Faking News » Technology

Government to pre-screen babies before mothers can give birth to them

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:20:37 +0000

New Delhi. In order to make this world a better and cleaner place for sensitive people, government has decided to pre-screen the arrival of future generations and stop those babies from being born who could offend people’s sentiments.

This will be done through a technology that mixes elements of genetic engineering, as developed by medical science, predictive algorithm, as developed by social networking websites, and preemptive censorship, as developed by Kapil Sibal.

“We can’t allow people’s sentiments to be hurt,” Sibal said in a press conference that was attended by representatives from Google and Facebook, “While our constitution allows a person to have sex and reproduce, we can’t allow them to breed babies who can later offend religious and cultural sentiments.”

“The right to reproduce can’t be absolute; we have to put reasonable restrictions on reproduction,” he added.

Many expert believes that Sibal in inspired by the Hollywood movie Minority Report, where a crime is stopped before it is committed.

The breakthrough was achieved late last night after the union minister of various responsibilities met with experts on various domains to come up with a solution to the ongoing debate over internet censorship.

The social networking websites totally refused to take any responsibility for what their users do, which led to the conclusion that the original offender was the user – the common citizen.

Representatives from Google and Facebook claimed that they had crucial data related to a user’s past behavior that can be used to predict how a user will behave in future, but their algorithm can’t predict if the user will behave offensively.

“Our algorithm suggest them which friends to add to their network and what activities to ‘like’ based on their behavior, and most of the times we come up with relevant information,” a Facebook representative explained to Kapil Sibal, who was amazed to learn how internet has grown beyond belief.

Representatives of Google later offered that they could help the government develop a similar predictive technology if the government agreed to keep them out of this censorship business. This gave Sibal the idea of pre-screening babies.

“If you guys know users so well, why should we restrict ourselves to the internet domain?” he wondered, “After all internet is just a ‘notional’ world, let’s target the real world.”

Sources tell Faking News that Sibal immediately called on his fellow lawyers and medical science experts and decided to work on a predictive technology that could predict the behavior of a yet-to-be born child.

“Based on DNA samples of the parents and their past record of offending people, we can surely identify potential offenders,” Sibal claimed as he announced his latest plan for “Human Resources Development”.

The union minister claimed that India will be full of gentlemen and gentlewomen once this pre-screening of babies gets underway. “There will be no abusive tweets, no offensive Facebook pages, no shocking Google auto-complete suggestions,” Sibal said.

The announcement has expectedly outraged people who wondered how could the government censor their babies.

“It’s my baby and I don’t need Sibal’s character certificate,” a pregnant woman tweeted.

Political parties too have opposed the latest move with BJP claiming it to be a conspiracy to stop birth of potential BJP voters. Though privately many BJP leaders confided to Faking News that they’d love to use this technology themselves if they came back to power.

The only parties who have openly welcomed the technology are the government of China, Guardian Council of Iran, and an unknown group in the USA.

Kapil Sibal’s $35 computer labeled as Micromax Tablet killer

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:59:12 +0000

New Delhi. Technology experts believe that the $35 tablet to be launched by the HRD Ministry will surely prove to be a “Micromax Tablet killer” if not an “iPad killer”. This was declared in an emergency meeting of experts that took place to reassess the potential of government’s tablet after Amazon’s “Kindle Fire” didn’t appear anything like an iPad killer, as it was being projected by some experts.

“We didn’t want to go wrong again,” Harish Krishnan, a leading technology blogger and expert said, “There was complete agreement among us that Sakshat (name of the $35 tablet) will not be an iPad killer, but we had some heated discussion on whether it can be a Kindle Fire killer or a Samsung Galaxy Tab killer.”

The prototype of the $35 tablet was unveiled in September last year by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, but two months after that he replaced A Raja.

The meeting of the technological experts took place in a totally parliamentary manner, Harish informed. The motion to dub Sakshat as Kindle Fire killer or a Samsung Galaxy Tab killer was rejected by a voice vote.

“We would have had a vote to choose between one of these two options if the motion was adopted,” Harish, who acted as the Speaker in the meeting, described the proceedings.

The proceedings were not without interruptions as many experts kept on shouting to prove their point.

“We expunged the remarks of a few fellows who kept on yelling that Sakshat will surely be an iPad killer,” Harish revealed, “These were the same guys who had earlier labeled Google Wave as Facebook killer and Facebook email as Gmail killer. We don’t trust them anymore.”

A group of experts who wanted the $35 tablet to be called Casio Calculator killer or a Chor Bazaar Tablet killer staged a walkout amidst the din as the remaining experts decided to go ahead and choose a suitable sobriquet for the tablet, which could be launched next week.

