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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."
You should also realise that digg posts links to slashdot stories as stories too.
Why does yahoo do this
as technology improves, the number of FIM quotes too increase! Compare this with the classic quotes like "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
they don't make funny quotes like that any more.
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
Sony's only on there once.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This is actually rather funny. I only hope that the people who made the comments realize how silly/offbase/nuts they sounded.
Keep the faith, share the code
We're talking about the biggest spoken gaffes in 2005, not 2004. Both of your links are dated in 2004.
I recall reading how the CEO of Quark Express had slipped so far into desperation due to Adobe's onslaught with its CS Suite that he posted some unprofessional and offensive comments, hoping to show that newest Quark offering was more "hip." Something to do with orgies.
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
"Mr. Negroponte has called it a $100 laptop -- I think a more realistic title should be 'the $100 gadget.'"
-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett
Who is getting the foot in the mouth here? Mr. Negroponte?
The human race is artificial intelligence created using object orientated programming.
Digg for the headlines. Slashdot for the commentary.
Yeah, Digg's comments are pretty worthless, but I think it has to do more with how it's commenting system is set up more than the reader base. Slashcode, for all its flaws, has a really nice system to sort, write, and moderate comments. Meanwhile, Digg doesn't even have threads, making each comment more of an island than part of a discussion. And anyone who knows who the koolaidguy is knows that Digg's moderation needs some work.
In any case, its nice to see Slashdot finally have some competition.
vi ~/.emacs
Seriously, why is printing "f**k" so difficult? I'm from Europe and I really can't understand you Americans.
:). I guess you made a similar mistake as someone in America who would try to imagine Paris from the "Amelie" movie - it just depicts a nonexistent culture of a nonexistent city in a nonexistent country.
I'm from Europe too and I think I have an explanation. We tend to learn American English primary from American popular culture - movies, song lyrics, comics, video games etc. That's why we think that the f-word is so common in everyday usage of American English - we imagine this country as populated mostly by hip handsome mobsters, private detectives in trench coats, muscular tatooed Afroamerican cocaine dealers able to rhyme everything with "mothafucka", bespectacled mad computer geniuses etc. When I set my foot for the first time on LAX, the biggest surprise for me was that actually everyone I met seemed to be nice and gentle, totally unlike what I have imagined from "Grand Theft Auto" or "Blade Runner"
It's a mindset thing. Americans are taught from birth that it is wrong (and possibly sinful) to say certain words. My mother still cringes when I say 'fuck' and I've said it a LOT.
To me, it's just a word. Like 'blimey'. Nobody screams bloody murder when you say 'blimey', and yet it's used in the same way.
Or let's look at replacement words... 'Frack' and 'frell' are a couple scifi replacements for 'fuck'. They are extremely obvious what they are, and yet nobody cares if they are said.
There are even other, more obvious words... Shit and crap are EXACTLY the same thing. Why is one a 'cuss word' and the other merely another word for excrement?
This bothered me for a few years and I spent those years cursing like a sailor. With reasonable people, it made no difference at all. But lately, it's gotten boring and I've decided to try to keep it to a minimum, mainly for something to do while I'm speaking. (Speech is boring and can use a lot of livening-up.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I've seen a nice one. In place of the banner killed by adblock:
"The site won't survive without money from ads. Switch off that adblock, please."
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
When Mary Mapes posts here and tries to be clever, I'm sure she'll be greeted in the same fashion.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Once upon a time a student writing a paper on Communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism told his professor that he had been visited by agents of Homeland Security because he had placed a request for Chairman Mao's Little Red Book through the inter-library loan program.
y /12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm
y /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm
Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
There's just one little thing the student didn't count on...
Sometimes professors do not take things at face value, sometimes they actually do some research and they check things, they ask questions, and sometimes they notice inconsistencies.
They're smart like that. They really are. That's why professors are professors and why students are students, and why small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri are small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. But I digress...
Anyhow, to make a long story short, this student's professor asked some questions. This student's professor noticed some inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor asked the student's parents some questions. This student's professor found more inconsistencies in the student's story. This student's professor did even more checking.
In the end this student's professor found that not a single thing that the student had told him could be verified. The professor confronted his student who tearfully admitted that the story of being visited by agents of Homeland Security was a complete fabrication.
Federal agent's visit was a hoax
http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/dail
This student's cobbled up story which had caused news articles and editorials to be written, which had caused much heated discussion on the Internet, in the end was unravelled and shot to pieces because the student's professor had not taken it at face value and had asked questions until he got at the truth of the matter.
Now, you may ask, who put their foot in their mouth in this story? Well, I'll tell you. Many people on the discussion board where you now read this very post put their feet in their mouths by spewing intemperate comments as a result of uncritically accepting the statements of a liar as the truth. I'd say that's a pretty good foot in the mouth story and a pretty good cautionary tale as well.
And here I thought the President had a monopoly on shooting the messenger.
Look, there was a story there. A valid story, about Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. A story that we won't get to hear or see now, because it's all been tarred with the fake-memo brush. Because Mapes and Rather thought the story wasn't quite good enough, they sexed it up... with faked evidence. How responsible were they? Well, they clearly didn't show the diligence that they were paid for.
And somehow you're saying it's the fault of Little Green Footballs that the memos were fakes? If I were a left-wing partisan hack, I'd be furious at Mapes and Rather for killing the TANG story. A six year old could have showed that they were fake. You're only embarrassing yourself by claiming otherwise.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"(Telecoms) and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!" -- SBC Communications CEO Ed Whitacre LOL! smell that fear, the desperation!
Send your spendthrift head of state this
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." George W Bush
"But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." George W Bush
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W Bush
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney
"We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Donald Rumsfeld
The two are mutually exclusive, so which is it?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We should put the media up for an award for their Katrina coverage. The Cat 4 huricane that was really a cat 3, the higher percentage of white people (over general population) who died versus black, the lack of mass murders in the shelters.... I could go on and on.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
I'd mod you up one. I'm American and not offended, and I don't get us either.
There is simply too much glass..
According to my dad, there is an interesting explanation behind the difference in rudeness between two English words that mean the same thing. In 1066 the Normans invaded England and took it over. This meant that there were two populations coexisting. There were the Anglo-Saxons, who were the common folk, and you had also the Normans who were the gentry.
These two people spoke different languages. Most of the ruder terms have come from the Anglo-Saxon words, while most of the more acceptable words come from the Norman words. The reason why the Norman words are less rude is, of course, because they were more upper-class and so using the words of the Normans was less vulgar.
I don't know if this is true, but if it is, then it's certainly interesting how class differences from a thousand years ago can still affect the language we speak today! If you look up "crap" in the dictionary, then it tells you that it comes from Old French roots (the Normans came from France), whereas "shit" is apparently from Old English, which seems to lend credence to this theory.
The interesting thing was not that the FBI "visited a student" but that they COULD visit a student.
Yeah, they could. Assuming, of course, the student was being investigated for terrorism or other national security offenses.
The idea that random students will be monitored for their reading habits is purest fear mongering.
Clear, Dark Skies