BBC Web Slip-Up Insults Facebook Fans 262
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC has accidentally insulted its Facebook followers by revealing a version of a new website which wasn't yet ready for public consumption and in which it referred to its social media followers as 'saddos.' The same website also features a picture of the Queen, described as the Pakistan hockey team. File this one under 'a really bad day at the office' for one web developer."
All I can really say is... (Score:5, Insightful)
lol.
and
Get over yourselves.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:5, Funny)
Saddos: The cereal for people who can no longer eat Cheerios?
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:5, Funny)
The breakfast of, well, er, not exactly Champions...
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:5, Funny)
The latest neuropsychology studies shows, that medium to long term facebook usage actually rewires the brain.
When shown a pair of crocs, normal people have strong activity which results in disgust, physical revulsion and often a vomit reflex.
The facebook users brain activity, more closely resembles that of a women shopping, heroin addict getting a fix, or farmville player harvesting crops.
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:5, Funny)
The facebook users brain activity, more closely resembles that of a women shopping, heroin addict getting a fix, or farmville player harvesting crops.
... or nerds espousing their superiority over people who do things the nerds don't like.
Facebook=Bad; MMORPG=Good? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is kind of humorous to see the people whose online personae are buxom, wasp-waisted pointy-eared swashbucklers poke fun at the people whose online personae are pictures taken ten years ago when they had all their hair.
All's harmless, in moderation. To each, their fantasy.
Read TFA (Score:2)
The TFA has a screenshot that says "You can also become a saddo on Facebook"
I did a search on facebook for "saddo". Found this, among other pages: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Being-a-Saddo/383335583952?ref=search [facebook.com]
It looks like what is actually printed is true. Taking things out of context, anyone can apply their own meaning to anything they find.
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:4, Funny)
Liar. If you were the Queen, you'd say "WE are not amused." Faker.
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:4, Informative)
Know your history, it's 'We'...
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/401800.html [phrases.org.uk]
Re:All I can really say is... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't need history. If the queen is an entire hockey team, We is obviously correct.
For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
Glad you cleared that one up for us. I thought someone at the BBC couldn't spell sado.
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Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
This is a mostly USA site so it's pushing it to expect everyone here to know slang from the almost the other side of the world
It's pushing it to expect Americans to know *anything* about the other side of the world.
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
It's pushing it to expect Americans to know *anything* about the other side of the world.
It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:4, Insightful)
I am a United States citizen and have lived on the other side of the world (Hong Kong specifically). I hope to be back there some day.
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You mean there is more than one?
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
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Which do you mean by Americans? North, Central or South?
It's pushing it to expect a non-american to know the difference.
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It was a joke!
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I'd expect pretty much any more or less educated person to know the difference
Well, that was your mistake right there.
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That's not how the term is used / one nation seems to claim the term for itself.
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well considering the only people who identify themselves as 'Americans' (Pronounced: A-mur-i-cans) are United States citizens, I'm going to take a wild guess that he's talking about United States citizens.
Except your wrong, I've talked with some Guatemalans who consider themselves Americans.
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Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
Nearly everyone on the mainland in this hemisphere considers themselves Americans. Most of them actually take offense to the uneducated masses on the other side of the world who are incapable of knowing the difference.
Now you are on the edge of pissing of the Canadians, I am certain you don't want that. Piss them off enough and they will set down their beer and respond.
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Pretty much the entire American continent calls themselves "Americans", except for Canadians who consider it an insult by reference to their neighbors down south.
In Latin America the proper way to address a US citizen is "estadounidense", which roughly translates to "united-statesian", though as result of its length and the need to sub/dub the word "American" in US movies, the phrase "norteamericano" (meaning "north american") is also in common usage which *also* pisses the Canadians off ;)
In fact, correct
For those who don't know Spanish slang (Score:3, Funny)
We're Americans, damn it! Maricons, maybe.
Uhhhhm, I don't think that last word there [urbandictionary.com] means what you think it means.
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Then it might be wise to learn how to use it, you dozy prannock.
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:5, Funny)
It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.
Isn't that where all the Commies live?
Re:For those who don't know European slang: (Score:4, Funny)
It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.
Isn't that where all the Commies live?
Seems like it... [msxnet.org]
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No. It's dragons.
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It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.
All Americans know there is another side of the world. It's just that many don't care.
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What? There are TWO sides to things?
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Parent post is "Flamebait" if and only if the moderators are American.
Stereotypes may be stupid, but they are generally based on some fact.
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Or almost somebody across the border, and generally a neighbor culturally, no? ;p
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European slang....... because we all speak the same language.
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Britains Biggest Cokeusers - further clarification of this acronym for non-UK readers.
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I was always partial to Big Brother Corporation...
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Or a rather obvious extension of the word "sad".
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I hope someone doesn't get in trouble for this. It's pretty funny and harmless.
m00se (Score:5, Funny)
"We apologise for the fault in the site. Those responsible have been sacked."
Re:m00se (Score:5, Funny)
"Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked."