“A lot of options were discussed, but we decided to play safe and chose a brand that doesn’t yet exist, so that people can’t compare the features,” Harish informed about the masterstroke that experts came up with to circumvent criticism.

“We realized that it’s not easy to outsmart Kapil Sibal. We had to play the same game, hence we decided to come up with a ‘notional’ brand,” Harish explained, “A brand of tablet that doesn’t exist, but is not too hard to imagine e.g. tablets by companies like Lava, Lemon, Zen, Carbonn, or Maxx.”

The experts finally agreed on Micromax so that its brand ambassador Akshay Kumar, who claims to be a devout follower of Maa Durga, gets some news coverage during Navratri days.

Google to make shirts that would auto-suggest matching trousers

Pagal Patrakar — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:07:21 +0000

California, USA. After internet, smartphones, and home appliances, Google Inc. is all set to get into clothing and fashion. The internet giant has announced the next generation of apparels that would record and analyze a wearer’s preferences, and auto-suggest wardrobe settings for him/her.

These set of “smart clothes” will be available in the market by this year end and help users dress up just right for any occasion.

“We are using a variant of our tried and tested and trusted algorithm that auto-completes Google search terms and suggests relevant advertisements based on the content of a page being viewed,” Google co-founder Larry Page informed Faking News, “Awkward sense of dressing and crimes against fashion would be a thing of past now.”

This popular image, often referred as the “Google Girl” has been chosen as the beta advertisement for the smart-clothes.

As per the proposed technology, each smart-cloth will be fitted with a microchip that will contain every minute detail about that particular piece of cloth e.g. its fabric, texture, color, pattern, price, date of manufacture, etc. apart from a wearer’s history with the cloth such as the last worn date and time, average time it was on body, locations visited by the wearer, et al.

Based on this data set, the microchip will communicate with other microchips present on different pieces of clothes owned by a user, and it will suggest the user what else to wear along with that shirt or trouser, whichever is worn by the user first.

“The moment you put our smart-shirt on, the trouser that would go along well with that shirt will start blinking in your cupboard, and you won’t need to spend even a minute thinking which combination you should wear for the party tonight,” Larry Page said.

Larry confirmed that the clothes for women would be priced higher as the algorithm required for women’s clothing and dressing is “way too complex” and requires higher processing powers, but assured that the smart clothes would not be prohibitively priced.

“It will also check instances of wardrobe malfunctions,” Larry further elaborated the benefits of smart-clothes, “You will get a 404-error (file not found) if you forget to put on your underwear.”

Google clothes are currently in beta stage and will be launched with basic features by this year end. Further technological innovations could enable the smart clothes with touch and sense technology, which would enable a person to roll up his sleeves just by tapping the cuff of his shirt.

Internet and lifestyle experts believe that Google clothes would be a runaway success and would force fashion designers and garment houses to use Google APIs while designing new clothes, while it could inspire companies like Facebook to launch similar products.

“You know, a Facebook series of clothes, which will suggest you which person to ‘like’ and be friends with based on the kind of clothes the other person is wearing,” an expert opined.

Proposal to install “mental detectors” at polling booths to stop idiots from voting

Pagal Patrakar — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:30:46 +0000

New Delhi. A “civil society” member has proposed that all the polling booths in the country should have some sort of an idiot-detecting gadget installed at the entrance so that no idiot passes through it and casts his or her vote in favor of an undeserving candidate.

The member has further proposed setting up a joint drafting committee to design this gadget, which would be known as “mental detector”.

“Most of the Indian voters are idiots. They support any candidate who can give them a 100-rupee note or a bottle of liquor. That’s why people like Anna Hazare fear losing their deposit if they stand for elections,” Nishant Bhushan, the civil society member argued, “We don’t trust these people with good sense, and hence we must stop them from voting and corrupting the system further.”

The civil society member claims his gadget is already functional and foolproof

Mr. Bhushan said that in order to stop good people like Anna Hazare to go on fast again and again, a proper system needs to be in place that stops idiots from voting or having a say in policy formulation. For the same, he recommended designing and installing “mental detectors” at polling booths whenever an assembly or general election takes place next in India.

“I have a prototype of mental detector ready and I’m ready to have a discussion on its functioning with a few nominees from the government, but the key issue is that we must get this mental detector installed as soon as possible,” Nishant Bhushan, also a lawyer by tradition profession, told Faking News in an exclusive interview.

Government is yet to respond to the suggestions of Mr. Bhushan, but former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has rejected the proposal as “idiotic”.

“Why doesn’t Bhushan test himself with his mental detector first and share the results? And let him do that in public and not in presence of a few good friends,” Amar Singh dared Bhushan.

Meanwhile sources suggest that while the government might agree to the formation of the joint drafting committee as demanded by Mr. Bhushan, the leaders are not too keen to get a powerful and accurate “mental detector” designed.

