as Pubsignia, part of a re-branding exercise that she hopes will reverse the recent fall in profits suffered by the popular Mars bar. The name change comes after an extensive project carried out by management consultants Arsentaur which took two years and cost several billion groats. Their recommendation: the new name and a new logo for the bar. Our newsdroid asked a representative from Arsentaur how changing the bar's name and repainting the sign outside would help Diesel to regain her lost clientele, but received no reply. An economic expert had this to say: "It's not unusual for companies that are going through bad times to attempt to change their image, in a hope to appeal to a new market sector. Arsentaur itself did this: formerly they were Arson Backhander Consulting Inc, having split from the accountancy company, but changed their name to Arsentaur to make the split more obvious. And in the light of Backhander's involvement in the recent collapse of energy giant Moreon, you can see why the consultants don't want to be associated with the auditors who made such a spectacular cock-up! "Companies who have a bad public image also want to change the name to fool the public into thinking it is a different organisation. Often, they pick a completely meaningless name so nobody can remember exactly what the company is supposed to do; therefore when they fail to do something, the public doesn't realise it was something the company was supposed to be doing. A good example of this is the Galactic Cement Company Inc which re-branded itself as Cotillion. "Re-branding is usually symptomatic of deep problems within a company. If things are not going well, but the directors haven't got a clue what to do about it, this kind of cosmetic change can reassure share-holders in the short term; although long-term it is no solution, and the vast sums spent on the re-branding can only make things worse. It's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it slowly sinks under the waves. "Of course, Diesel is the sole proprieteur of CDs, so has no share-holders to keep happy, so quite why she has decided to waste groats in this fashion, we can't say. We can only speculate that by no longer naming the bar after herself, Diesel hopes to shake off the memory of past scandals, such as the antlers found in her moose pizzas." The name change is due to take place at the end of the month.
The rebranding of the popular Mars bar, Chez Diesel, in which a new name and a new logo was planned, has been cancelled after market research showed that the design for the new logo was misunderstood by 87% of respondents. Most of those questioned in the research thought the logo was for a bank or other financial institution, not a bar. In addition, regulars of the establishment sometimes known as the Social Centre of the Solar System produced a petition which they presented to Diesel a few days ago. They said that they liked the bar being called CDs, and if the name change went ahead, they would all shift to drinking in the Duff Modem round the corner. They were also angry at the plan to stop serving Diesel's Old Peculiar and replace it with a designer lager. The waitdroids, too, were unhappy at the rebranding because their new contracts would have meant longer hours for less groats. They were also unhappy at the new uniform they would have been expected to wear. One droid told us that it chafed badly, and the silly hat fell over the droids' occular mechanism. Faced with this vote of no confidence in her rebranding, Diesel was forced to tear up the plans and leave things as they are. Diesel made no official statement, but was seen in the bar drinking a large quantity of her ale, cursing and mumbling to herself about how the management consultants Arsentaur had conned her into paying them several billion groats for the failed rebranding exercise. The threats she uttered suggests that any employees of that company had better not be seen anywhere in the vicinity of Mars in the near future!
NOSTALGIA: THE MILLENIUM BUG FOILS CRIMINAL Two years ago, everybody in the computing world was breathing a huge sigh of relief that the millennium bug had failed to cause the chaos that had been predicted. Everybody, that is, except a hotel worker in London... Richard Apea appeared in court last week and was sent to jail for a year. His crime: defrauding the hotel at which he worked as a receptionist of just over £23,000. Over a period of months he transferred the money to his own credit card, pretending the transactions were refunds to a guest. He was banking on the millennium bug destroying all records of his crime; when it didn't, he was found out and is now on his way to prison. I have heard of plans being foiled because technology fails to work... but this is the first time I've heard of the plan being thwarted because the technology did work!
REAL LIFE NEWS: LACE ME UP, SCOTTY! Shoelaces can be dangerous; if left untied they can cause accidents. Parents worried that their kids' laces will cause the little darlings to trip over can now avail themselves of the latest technology: a sensor that sits on the tongue of the shoe and detects when the laces are not tied properly. When the laces are threaded through the eyelets, they pass over a pressure switch and optical sensor in the device, which checks that the laces are tied, and how tightly. If the lace comes loose, a light flashes or a buzzer sounds. The sensor silences the alarm when the laces are completely unthreaded or the shoes are taken off. Wow. I can think of many adults who would benefit from this technology. Now all we need is a device that will actually tie the laces for them!
REAL LIFE NEWS: PHONE ACCIDENTS In the UK mobile phones are so popular now that if you don't have one glued to your ear while you walk down the street, you look out of place. This has lead to a huge increase in mobile phone thefts. Official police figures estimate that 700,000 phones are stolen each year, but a new study by a market research firm suggests that many people don't report phone thefts to the police. They put the figure much higher, at 1.3 million. But the survey had some much more startling figures. It appears that an estimated 600,000 people lost their mobile phones by dropping them down the toilet. Clearly the effort of using the facilities and chatting on the phone at the same time was too much for them! 400,000 people accidentally dropped their phone into a drink, and 200,000 accidentally put them in the washing machine. Add all those figures up and it comes to about 2.5 million phones that would have needed replacing last year. No wonder the industry is thriving!
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