Yes, folks, it’s almost 2009, and therefore, it’s time to present this year’s Crashed Pips Awards. (Yes, I know that emblem’s a cheapo generated badge fetched off a website, but having been rather busy with a broken laptop and the fact it’s Christmas, it’s all I could find with eight and a half hours to go.)
So, without further ado, let’s begin with the Best Linux Distribution award, whose nominees are Ubuntu, Mandravia, Xandros, and OpenSUSE. However, the winner this year is Fedora, for its sheer slickness out of the box and speed.
The Worst Kept Secret award is pretty simple this year: nominees are the iPhone 3G, the MacBook Air, the iPod Nano, and the Windows 7 Beta. However, the irrefutable winner in this category is the new MacBook family, which, to be honest, we all saw coming from a mile off and even had time to prepare a tea party for.
Next up is the Jason Jones award for the Most Superfluous Use of the Number 7. This year it goes to Windows 7, for being so-called because, according to Microsoft, it’s the seventh release of Windows. O RLY? Let’s see… in chronological order, we have
- Windows 1
- Windows 2
- Windows 3
- Windows 3.1
- Windows for Workgroups 3.1
- Windows NT 3.1
- Windows NT 3.5
- Windows NT 3.51
- Windows 95
- Windows 95b
- Windows NT4
- Windows 98
- Windows 98SE
- Windows 2000
- Windows ME
- The Xbox distribution of Windows (which doesn’t carry a name)
- Windows XP
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Vista
- Windows Server 2008
So, in short, Windows ‘Seven’ would be the twenty-first release of Windows. Yeah. Very significant, there.
The Nixon Award For Talking Out of One’s Own Anus has several nominees.
- Apple, for saying that Macs are ’secure out of the box’. Yeah, if some fairy visits the machines while they’re in transit and turns the firewall on. Sorry, folks. That’s the truth.
- Psystar, for saying Apple didn’t copyright Mac OS X. Epic fail on that front.
- The BBC News head of department, for blathering on NewsWatch that after ten years of a perfectly good brand, scrapping the BBC News 24 name was a good idea because it was just the time you wanted it to be called ‘the BBC News Channel’. Yeah, because I always thought the news on News 24 came from ITN.
- The LHC Defense organisation, who said that there was a chance that the Large Hadron Collider might destroy the world. It cannot, has not, and will not destroy the world.
- Andrew Burnham, for saying that cinema-style age ratings for websites are ‘an option’. Over my dead body.
However, the undisputable winner this year is Woolworths, whose website, at the time of writing, says - and I’m not joking:
Our site is currently undergoing essential maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. Please check back later.
What’s that? Bidding starts now. Do I hear one farthing?
The Month of Apple Bugs award for standing up gallantly to a crowd of screaming fanboys goes to PZ Myers, for weathering a storm of hate mail after pointing out that Holy Communion is… well… a cracker and some dilute wine. After taping a consecrated wafer to pages from the Qur’an and a copy of The God Delusion, he threw it in the rubbish and allowed it to be taken off to a landfill site somewhere. This, of course, meant ridiculous death threats and wretched screaming from the Catholic League, who presumably now believe that Prof. Myers will end up in a pit somewhere with Satan gnawing on his right leg. For standing up to the crackpot fundies, we salute you, PZ.
Now, the Oh God, it’s You Again award goes to Trevor McDonald, for returning to ITN’s News at Ten so briefly it didn’t really matter. And, with that, we come to our most prestigious award, the Crashed Pips Award for Services to Humanity and Small Furry Creatures from Alpha Centauri.
I was going to give it to Tim Berners-Lee, who, let’s be honest, deserves nothing less than World Presidency and God status for developing the World Wide Web and giving it away for free. However, late-breaking news forces me to change that decision (hard luck, Tim - maybe next year) and award it to the 30gB Microsoft Zune, which is, as we speak, committing mass suicide across the globe! It’s a service to us, protecting humanity (and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, Vogons, biros, and super-intelligent shades of the colour blue) from certain death, re-animation, intoxication, indoctrination and enslavement by their evil brand of personal media players.
