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101 Dumbest Moments In Business 311

Posted by Hemos from the hehe-hehe dept.
hhutkin writes "It's that time again. Business 2.0 posted their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business. Of course, they lambast Enron, but they also slam Ginger, a laptop computer made for the steering wheel of your car, Steve Ballmer dancing, and some other really dumb stuff from the past year."
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101 Dumbest Moments In Business More

101 Dumbest Moments In Business

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  • Is this brilliant or stupid? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tri0de ( 182282 ) <dpreynld@pacbell.net> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:35PM (#3166027) Journal
    33. "We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK
    • "You can have any color of car you want, as long as it's black." -- was it Henry Ford that said this?

      You can measure it's brilliance by how much the investors put in after that comment. If they still gave him money, then his positive 'marketing slant' freed some money from some obviously stupid people. Heh. mmmmDarwin Economics.
    • > 33. "We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK

      So they're the brains behind :Cue:Cats!

      (Sure, Enron was fucked, but you'd think they could have spared one of the 15 Enron entries for at least one CueCat story!)

      I humbly submit:

      102-a: Our own failure to include the :Cue:Cat on the list of 101 dumbest moments in 2001 business.

      102-b: Anyone who's gullible enough to believe that the CueCat really didn't belong on the list, and especially if you don't think the omission is linked to the fact that they had lots of money to spend on print advertisements, please call us. We'll need your business plan for the 2002 list. ;-)

  • THE dumbest moment in business (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As far as dumbest moments in business go, can anyone top this [linuxtoday.com]?
    • This is by far my favorite part:

      So it's not strictly true that I'm wealthy right now. I will be wealthy in six months, unless VA or the U.S. economy craters before then. I'll bet on
      VA; I'm not so sure about the U.S. economy :-).

      Yep, no chance in hell VA Linux (er, software) will crater.

  • They forgot 0. (Score:3)

    by Knunov ( 158076 ) <eat@my.ass> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:40PM (#3166055) Homepage
    0. Websites will revolutionize the way people do business

    1. Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 1: Enron

    Knunov

  • Was this article a Beastie Boys solo project? (Score:4, Funny)

    by darien ( 180561 ) <darien @ g m a i l . com> on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:46PM (#3166075)
    Anyone else notice the article was co-written by Adam Horowitz? I guess after Hello Nasty there was only one place to go - business journalism!

  • Biggest famous mistake=Osborne's Interview 60 Min (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:47PM (#3166082)
    Biggest famous mistake=Osborne's Interview 60 Minutes.

    Mr Osborne is a multimillionaire with his portable computer (pre Compaq competition) and his Osborne 1 is famous, though not too high tech).

    60 minutes asks him if he is rich enough and if Osborne 1 is good enough.

    Osborne foolishly boasts " THE OSBORNE 1 is NOTHING COMPARED TO HOW GREATE THE OSBORNE TWO WILL BE!!!!!!!"

    That boasts puts him out of business the next month practically.

    Its is now called the Osborne syndrome.

    Apple computer avoids this mistake.

    Do you see the mistake?

    Not one customer wanted to ever buy an Osborne 1... they all waited for an Osborne 2 that could never ship because the inventory was killing the company in unsold computers with no buyers.

    One foolish public boast about new model.

    Its one of histories top 100 mistakes, and its a silicon valley top 10 mistake.

    If its not in the list then the list is not authoritative complete or correct.

    They should consult this slashdot thread and read at "level 0".

    people never moderate anymore.

    • Speaking of which, was Donna Dubinsky's vague conference call statement that Handspring is 'exiting the traditional organizer market' on the list? (Site is slashdotted, so I don't know.)

      She did a great job of alienate Handspring's existing customer base and rendering their inventory unsellable before the Treo was available. :P

      And Handspring's damage control was just as bad as the original statement... lots of "We want to reassure our customers and Springboard developers that we're not discontinuing the Visor, uh, right away. We're still behind the Visor line, but we're dropping our only color model and sticking with OS 3.5."

    • Re:Biggest famous mistake=Osborne's Interview 60 M (Score:5, Insightful)

      by klieber ( 124032 ) on Friday March 15, 2002 @08:36AM (#3167438) Homepage
      If its not in the list then the list is not authoritative complete or correct.

