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2005 Foot In Mouth Awards 322

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the thank-god-they-don't-record-me-all-the-time dept.
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."
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2005 Foot In Mouth Awards More

2005 Foot In Mouth Awards

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  • Save you the trouble: (Score:5, Funny)

    by imstanny ( 722685 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @04:33AM (#14343573)
    The best one by far:

    "I know what I don't know, and to this day I don't know technology and I don't know accounting and finance."

    -- Bernie Ebbers, ex-CEO of WorldCom

    • Re:Save you the trouble: (Score:5, Funny)

      by tuxette ( 731067 ) * <(tuxette) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:28AM (#14343690) Homepage Journal
      I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean...

    • Re:Save you the trouble: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nah, here's a better one

      "(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!"

      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.

      • It's like saying that tele-marketers use phone lines for free, so they should pay a special "tax" to the kind phone companies.

        Bad example. If phone companies would pay half to the customer receiving the call and keep half for themselves, both customers, phone companies and the society in general would benefit (in the form of increased tax profits and less stress for people leading to less illnesses).

        In general, if you want to argue against some proposal, it is best to avoid any analogies where the pro

    • Not tech but the top spoken gaffe of 2005 (Score:5, Funny)

      by nightsweat ( 604367 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @09:36AM (#14344301)
      Without a DOUBT was, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

  • ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ArbitraryConstant ( 763964 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @04:51AM (#14343618) Homepage
    Sony's only on there once.

  • Makes me giggle (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Yonkeltron ( 720465 )
    This is actually rather funny. I only hope that the people who made the comments realize how silly/offbase/nuts they sounded.

    • they sounded

      Some comments that now sound ludicrous probably sounded quite reasonable where and when they were made. The memory one that is attributed to Bill Gates and that IBM one about how many computers the world would need, were quite sensible in the light of knowledge at the time.

      I don't think GWB and other dodgy executives have the same excuse though...

  • The forgot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ms1234 ( 211056 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @04:52AM (#14343623)
    this guy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/23/15 13203&tid=141&tid=158&tid=3&tid=106 [slashdot.org]

  • Fear Not, Slashdotters! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Armadni General ( 869957 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:25AM (#14343685)
    Chair-to-the-wall has won Number Two!

    "'I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google.'"
    -Steve Ballmer

    Excellent.

  • This was funny... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:34AM (#14343704)
    "Walk this way, talk this wa-ay."

    -- Intel chairman Craig Barrett

    The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet.

    Watching the video [silicon.com], I was amused trying to determine who was actually the older white guy...

    The whole demo with the crazy kids is pretty awkward too. Tyler gives a little speech to the audience... *shudder*

  • Pay Again For Telecoms? (Score:3, Informative)

    by GaryPatterson ( 852699 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:48AM (#14343737)
    I love the last one, in which the guy conveniently forgets that customers do actually pay for the telecom connections, usually in monthly line fees (well, here in Australia my fees well outweigh my call costs) and call costs.

    Sure! Let's pay for the same stuff twice! Because we're stupid!

  • $100 laptop (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rickler ( 894262 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:52AM (#14343743)
    "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?

  • Here's a really good foot in mouth story... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @07:23AM (#14343935)
    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.

    Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
    http://www.southcoasttoday.com.nyud.net:8090/daily /12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm [nyud.net]

    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/daily /12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm [nyud.net]

    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.
    • Very true. It's just a shame that the professor(s) couldn't find the time or inclination to investigate the story (as you say) before shooting their mouths off to the press.

      No. The professors had their foots firmly in their mouths because the story as told them by the student very conviently fit into their "gov is bad" paradigm. The student played them like fish.

    • Very good point (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dptalia ( 804960 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:37AM (#14344556) Journal
      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.

