All IT people have heard the joke, "Well, if I take a hammer to it..." But that doesn't mean they do it. From the article, the headline reads as though users are causing deliberate damage to their computers in order to receive an upgrade. Read the actual text however, and while users are saying that, there isn't anything presented to show there are widespread acts of vandalism happening. The only real takeaway from this article is that some UK offices are using significantly outdated equipment. The headline is just sensationalism. I hate to say it, but I think /. fell for this one.

Good satire uses humor to expose some truth. One of my favorite South Park moments was during the episode about tolerance. The characters had just toured the Museum of Tolerance where they learned to respect people of other races and cultures. Leaving the museum they see a smoker sitting at a fountain smoking and start ripping on him, calling him names and telling him to get lost. It was funny because there is some truth there, that we preach tolerance of other races yet condemn smokers so easily. With "Manbearpig" the satirical truth Matt and Trey went for was the global warming is just as real as the creature manbearpig. Both are figments of Al Gore's imagination. If global warming was false, and the alarm over it was as overblown as South Park Al Gore's fear of manbearpig, then the satire would work. But we know global warming is happening, and that current practices of humanity are the primary causes of it. So, the satire just doesn't work. A much better environmental-focused South Park satire was of the smugness of hybrid car owners in the episode "Smug." I love hybrid cars, but that episode was funny because it took to task the superiority complex of some hybrid owners.