      The list focused on the top 101 business mistakes of last year.

      people never moderate anymore.

      Yeah, and they never read the articles, either.

  • Sounds familiar... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jcsehak ( 559709 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:48PM (#3166087) Homepage
    5. Proving the old business school law that says "any idiot can sell a dollar for 80 cents," online-currency company Flooz.com in July launches a special offer whereby American Express platinum cardholders can buy $1,000 of Flooz currency for just $800.

    6.A month later, Flooz.com ceases processing transactions. It declares bankruptcy in November, leaving those who bought Flooz currency stuck with worthless e-dollars

    Homer: Okay, I'll take $1,000
    [Signs inside Itchy & Scratchy land]: "No Itchy & Scratchy bucks accepted here." "We don't take Itchy & Scratchy bucks." "Real cash only."
    Homer: D'oh!

  • My favorites (Score:3, Funny)

    by kingdon ( 220100 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:48PM (#3166088) Homepage

    The best thing about

    "33. We've been doubling sales every 18 months. However, when you start from zero, it takes a long while." -- Stephen Yeo, a marketing director at Windows-terminal manufacturer Wyse, explaining his company's less-than-meteoric rise, to ZDNet UK"
    is that in marketing-speak, this is a totally normal thing to say. Only in plain english do "zero" and "double" have their mathematical meanings.

    And my reaction to the "Tibet-themed bash" is why couldn't I work for one of those companies, even for a little while? All in all, I'd rather have seriousness and profits, but for a break?

    But of course the most relevant to Linux is:

    The Gartner Group issues trading cards featuring its analysts.

  • I knew I was doing something right. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Britney ( 264065 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:48PM (#3166089)
    56. Half.com places advertisements on the slips of paper inside fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants. Confusion ensues when some customers mistakenly believe that the advertisements, which offer $5 off a purchase at Half.com, actually entitle them to $5 off their dinner check.

    That's exactly why I disabled "Third-party cookies" in my browser.

    btw - did it say "Confucius ensues" back there?

  • Business2 isnt all that. (Score:3, Funny)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:49PM (#3166096) Journal
    27. Mobile Office Enterprise unveils the Express Desk, which attaches a notebook computer to the steering wheel of a car. For use only while parked, of course.

    Guess they havent worked in their car before, thats a neat idea actually. It seems better than sitting sideways to work, which I have to do.

    There are others where are more of thier personal view of things than actual stupidity.

    14. Following in the footsteps of M.C. Hammer and a talking Chihuahua, Amazon.com CEO and Time magazine 1999 Person of the Year Jeff Bezos becomes a shill for Taco Bell in an ad that touts its chicken quesadilla as a "hot new handheld."

    I keep laughing at the hot new handheld, and the other stupidly funny commericals from taco bell. Like the quesadilla is like a powertool, and geek cant understand how to use it. Kinda funny.

    43. CNN 2, Fox News 2: Reporting live from Afghanistan, Geraldo Rivera implies that he's packing heat. "We refuse to be crime victims," Rivera says. "We're not the victim types. If they're going to get us, it's going to be in a gunfight."

    Beats running around naked with a 20 dollar bill taped to your ass.

    64. Fox News 3, CNN 2: During his sojourn in Afghanistan, Geraldo Rivera decries the deplorable living conditions in the town of Taloqan. Standing in front of a crowd of barefoot children, Rivera looks solemnly into the camera and states, "Look at the children. They haven't seen television or anything their whole lives."

    They really dont like him do they...

    65. Eleven years after McDonald's announces that it has started cooking its fries in "100 percent vegetable oil" -- and one month after a Seattle lawyer files suit on behalf of Hindus and vegetarians who interpreted that to mean that the fries are meat-free -- the fast-food chain concedes that the "natural flavoring" in its fries is, in fact, beef fat.

    This was soo funny, as thier frys do taste damn good. Glad im not a vegan.

    75. Unilever subsidiary Lipton approves an ad in which a man standing in line for communion holds a bowl of onion dip, presumably to improve the taste of the body of Christ. Under protest, Lipton withdraws the ad.

    hehe

    78. After two years of hype, Dean Kamen unveils Ginger, a.k.a. the Segway HT scooter. To understand why this is on our list, kindly refer to the table below.

