Slashdot Mirror
Raunchy Dance Routine a PR Nightmare For Microsoft
theodp writes "GeekWire reports on the techno-dance routine that preceded Microsoft's Windows Azure presentation at the Norwegian Developers Conference this week, which featured a group of women jumping around on stage to a song that included several drug references and the line: 'The words MICRO and SOFT don't apply to my penis.' In a strange effort to be inclusive, a monitor displaying the lyrics added, 'or vagina.' The official Windows Azure YouTube channel has posted an apology for 'a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language,' and said it's actively looking into the matter. Hey, could've been worse — at least @ASUS wasn't live-tweeting the event!"
'The words MICRO and SOFT don't apply to my penis.' In a strange effort to be inclusive, a monitor displaying the lyrics added, 'or vagina.'
What in the hell is an "or vagina"? Is that new hardware slang for an OR gate?
My work here is dung.
developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS ?
I Love This Company!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Sorry.. was that a Loiter Squad skit?
I can't see any way that as not meant as an intentional parody.
Either way, or the writer was on drugs.
Oh yeah, it's the latter. Never mind.
"'The words MICRO and SOFT don't apply to my penis.'"
And the word "maturity" and "adulthood" don't seem to apply to your brain either.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
But that dance routine WAS a disaster.
Also, that's not Techno.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
I remember when they rolled out the Microsoft Mambo #5, it was so bad I had to leave the room so I wouldn't laugh in front of the customers. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but they should be dragged to death behind a truck.
As an American I am only offended that the girls weren't hotter and the dance wasn't more sexy.
The words to the "song.." well, I can only say this: "Non Native Speaker."
I always thought that Microsoft made bad choices for music. For Windows 95 they used the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up, which contains the lyrics :
If you start me up
If you start me up I'll never stop
Which was fine for an adv. campaign, but then the next line always seemed weird for Microsoft to want to associate with:
You make a grown man cry
Yet in hindsight was amazingly prophetic in the context of Win95 .
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It could be worse. I discovered a famous furniture company's name means "ass" in Swedish from some engineers who couldn't stop laughing whenever they would see these boxes everywhere. I couldn't find it in the dictionary so it must be colloquial.
I wonder is there a way to search whether a made up brand name matches any word colloquial or not in any of the mainstream languages?
The harder Microsoft tries to look cool, the more they look like awkward social retards staring at their feet in the corner of the highschool dance. I'm hard pressed to think of a company with a worse public image -- aside from Haliburton and PG&E, who actually kill people to achieve profit.
developers, Developers, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS ?
Since all their attempts just result in complete awkwardness, I know that Tim & Eric sometimes do product skits (like this board game) and I think that Microsoft should just go full intended awkward and hire Tim & Eric. That way nobody can make fun of them for being awkward and, like, twenty years from now they will be seen as doing comedy WAY ahead of its time.
My work here is dung.
Apple would have girls that were actually sexy.
Meh....
Lame lyrics and where's the raunchy dance? :D
Geekwire needs to check up on the state of music videos these days(the uncensored versions). Or maybe not, it will give them a heartattack.
And I get this? Come on, that looked like routine from my junior high talent show, but not as raunchy. This is more blatant headline sensationlism by Slashdot!
But I do so love the ESL lyrics.
Blue Jeans on Fire!
Chevrolet, Elvis!
Blue jeans on fire!
New York, let's go!
Every incident like this I've ever been involved with usually began with a staff meeting where everyone thought it would be a great idea to be young and hip by putting the young and hip guy in charge of some presentation. And it usually ended with said young and hip guy explaining why he honestly thought that having someone sing a rendition of "Cop Killer" to a backdrop of nude dancers would be appropriate for a presentation of of the company's annual shareholders' report.
Leave the musical numbers for the Oscars and the comedy skits for SNL. They already do them bad enough without you trying too.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Didn't think it was all that bad. Sure it hurt my ears, but didn't touch my delicate sensibilities.
Apple would have girls that were actually sexy.
With rounded corners, of course ;-)
Microsoft's official stance: If you aren't sure what something is, Bing(tm) it. Go to your XBox 360 with Kinnect and shout proudly "XBOX BING OR VAGINA".
Actually, we speak English just fine here [in Norway], even though it's a second language for most. English is after all a close cousin of the Scandinavian languages, Dutch and German. It's closer to "native" than you would think.
I'm sorry to say we have no excuse for this silly little song, other than that we have a different culture and couldn't care less about offending "sensitive" foreigners :)
I haven't heard the song itself, but you might want to consider the fact that we also like to intentionally create songs that make a mockery of both our languages. It's called parody. Things are not always what they appear to be ;)
The good news is the Apple girls would be multi touch enabled, the bad news is only one "button" to play with even if the world standard has always been to ship with two. And they'd be shiny, very shiny.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If your name is associated with it you have something to do with it. Or at least partially responsible.