Re:m00se (Score:5, Funny)
The directors of the firm hired to continue the site after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.
Re:m00se (Score:5, Funny)
Re:m00se (Score:5, Funny)
Re:m00se (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Sir,
I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about the fault in your site, about Facebook users being saddos. Many of my best friends are saddos, and only a few of them have Facebook accounts.
Yours faithfully,
Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs.)
Remember kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
Always use "Lorem Ipsum" text when you're doing layout work and don't want to be concerned with actual content.
Re:Remember kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's boring.
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then try Hillbilly Greeking [duckisland.com]:
Also available: Technobabble, Matrix, and pseudo-German for your Greeking pleasure.
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Jumpin' guzzled barn em backwoods panhandle sittin' cheatin'. Jezebel took commencin' been confounded, lordy fit. Hootin' bootleg townfolk knickers tax-collectors simple, everlastin' consarn. Heffer java gospel give hairy jezebel.
With words like 'guzzled', 'cheatin', 'Jezebel', 'knickers' and 'give hairy jezebel', its think it was some kind of either really kinky or really twisted porno...
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then try Hillbilly Greeking ... Technobabble, Matrix, and pseudo-German ...
You're trying too hard.
If this is a corporate site (most are), you can just use the Bullshit Generator [dack.com]. Your pointy-haired boss will nod approvingly, and you can call it a day.
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Re:Remember kids... (Score:4, Informative)
It's supposed to be boring. This way no one will start nitpicking the text and will concentrate on layout/design.
At that stage of the work, text content doesn't matter. What matters is the font, color, size, placement and so on. You want the client to say "I like the font, maybe make it bigger by 1pt" rather than "you didn't capitalize properly."
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It's supposed to be boring.
Just like your post and, apparently, your sense of humor.
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Probably some of the best typesetting text around, especially for web development.
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I see the reason to have this sort of thing...but, I'm curious, why the Lorem ipsum bit so omnipresent in mockups, as opposed to everyone doing their own thing? I'm sure the same purpose could be served by many different pieces of text. Is it just a matter of copy/paste is so much easier? Is there something particular this does better than anything else someone could think up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum [wikipedia.org]
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with Lorem Ipsum is the stupid questions from clients.
" Is it French? What the fuck is this? Don't you speak english? How is anyone supposed to read it?"
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, and I have had more or less that reaction in the past - "Why is it all in Latin? I don't like that..."
On the plus side if you use copy that is obviously placeholder, even at the most cursory of glances, it does make it less likely that it will be sent live by accident - and even if it is, there's no chance of actually offending anyone.
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it does make it less likely that it will be sent live by accident - and even if it is, there's no chance of actually offending anyone.
True story. Those who know how to properly translate Latin to English, etc usually are not the those who are capable or willing to make an online translator. Google translate doesn't do Latin right? - at least it didn't many years ago when I was in high school!
Re:Remember kids... (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, and I have had more or less that reaction in the past - "Why is it all in Latin? I don't like that..."
Then use the English translation, like I do [pineight.com].
ARGH (Score:3, Funny)
You caused me to have a client-meeting flashback. My lawyer will contact you to agree a settlement for emotional traume after consultation with my shrink. Straight jackets ain't cheap you know, hope you have good insurance.
I actually once had someone ask why all the images were the same in a website and had "place-holder" instead of product photo's... after I spend over a month asking for the product pictures so I could put them in place.
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The problem with Lorem Ipsum is the stupid questions from clients.
" Is it French? What the fuck is this? Don't you speak english? How is anyone supposed to read it?"
MOD PARENT WAY THE FUCK UP!!!!
Yeah, I get this all the time.
Even once from my old boss when I was working at a newspaper...*sigh*
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Well, that's the whole point.
A client may be confused for a few seconds about "gibberish text" and then will ignore it, concentrating on things that actually matter.
If you put in text, they'll start nitpicking on details that are irrelevant at that stage, like "it's 'M.D.', not 'MD'" or "you didn't capitalize properly" and so on.
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Because when you're designing a layout for a website, you don't always know what you want it to say yet. Because writing the text of the website is not always the developer's job. Because when you're having a meeting to get approval from a client for a layout, you don't want to blow a lot of time writing and re-writing some text that can be changed later and has no relevance to the task at hand.
Should I go on, or will you just admit that you're a moron and an ass and spare us both?
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Ah, gee, I never was any good at greek. The only word i recognise is occaecat (the ancient greek for Longcat).
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Funny)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
What did you say about my mother???
Re:Remember kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. If you need substantial content, like to fill what should be news story bodies, Lorem Ipsum is perfect.
When I'm testing things, and I'm looking at functionality over volume of filler, I'll use some informative yet useless information. For example a news story may read "This is a test title" and "This is the test body". No harm, no foul, and when something gets left behind for the bosses (or general public) to see,it won't result in finding yourself unemployed.