    Anyone who dis's the segway sucks. IMHO

    Site gets slashdotted, cant read the rest.
    Argh..

    • Re:Business2 isnt all that. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sc00ter ( 99550 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:58PM (#3166139) Homepage
      "Anyone who dis's the segway sucks. IMHO"


      I agree.. After seeing one in person zipping around Manchester, NH (Where Deka is based) I must say, they are very cool.. The guy (a Deka employee) was zipping down the sidewalk on Elm St. not bothering anybody.. the only pedestrian problem be causes was people gawking at him (I happened to be in a pizza place). He was going around 10mph along the sidewalk, came to an intersection and stopped DEAD.. it was amazing to see how fast it stopped. Then he zipped through a park and went around the corner.


      Alot of people don't like to ride bikes and get all sweaty, they can't change when they get to work, or whatever.. I'd use one.. hell.. just today I went to the drug store to pick up a few items and it's in one of those weird distances. To far to walk (or would take to long to walk) but seems silly to use the car. Since my bike is still in storage awaiting slightly warmer weather, I took my bike, but if I had a segway, I would have taken that.


      The work in the grass, snow, and dirt. They'll go through puddles and work in the rain. They're bairly wider then an average person, so space isn't really an issue.


      BTW, they were called "Ginger" because the stair climbing wheelchair that was also invented by Deka was code-named "Fred-a-stair"

    • 43... Geraldo with live ammo. Everyone but the Taliban, duck!!! (You're only safe if he's aiming at you...)

      OK, for all I know he's an expert marksman. Or maybe he doesn't even know how to release the safety. But on TV in Afghanistan, he looked like the ultimate blowhard. I've known some truly dangerous men, and they act nothing like Geraldo.
    • Anyone who dis's the segway sucks. IMHO

      Yeah, that's just shortsighted, and it's really the only thing in the list where he just sort of gives his opinion on if a product will do well.

      The comparison made me think of what it might have been like when automobiles were first coming into use. Compared with a horse it was bulkier, heavier, slower, more complicated, and silly-looking. As we all know, that auto-mobile fad ended long ago... right?

      The list is pretty decent overall though.

      mark
    • Anyone who dis's the segway sucks. IMHO

      Did you notice in their little chart comparing the Segway and a Huffy, they spelled "pedal" wrong? Are we sure Taco didn't write this for them? :)

  • Surprise, Surprise! (Score:5, Funny)

    by NOT-2-QUICK ( 114909 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:51PM (#3166103) Homepage
    Microsoft came in at a disappointing #7 with:

    7. Last May, Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that received funding from Microsoft, is caught simulating a "grassroots" campaign to get state attorneys general to drop their antitrust suit against the software giant. One detail that gives the scheme away: Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.

    Personally, I can think of many other, much more comical MS events...one of my personal favorites being this [nwsource.com]...

    Anyone else with any votes for stupid MS trick of the year?

    • Grass Roots Campaign (Score:5, Funny)

      by yintercept ( 517362 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:17PM (#3166220) Homepage Journal
      Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.

      Come on, give Microsoft a break. When you think about it, dead people know more about grass roots than any of us; so why shouldn't they be part of a grass roots campaign?

    • Re:Surprise, Surprise! (Score:5, Funny)

      by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:36PM (#3166279)
      Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.

      Oh my God! The dead have risen from their graves and are supporting Microsoft!

      • And the dead only need to find three Orbs Of Power to turn into a MegaMicroSoftie that can hurl fireballs at the DOJ-Beast.

