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| Technology News - updated 7:51 PM NST Jun 05 |
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| Reuters | CNET | Internet Report | ZDNet | MacCentral | AP | NewsFactor | ||
Good God!Another dotcom?By Justaus Bari"Recognizing the importance of the Internet, I have decided to launch God.com". Thus began His press release, which simultaneously appeared on Bloomberg, Internet Wire, Reuters, and all the web channels.
"It
is the age of direct marketing. It is not enough any longer to depend on
My agents – the religious institutions and politicians, or even the
Godly Groups - for large-scale publicity. It has become necessary for Me
to take a more active role. The Internet is the new reality, the perfect
medium for directly interacting with My people. “Also,
the Internet is threatening to become omnipresent, and Wall Street's
quarterly pressure is already almost omnipotent, creating and destroying
companies, people, and their lives. I could take up an adversarial
position and create a great flood of junk bonds and sites. But, I have
decided that the appropriate vehicle for the future is God.com, which will
have its launch and IPO after seven days." All
those who joined up have been promised a fantastic after-life. Places in
Heaven.com (a 100% owned subsidiary of God.com) can be booked on the Web.
"It's as easy for a man to enter Heaven, as it is for a mouse to pass
through the eye of this image,” the site proclaims near an image of a
needle. Freedom from Spam, Freddie Mercury songs, and the Blue Meanies
have been promised as part of the package deal. Wall
Street analysts - the closest competitors to God as far as the corporate
world is concerned - hold a wide variety of views. At first, some doubted
the miraculous efficiency needed for the construction of the site. Could a
whole new site be ready, up and running, starting from nothing, in just 7
days? But analysts who specialised in tracking the creation industry have
said God’s references proved perfect on that score, noting that His last
mega-project was completed on schedule on the sixth day. Some
Wall Street analysts have begun to voice doubts. Some analysts who have
studied His brick-and-mortar project have asked how God.com could survive
in the 24*7 net Economy if He wanted to rest every 7 days? And would the
security be adequate, questioned some analysts? The previous mega-project
had promised, “No work, all play” in Eden, but the security of key
information was controlled merely as a word-of-mouth warning.
Consequently, people had accessed – easily and quickly – the critical
information. It had led to the abandonment of some of the basic premises
on the last project; what was the probability of it happening again if
security was enforced in such a lax manner as before? With
this has also come all the questions about the business model. Clients
have to subscribe now but they get their returns only in after-life.
Short-term returns for subscribers were deemed unlikely. While subscribers
have been promised grand things such as eternal life, they would have to
wait for eternity, unless – analysts added - the Apocalypse was soon. Unfortunately,
this has led to a new theory: the Apocalyse is imminent, which is why
God.com is being launched. With devilish cunning, these analysts have
claimed that God is probably in to make quick returns, to do a major
launch just before the Apocalypse hit. Many
sites joined in the babble that towers above all news items.
Rationalists.com threatened to sue the Internet news providers. It’s a
fraud, they claimed, just another hoax. Look at the sources: how could a
news item, any news item appear at all websites simultaneously. It must be
a fraud. And see who is pushing this story: Bloomberg and Internet Wire!
Could one believe them after they had pulled off the previous greatest
web-hoax of all time: the Emulex story.
Evangelists.com used the same evidence to prove the opposite: if it
could appear at all sites simultaneously, it must be a miracle by God
Himself. God.com
must be an impostor because God is dead, claimed Nietszche.com. We’ve
killed God, said the communists, who most observers believed were dead.
Man.com added to the world of claim and counter-claim: it pronounced it
had invented God, in the pre-WTO days when the patent regime was not
strictly enforced. Soon
after the announcements, connectivity stocks fell sharply. CISCO, Juniper,
and all ISPs were badly hit. CISCO dropped by 8.21%, and Juniper by
10.51%. Who needed Internet hardware, routine routers, mundane modems, or
weird WAPs if God was powering the Web? All you had to do was pray. “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams
of”, said network analysts at Gartner, echoing Tennyson. A set of
research papers was available at Gartner: these indicated the high
correlation between users who prayed for their Internet connectivity, and
actually getting connected to the Internet. “This trend of increasing
correlation between prayer and performance is expected to increase. While
it cannot be said with certainty that currently, prayer is the most
important or only driver, it is likely that with a new paradigm introduced
by God.com, there may be increasingly less reasons for intermediaries to
an internet with an active God.com.” Most
commercial sites providing information dropped sharply in the stock
market, as it was feared that God.com would provide easy access to most
information through its universal access mechanism. Overall, the Nasdaq
dropped 8.13% in 1 day, making it the greatest fall in any one day in its
history. “We have run out of Black days, so we don’t know what to call
this day,” said one analyst. Biotech
stocks have not been affected yet. Celera Genomics (news
- web
sites) Inc., based in Rockville, Maryland, claimed that the new Internet site
will not affect the Biotechnology companies, and specifically those
companies involved in the human genome project. “We have seen in the
past that while God did provide pleasure and entertainment to humans,
access to the Tree of Life was not in the public domain. We hope that this
will reinforce our position as providers of the genome information to our
investors alone.” Celera
closed up $6.15 to $47.75, or almost 15 percent. Amidst the growing confusion, there was another announcement from God.com: "Due to the unexpected sharp and sudden fall in the stock market, the IPO has been postponed indefinitely." Wall Street analysts rejoiced privately, claiming that this proved they were as successful in predicting the markets as God Himself.
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