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Saturday, May 22nd, 2010
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3:17 pm - flamewars, executive-style
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galateus
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Those assholes at Viacom are calling Google assholes. LOLZ at 11.
From the article:
- Viacom quotes YouTube employee Maryrose Dunton telling an engineer to "'forget about the email alerts stuff' precisely because 'I hate making it easier for these a-holes' - referring to copyright owners - and 'we’re just trying to cover our asses so we don’t get sued.'"
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Viacom complains that YouTube employees "sneered at rights holders as 'copyright bastards' and 'a-holes.'"
- Google retorts that Viacom can't complain about this language, and it quotes numerous Viacom execs to make its point. Sample outbursts include, "fuck you, you Google bastards," "bastards at Google are harassing me," and the eloquent "fuck those mother fuckers."
- A Viacom VP even complained about the "fucking assholes" at YouTube—because the company "enforced its repeat-infringer policy concerning a Viacom marketing account that had received multiple take-down notices from Viacom's legal department." The lulz, they are here in spades.
- Viacom top brass wrote e-mails with more exclamation points than my niece would even consider decent. They also had what Google calls an "obsession" with buying YouTube.
- Case in point: "I WANT TO OWN YOUTUBE. I think it's critical, and if it goes to a competitor.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" That was from MTV Networks head Judy McGrath.
- Viacom CEO Tom Freston wrote, "If we get UTube… I wanna run it." McGrath responded, "You'll have to kill me to get to it first."
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(51 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, May 20th, 2010
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1:36 pm - If you like hot showers, YOU ARE A SNIVELING, WEAK WASTE OF SPACE
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tetradecimal
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Jeffrey Wells is here to tell you that if you take showers that last more than three minutes, you might as well be a drug-addled addict hiding away and shivering in a cave somewhere, wishing only for sweet, sweet death the comforting warmth of your mother's womb.
"I was reminding myself this morning that it's a sign of weak character to take long showers. Anyone who does this is a soft sister -- a person looking to hide inside the warm amniotic fluid of his mother's womb, which is what a nice hot shower feels like. This realization goes back to when I was in my early 20s. If I happened to notice that a roommate or some guy or girl who was staying over was taking ten- or twelve-minute showers (or worse), I would instantly write them off.
Those who take extra-long hot showers are the same people who take extra-long breaks or lunches in order to get away from office drudgery, or who hide away inside an alcoholic or nicotine or drug cave. Your average enterprising, disciplined, hard-working types take four- or five-minute showers, at the longest. If you're really hard-core you've finished in less than three. No exceptions, no excuses -- either you get it or you don't."
ETA: Oh yeah, unrelated but relevant link.
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(323 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, May 14th, 2010
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6:01 pm - Yes, they actually use the phrase "Mean Girls"
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| Monday, March 29th, 2010
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9:37 pm - Seattle's delicate tastebuds
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| Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
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7:08 pm - In France they call it a Royale with Wank....
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theelusiven
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An afternoon snack in miniwank form from ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif) customers_suck, courtesy of a mousie from wank_report , from whom the writeup is copypasta'd because journalfen ate the writeup I was working on. There's pedantry here to rival the Buttercream wank from awhile back. Thanks, mousie!
Over at Customers_Suck, ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) haine_otomiya86 posts about a particularly irate customer who - among other things - was unclear about whether he needed a "McDouble," which costs $1.00, and a "Double Cheese Burger," which costs $1.19. The story goes on to describe how the poster had to double check which one the customer actually wanted, as well as a quick mention as to what the difference between these two sandwiches are. Answer: the $1.00 one contains two patties and one slice of cheese, and the $1.19 contains two patties and two slices of cheese.
However, for one magickcat, bothering a customer for clarification is apparently unacceptable.
Okay, seriously?
The customer was a jackass, I will give you that.
HOWEVER, your fussiness here about the McDouble/Double Cheeseburger thing is beyond ridiculous.
I don't mean in dealing with this guy- you did the best you could with an idiot like that, but for YEARS there was a dollar menu double cheeseburger.
Just because they took out one slice of cheese last year and decided to call it a "McDouble" doesn't mean that you shouldn't know what the heck someone is talking about when they specifty the "dollar menu double cheeseburger" which is EXACTLY WHAT A MCDOUBLE IS. There is a bun, there are two burgers, and there is cheese. I don't care how much you charge for it, its a freaking double cheeseburger. When someone specifies the "dollar menu double cheeseburger", if you don't know what they are talking about, well.... yeah.
As the thread unfolds, the reason for such an outburst is soon explained... magickcat is in fact a Cheeseburger Master!
I understand the math of the cheese, I really do.
What I am saying in that it is still a double cheeseburger, because it is...get this... two burgers.. WITH CHEESE.
I don't eat at fast food restaurants, as a general rule, and we don't have In & Outs here, so your reference means nothing to me. It certainly isn't rocket science. I know a few rocket scientists, and they know that a sandwich with 2 burgers and cheese is a double cheeseburger. ;)
"I understand the math of the cheese" may be my new favorite phrase.
