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IF bugs, THEN marketing director eats insects

Anonymous Coward writes "Ambrosia Software, Inc. announced that it would force Marketing Director Jason Whong to eat real insects if any Fall/Winter 1999 or Spring 2000 product shipped with a bug. Check it out at Bug free pledge. " Excellent.

17 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Hoo-ha! by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 2

    Geez, some of you need to lighten up! Not every PR stunt is a manipulative scheme devised by marketting flacks. Ambrosia has actually made some pretty cool games for the Mac, and even allowed one of their most popular to be ported to Linux.

    Speaking of marketting flacks, I once heard both music and sound effects from the game Apeiron on a commercial for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I only saw it once, and no one believed me. I couldn't have been the only one, will someone confirm this? It may have been made by the local station, channel 46 in Atlanta.

    I doubt they got permission. It would be ironic, considering how uptight Paramount has been about copyright infringment by overzelous fans.

  2. Insect consumption.. by technos · · Score: 4

    A few years back, while at a seminar in LA, (Los Angeles, California), a local friend of mine dragged me out to dinner. She was hot to show off the ill-gotten gains of corporate America (Read: She wanted to rub her six-figure income in my face) We went downtown to some trendy, tres chic resteraunt. After watching her order a $20 entree and a $45 slab-o-meat, I felt a little revenge was in order. Choosing the third most expensive item on the menu (and I'm sure a value at its $90 price tag!) and a mug of Guinness, I figured I had gotten her back. She looked at me with this huge-eyed, 'you just mke2fs'd an active mount!' stare. Slowly she explained to me that I had ordered pan-fried African earthworms on a bed of exotic vegetables. I contemplated something dirty and underhanded to get out of it, but as I was kind of hoping for some 'female companionship' later in the night this was out of the question When the meal finally came (Thoughts of live worms were killing me) it actually looked pleasant. They were presented on a bed of leeks, sprouts and pine nuts. The looked like fried clams, chewed like Goodyear, and tasted something like chicken. All in all, I'd rather eat fried worms than curried [insert meat here]. Just one word of advice: Don't count on going home with anyone after they've watched you eat worms. (The next night was fortunatly a different story, or my California trip would have been quite dull indeed!)

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    .sig: Now legally binding!
    1. Re:Insect consumption.. by Gleef · · Score: 2

      Since when are "leeks, sprouts and pine nuts" exotic vegetables? Anyway, I've always wanted to try some of the bug delicacies, but I've lacked the opportunity (i.e. being at a place I'd trust to do it well, with enough money to actually get something).

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      Open mind, insert foot.
  3. Re:Does anyone else think by webslacker · · Score: 3

    Hell, then Halflife musta been the most feature-rich game I've ever played!

  4. The *Marketing* Director? by DonkPunch · · Score: 4

    Does anyone remember the Dilbert cartoon where the Pointy-Haired Boss offered a cash incentive for every bug the programmers found and fixed?

    Result: "I'm gonna code me a minivan this afternoon!"

    I sure hope this marketing director gets along well with the developers. I can imagine a few marketing types who would inspire exactly the wrong behavior -- "Let's see, here's a mealworm for you, and a couple of grasshoppers, and here -- in line 3327 -- is a nice big roach!"

    --

    Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
  5. "Can of Worms" by DonkPunch · · Score: 2

    heh heh -- Good one. :)

    --

    Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
  6. What about Rob Malda doing the same? by funkwater · · Score: 2

    CmdrTaco and Hemos should have to eat a Madagascar Hissing Cockroack for each bug found on /.

  7. Yeah, that's funny and all, but... by Zico · · Score: 2

    When the Linux 2.0.0 kernel came out in January, it didn't even take them four months before 2.0.9 came out. At least 8 of those kernel updates included bugfixes; most likely all 9 of them did.

    Keep in mind that we're not even going into bugs throughout an entire average Linux system -- we're talking about all the bugfixes just for the kernel.

    Hmmm, what was that old saying about people in glass houses...? :)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

    1. Re:Yeah, that's funny and all, but... by dirty · · Score: 2

      Yes but atleast fixes were released in a timely fasion. Microsoft's method seems to be deny deny deny for 3 or 4 months then release a service pack that creates just as many bugs as it fixes, then deny deny deny for the next 3 or 4 months, and so on. Sure linux has bugs, but they also get stomped on quickly.

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      -matt
  8. It's not a bug, it's a feature! by jabber · · Score: 2

    So what constitutes a bug for these guys?
    Is it:
    a fatal system crash that hangs the PC?
    a fatal program crash that kills the process?
    an unexpected or unintuitive behavior on part of the software?
    corrupted graphics in some tight action situation?
    a divergence between specs and implementation?
    a poor choice of colors or fonts on part of a developer?
    the failure to support, or support completely, some obscure piece of hardware?
    weird interaction with some other software?
    unreasonable system requirements?
    etc...

    Sounds like Hakuna Matata time for Mr. Whong.

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    -- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
  9. Oh like this really matters.... by _J_ · · Score: 3

    Hey, it's a marketing guy. He's not a real person to begin with. Now if they made the programmers eat the bugs, that would be impressive.

    J:)

  10. Does anyone else think by aheitner · · Score: 2

    this is a cheap ploy to get attention by being posted to /.?

    Seriously, they make games. Games never have bugs, take it from an old hand. Only features.

    Ask our graphics programmer, Dave Rosenthal. Not a day goes by when his code isn't full of ... features...

  11. His response. by Coretti · · Score: 3

    (This was posted to comp.sys.mac.games.action; this particular snippet from Mac Gamer's Ledge)

    "I think that someone should be responsible for bugs. The thing is, we can't make the programmers eat bugs, because programmers are pretty high up on the totem pole, and we don't want to alienate them. And I can't ask my boss, Andrew, to eat the bugs, because he is my boss."

    "That's why I am making the wager."

    "Shipping a product without bugs is a goal that I think we can achieve. We have done that before with some of our games. Shipping every product between now and next July without bugs is going to be the challenge."

    "I wonder what Apple was thinking when it said "Yum."?"

  12. Probably no biggie for Mr. Whong by Bizzaro · · Score: 2
    Eating insects is very common in some Asian cultures. I don't mean this to sound derogatory. They consider it to be as normal as eating chicken. The U.S. and U.K. are actually among the very few cultures that consider insects to be unedible.

    This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.

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    This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.
    HAL9000

  13. Re:question by DonkPunch · · Score: 2

    It's a default score. Every now and then, something I post gets moderated up. I try to avoid posting stuff that will get moderated down. I don't have any control over it, other than my post content.

    When the default score system came out, my first comment about it was:
    "I don't know about this. Most of my posts are pretty pointless -- like this one."

    IIRC, that post ended up at 4.

    The only hack I have is using Anonymous Coward sometimes for those things I just HAVE to say, but which might annoy some moderators. Sometimes I guess wrongly. The AC post actually gets moderated up, and I'm left going, "D'oh!"

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    Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
  14. Jason Wong Renfield? by davie · · Score: 2

    It's a conspiracy, I tell ya. This guy's either a closet bug-muncher, or his cousin is fixin' to open a bug cafe in San Francisco. He prolly can't wait to munch down on some juicy nightcrawlers.

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    slashdot broke my sig
  15. Great games, Ambrosia makes... by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

    IMHO, they make great games - they make *the* Mac games of originality, great graphics & sound, and playability.

    Unfortunately, my Mac is extremely dated ("blackbird" or PowerBook 540c [LC040, 20 megs RAM]), but all the software I've gotten from Ambrosia (even recently), is extremely good.

    From these people, I'd be surprised if the guy actually eats a bug from this deal.