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Microsoft's iLoo Project A Hoax
minesweeper writes "It appears that the 'iLoo,' a portable toilet with Internet access designed by Microsoft, was actually just a hoax issued by its MSN division in the United Kingdom. In addition to receiving press here on Slashdot, the fake release was also covered by The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Reuters. See a diagram of the iLoo here."
...as I said at the time. Boom, boom!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
and if you were unfortunate enough to have fallen for it, your picture and whatever it was you did in there will soon be posted on the internet for the world to see. Trusted computing my arse
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
unfortunately.. it turns out Longhorn wasn't a hoax. :(
An April fool that's wayyy late.
sooo, not only do microsoft talk shit, they talk shit about making things that deal with shit, which end up being as useful as shit, because, in the end, its all shit... :-)
They even say it to our faces "Your stupid, you believe everything we say, we can tell you this, and you'll still buy our OS for a hugely overpriced cost!". Well I guess at least the UK division has a sense of humor.
I love you cowboy neal! Come back!
I'm sure when they find out the name of the guy responsible for the hoax, his job will be flushed...
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Does that mean the iLoo has gone down the toilet?
Yeah, I thought the 6 channel surround sound was bit much.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
but... I thought reality was supposed to be stranger than fiction.
take a 3-flusher. All of a sudden, BSOD. The bowl
is full. You need to flush, but the flush control is a
mouse click and you can't reboot (that's locked out
by their new DRM controls so only the janitor
can reboot). Stranded
Or, could you imagine the germs on the mouse or
trackpad. Or you were in New York where no one
washes their hands. Or porn....
The Open Source communities efforts to build a better shitter?
There seems to be some kind of coincednce here, XP in a portajohn.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
"due to be unveiled this summer"
Since when has Micro$oft ever delivered a product in under 5 years ?
It was obviously a hoax, just like Longhorn,
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
This whole thing stinks, they knew it, and they wanted to wash their hands of the matter. Who wouldn't after the smear job it recieved. Talk about being caught with your pants down!
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I guess this means I should cancel my GNUPoo project over at SourceForge.
I was looking forward to writing the W32/flusher.gen virus. I had all my plans in the works. Automatic flushing, and handwashing alarms....
A hoax? No way! I already bought my plane tickets and passes to ever music festival in the UK this summer just so I could check my email from an shit covered keyboard in an outhouse.
Damn...now what am I going to do?
BFL
There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
Microsoft has been perpetrating hoaxes for ages. Look at their OS, for example.
After all, iLoo was already trademarked by Apple, the new toilet from Microsoft will be called Microsoft Shit 1.0.
I've often wondered about this, and I think it is simply because some people take longer than others to drop a loaf. Some can force it out, but others have to let nature take it's course, so they have to sit there for ages and bring some reading material.
In short, there are both passive and active shitters - to the active, the shitting is it's own reward. With passives, it is merely a distraction.
I was hoping to see Steve Ballmer jumping around some stage yelling 'Plumbers! Plumbers! Plumbers! Plumbers!'
for those who don't have a clue, here is the video of the original.
Since one of the DOC lawsuits that MS settle on had a clause about vapor ware does DOC now have the right to claim MS violated the settlement agreement?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
...would I have ever thought I would see /. ranked right up there with the big boys:
/. headlines. Hell, he might even stop bitching at me about wasting time reading all that geek drivel, now that he realizes he's been in good company all along.
In addition to receiving press here on Slashdot, the fake release was also covered by The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and Reuters.
What prestige! I bet my boss wouldn't even notice if I swapped out his beloved Journal with a copy of today's
Toilet paper? Didn't you realise that an integrated computer was the first step towards a paperless toilet?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
This is very much a 'toe in the water' experiment
There have been quite a few gross comments in this thread, but that takes the cake!
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The fridge is usualy a clean place. Its supposed to preserve food. The toilet is a place you put food after its been digested. Something that germs like to cling too. Thats why you wash you hands after you've been. Its also why you should disinfect your tolite every once in a while.
Its like the place to socialise, read the paper, or print out your stock reports on toilet paper.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Who would think of trusting Microsoft with a device as important as the toilet? What would stop every script kiddie in the area from using your bathroom? How far from your computer does the toilet have to be in order to prevent Microsoft toilet viruses from reading your Outlook address book? How reliable would such a toilet be?
So you upgrade to the Palladium toilet, but now you can only go to the bathroom when Microsoft says it's OK.
Microsoft Flush 2003 offers very little improvment over Flush 2000, but you have to buy it because of "Potty Assurance (tm)." The new requirement of having each bathroom visitor sign the EULA looks annoying at first until you realize that the hardcopy EULAs are useful as toilet paper.
Gawd, that's gotta be a PHE (pointy-haired editor/boss) move.
editor: didja get the story on the iLoo?
reporter: yeah, Redmond says it wasn't sanctioned (they sounded pretty embarassed), but the UK office says it is real.
editor: ok, so it is a fake, right?
reporter: well, not really, no.
editor: so what's the by-line then?
reporter: I dunno - iLoo not a Hoax?
editor: but, you just said Microsoft said it was fake?
reporter: *sigh* no, I said that the MS UK office confirmed that they really are building a prototype, but that the MS US people say they didn't know about it.
editor: ok, just write the story and have it to me by 4:00
(next day)
reporter: WTF? *not again*
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Uh, it would be very un-Microsoft-like for them to release something on time. It was probably intended for April 1st but release got delayed by 32 days.
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
I thought Microsoft was finally being innovative!
A Microsoft spokesperson is now claiming that it was "an April's Fools joke"
Leave it to M$ to delivery over a month late on a simply joke... WinFS in 2005, yeah right...
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin