Futurefeedforward Cuts 18,000 Jobs

October 24, 2001
NEW HAVEN–Citing recent weakness in networking and telecommunications equipment spending and a market for IT products “softened by a general downtrend in corporate earnings and by increasing uncertainty about the near-term future,” Futurefeedforward CEO Redroe “Red” Boudaine announced Wednesday that the company plans to “pursue the world’s first trans-temporal corporate restructuring” in an effort to “return the revenue pyramid to an upright posture.”

Noting that the company is currently in sound financial shape, Mr. Boudaine went on to explain that undisclosed financial events some 50 years in the future necessitate a pre-emptive restructuring. “Our proprietary temporal network affords us access to key information about future developments both inside and outside the company,” explained Boudaine. “Today’s announcement is just our management leveraging our own technology to make sound business decisions.”

The bizarre plan calls for the Connecticut-based start-up to layoff some 18,000 workers who have not yet been hired. “The cuts come largely from upper management,” noted Boudaine. “They’re spread over about a dozen years and concentrated in our fast-food and consumer amusement divisions. Frankly, I was shocked to learn that we’ll be entering the fast-food business at all and wanted to take steps now to keep us out of it.”

The company broke the news to workers by mail, in many cases notifying parents that their as-yet unborn children, and in some cases grandchildren, are being laid off by a company they didn’t even know existed. “It was pretty strange,” admitted a Des Moines insurance adjuster who received a notice earlier in the week. “This letter said that my daughter ‘Janey Marionatti’ was being laid off by some computer company or something. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have any kids. I don’t even have any plans to get married. The severance package was attractive, though, and they offered a scholarship to ‘retrain’ my kid before she goes into whatever line of work she was going to go into. All-in-all it’s a pretty nice way to lose your job.”

Responding to questions about the restructuring, Futurefeedforward CFO Emily Efou emphasized the company’s commitment to “progressive, fiscally sound labor practices, including job re-training and pre-emptive out-placement. This restructuring also allows us to take advantage of a paradigm-scale inefficiency in financial markets,” noted Efou. “This gives us an opportunity to pay out severance and restructuring costs in present dollars. In the near-term that appears inefficient, but, once markets adjust to our technology and future dollars surpass present dollars in value, we’ll be sitting pretty.”

Asked about recent disruptions in the company’s publicly-disseminated weekly newsfeed, Boudaine admitted that delays in the service were the result of “small-scale, sympathetic work stoppages by future-side employees” and sought to reassure clients and investors that the company remains fit and focused: “There’s no need for any doubt or discomfort,” exclaimed Boudaine. “Our vision is deep and resilient. I’ve got the future in my pocket. You know that all-seeing eye on top of the pyramid? That’s me up there.”

Gates Suffers General Protection Fault

August 8, 2021
REDMOND–A recently leaked internal company memorandum has confirmed that Microsoft Chairman Emeritus Bill Gates’ collapse last Thursday was related to his participation in testing of the company’s beta-stage development of an operating system for the human genome. Marked CONFIDENTIAL and addressed to members of Microsoft’s Board of Directors, the memorandum admitted frankly that Gates’ mysterious condition was “a result of Chairman Gates’ direct participation in the development of W[indows for the] G[enome],” and sought to reassure Board members that the incident “does not represent a threat either to the established launch schedule or to the integrity of Bill’s leadership.”

Witnesses to Gates’ collapse during last week’s annual shareholders’ meeting describe a lucid, vital Gates speaking to the assembled crowd for nearly an hour before beginning to show signs of trouble. “He was really on a roll,” recalls one shareholder present at the meeting. “He was going on about physics being an open-source OS for the universe and being the number one threat to Microsoft when, all of the sudden, he stopped talking mid-sentence. He just froze. Then somebody up on the stage tapped him on the shoulder and he seemed to come out of it for a couple minutes until he just fell over, stiff as a board, muttering something over and over.”