        Meanwhile the SlashWags will chant "Welcome to your Doooooom! Ha! Ha! Ha"
    • Sometime in late 2001, some bozo's organising an advertising campaign for Microsoft's XBOX console decided it would be a great idea to graffiti the logo in bright green paint all over publicly funded paving, pathways, garden beds etc in Sydney, Australia. Claimed it was environmentally friendly paint, will wash off with rain. Company charged hundreds of dollars in removal costs for each logo, after the local government found that in many cases it was rather more...permanent, including many instances on newly installed granite paving. Story reported in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, so I suppose theres *plenty* of consumers like me who are spending their money on PS2 instead.
      • Sometime in late 2001, some bozo's organising an advertising campaign for Microsoft's XBOX console decided it would be a great idea to graffiti the logo in bright green paint all over publicly funded paving, pathways, garden beds etc in Sydney, Australia. Claimed it was environmentally friendly paint, will wash off with rain. Company charged hundreds of dollars in removal costs for each logo, after the local government found that in many cases it was rather more...permanent, including many instances on newly installed granite paving. Story reported in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, so I suppose theres *plenty* of consumers like me who are spending their money on PS2 instead.

        Hey, that sounds like that campaign where people spraypainted TUX on everything... and got in trouble for it. Wasn't that IBM who did that?

        I guess stupidity is universal.

        Simon

  • The site seems to be Slashdotted. But do they include themselves? Business 2.0 were the absolute leaders in breathless "new economy" stories, although I haven't read them lately to see if they've calmed down at all.

    • Re:Dumbest (Score:2, Funny)

      by GreenHell ( 209242 )
      Yes they do, it's slashdottted, so I can't tell you what number, but they put themselves in for putting Enron's CEO on the cover as a shining example of the new economy. The issue ran the week before he resigned.

  • 102: getting slashdotted... (Score:5, Funny)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:51PM (#3166106) Journal
    You'd think people would prepare for this.

    --Blair
    • Ive been thinking about using a pre-caching proxy, or maybe just loading all the pages in cache before I read it. Alot of these sites cant handle a /. hit.
    • Right. It's easy to prepare for a Slashdotting, because the moderators are soooo predictable in which submissions they post.

      I don't know about you, but I wouldn't call it a wise business decision to prepare for a 12 hour long 100-fold increase in web traffic on the off-chance that one of your pages might get posted to /. during prime-time.

      That said, they really should have been able to react more quickly, so that the downtime was minimized.

      (Well - I think I sat nicely on the fence there.)
  • My God, I hope they had plenty of security personnel on hand to prevent him from getting mobbed by the fans!
    • My God, I hope they had plenty of security personnel on hand to prevent him from getting mobbed by the fans!,/i>

      Not the fans, the developers! Developers! [b]Developers![/b]

      I love that video. :)

      LV
  • It takes a genius to fuck up this bad :)

    16. "No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things." -- Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle

    I must away to buy a gamecube right NOW!

    :)
    • When taken ass end out of context that is indeed stupid.

      When followed up by the appropriate "we want to be the middle man that provides good hardware AND good software" part of the speech is sounds damn convincing.
    • It takes a genius to fuck up this bad :)

      Probably shouldn't have made the top 100 list, though, considering it had no negative impact on nintendo's sales.
  • Fox News probably bolstered national morale by sending Geraldo to Afghan! ;-0

    And I can't believe Balmer didn't get 2nd after Enron. His little monkey dance was much more embarrasing than any foot burning incident BK went through.

  • It happens every day (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:56PM (#3166131) Homepage

    As anyone involved in corporate America can attest, incredibly stupid things happen in business every single day.

    Considering this, what is remarkable is that businesses are as successful as they are.

    • A business does not have to be smart or efficient to succeed, just less stupid or less inefficient than it's competitors.

      It's like the old story about two people being chased by a bear: "I don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than you."

      And actually, I know of companies that have been very comfortable in a niche market for decades in spite of truly terrible management, because by swapping managers back and forth between them, they have both come to be mismanaged exactly the same. That is, their favorite problem solving techniques are shooting the messenger, denying there is a problem, and blaming someone else. They want their decade old equipment redesigned, but no one actually knows how it works, the source code for the control program has been lost, and they can't even tell you how many different configurations have been deployed. Yet, you've got to stay compatible with all of them. And they want the new controller to cost half as much -- sorry, the only thing that will maintain compatibility with machine configurations that we don't even know about is the old controller, and the price of that is going up...

      Why haven't they been clobbered by a competitor? It would $100 million to design all new equipment (since compatibility issues will keep you from replacing one piece at a time), then take five years to get your salesmen in to start selling it. American companies don't look that far ahead. Someday some Japanese corporate chief will notice how vulnerable these guys are to anyone that takes the long view and make his grandchildren another billion dollars richer, but it hasn't happened yet.