“They fear the consequences if such a gadget is installed at the entrance of Parliament and state assemblies,” informed our source.

Facebook to launch genes that will genetically modify humans to use Facebook more easily

Phek Entrepreneur — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:49:29 +0000

California, USA. Mark Zuckerberg, in what could be the most significant kink in the history of evolution yet, today announced the launch of the Facebook Genes, which assists the naturally occurring sensory organs and takes people a step closer to realizing the most perfect human interactions system – the Facebook.

In layman terms, the Facebook gene can be added to an embryo during pregnancy so that the child is born mutated with certain Facebook features embedded into it, giving it an edge over its peers in communicating and “staying connected”.

Parents need to provide the name, e-mail address and Facebook ID for their fetus to sign up for the delivery, and the gene transplant is done free of cost by the Facebook Inc.

“We realized that ‘normal’ human beings are still struggling to understand and appreciate many Facebook features,” Zuckerberg explained the rationale behind launching the Facebook Genes, “Not only they fail to update and control their privacy settings, they have also proved to be utter failure in appreciating aesthetic features like black background behind pictures.”

Facebook Genes are set to revolutionize humanity

“Also, science has now confirmed that the size of your brain depends upon your social network, so we thought it was high time we helped people with their brain sizes,” he added.

FB Genes will blur the difference between the physical and the digital worlds. People will be able to continuously upload and download images, videos and information from their Facebook profiles. In the physical world, they will be able to exhibit three additional emotions – ‘Like’, ‘Poke’ and ‘WTF’ – with the help of various facial and lower body muscles.

“An advertising module, designed by our smartest programmers will directly implant a product purchase idea in the mind of the customer, similar to what Leo Di Caprio did in Inception, you know, and all that display-ads farce will be history. And I doubt Google AdWords would be able to match that,” Zuckerberg added with a chuckle. Asked if he thought people will allow such levels of intrusions into their private lives, he said, “You kiddin’ me! Haven’t they already?”

It is a well-known fact that Facebook’s influence on the lives of common people has grown significantly after people in Egypt used it to overthrow their dictatorial regime and many American businesses have started conducting business using Facebook Credits preferring it over the US dollar since it is a lot cooler and being used more frequently. Facebook also launched a mobile SIM card recently.

Zuckerberg denied any ulterior profit motives behind launching of FB Genes and termed it as an extension of his philanthropic pledge, as he was just improving the “divine creation”.

“Look, God designed us a really long time back – he missed out a few things and I am just filling in the holes,” the Facebook founder said, further denying that developing a mutant human being was like copying a software code, “Do you see any of His code in it? If He were the inventor of Facebook, He would have invented Facebook,” he added with a coy smile quoting himself from the movie, The Social Network.

BJP launches web browser for its members and supporters

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:06:45 +0000

New Delhi. BJP has come up with a New Year gift for its supporters – a web browser that helps a person visit only those websites and pages that are seemed “safe” and “sympathetic” to BJP and like leaning groups. The new browser is being called Saffron Surfer and comes with hordes of pre-installed add-ons and plugins that helps a web surfer steer clear of so-called left-liberal content online.

“The mainstream media is full of left leaning pseudo-intellectuals,” BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the launch event, “This browser will alert an unsuspecting visitor landing on such a websites or blogs through search-engines or hyperlinks.”

Faking News tested the browser and found it working on the expected lines. When we tried to visit the website of “The Hindu”, there was a flash-screen alert window before the page loaded – Warning! This website could harm your computer with Maoist Trojans.

The logo of the new browser launched by BJP

There were two options given – “Take me out of here” and “Proceed at your own risk”. The first option took us to the website of “The Daily Pioneer” while the second caused the tool bar to blink at regular intervals with “Your computer and intelligence is at risk!” message till we closed the window.

“It’s lovely!” said Ravi Rajendran, a BJP supporter who downloaded Saffron Surfer and was suggested “list of possible scams” as alternative search option when he tried to search for “UPA in 2011” on the default search engine at the homepage.

“But it’s also blocking all the porn sites,” Ravi pointed at one of the possible “bugs” or shortcomings of the latest browser to hit the market.

One of the advanced add-ons coming with the browser is “NoDiggy 2.0.1” that replaces the text “saffron” or “Hindu” with “absent” whenever it appears in conjunction with the term “terror” on webpages.

“Dharmik Desktop for All” is another add-on that automatically changes the desktop wallpaper to “approved” images of Hindu gods and goddesses once such an image loads fully while surfing the net.

“It’s in beta stage as of now,” informed the developer Kaushik during the launch event, “We hope to introduce advanced plugins that would analyze a person’s web footprints to identify leftists on social-networking sites so that users know what kind of person they are talking to.”

Saffron Surfer was downloaded 55,284 times within three hours of its official launch, which also saw volumes of Rediff comments going down substantially during the same duration.

When accessed through the BJP browser, Faking News was rated as “frivolous” by its own “Web of Trust” add-on, because of which we are giving it a 0.5 star on a scale of 5 stars.

Appearing busy gets easier; Nokia to launch phone that talks to you

Simon — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:40:28 +0000

Mumbai. Nokia is set to launch a ground breaking new phone this week. After extensive market research, the handset manufacturer found that 67% of the times when mobile phone is removed from the owners’ pocket, it is not used to make a call or send a text. Rather it’s taken out either in an attempt to appear busy whilst waiting around – so as not to appear like poor Johnny No-mates or to try and avoid eye contact with Sunil from Accounts who’s crossing the road.

Inspired by this discovery, the “Nokia Parrot 150” records snippets of all the user’s conversations and replays them randomly when the owner dials the ‘parrot’ number. The handset will simulate an important call by ringing and flashing up “CEO”, “Muki Ambani” or “Sach (Mumbai number)” on the display.

“The Parrot 150 serves an important social function,” says developer, Manoj Kabra, “it makes the user appear busy on a call without the bother of actually calling anyone, plus some people get very lonely. It tackles the boredom of standing still, being quiet and paying attention to your surroundings.”

Pretending to talk to someone on phone while there is no one on the other end is known as “communifaking”

With the phone to their ears, users will give the impression of being deep in an important call, whilst having the reassurance of listening to a human voice on the other end, even if the random snippets make little sense. “The sense bit is not important,” says Kabra, “some people call the random playback of conversational snippets nonsense, but look at song lyrics, poetry and art, it doesn’t have to make sense for people to say it’s good… are we to believe that John Lennon was really a walrus?”

But the phone does speak some sense: if will ring and play a recorded message to the owner if it is low on battery or needs a re-charge. It will also notify the owner of several issues when it sees fit, including: “she won’t text back, best stop, this is embarrassing for Nokia too”, “your last text did not contain any vowels, please purchase a dictionary” and “yes, it was him from the party again, to change your number please visit our website”.

Faking News was given a Parrot 150 to test. The device came in useful at a prestigious media event at Delhi’s Gymkhana Club. Having offered the watchman a pack of silk cut to walk the other way, successfully scaled the back wall of the property and made it onto the lawn without trampling the flowers, our correspondent found no one was willing to talk to Faking News staff.

Fed up of this obvious jealously at FN’s diverse and unpredictable information sources, your correspondent engaged the ‘parrot’ option and appeared to have a 30 minute long ‘conversation’ with the editor of the ‘Times of London’, whilst actually listening to the best of our communications with random property agents, Merucabs, Airtel’s customer service desk, and assorted adult services.

Mobile voice changer service coming for those whose phones could be tapped

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:10:27 +0000

New Delhi. Students at IIT here have developed a mobile application that would instantly change the pitch of the voice of the speaker after pressing a designated button on the handset, thus making the voice rather unrecognizable even though intelligible. Students are planning to launch the application as a premium product for professionals, who fear that their telephone conversations could be being tapped and recorded by intelligence agencies.

“Even if the recordings are released at some point in the future, the person caught can always claim that the voice on the tape is not his or hers,” said Rani Radia, a final year Computer Science and Engineering student, who along with a three of her batch-mates has developed the application on Android platform.

Government departments are expected to adopt this latest technology at the earliest

Rani and her friends have tested their application, tentatively named SafeLobyy 1.0.1, on their mobile handsets and the initial results have been “very encouraging”, she says.

“Venu was sounding like Veena after the pitch was increased by 137%,” Rani informed, “it sounded so bizarre that a girl was telling another girl how everyone could see her (him) shaving early this afternoon in the hostel balcony.”

“It might give rise to new imagined scandals, but then the original ones are always buried due to this smokescreen,” Muthu Krishna Venu, a co-developer, justified such misinterpretations that could happen once a person activated SafeLobyy 1.0.1.

Venu further informed that the application, when activated, interferes with the microphone of the handset and alters its recorded frequency by a factor selected by the user. In such a scenario, even the caller gets to hear an altered voice.

“It could shock the caller, but I guess people would use it with complicity,” Venu suggested, and claimed that SafeLobyy 1.0.1 was far better than other gadgets, which at best made the altered voice sound look like that of a duck or some ghost from Shaktimaan.

The team of developers has refused to launch the application as a Mobile VAS (value added service) in partnership with telecom service providers as it could “defeat the basic purpose”.

