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2005 Foot In Mouth Awards
jollyroger1210 writes "Wired is running a story on the 2005 Foot In Mouth Awards." From the article: "Tech execs say the darndest things. And so do shuffling presidents, and disgraced scientists, and Wikipedia fakers. It's time to relive 2005's biggest spoken gaffes."
I'm going to sacrafice some karma for this, but I truly don't care.
First of all, who cares if Slashdot posts it a little late?
Honestly, Some of us do not visit 'digg' or any of that crap. Why? Becasue it's full of little children who have no idea what they're talking about.
So if it was posted there first, who cares? No one, except for you and the other 'anti-slashdot' kids. If you're so enthralled in the fact that 'digg' posts it first then, guess what? Go there and read digg.
I, personally, am going to stay here at slashdot. Why? Because I can actually get smarter by reading some posts. I just got more ignorant trying to decrypt the aol-leet-speek-kid posts at Digg.
Slashdot may have it's share of problems, but it also has some great minds that read it and contribute.
this guy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/23/15 13203&tid=141&tid=158&tid=3&tid=106
Well said! Regular readers all know that Slashdot, editorially, is fairly mediocre. Awful editing and spelling, frequent duplicate posts, and so on. But it's the moderation system and comments that make it shine. Where else can you read astrophysicists discuss the latest astronomy finding, or professional engineers dissecting the latest technology invention? Thanks to moderation, the best posts rise to the top.
The one time I visited Digg, I found the comments worthless.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Man, get over it. Like the Swift Boat Vets, the Dan Rather story is more a case of corruption and blog bullying than anything else, it's definitely not "a return to truth in journalism", or whatever you may think it is. They decided what they wanted to say, shoved their fingers in their ears and screamed "it's fake" until someone noticed.
It was more about PR cleanup than fact checking. The question is not "is this legit?", but "how can we manipulate belief"? They had people discussing how to tear it down within 10 or 15 minutes of its first airing. The qualifications of the people discussing the matter? Well, it's a memo. You could ask people in print manufacturing, or forensics. You could ask an army desk jockey. You could even ask any secretary old enough to have used one of those typewriters. Instead, it was freepers, marketing people, PR, politicians, newscasters, paid political operatives(bloggers!), and the like. Oh, and a few computer guys. Most weren't even born yet in the era of that typewriter or Bush's service.
Me? I work in printing. The family business is printing, and my father was in computer repair for decades. My childhood was spent with inky fingers, learning programming or fixing hardware. So, I know both areas pretty well, and I didn't buy it. The really clever thing is that the real point of the matter was "did Bush fulfill obligations?" not the placement of a fucking letter or apostrophe. Kudos on making sure the voting public avoided that question and discussed decades old typewriters instead.
It's an exercise in the efficiency of the conservative political machine. You're not even discussing the topic at hand. You're discussing 2004 in a "let's remember 2005" comments section. We should both be modded for being offtopic. And you should learn that you can't reuse calenders.
Oh, don't bother. For every article, there is an idiot who thinks that foobar website had it 3.247 minutes before Slashdot.
Who the hell bloody cares? Slashdot is one place where it will eventually show up, and one place where the discussions aren't full of crap.
Seriously, a message to the posters like the OP - get the hell off Slashdot. If you don't like this place, then what the hell are you doing here? At least, let those of us who like this place hang out and actually discuss stuff, rather than whining like a 13 year old about his zit.
I've seen a lot of these "alternative" to Slashdot websites. They're all full of crap. Slashdot is what it is not just because of the articles, but also because of its readers and posters. Now, take your whining elsewhere and let those of us who like the place discuss things related to the article.
Freakin' idiots.
Excuse me if I'm wrong, but I bet that the internet bills for Yahoo and Google are quite high. They already pay enough. It's like saying that tele-marketers use phone lines for free, so they should pay a special "tax" to the kind phone companies.
"Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
-- Thomas Hesse, president of Sony BMG's global digital business division
sounds like:
"Most people don't even know what AIDS is, so why should they care about it?"
Well,
I work for the largest carrier in the US, and not in a "phone store" but actually some place where I am privy to see the popularity of phones on a national and international basis.
The Razr has been super popular since its release almost a year ago. In the US, Canada, and overseas.
We unlock them hand over fist for people to take to their come countries.
And since the price dropped drastically in the past few months it was one the hottest Xmas gifts given.
And while I agree with you that Moto has a good amount of crappy phones, and nokia makes a better phone, though less feature rich on the low end, the Razr is a pretty good phone all things considered, customers live it for the reception.