Cue rabid dogpiling and unsuccessful attempts to reason with Earth Logic and first grade math. Unfortunately it is all for naught as even magickcat does not seem to know what exactly the point of the argument is. Depending on which thread you visit, it waffles from "they're both cheeseburgers; it's all the same" "Oh, you misunderstood: I wasn't talking about this customer at all, only a theoretical situation where everything was described perfectly," to the cost difference is all a conspiracy by McDonalds":
NO, it costs more because McDonalds saw a way to make more money by adding another burger. They are all "meat"burgers, if you can legally call whatever they put in those things "meat"... I know damn well what is in each one because it was in the news and whatnot about what the change would be. My case is correct, and it stands.
And the arguments just keep coming...
current mood: *sporfle!*
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(46 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, March 8th, 2010
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7:03 pm
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sarracenia
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A tiny old wank, but one that's a microcosm of why I love programming wank.
Background information for non-computer people:
PHP is an older web programming language, that's widely supported by everyone on the planet and thus decidedly uncool. IBM supports it, for chrissakes. Do you get more stodgy than that?
Ruby on Rails is a new, hip web programming language and framework that is way cooler than PHP. And supposedly it's easier to program with, but mostly it is way cool. Twitter uses it!
Frameworks are software to make it easier to program. They're kinda boring, except that Ruby on Rails has theirs automatically included while PHP people have to find or make their own, thus making Rails infinitely more cool.
When writing an article about your new PHP framework, never, ever make an unflattering side comment about Rails. Else its creator will jump in immediately with:
“Rails also suffers because it is hard to decouple Rails code from page display code.”. WTF?
Have you actually tried Rails? What part of MVC escaped your observant eye? When you talk about “Rails code”, what would you be referring to? Business logic? Controller logic? Hand-waving logic?
Not only does Rails go to greater lengths than most to separate concerns, but it also ships with a host of solutions to better organize “page display code” (I assume you’re referring to view logic). From partials to helpers to layouts.
Hell must certainly have frozen over with pigs flying across the skies. There’s no other day of the week that a PHP framework could be slinging accusations of poorly separated concerns.
CLEARLY THIS IS OFF TO A FRIENDLY START. Why, next I expect them to be sitting in a circle singing Kumbaya. Or slinging accusations of slander, hyperbole, cult membership, and of course fascism in less than thirty comments. One of the two.
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(33 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
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7:48 pm
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tarash
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We could do with a little more Olympic wankery, I figured!
NBC reporter attemps to interview Dutch gold medalist Sven Kramer after he won the 5000 meters speedskating event, and starts the interview with the question of who he is, and Sven wants to know if she's stupid.
Comments range from "She got what was coming to her" and "awesome stick it to the dumbass american media!" to "What an arrogant prick. I hope he realizes his 15 minutes of fame won't last long." and "what a douchebag. he doesn't even play a real sport."
I guess skating really really quickly isn't a sport, then. ANYWAY, yesterday, Sven Kramer had to skate again, and is pretty much the expected winner of the 10000 meters.
Until he gets disqualified for moving into the wrong lane. Quite a lot of the commenters, though, would still to talk about whether or not he'd been a rude arrogant douchebag and if the reporter was useless or simply doing her job. And some blame his parents: "I have never said anything so rude to another person, nor did I teach my children to speak to other people that way." and one person thinks Sven's coach should be given the medal, even though the coach was the one who told him to go in the wrong lane: "The GOLD medal should have been given to the coach for putting up with such an arrogant, cocky, mouthy and STUPID kramer"
And then there's some American-bashing: "Could the americans in this article, who didnt check their facts, stick to their own nations webpages and rant about their version of the truth?"
Ohnotheydidnt weighs in on the matter as well but it quickly goes into "he's good-looking enough that he could verbally abuse me and i wouldn't care, so long as i got to slap dat ass" territory. Maybe the skintight suits involved in speedskating bring that out in people.
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(101 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
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6:34 pm - Yo Lysacek, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish...
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12:09 am - Fugly Wank of the Day
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sadisticferret
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One fine day in February, every angry equestrian's favorite blog, Fugly Horse of the Day, had an anonymous guest blogger post about the many irritations of being a horse trainer, particularly when beginning riders are involved. Said post is very, very angry indeed, earning a figurative "you go, girl!" from Fugly herself. Opinions in the comments, however, are divided on whether she's 100% correct, right on several points but kind of snotty and condescending about it, or right on a few points but mainly just a wannabe know-it-all with a god complex. And they all lived angrily (but very happy about it) ever after.
I'll expose my bias and admit that I think that most of the wank is coming from the article itself, but there are a few gems to be found in the comments as well. But enough of that, have some quotes.
From the article:
I hate all of your tack. I swear every time I go to a new job I find the exact same crappy tack, tack that I wouldn’t put on my horses even with a gun to my head. It is the tack that your “friends” gave you because surprise they realized that it sucked so they gave it to you. The saddles you have are dry rotted and synthetic (I don’t care what you paid for them, a saddle that is $300 or lower new is crap), they nose dive on the withers and swim all over the back, so you have to cut the horse in half to get them to sort of stay on and then you have to balance the saddle on the horse while trying to ride, because it slides all over the place. A good western saddle new is $800 up, and tolerable one will be $500- $800.