“The application must be hosted locally on the handset and the service providers, who could come under pressure from investigating agencies, should have no idea if a subscriber was using such an application,” Rani explained.

Rani, Venu and their two other unnamed friends are planning to make corporate presentations and demonstration of SafeLobyy 1.0.1 to various media organizations, corporate houses, government ministries, and political parties in the coming weeks.

After “Spell Check”, Microsoft introduces “Reality Check”

Tantanoo — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:36:17 +0000

Redmond, Washington, USA. In a surprise move, Microsoft Corporation today announced that the next version of Microsoft Office, which would be called ‘Microsoft Office Office’, will carry a cutting edge feature that will take AI (Artificial Intelligence) to the next level. In a glitzy press conference, an enthusiastic Steve Ballmer unveiled the “Reality Check” feature.

Ballmer in his introductory speech said, “After the astounding success of ‘Spell Check’, we had been secretly working on the next game changer. Our newly fired Windows Vista team had a lot of time on its hands and so they teamed up with leading Space Research organization JHANSA and several research institutes across the world and came up with – Reality Check – a plugin that performs a reality check on your data.”

The latest version of MS Office would be launched sometime early next year

The Reality Check feature allows a user to verify the ‘reality’ behind any data that he enters in Microsoft Office. In a few Alpha tests, the feature was used on some sample data and the results were astonishing to say the least.

When used on a latest IIPM ad, Reality Check checked the article for ‘realities’ and suggested alternate values. For a ranking table that showed IIPM ahead of 7 IIMs, it offered to either change the full form of IIM to ‘Imaginary Institute of Management’ or to replace Arindam Chaudhuri’s image with a duck. It also suggested the basic corrections like adding ‘conditions apply you moron’ or changing the title to ‘IIMs ahead of 7 IIPMs, What else did you expect?’

“It is almost like Gandhi 2.0, it gives you nothing but the truth,” says a CWG official, under clauses of anonymity. Reportedly, the Beta testers tried Reality Check on CWG presentations and spreadsheets and accurate details of expenditure were discovered.

“This was how the discrepancies in CWG expenditure were discovered,” maintains the anonymous official adding that one could follow him on Twitter at @CWG2010PR. He also revealed that Lalit Modi’s 20000 page document was reduced to a sheet of paper with ‘Loads of bullshit. IPL is my bitch’ when run through Reality Check (RC).

“I used RC on the love letter my hubby sent me”, says Pinki Batra, “it changed the recipient of the letter from my name to another name. Who needs Emotional Attyachar anymore? I can spy on my husband at home on my Microsoft PC,” Pinki exclaims in a teleshopping commercial voice.

A spokesperson from Microsoft reveals that an audio version of RC is also in the pipeline that will help you to find out the original Korean song by running it on a Pritam song or finding the actual age of a woman by using speech-to-text during a date. The possibilities are endless.

The Reality Check is already being dubbed as an “Apple killer” by experts (who, as usual, couldn’t explain how it would kill Apple) and as the next big thing in AI. It is also rumored that Dan Brown is already working on a novel involving RC, the Pope, The Vatican lavatories, and the-secret-organization-that-cannot-be-named.

We at Faking News tested RC on a pirated edition of Microsoft 2020 (code name for Microsoft Office Office) and found the feature fascinating. We ran RC on a test sentence – Lady Gaga is a man – and it converted the sentence into the (politically) correct sentence – Lady Gaga is not a lady.

We also ran RC on our entire database and surprisingly it didn’t change anything, which leads us to believe that all our news reports may turn out to be true in the future. The possibilities, like we say, are endless.

(written by a very lonely person called Tantanoo)

Japan decides to shut down its secret Rajini Robot project

Guest Patrakar — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:50:33 +0000

Tokyo, Japan. The Government of Japan has finally woken up to reality and decided to shelve the two-decade long robo-project codenamed “Thalaiva 2.0” initiated to replicate Rajinikanth in the form of a robot. The project involved some of Japan’s top minds from their top tech companies and so far had cost the Japanese an amount ten times more than the round underground thingamajig built in Switzerland, pushing the Japanese economy into a decade long economic tailspin.

Admitting defeat, the head scientist Hidenseeki Icandonomuru said, “It would have been totally badass if we could pull off another Rajini saaar; I mean think about it! The possibilities are mindboggling in various spheres of life. For instance, in sports, the robo could have coached people to play volleyball like it in Baba or even imagine the revolution it could have caused in the art of cigaret… err… bubble gum popping.”

Even though Japan has conceded defeat, some companies in China claim that they can make Rajini robot once 'Endhiran' is released.

Hidenseeki changed his last word, apparently fearful of the possibility that he could be targeted by activists of the Japanese arm of the PMK.