      • Re:Very good point (Score:3, Informative)

        by gameguy1957 ( 937850 )
        Thanks you! I live on the Gulf Coast and every time there is a storm that get close, the news agencies send hundreds of reporters to the area. Not only do they get in the way but they wish bad things on us in order to get a good report. If the storm happens to go in a different direction or degrade, you can watch as the reporters get dissappointed because there's not going to be as much destruction. Not only that but their exaggerated stories cause runs on fuel, food and building materials before the stor
        • How about the the TV report about flooding from the reporter in the kyak? If I remember correctly she was in about 2 inches of water... Non disasters don't get viewers, so everything has to be hyped up for the coverage.

        • Re:Very good point (Score:3, Interesting)

          by king-manic ( 409855 )
          Thanks you! I live on the Gulf Coast and every time there is a storm that get close, the news agencies send hundreds of reporters to the area. Not only do they get in the way but they wish bad things on us in order to get a good report. If the storm happens to go in a different direction or degrade, you can watch as the reporters get dissappointed because there's not going to be as much destruction. Not only that but their exaggerated stories cause runs on fuel, food and building materials before the storm.

        • Re:Very good point (Score:3, Interesting)

          by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
          Speaking from the San Francisco Bay Area... & Yes, the earthquakes and fires were devastating. Large numbers of people ended up with their homes in ruins, and many didn't have sufficient (or any) insurance...or the companies were reluctant to pay...

          But it didn't look in person like it did on TV. San Francisco didn't end up in ruins, though a few blocks were demolished by the earthquake. Actually the fire the next year was much more destructive (though it killed fewer people). I was out of the area w

      • Re:Very good point (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Vitriol+Angst ( 458300 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @01:15PM (#14345663)
        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.

    • Let's not paint the professor as a saint in all this. His role was to run to the media right away, and only after others started pointing out inconsistencies and asking for more details did he start to question the student's story. At this point he still refuses to name the student and I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was all made up by the professor.

    • The interesting thing was not that the FBI "visited a student" but that they COULD visit a student. The provisions of the Patriot Acts allow for this scenario. Citizens who are Pro-Liberty somehow have to get everything right when every act by Homeland Security can be made secret? All we can do is speculate because much of the real news of this day is not covered by the Main Stream Media.

      So, a story was debunked and we can all rest our little heads -- nothing to see. I don't even know if this student existe

      • Bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by porkchop_d_clown ( 39923 )
        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.

  • transferred to world health... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @07:51AM (#14343989)
    "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?"
  • "(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!
    • That quote needs some context or it seems like a perfectly reasonable assertion. Ed Whitacre was saying this in the context of charging websites for the "privledge" of allowing their users to connect to said websites.

  • My favorite (Score:4, Insightful)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) * on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:14AM (#14344454) Homepage Journal
    My favorite gaffe of 2005 had to be the non-story about Google and Sun "teaming up on OpenOffice." [forbes.com] Remember how Slashdot reported that Sun and Google were "planning Web Office" [slashdot.org] 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) [slashdot.org] would have led to mass denouncement among the alpha geeks.

  • A personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)

    by SnappingTurtle ( 688331 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @10:47AM (#14344618) Homepage
    I once worked at a small factory that was going through some difficult financial times. The CEO was really a decent guy, but he made a classic gaffe during a speech. He was trying to show the factory workers that he was willing to sacrifice too, so he said "if it helps the company, I'm willing to take home a few thousand less a month."

    His "I'm there with you" speech to workers who were lucky to take a single thousand a month didn't exactly have the intended affect, and he resigned a month later.

  • 2 standards (Score:3, Informative)

    by kidtwist ( 726601 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @11:22AM (#14344870)
    They didn't include the "2 standards are better than 1" comment from the Microsoft guy in the Massachusetts case. That was my my favorite.

  • hey! (Score:4, Funny)

    by l4m3z0r ( 799504 ) <<kevin> <at> <uberstyle.net>> on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @01:01PM (#14345558)
    as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show

    Let's be nice, some of us like Steven Tyler...

  • Recognize excellence (Score:3, Funny)

    by Belseth ( 835595 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2005 @05:14PM (#14347633)
    Isn't it about time Bush got a lifetime achievement award? A golden foot in mouth would look great on the mantel in the oval office.

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