  • slashdotted at number 40 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nickynicky9doors ( 550370 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @09:59PM (#3166150)

    Why do /. ters hang out at a site where, even with broadband, it's likely the site they want to acess is unavailable?

    "One of the injured, a VP for product marketing aptly named Dana Frydman, tries to put a positive spin on having her feet flame-broiled like so much ground chuck. "It made you feel a sense of empowerment and that you can accomplish anything," she tells the Miami Herald.

    The above from the fire walking marketing types is my favourite thus far. Doesn't the response say it all. The glass is half-full, I live in the best of all possible worlds and I love Mary Poppins. Marketing... fundamentalist religions got noth'n on it.

  • Ballmer dancing music video (Score:4, Funny)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:01PM (#3166155) Homepage
    This music video of Ballmer dancing [mac.com] really isn't stupid -- it's hillarious.

    ...and it was made on a mac.

  • It was an honor just to be nominated. . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:04PM (#3166167) Homepage
    More for the list:

    • Fox introduces Celebrity Boxing.
    • Santa Claus, not having heard that you can't make money by giving away stuff for free, announces the IPO of North Pole Enterprises.
    • Ebay refuses to hire me for their tech support.
    • Mandrake realizes the obvious fact that it wouldn't be hemorraging money if everyone in the world gave it just $5, then extrapolates that into a business model.
    • Slashdot realizes the obv. . . oh, never mind.
    • I go out and buy a Mandrake distro out of guilt, not need.
    • North Pole Enterprises announces huge layoffs. Santa gored to death by a disgruntled Blitzen.
  • then at least post the link to the printer-friendly version [google.com]

  • It may just be my connection... (Score:5, Informative)

    by GreenHell ( 209242 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:45PM (#3166305)
    ...but it appears to be slashdotted...

    Once again: google is our friend!

    Page:
    1 [google.ca] 2 [google.ca] 3 [google.ca] 4 [google.ca] 5 [google.ca] 6 [google.ca] 7 [google.ca] 8 [google.ca] 9 [google.ca] 10 [google.ca]

    Well, I know that doesn't look nice, but otherwise it's hard to post due to characters per line restrictions...

  • slash and pre-google caching (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sykt ( 6887 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @10:58PM (#3166347) Homepage

    google cache [google.com]

    how about adding a feature to slash that will pre-google-slash (cache) any referenced post and then automatically insert the google-cache reference next to the original link?
    CmdrTaco ... anybody ... anybody...

  • The Industry Standard died, Fast Company has dwindled down from biblical thickness to the size of a pamphlet, and Business 2.0, along with many other business mags, are filling their pages with exhumations from the morgue.

    Take a look at all of the business mags, and you'll see that they're desperate to put anything in the pages, anything that will get readers and fill space.

  • Why Boston Market Failed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Thursday March 14, 2002 @11:10PM (#3166413)
    I know why Boston Market the restaurant chain failed. Analysts made up all sorts of reasons. But I a loyal customer know the truth.

    Something so simple too.

    They switched cleaning agents. I was a huge Boston Market fan. One day, I go in, and the place reeks like some kind of urine. I go across town to another store, it too reeks of urine.

    Not everyone could smell it; my girlfriend did an investigation and found that most people only noticed it once it was pointed out--chicken smells sort of that way too. However, we routinely saw people leave from the smell, muttering under their breath, but not telling the manager. A handful with 'good smellers' couldn't even enter the door.

    My girlfriend tracked down the smell to the cleaning agent they used for the floor..and oddly enough, the trays. She tried to tell employees. They would not listen; they couldn't smell anything..they had acclimated.

    She told the managers. They humored her. But nothing changed. She went to several outlets across town; same story.

    About a year and a half later, Boston market shut down its restaurants ostensibly because 'americans were changing their eating habits'..sails climbed, then fell off because 'americans had changed their eating patterns'

    As I said, not everyone noticed the smell; but the subconcious is designed to avoid certain odors such as death and human waste.

    I am certain the smelly cleaning agent was their real downfall.
  • Not only is the article slashdotted but it is cut into 10 pieces and finding it in the google cache is a real pain.