Other witnesses, including insiders at the Pacific Technology Executives’ Medical Center where Gates received initial treatment, confirm that he has fallen into a fugue state characterized by “deep, universal muscle rigidity” and “compulsive glossolalia.” “He was blue!” exclaims one hospital insider. “I mean really blue. Not just hypoxic, but this really weird, deep blue. I’ve never seen anything else like it. And he just kept repeating the same thing over and over again, something about a general protection fault in gene 23Xw something. The whole thing gave me the creeps.”

Gates’ collapse and the leaked response memo appear to confirm rumors that Microsoft’s ultra-secret ‘Bangkok’ project aims to extend the company’s franchise into the realm of gene therapy and genetic trait manipulation. “For a long time Gates has been talking about the need for a way to standardize and coordinate gene manipulation functions across phenotypes,” notes industry analyst Juliet Joliet. “Bangkok almost certainly involves the development of a Windows-brand platform for standardizing and controlling the interface between manipulation products and the underlying genetic hardware.”

Describing Gates’ condition as “significant but trivial,” the internal memo provides hints about the company’s plans for Windows for the Genome, including mention of government review of terms in developer agreements qualifying disclosure of the product’s “TPI” or “Trait Programming Interface:” “We have reason to believe that confidential FTC approval is at a sensitive stage,” notes the memo. “We cannot stress enough the need for the Board to present a confident, united response to the Chairman’s incapacitation.”

Information concerning Gates’ prognosis has been scarce since his transfer to his private Mercer Island medical facility, but sources close to the Board hope for a rapid and full recovery. Discussing treatment measures planned by the company’s engineers, the confidential internal memo notes that “absent a more elegant solution, the reported afunctionality can be resolved by reformatting the Chairman and doing a clean reinstall of the product.”

People Sprout Squirrels, Flies

Feb. 11, 2119
LINCOLN, NE–Organizers of last weekend’s Conference on Spontaneous Biodiversification indicate that the recently identified phenomenon has spread beyond the thinly-populated rural farmlands of the American Midwest and has begun to crop up in isolated cases in urban centers as far afield as Chicago and San Diego. “The real take-away from the Conference,” notes Dr. Wendy Chimer, the Conference’s keynote speaker, “is that spontaneous generations of the sort we’ve seen in this area for several years are not localized aberrations, but part of a larger biogenetic process that we are only now beginning to recognize.”

The phenomenon, known variously as “Organismic Teratoma,” “Noah’s Ark Disease,” and “Intronic Alter-Generation Syndrome” was first identified by a team of research oncologists working at The Nebraska Health Consortium to formulate courses of treatment for strange tumor-like growths that appeared to contain small animals. “We’d never seen anything like it,” explains one member of the team. “One of the patients literally grew a squirrel right in our isolation unit. I didn’t realize that such a small animal could cause such a big mess. Have you ever tried to catch a squirrel with just a mop and an emesis basin?”

Though researchers have yet to agree on a formal definition of the phenomenon, experts confirm observed gestation periods of varying lengths, from as short as 48 hours to as long as 3 months, and have noted the generation of a menagerie of both rare and common animals, including squirrels, toads, blue-bottle flies, and a species of brown garden snake. “Every day brings a startling new story,” admits Dr. Chimer. “Just yesterday a colleague recounted an examination of a patient during which a carbuncle erupted, emitting a small nuptial flight of Jackson Hole Bees.”[p]
Most experts point to a likely connection between the phenomenon and the presence in the human genome of what is commonly called “junk” or “vestigial” DNA. “One of the continuing mysteries of the human genome is the fact that most of it appears unused,” explains Dr. Chimer. “We use some 3-4% of it, but the rest appears to be either an evolutionary artifact or simply a structural glue of sorts. Now we’re beginning to realize that a number of non-human genomes may be stored there, dormant, waiting for some activating cue we have yet to identify.”

Preliminary findings from several clinical surveys appear to confirm the presence of “appropriate, intronic, non-human genomes” in patients expressing mice and amphibians. “Our assays have consistently found species-appropriate shadow-genomes in all subjects yielding tree-frogs,” explains Dr. Harald Hopping of The Johns Hopkins Gene and Cola Center. “While our conclusions aren’t yet generalizable, they are suggestive.”

