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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.
So what are the chances MicroSoft thought this was a legit idea upon releasing the concept, only to backpedal and say it was a "joke" a few days later? Seems like and odd joke to me...
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....
click here (don't be afraid, it's not one of those links that are on-topic to this story in their own special way...)
Although having a Portable PC in a Porta-potty doesn't make much sense, it seems like a somewhat good idea in a permament environment.
I mean realistically your going to be sitting down anyway and since your basicially a captive audience you might as well read up on the news or sports while your there. It's better than reading the writing on the wall.
Of course a paper would be just as good, but something like this built into a wall would be more up to date. It doesn't really need to be interactive either. just run headlines, Sport Scores and Stock Market tickers.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Well If i can have a fridge with internet access why not the toilet as well ??
I had a pet once
The Open Source communities efforts to build a better shitter?
... after they realized everyone was making fun of their iLoo. So they just pulled it back.
... This is very much a 'toe in the water' experiment to gauge interest so we'll have to see how it goes, although judging from response so far it's really captured people's imagination!"
From the article:
In an e-mail sent last week to The Associated Press, Red Consultancy's Ben Philipson wrote "MSN is really working on building a prototype for the Summer festivals, perhaps Glastonbury
Malina Bragg, who helps with MSN's account for Waggener Edstrom, also verified last week that the project was true.
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
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 wonder if this was inspired by the Apple iToilet
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Yes, "Loo" from the company that *still* spells "colour" as "color" and "favourite" as "favorite" even when you select the UK English language settings? Come on guys, you're supposed to have this language thing sorted now.
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
After all, iLoo was already trademarked by Apple, the new toilet from Microsoft will be called Microsoft Shit 1.0.
So the UK office puts out a funny-gram on 30 April and it takes the headquarters over 10 days to say it was a joke? This after the "release" was carried by everyone from /. to major news carriers? Sure, it was amusing but it was obviously being taken seriously by the press. They should have come out with the laugh and the "oh, hey - they were just kidding" memo a lot sooner.
"MSN is really working on building a prototype for the Summer festivals, perhaps Glastonbury ..."
The Glasonbury Festival could be the ultimate test for a wired toilet. Problem is most of the users would be too stoned to notice, and who in their right mind is going to spend any longer than needed in a Glasto portaloo to check their hotmail, (that is if it doesn't get nicked by the skallies).
This is how the Festival Organisers describe them...
"The 'long drop' toilets are open stalls positioned above a large pit - looking down is not advised! The stall gates often don't lock, so it's advised to look under the gate for feet before entering a stall. But don't be surprised if you then do find someone inside - squatting with feet on the seat is a popular way of avoiding skin contact."
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
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.
Here is the Google Cache for the iLoo.
How can your own company hoax itself?!?! This wasn't just some Onion article or fake email everyone sent out. It was a bloody press release! And it was NOT an April Fools Trick as it dates May 2nd.
Gee everybody was fooled into believing the iLoo was real because Microsoft issues a press release saying it was building the darn thing. Really pulled one over on us...
MAYBE the truth is that Microsoft recieved so much bad press over it that they decided to pull the iLoo and pretend it was a joke. If that is the case, aren't there regulations against such things?
BrianSince 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 time, SFgate is wrong. It's not a hoax. Read the article. It's a legitimate experiment to build a prototype for the Glastonbury festival. It's just that it got so much attention that an embarrassed Microsoft had to say that it wasn't officially sanctioned communication. This does not mean it's a hoax. The SFgate chose a poor headline, especially after the reporter verified that the project was true.
bp
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/
It *could* be just P.R. damage control designed to counter how silly MS was looking. The CNN article I read indicated that the legitimacy of the toilet was attested to by several other MS staffers.
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.
not that i can't take a good joke, but is their some legal precedence that would enable a person or entity to sue MSN UK? couldn't the media companies that took the time to research and publish (print, tv, internet media) this story could sue for lost revenue, lost wages, lost time, lost reputation (for printing a hoax? couldn't companies with analysts covering microsoft or the embedded devices market sue for lost revenue and lost time?
not that i would sue, but shouldn't their be some legal ramifications for this hoax? what if somebody could prove that MS stock price actually increased in the time directly after the announcement?
just my ramblings...
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Maybe this iLoo was created with the genuine intention of building such a product. But when it started to get press, the MSFT brass realised it was a 'stinky' idea. Why would MSFT UK just release something outrageous like this as a hoax? I think they didn't want to fess up and admit that they had a terrible idea so they just said it was a hoax.
I thought Microsoft was finally being innovative!
Seriously, Don't take anything I say seriously.
As the article states, the Associated press recieved confirmations that it was true from two of Microsoft's public relations agencies.
... there is no way they would have confirmed that unless they had microsoft corp's ok.
It is believable that maybe some engineers or lower management will plant a false story as a joke, but the public relation firms deal with top management only
It is much more likely that after realizing the whole thing just got turned into a bad joke in the media, Microsoft decided to pretend they never had anything to do with the whole project.
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
According to this article Microsoft is now claiming that the iLoo is not a hoax, but was a concept being developed and has since been cancelled. "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax, and in fact it was not," said Lisa Gurry, MSN group product manager....On Tuesday, though, Microsoft said it had relied on bad information from a Microsoft employee in the United Kingdom who said it was a hoax, Gurry said. After more talks with people in London, the company determined it was a real project, after all.