Further expressing grief over the loss to the scientific community due to the abortion of this grand project, Hidenseeki said, “It would have been enlightening and more fun watching the Rajini robo go around fascinating trajectories than watching atoms go around in boring circles in our laboratories. However after various years of trying, it dawned upon us that Rajini saaar doesn’t operate within the laws of this world.”

“His way is a different way. And though our tech is cutting edge, it not as cutting edge as Rajini saaar.” he added, probably referring to the technology, which allows Rajinikanth to cut a bullet into two to simultaneously dispose of two goons.

But Hidenseeki Icandonomuru added with glee that while pursuing the project, the scientific community of Japan could watch all the movies of Rajinikanth for free and hoped that the exposure and experience would come handy to them for future projects.

“In fact, we are planning a Madame Tussauds like museum in Tokyo with robots of celebrities, especially Bollywood starts. We have figured out that we virtually have to do nothing but to give the listless machines some cosmetic appearance. Robots automatically start acting like them afterwards.” Hidenseeki informed.

The announcement by Japan comes at a time when Rajinikanth is ready with the release of a movie called Endhiran in Tamil and Robot in Hindi, where he plays a scientist as well as a robot.

“Thalaivar can play robot, but a robot can’t play thalaivar!” concluded Karthik, an excited Rajini fan.

(report by Geela, a fraud Tamil)

Robot programmed to function as priest caught in sex scandal

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 28 May 2010 12:04:36 +0000

Bangalore. A robot programmed to function as priests at marriage ceremonies has been caught on hidden camera in a compromising position with a wedding planner, shocking millions of i-faithfuls worldwide. The shocking visuals were played repeatedly on a regional news channel here, which clearly showed the robot as I-Fairy, the latest product of Japanese company Kokoro, while the face of the wedding planner was blurred beyond recognition.

“Oh Jejus! I was so happy to have these e-pundits and metal-maulvis in our country, but never expected to see this day. My head hangs in shame.” Rakhi Sawant said, who according to this report, had booked an I-Fairy to solemnize her next two seasons of “Rakhi Ka Swayamvar”.

I-Fairy, in non-controversial times

Although sex and marriages with robots were predicted more than thirty months back by an artificial intelligence researcher in the Netherlands, nobody, not even the script-writers of Terminator or Transformers, had thought that robots would get caught in a sex-scandal. But it happened in India.

And now this scandal is getting mired in all kinds of controversies.

“Can we really blame the robot here? We don’t yet know the moral standards of robots, so how can we term it as a scandal?” wondered a social scientist, alone.

The brand name of the Kokoro’s robot is becoming another controversy with Apple Inc. threatening to sue the Japanese company for using its trademark I-prefix to create a product.

“I-Pod, I-Pad, I-Phone; anyone can say that I-Fairy belongs to us. We’d get back the right to use this name and re-launch the robot with an I-Condom.” Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs told Faking News.

But the other controversial aspect, which is attracting maximum attention and participation back in India, is the debate over which function to blame for this shameful conduct of the robot. The debate is threatening to snowball into religious flashpoint as the particular robot was programmed to function as a pundit, pastor as well as maulvi.

“No doubt this foreign robot came with foreign sins. Catholic priests have long been caught in sex-scandals and this electronic father proved to be no different. Government shouldn’t have allowed this sinful machine to operate in India.” Swami Nithyananda, president of Rashtriya Pundit Sangh protested.

But Christian groups have protested the remarks by Nithyananda and have blamed the Hindu part of programming code for the sexual malfunction. “Hidden cameras are for Hindu swamis. This is not even a case of child-abuse.” argued one activist, categorically denying that the Christian part of the code could have been the trigger of this moral decadence.

Muslim groups too have threatened mass agitation if anyone attempted to blame the Islamic part of the programming code for the misdeeds of the robot. They cited a fatwa released by Deoband seventy years ago, and repeated seventy times by now, which barred non-males from taking up jobs (as maulvis).

“How does one determine the gender of the robot?” asked Maulana Tauheen Azahar, which could actually help settle the religious differences as the robot is widely believed to be male, and as per the latest reports, even the wedding planner could be a male human being.

“So it was a homosexual robot! That explains it!” said Maulana, drawing approving nods from fellow Hindu and Christian representatives.

3G spectrum auction closes, colors other than VIBGYOR sold

Wimwian — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:18:14 +0000

New Delhi. After a month long auctioning, the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) not only declared the process over, but also revealed the path-breaking technology that differentiated 3G over the 2G spectrum. The third generation spectrum would have many more colors than the seven traditionally acknowledged in the spectrum – Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red – better represented by the acronym VIBGYOR. As a result, the government could earn 70,000 crore rupees, much higher than it had expected.

“No, it’s not the result of absence of any scam, but an outcome of our observation that led to this success.” Telecommunications Minister A Raja said, referring to the huge revenue realization and the technological breakthrough.

A Raja thinking why he couldn’t solve the color riddle earlier, even though his party DMK had successfully offered color televisions to the voters

Talking exclusively to Faking News business reporter SK Wimwian, Mr. Raja went on to claim that this shall be one of UPA-II’s major contributions to many generations of aam aadmi’s.

Initially reluctant to divulge details to our reporter, Mr. Raja later opened up over tea and samosas, and let slip the fact that his Ministry had longed wondered over steps to graduate into 3G from 2G. However, the DOT’s think-tank had noticed that a few years back Hutch had changed its color from Orange to Pink, and its networks still continued to function normally.

This chance observation led the DOT to its intellectual breakthrough – namely, that all existing operators can be asked to select a shade other than VIBGYOR, thereby freeing up their original part of spectrum.

A senior DOT source speaking on the condition of anonymity also said that the issue over allocation of spectrum to the armed forces is being resolved in consultation with the Ministry of Defense. Apparently, the ministries were going to permanently allocate Black color to the defense forces, which was not only outside the normal VIBGYOR spectrum, but also very difficult for other countries to detect or intercept. A proposal to similarly allocate Grey to police and paramilitary forces would be discussed in due course, the source added.

DOT will soon release a press release listing the number of colors and respective operators.

IIT student develops gadget to help Mayawati statues join Twitter

Pagal Patrakar — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:55:52 +0000

Kanpur. With a special police force to protect them from evil doers, statues of Mayawati could now peacefully speak up their mind on Twitter. Sounds unbelievable? But this has been made possible by Avinash Singh, a final year Electronics and Communication Engineering student at IIT Kanpur, who has designed a gadget that could create automated tweets for Mayawati statutes based upon the surroundings and ongoing events in the vicinity.

The gadget is in shape of a small box-like device with sensor cables coming out of it. These cables would take inputs from the environment in form of temperature, wind speed, humidity levels, decibel levels, luminosity levels, etc. apart from other inputs from the data points defined at various physical spots on the statue such as on the head, near toe, on hands, et al.

A sample of what Mayawati statue’s tweets might look like

“There would be hundreds of pre-defined messages under 140 characters that would be coded in the gadget software. Based upon the mix of inputs received from various sensing points and parameters, one of those messages would be selected as output and finally updated on Twitter as a status message i.e. a tweet,” Avinash tried to explain the working of his gadget to a mix of journalists and BSP supporters.

For example, the tweet by a Mayawati statue could be – Oh shit! It’s raining, and I don’t have an umbrella! But I am happy for my farmer brothers – when the sensors detect rain based on humidity and moisture level in the environment. And say, if the sensor records high amount of decibel levels, the Mayawati statue could tweet – So much noise! Seems like Rahul Baba is out with his band of sycophant followers. What noobs!

Similarly, the sensors situated at various physical spots of the statues could help generate custom tweets e.g. the sensor on the head of the stature could result in the following tweet – Oh no! The pigeon has crapped again. Please tell the policemen to come up with soap and water.

“I am sure that with the help of Behenji, we can come up with thousands of pre-recorded tweets that could be mapped to a mix of various inputs so that the tweets become more and more real. This will give a whole new life to the statues and people would be able to follow them even when they are traveling or in office,” Avinash made a case for his gadget and hoped to meet Chief Minister Mayawati to get official sanction for his project.

Mayawati is likely to review the proposal from Avinash in a cabinet meeting slated to be held this Monday.

Google goes the facebook way, Nexus One to suggest whom to call

Pagal Patrakar — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:45:29 +0000

California, USA. Google continues to learn from facebook; after opening up Google Wave for third party developers and introducing better networking and sharing features in it, Google has now tried to integrate the “suggestions” features of facebook into their latest offering – Nexus One, the android phone by Google. Based upon your call and chat history, Nexus One will suggest a list of people to call when you update your status.

Currently this feature has been released in its beta version and many people worldwide got a taste of it when they updated their status on Google Talk or Google Wave. Users had mixed feedback on this new feature, but most of them agreed that the suggestions were not way off the mark or random, as is perceived in the case of facebook suggestions.

Mika’s Nexus One and suggestions for him

Bhangra rap and pop singer Mika Singh was one of the few celebrities, who had a firsthand experience of this new feature on his brand new Nexus One. Mika was not too happy with the suggestions.

“Kya yaar, why the hell was Rakhi on top of all? KLPD tha yeh toh. But I hope these are small bugs in the beta version, and they would take care of it.” Mika told Faking News, after Nexus One suggested him a few people to call as he updated his status message to “horny”.