The fact that didn't pay attention isn't an excuse. Their name will be associated with this because it was part of their event.
You know what's immature? The fact that we as a culture seem ok with glorifying violence against people, killing and maiming them, but when you use the word "penis" then OMG! horrible! It's not natural Bullshit.
The world would be a happier, healthier place if we just stood up against this nonsense and admit that sex is fine, fun, and healthy. Seriously, who made that headline? Other than a stupid song with some dumb lyrics, who cares? Sure, it doesn't really get across what MS wants, but a "PR Nightmare"? Give me a break.
It's headlines like these that keep perpetuating the controlling and immature notion that sexuality is a sin, punishable by censure or banishment from society. If MS had used a video of the paperclip smacking around then crushing an apple that oozes blood it wouldn't be appropriate but would it be a "PR Nightmare"?
-
Microsoft already seems to be doing some kind of damage control because I cannot share this link on facebook. Facebook tells me I'm trying to share a blocked link...
I haven't seen something like that since the time my company accidentally hired strippers for our Vegas-themed Christmas party.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Only PR.
You are talking about Microsoft, mission complete.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
For Windows XP they picked Madonna's "Ray of Light". I came up with better lyrics than the stock ones.
Gotta admit, though, after maybe 5 years XP became nearly tolerable. For playing games, at least.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
do you cry while you masturbate alone at night, bitter internet puke?
I used to, but thankfully your mum is doing cheap webcam shows for me now.
I'm not signing anything
I see you have never been to an Apple store.
I actually had the misfortune to need to go to one in my local mall, when my work Mac Book Pro's hard drive died under warranty.
Two things stuck out:
1) they had easily twice as many blue-shirts as customers, which sure made them look a lot busier than they really were.
2) they had somehow gotten two uniformed, armed police officers to stand as full-time guards in the store. I really appreciate this expenditure of my local tax dollars, knowing that they are vigilantly watching over Apple's goods. Certainly this isn't something they could or shoul dhave handled via private security or something... however do jewelry stores manage?
I'm only offended by how bad the song was. If you watch the video you can hear the crowd's indifference to the whole thing, except for one person sort of laughing at the "joke". The whole thing was pretty lame and ham-handed, which just made the use of vulgarity more notable, like when your dad tells a "dirty" joke to your friends and it's just a bad joke. It makes it way more uncomfortable.
Some departments allow police to be uniformed, off duty, and getting paid to do private security in their spare time. Likewise, some municipalities allow events to pay them to have officers loiter there. So it wasn't necessarily tax dollars.
So the local Microsoft subsidiary or its PR firm didn't understand the parent company is based in the veritable Saudi Arabia of the western world, where even though the prudes, Puritans, and American Taliban have lost the culture war for the most part, they're still staunchly camped out in the business world, under the guise of "political correctness." Instead of invoking Bible verses its "insensitivity" or "sexual harassment" nowadays. New lipstick, same ol' pig.
Now if only they had shown a video of American fighter jets and bombers carpet-bombing civilians, squirting red, white, and blue smoke behind them, all set to "America, Fuck Yeah!", I'm sure it would've been met with raucous cheers and squeals of unmitigated glee from people on this side of the pond.
D. Tyler Cade
You know how members of the military show genuine respect for some idiot that outranks them?
Because when you salute, you're not saluting the man, you're saluting "the uniform," the office the man holds, not the man. It's kind of a dodge, I'll grant you, but one I think works.
The badge works the same way. I'll follow an officer's instructions in public not because he's a great guy, but because he holds a public office We the People have invested with authority. It's the badge that's important, not the man.
When I was in college, I worked at a very large and successful tourist trap restaurant and bar at a site of great natural beauty. The owner hired two sheriff's deputies for security. In return for hanging out on the weekends and hitting on the waitstaff, the owner provided those two deputies with half of their takehome pay and just a whole lot of booze.
It didn't take long for the corruption to set in. The owner was getting those deputies money, alcohol and sex and sure enough, they very quickly became his personal pet deputies. I saw people get arrested for very little more than "Contempt of Owner," while the DUI patrols that used to hover around the restaraunt mysteriously evaporated.
It's a pretty simple principle. The badge should not be available for rent or sale. Private money should not buy public authority. Doing so is called "Bribery." Our Law Enforcement Officers need to avoid even the appearance of favoritism or bias, and thus should not be taking money from people thay may one day be called upon to testify against or arrest.
If this means we need to pay our LEOs a living wage, so be it.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."