I have one that I use when I do not feel like toting my Treo 650(which is a good phone for the most part, a crap phone if you install third party apps) and have not had any trouble with it.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Some just don't get it. USA, where sex with one person is more important than war with another country.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
My favorite gaffe of 2005 had to be the non-story about Google and Sun "teaming up on OpenOffice." Remember how Slashdot reported that Sun and Google were "planning Web Office" and how hundreds of posts celebrated the "fact" that a buggy office suite would be rewritten in JavaScript? In the end all that came of that deal is that Google would bundle its toolbar with the wholly-unrelated JRE download -- an asinine bundling that if it involved any other two companies (cough) would have led to mass denouncement among the alpha geeks.
For more information, click here.
Ok, so maybe Bush did believe there were WMDs. I don't think I've heard anyone saying Saddam was a nice guy or anything, it's pretty much agreed in all parts of the civilized world, no matter what your political leanings, he was a grade A asshole (yes, I know the US pandered to him in the 80s, and yes that was a shitty thing to do).
Given that, it's certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of reason to consider security data which implicated Saddam in such activities. But... you don't go to war without a vetting your intelligence.
So, if that's the case, that means Bush is either a completely gullible buffoon and utterly failed to do minimal source-vetting, or he was maliciously manipulated and lied to by those underneath him (or they didn't perform due diligence). Either way, where's some of this "personal accountability" we hear so much about from the right? (hey, and I'm all for it really, if it's real)
Let's put it this way: If I were president, which I never ever want to be, and shit played out such that I discovered I had been lied-to/duped/etc like that
How about the award for the Media for about the past decade?
They didn't start to give crappy, over-hyped reports on Katrina -- they actually somewhat improved reporting for a brief moment. But News Reporters follow "stories" not truth, not justice, not anything but what makes the best "story."
And don't feel left out that they didn't report White Misery -- yes, In know there are other place besides New Orleans -- but you are talking about a media that spent about 3 months in Aruba chasing down one white girl. If you had wanted coverage, you would have had to run around in large, naked groups with funny hats. Just getting killed doesn't count.
So, insipid, useless infotainment driven by PR flacks is the norm in News today. Screaming about the travails of a minority occasionally does nothing to upset the status quo.
And it is pretty obvious to me that the Weathermen over hype any bad weather. That's why it's so hard for people to decide whether to evacuate or not -- because any Hurricane will admonishments about the last group who didn't heed the weathermen. Nothing makes a weather persons day than to interrupt regularly scheduled programming with a weather alert. The only News here is that the News Service has been dead for some time.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Hey, hey, stop erecting strawmen here. All I said, is that the same person simply can not be stupid enough to deserve being called "clueless baboon" and evil enough to warrant comparisions with Hitler.
... which is largely why you can't understand why such a critique is applied to your Republican Prophet, Bush. When society goes insane, the sane man is condemned ... and that's ALL that you are doing here, Roscoe.
Your statement was clear enough. But my rebuttal was no straw man, and it was that you are simply incorrect, like so many people trying to protect the President and his Fascism out of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
That schizophrenics exist, destroys your argument. Bush could very well be the type that is crafty at one time, and a few hours later descends into a Hyper-Republican mindset that is the very essence of stupidity. This is why I fucking used the term "CHRONOLOGICALLY".
But we're long past "coulds". Considering Bush's past of abuse of drugs and alcohol, it's very likely he's schizo in the ways I've indicated. And -- oh yeah -- as the OP implied, we are swimming in an ocean of evidence that Bush acts like a fox on one hand, and then a retard on another.
But schizo behavior is not exclusive to the President (nor at any one time, either). Millions of Americans still think that Iraq had something to do with 911. Millions also think that Bush is a good President and that he's "protecting" America by invoking a conventional or perpetual WWIII. Schizo behavior is running rampant in America
In conclusion, if you want to see saliva in inappropriate places, watch tapes of your beloved Neo-Cons as they've talked up American Fascism for the last 4 years. I mean, good god, man, the use of torture is being PUBLICLY DEBATED as some sort of valid topic! 911 has been used to enact a Neo-Con (and Neo-Liberal -- let's not forget them!) agenda to enact outright Fascism in the USA. Smart guys and morons are making this all happen by cashing out America's wealth. And the Head Monkey in Charge (i.e. Bush) is all part of the larger Fascist game. To enact Fascism, you need to make more use of belly, not brain.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Acts like Hitler with his absolutism and vyings for complete control... thinks like a baboon with his lack of understanding and unintelligent arguements/commentary.