A lot of times, when I'm working on someone's web site, and they haven't given me content for say their front page, I'll just put "Put something warm and friendly here." Occasionally (very occasionally) I'll put something funny in, but not so much that it'd cost me a job. I worked at a place, way back in the beginning of the popularity of the Internet. The programmers for the billing system had an impossible to reach if statement which said something like "You'll never fucking see this." Well, after a while, it was seen. Customers were less than happy, and were more than happy to contact the CEO directly. Heads rolled on that one.
I expect that my customers will look at my work in progress. I encourage it, so I can get their feedback as it goes. It's much better to find out they don't like something in the beginning, rather than when you've worked on the project for months and are complete. If they see "you should have stuff here about your company", that's much better than nothing at all. For the sake of filling the space, Lorem Ipsum is much better.
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What did you say about my mom?
What did it say about (Score:2)
Re:What did it say about (Score:4, Funny)
slashdot followers ?
They called us Nerds.
But I'm ok with that since even Slashdot itself tells me I'm a nerd, which for once isn't news, but does matter.
Truth in media? (Score:2, Interesting)
similar experience (Score:5, Funny)
For client X, when loading Y, error message is displayed: "The dinosaur says RAWR!"
While this is amusing it is not the expected behavior.
Ya, it's not harmful but it was a little embarrassing. It must be really embarrassing for a web developer at a company which is so publicly visible. I feel this particular developer's pain.
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In an old wxPython application I once made (some IDE with a VCS for editing complex huge ini files) there is a tree control representing some inheritance mechanism. The user can drag any sub tree to another node to do a "cut and paste" operation of that sub tree to another position in the tree. If the user drags and drops the subtree to the same position a "Full gas in neutral error" message pops up with a funny icon.
There is also a very silly boolean constant (used for debugging and set to false on release
Re:similar experience (Score:5, Funny)
Re:similar experience (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the much more embarrassing thing about that post is that the password was being logged all over in the code apparently in clear text.
Remind me never to hire that guy.
Re:similar experience (Score:4, Funny)
One day we had a sim on test with the customer and during some out-of-normal-range testing, the pilot nose-dived the plane into the primary runway only to see something like 'fuck off Joe' displayed across the entire width of the cockpit view, several feet high.
This was hastily followed by a memo to all engineers about comment etiquette. Fortunately, the pilot had a sense of humour.
Re:similar experience (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, that's right, our version number was Oh Shit. I'm guessing that's what the guy who did it thought when he was told it made it to the wild.
Re:similar experience (Score:5, Funny)
A long time ago I was working on a simple CGI to output a table on a test intranet site. I had a hard to see typo in the code which prevented the right data in the cells from showing up, so after getting royally pissed off I used "Fuck You" to substitute as fake data. The table read "Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you, .." for a few dozen or so rows. Later that day my project manager walks in a very serious and somber mood. He was concerned about what I was working on because the VP of sales called him and mentioned he saw a page with nothing but Fuck Yous. I was stymied because this was a pre-prod test site (it used a copy of production data) and no one but a developer should be touching it. Apparently, months ago the VP had been given a peak at a new feature in development and got a link to the test site. He bookmarked it and had been using that for months for running his reports. He had long wondered why the site seemed so flakey and buggy because sometimes it would fail to load or emit some file not found error (presumably because a developer was fiddling with it). When my manager and I met up with the VP, we were expecting a royal chewing out. Chuckling, the VP said although the Fuck Yous were funny, he really needed to see that data. I just gave him the production URL he should be using and had him remove the old bookmark.
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We had a javascript popup on a coorporate website with 80k hits a day showing "Hello! I'm Lindsay Lohan!"
The dev was trying to "debug" and just had seen the "Achmed the dead terrorist video".
It seems our parent nation England/UK (Score:2)
has somehow confused the 4th of July, US Independence Day with April Fool's day and tried to make the April Fool's day version of the new BBC web site.
I think the BBC's funniest April Fool's prank was the Spaghetti Trees. [youtube.com]
Oh that British Humor. If only Benny Hill had not passed away or Monty Python broken up they could have made even more practical jokes and even more BBC prototype beta web site designs to insult and offend more Facebook fans.
"We're the BBC, we don't care, we don't have to!" -Ernestine after
No pucks in field hockey (Score:2, Insightful)
Pakistan plays regular hockey (also called as field hockey) - there are no pucks in hockey [wikipedia.org].
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Oh how Americans misunderstand British humour! There's a reason why Benny Hill is better known in the US than the UK.
And the insult comes from who? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care being called a "saddo" by a webmonkey.
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I don't care being called a "saddo" by a webmonkey.
Unfriend him, it will ruin his life.
The News (Score:5, Interesting)
CNN falls all over itself to pander to "social networking" types while the BBC refers to them as "saddos." Yet another example of the BBC showing up US news services.
We've been promoted (Score:2)
Re:duhhh (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't they just use an international cymbal
Too loud.
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I still think lorum ipsum is a better filler than your suggested text.
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I'll say it again, I still think lorum ipsum is a better filler than your suggested text.