    If slashdot are having difficulty with their ad revenues why don't they offer to send their readers off to sites in return for a cut of the ad revenue?

  • It looked like everything on there was real recent. At most the CNN/SI thing went back a couple more years.

    What about the SNL thing from the 80s?

    Hell....fuckedcompany.com is much funner reading!
  • "77.Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 11: In late January 2002 -- well after the government has instructed Enron to stop shredding accounting documents -- Maureen Castaneda, a recently laid-off Enron employee, reveals that the shredding has continued. The tip-off: In boxing up her belongings, Castaneda finds a stash of shredded paper to use as packing material. Because the paper has been shredded horizontally instead of vertically, Castaneda can see that it consists of accounting documents."

    What a bunch of incompetent asses! They can't even shred documents right! :D

    BlackGriffen
    • those type of shredders are pretty useless anyway.
      The shredders we used in the military whree pretty damn good.
      you out in your documants, it turns them in pieces of paper 1/2 inch long, and about 1/8 an inch wide.
      then they burn it.
      That is how you take cars of documents you don't want anybody to see.
  • 4. Sept. 11 Inc., Rampant Greed Division: Gas stations nationwide exploit post-Sept. 11 fears of a fuel shortage by charging customers $4 and $5 per gallon.

    I am baffled at how a business magazine could think the gas price hikes of 9/11 was dumb business. People were panicking and filling their tanks at an incredible rate. There is only so much gas at a station, and when it is gone, it takes a while to replace.

    I fully support the increase gas prices of that day as a way to moderate demand. After all, there are a lot of people with huge cars that can hold in excess of 30 gallons. Some of those people were getting gas just to get gas. If the higher prices meant that some of those people put 10 gallons of gas in their tanks instead of 20 gallons, I think the price hikes did their jobs. The fact that I did was able to get gas a few days later was, in my opinion, a validation of the higher gas prices.

    Ultimately, the problem is caused by the number of people who can only afford to own the cars they do because of cheap gas and other government subsidies. On the other hand, for those of us with cars within our budgets, gas at $1 or $2 or $3 is just not such a big deal.

  • Well, I know that this is a karma killer, but what the hell. #1 on that list should've been Open Source Companies. It's an oxymoron. A whole slew of businesses trying to sell a product that people can get for free. Talk about stupid business!
  • Pretty tedious read. Is there a "most padded story" award?? Many of the items just didn't seem all that dumb. The general background stupidity level of the world makes it hard to tell sometimes. The one about K-Mart being declared "retailer of the year" and declaring bankruptcy the next day was a corker though.
  • 20. The Gartner Group issues trading cards featuring its analysts.,

    Anybody know a a way to use trading cards as voodoo dolls? ". . . and that's for stealing your recommendations from the tech section of the Bumsteer Daily Braindump . . . " :)

  • One mistake that has been made, which seems to have slipped past most people's notice is this:

    I live in Edinburgh, and would make some fine company a wonderful SysAdmin - yet nobody has given me a job.

    Not only would I be great as a Linux/Unix/Windows sysadmin, I'm good with people, cats, and small children and on top of that I'm a competent programmer too!

    Come on Edinburghers, give me a job .. please!

  • This one bugged me:

    "No one will deny that Sony is a world-class hardware company, and no one would deny that Microsoft is a world-class software company. Nintendo aspires to be neither one of those things." -- Peter Main, a Nintendo marketing executive, to the San Francisco Chronicle

    The quote has been taken out of context. Obviously, he means hardware and software companies as opposed to video game companies.
  • You knew I was going to say that.

  • When you go to their site and they can't serve up a page (due to the ./ effect, presumeably) the '404' message displayed is: "Permanently Moved" . Going back a bit later to the same page shows that their idea of permanency is a bit different than most peoples, as it magically appears! 8^}
  • What is this strange attraction, exhibited by people with far too much money, to Buddhism? One thinks also of Richard Gere and [shudder] Steven Seagal claiming to adhere to Buddhist principles. I find that laughable, considering what I remember about the tenets of Buddhism, especially the bits about extinction of the self, freeing oneself from worldly attachments and cravings, and so forth.

    hyacinthus.

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