Most popular among theories of the origin and causes of the syndrome is that identified by Dr. Chimer as “Spontaneous Biodiversification:” “Why is this syndrome concentrated here, in the Midwest? Well, the phenomenon has been observed most in biomes that have become largely monocultural through intense cultivation of a single human foodstuff. Biodiversity in the state of Nebraska is now extremely narrow: pretty much people and wheat. Everything else has been driven out. It may be that this syndrome is a previously unidentified natural mechanism for kick-starting diversity where it has been lost. These animals are erupting like symptoms of a genetic unconscious in distress.”

Among avenues of treatment, excision has offered temporary relief from some “generations,” but the syndrome is remarkably persistent. “Frankly, we are not recommending treatment at this time,” notes Dr. Hopping. “The syndrome involves some physical and emotional discomfort, but does not, at this point in our research, appear to have lasting physical side-effects. In the cases of patients known to be gestating endangered or extinct species, we strongly encourage them to let symptoms run their course.”

New Camera Offers Product Placement in Snapshots

Oct. 3, 2006
ROCHESTER–Eastman Kodak today announced availability of a line of free digital cameras developed in partnership with digital advertising giant DoubleClick. The cameras, to be distributed for free to consumers under the “Phreeto” brandname, generate revenue in the form of sponsored digital product placements powered by DoubleClick ad-targeting technology. “Phreeto means freedom,” explains Kodak Marketing Director Helmut Juice. “By working with DoubleClick to enable an ad-driven business model we’ll be able to offer digital photography solutions to a much wider audience.”

Featuring gigapixel resolution and a materials-based flex-polymer zoom, the Phreeto offers two modes: a ‘sponsored’ mode in which select products are digitally placed in the ‘image environment,’ and a ‘premium’ mode offering added features for a modest subscription fee. “The idea is to give people choice,” notes Juice. “Price-sensitive consumers will get access to good, standard, network-ready personal imaging equipment. Those interested in added functionality or in disabling product-placement will be able to unlock those features with a subscription key.”

Beta-testers of the camera report mixed experiences. Though the Phreeto is designed to unobtrusively integrate placed-products into images, some users have noted limits to its compositing and re-touching algorithms. “Most of the time it seemed to not do anything that interfered with the pictures I was taking,” notes one tester. “It would just put a can of Pepsi on a table in the background, or maybe it would change your coat into something from Tommy Hilfiger. I think I’ve even got a picture at the Eiffel Tower with a McDonald’s in the background that I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist. Sometimes, though, it would freak out. I don’t know how many pictures I’ve got of a VW bug setting behind the Rockies.”

Other testers report problems with the targeting of product placements. The Phreeto is designed to exploit proprietary DoubleClick technology to place demographically-targeted products. Through analysis of the pictures users take coordinated with interaction with wireless servers housing databases of demographic and product information, the Phreeto selects user-appropriate products and collects fees from sponsors based on the demographic desirability of user profiles.

A number of testers, however, have reported embarrassing flaws in the targeting technology, including one user’s reports of pictures of “the stands at the Super Bowl, with everybody waiving boxes of tampons. In one picture my friend Joe is suddenly modeling some new Victoria’s Secret bra or something.”

Asked about flaws in the placement technology, Juice notes that the majority of the “kinks” reported by beta-testers had been addressed. “This is a first-generation product and there are bound to be some wrinkles to iron out,” he explains.

A number of activist and consumer privacy groups have expressed concern about the new camera. Reacting to news of the Phreeto, Jimmy Sale, director of the Product-Free Living Coaltion, bemoaned the “insidious invasion of technologies of memory by the artifacts of consumer culture. Personal, domestic photography is intimately bound up with both memory and nostalgia. By invading our snapshots, these products will begin to invade our memories.”

Other critics concede Kodak’s ingenuity. “It’s really quite clever if you think about it,” notes Columbia University Professor Carla Kin. “It’s all based on the simple insight that consumer photography is a medium just like any other, and, just like radio, just like TV, it may be amenable to exploitation by advertisers.”

Available in markets with 5.F wireless networks, the Phreeto comes in three eye-catching colors: cobalt, vermilion, and asphalt, and in three aromas: jasmine, oatmeal, and patchouli.