foolZONE Special Reports for April 1, 2006
Washington, DC April 1, 2006...The Department of the Interior has unveiled an "aggressive" ecology strategy in response to scientists' recent discovery that the United States' supply of Ones and Zeros has become deeply depleted, primarily due to growing levels of Internet traffic. "While it's not a crisis yet, we need to adopt conservation measures to ensure a steady supply of the fuel that powers our digital economy," said Intern to the Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, Gayle "Tim" Horton. The National Strategic Bit Conservation Initiative (NSBCI) s/he outlined will also address the problem of so-called "bit pollution," a phenomenon most evidenced by the ever-growing piles of used Ones and Zeros that are cluttering the offices of smaller businesses and threatening to bury larger on-line enterprises such as Google, eBay, and analogZONE."
"I have tasked Donny, Dickie and several other key White
House staff members to make sure we're not caught flat-footed like we were
with Katrina or gas prices," said Secretary Horton. "They've worked
with industry leaders to develop this two-phase plan to be the foundation
of a national effort to conserve this precious natural resource. And, so
far, I think they're doing a heckuva job," she concluded.
The first phase of NSBCI will involve a voluntary program to conserve bits in e-mails and other digital communications. Dubbed the E-Signature Conservation plan, this program will provide tax credits to businesses for reducing the length of signatures used at the end of e-mails. "The idea came to me as I went through my e-mails one morning. I was shocked at how many had lengthy e-signatures," said Horton. "A number of my dear friends have quoted entire paragraphs out of books, never mind that in doing so they are in direct violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now, granted, many of the quotes come from worthwhile sources such as The Bible and my speeches, but they haven't changed these quotes for months. How many times am I going to read them? I just think of all those wasted bits that serve absolutely no purpose. I mean, what's going to happen when we run out of room in the e-landfill? If every American eliminated just one comma from every e-mail he sent, you could encode the entire Encyclopedia Britannica 1537 times every day. What an impact on our environment this would make."
Alice McAfee, spokesperson for the president's science advisory council, explained that the second phase of the NSBCI will be to develop bit recycling technologies that can extract, process, and re-use bits from computers and networking equipment. The program's plans include a pilot bit reprocessing plant which will be constructed under a joint effort between Haulyerbooty Home Industrials and Schlockheed Martinizing. The cost will be covered as part of a $10 billion no-bid contract the two companies were awarded to manage NSBCI-related activities. "We're very close to being able to reprocess Ones on a commercial basis, although it will probably be a year or two before we can do the same for Zeroes," said McAfee.
Secretary Horton plans to initiate the launch of the NSBCI by sending
out a high-resolution PowerPoynt presentation to the entire subscription base of AWOL, Earthylinx,
YaWhom and other major ISPs.