CIA Agent Wet-Wired With BeOS
In it's most successful effort to date to merge man and machine, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) installed a customized version of the BeOS into a human being.

"We aim to be platform agnostic, but this is somewhat astounding," said Be Inc. CEO Jean-Louis Gassée.

A source deep within CIA headquarters told Be Dope that hardware enabling a human being to augment its natural abilities with those provided by the BeOS had been successfully transplanted into a test subject.

"The small CPU is implanted into a body cavity, while output is directed straight into the optic and aural nerves. Input is wired directly from the brain and there are a series of transmitters to provide wireless communication with the Internet and other networks," said our source.

Power from the unit is derived from the host's body heat and kinetic energy.

"Now, an agent can be searching vast databases of information, reviewing mission briefs, viewing photographs and transmitting a report back to headquarters while simultaneously performing other aspects of a mission," our source reported.

None of this would have been possible without the stability and speed of the BeOS.

"We obviously needed something that would not crash, that could handle all types of media and that could perform multiple tasks without taking a performance hit. The BeOS was an answer to our prayers," explained out source.

The source said it was "unlikely" this technology would be released to the average consumer any time soon.

Microsoft Faces "Unfair Monopoly" Charges
Federal and state regulators are expected to announce Thursday antitrust action against Microsoft for what they claim are "unfair monopolistic practices".

"Gates is always using his power in unfair ways, including building hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place just before people land on them," said Justice Department trustbuster, Joel Klein. "He has also been known to pay large sums of money to purchase other properties for the sole reason of preventing other players from building houses and hotels on them. In this way, Gates prevents other players' properties from increasing in value."

Other complaints include charges that Gates steals money from Free Parking, uses loaded dice, palms "Get out of jail free" cards from the bottom of the deck and always demands to be the racecar.

BeOS Anti-Gravity Solution Lost By NASA
NASA scientists lost years of anti-gravity research when a BeOS-enabled device suddenly solved the anti-gravity equations and sped away from earth.

"Our prototypes were failing because of the rapid, simultaneous ongoing calculations could not be sustained by any hardware," said Dr. Peter Hume, Director of NASA's Anti-gravity Research Division. "When we outfitted the prototypes with new computers running specially modified versions of the BeOS, we recorded a substantial improvement, but did not expect a breakthrough of this magnitude to happen so soon."

According to Dr. Hume, the device was not set to simply reduce the effects of gravity, but to nullify it all together.

"To be honest, we had no idea of what would happen if it started to work," Dr. Hume reported.

Scientists were performing routine tests on the new device when they noticed a strange, low hum fill the room. A check of telemetry data showed the BeOS computer was less than a second away from balancing all the needed equations and functions of the device. Before the scientists could shut it down, the device sped upwards so quickly it easily broke through the ceiling and continued through the atmosphere and into space.

Although no one was hurt, debris from the collapsed ceiling destroyed the other prototypes as well as the central computer where all mission data was stored. The morning's data had not yet been backed up to a remote location.

NASA expects to recreate the data within three to five years.

Egyptian Curse Responsible for Windows OS?
A recently discovered burial tomb in Egypt has yielded portions of an ancient curse that archaeologists believe might explain why Windows is the most popular OS in use today.

"While most curses from this time period usually called for violent and spectacular deaths for the victim and his descendants, this curse worked in much more subtle ways," said archeotechnologist Dr. Peter Rimes. "It called for what translates roughly to 'a reign of inefficiency' to spread across the earth."

Rimes claims this curse could explain the decline and in some cases outright disappearance of what were formerly advanced civilizations.

"This curse could easily explain why an OS as slow and buggy as Windows is found on such a high percentage of computers worldwide."

Fortunately, this curse comes with an expiration date, according to Dr. Rimes.

"According to our best calculations, the curse is set to expire sometime in the fourth quarter of 1998. Already we see the strength of the curse deteriorating in the DOJ probes and the rise of attention for other operating systems," explained Dr. Rimes.

BeOS R4, the first "consumer-friendly" version of the BeOS is scheduled to ship sometime in the fourth quarter of 1998 - just as the ancient curse is set to expire.

"My, what a fortunate coincidence," said Be Inc. CEO and former Egyptologist John-Louis Gassée.

Godzilla Accidentally Ported to BeOS
A group of misinformed but well-meaning programmers have ported Japanese rubber-monster movie star Godzilla to the BeOS according to several postings to the Be User Group mailing list.

"We are proud to announce Godzilla v.8 beta for the BeOS" said an announcement mailed to the list on Thursday.

Several email exchanges later, Be Dope learned that the programming team had ported Godzilla in response to an email from a friend that informed them that "a version of Godzilla for the BeOS was desperately wanted" by BeOS users.'

"I of course meant to type Mozilla," said the sender or the original email.

Mozilla is Netscape's public release of much of the code used in its popular web browsers. BeOS users hope for a BeOS Mozilla to make surfing the web with their favorite browser possible.

"Although Net Positive is fast and gets the job done, I prefer many features found in Netscape's browsers," said one BeOS user.

"We will treat this as a learning experience," said a spokesman for BeOS Godzilla. "Now that we've done Godzilla, we can move on to Mozilla."

BeOS Godzilla can knock over skyscrapers, shoot red laser beams from its eyes and emit high-pitched screeches that shatter monitor screens and windows.

Cool SheepShaver Screenshot
View this screenshot to see the BeOS running SheepShaver running the MacOS running a DOS emulator running Windows 3.1 running an Apple //e emulator. Of course, it's worth the effort to play Dig Dug.