But not all the people, who were suggested a calling list by Nexus One, thought that the suggestions feature was buggy. When 25-year-old Akshay Gupta, who was badly scolded by his boss earlier in the day, updated his status to “depressed”, Nexus One suggested him to call his MBA batchmates who had lost their jobs last year and were still unemployed.

“I felt good instantly.” said Akshay, congratulating the Google engineers to have integrated such a novel concept in a phone.

But some legal experts believe that Google, as well as facebook, is going too far in such innovations, and such practices amount to violation of a person’s privacy. Apart from legal problems, experts also foresee relationship troubles arising in a person’s life due to this feature.

“Imagine a wife checking up on her husband’s Nexus One and updating his status to ‘romantic’, ‘missing’, etc. and finding out that her name and number doesn’t appear in the suggestions list at all. Who will own up the responsibility for the troubles that would begin? Will Google compensate such families?” Adhiraj, a legal expert wondered.

Thousands duped as conman sells them bottled moon water

Pagal Patrakar — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:51:26 +0000

Sriharikota. Many local residents, along with several other families in different cities of India, were duped by a conman who sold them ordinary bottled water on pretext of selling water found on the moon. The residents believed the conman as they had earlier read and heard the news about water being discovered on moon by Chandrayaan. The conman had showed them fake pictures claiming the moon water was bottled and sanctioned by ISRO.

One of the fake pictures conman showed the unsuspecting buyers to prove association with ISRO

“He told he was an employee of ISRO and was selling bottled moon water to promote India’s space mission. He claimed that the money earned by ISRO by selling moon water will be used to fund further researches. He showed us some pictures and documents that looked genuine. We believed him and gave him the money as he asked for just 40 rupees for a 1.5 litre bottle.” Shashank Shetty, who bought five bottles from the conman, told Faking News.

Experts have criticized common men for believing in such hearsays and point out that last year many families had paid money to buy land on moon. Psychologists believe that Indians are non-suspecting by nature and tend to believe most of the stuffs easily. This innate nature has been exploited by advertisers, tricksters, losers, politicians, conspiracy theorists, journalists, and husbands – experts point out.

The above fears seem to be true as attempts already are underway to cash on the “discovery of water on moon by an Indian lunar vehicle” sentiments, even though Americans maintain that it was their equipment (moon-mapper) on the vehicle (Chandrayaan) that performed the discovery.

According to our sources, many mineral water companies are going to announce their plans for packaging and selling drinking water from the moon. These companies could play on the “Indian” sentiments to target the Indian customers and the ‘purity’ factor to target the global markets.

“Moon has a special status in both Hinduism and Islam, and surely lunar water is going to be a special product for the Indians. Furthermore, no industries have been discovered so far on the moon by Chandrayaan, so the water is expected to be of the purest form. We are exploring possibilities of tying up with ISRO to develop a 560 crore mega project for this purpose.” a representative of leading mineral water manufacturing company confided to Faking News.

(with inputs from our special correspondent Binitwa)

Local IIT nerd spends entire day not recounting IIT experience

General Specific — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:33:11 +0000

Chennai. Several people went crazy with joy as local IIT Nerd Abhay Prakash S. spent an entire day of abstinence from recounting silly experiences from his time at IIT Madras (Metallurgical and Coconut Engineering Specialization). But their joy was short lived as Abhay ended his day of abstinence at 7.00 PM and promptly recounted a series of anecdotes filled with IIT slangs that none in his audience of neighborhood friends (and their parents) could follow.

These anecdotes were peppered with liberal references to his IIT preparation days and the numerous quirks he developed at that time. For instance, Abhay found it impossible to solve any mechanical physics problems related to inclined planes without being completely naked at the time. Subsequently, he was able to overcome this prerequisite by the use of mental visualization techniques which replaced the actual need to be nude.

An IIT nerd thinking how he can modify the auto-rickshaw

Social Psephologist Yogi Yadav explains this phenomenon thus, “It is common for young 18-year-olds entering IITs to develop a retardation that does not allow their minds to develop beyond the emotional age of 15. Of course this does not come in the way of their performing normal day to day duties like analyzing traffic patterns, reading newspapers backwards, measuring the time it takes for a crow to fly from one telephone pole to the other and back repeatedly at varying velocities, applying arbitrary probability distributions to insignificant events like the arrival time of the milk man, and needlessly ogling at middle aged women. Sometimes it also includes other forms of idiosyncrasies like voting for the BJP.”

To mark the occasion of inaugural abstinence by Abhay, local Municipal leader A.X. Square inaugurated a coaching institute for IIT aspirants. Abhay Prakash S. displayed his brilliance once again, as he cut the ribbon at ten different points, where the gaps between the points represented the Fibonacci Series in centimeters.