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Your way wasn’t working, that is why you called me, so just shut up and listen. I love it when I get a new client who regardless to what I say or accomplish with their horse still thinks that they know what they are doing or their way is better. You don’t. That is why you called me in the first place.
From the comments:
I used to burst screaming into The Vapors song, “I Think I’m Turning Japanese”, grab my hair and stomp around when I finally snapped.
I was mildly famous for it.
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Well, I’m glad some people are keeping horse ownership to be something only the rich can afford. I’m so glad that the multitude of reasons I have a synthetic (including health reasons that preclude me from having a heavy and expensive “real” saddle) cause someone who has nothing to do with me or my horse so much grief.
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Newsflash to people who use the “life happens” excuse: Unless your job involves riding horses, NONE of us have time to ride our horses! We do it anyway. I’d rather function on 4 hrs of sleep than function in a state of bitchiness because I didn’t get to ride my horse.
Edited to make it a little clearer which quotes come from which section. Sorry for the confusion!
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(65 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, February 13th, 2010
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2:59 pm
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kaen
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ReadWriteWeb is a blog hosting articles about various internet products and trends, including social networking sites. On Wednesday they posted a short article about Facebook partnering with AOL.
Right now you're probably thinking the wank is something about the partnership. That wouldn't be nearly as funny as what actually ends up happening.
The first comment, while not wankish in itself, is a sign of things to come: "Ok If I have to I will comment,I love facebook so right now just want to log in if thats ok with you..lol Keep up the good work..."
Soon the comments start flooding in from people thinking that they're on Facebook and demanding to be allowed to log in, many jumping straight to rage against this new "redesign" such as this woman: "I am going to delete my account (IF I CAN EVER LOG IN) as this SUCKS BIG TIME ! If this does not get back to NORMAL you are going to lose a lot of folks who hate this and as you can see from all the comments they think it sucks too !!! facebook was great for connecting with old friends ...now, NOT SO MUCH. SO HOW DO I LOG IN ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????"
By page three people are wondering if the blog is being trolled, but one of the site maintainers has found the problem! Looking at their traffic stats, she's discovered that they're suddenly getting hits from a bunch of people searching Google for "facebook login". Yes, they're suddenly being flooded by people who don't know how to get to Facebook without searching Google for it. And the article was steadily creeping up the results list all day.
Around this time a big bold paragraph is added to the article informing people that the site is not Facebook, and providing anyone who needs them with links to get there and a suggestion to bookmark the real Facebook login page.
This doesn't help. And, though most people following the thread are amused by what's going on, at the same time the other side of the wank is forming; people who are getting increasing annoyed at the Facebook commenters for ignoring all the people telling them they're not at Facebook, for instance "Wow!
I mean just WOW!.... are people really this f**king stupid, and they rely so blindly on whatever the first link google throws up.
This is NOT facebook you clowns. How god damn retarded are you."
Three days, 27 pages later, and a smattering of news articles later and it's still going on, but at this point the people trying to get to Facebook have tapered off and it's just the people frothing at the mouth about them left.
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(240 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
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1:02 pm - Voter Fraud and Internet Popularity in 140 Characters or Less
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beccastareyes
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The Shorty Awards is a contest to select the best of Twitter in certain topics... by encouraging folks to tweet (or post their votes via Twitter) their votes, where the top five will go on to judging. Yeah, you can tell this will end well. One of the awards is for Health (or #health -- the hashtags on Twitter let you search for certain topics).
Anyway, this seems to be shaping up into a wankstorm. Not really because of the health issues themselves, though that plays a part, but mostly the standard of 'cheating, vote solicitation, and conspiracies'. The nominal issue is whether the Science-Based Medicine (SBM) or the Alternative Medicine (alt-med) should take the Shorty, but... well, it stops being about the medicine and more about which side wins.
The Cast
Science-Based Medicine/Skeptic Movement
Dr. Rachael Dunlop/@DrRachie -- Skeptical podcaster and heart-disease researcher on Twitter.
Orac -- Cancer surgeon, vaccination advocate, and medical blogger.
PZ Myers -- Skeptic, atheist and biologist, known for 'pharyngulizing' internet polls, which basically means posting links to informal internet polls on religion, science and so on, with the intent that his readers will push them in unexpected directions.
Tim Farley -- Vaccine advocate and blog commenter.
Alternative Medicine
Joseph Mercola/@mercola -- Osteopath and webmaster of a natural health site.
Mike Adams/@HealthRanger -- Webmaster of NaturalNews.com, an alt-med news site with a bit of a reputation for conspiracy-mongering.
Going to apologize - I follow Orac's blog, so most of my commentary is from there.
( Twitter Awards are Serious Business )
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(75 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, January 17th, 2010
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12:35 pm - So. Much. Stupid.
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| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
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1:07 pm - Wind; hear my cry!
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| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
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6:54 pm - Satanic ritual abuse wank
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vassilissa
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I dithered about whether to put this in unfunnybusiness or here, but in the end Satanic Ritual Abuse is not real, and what the person who said it was said was so funny it belonged here.
People who blatantly deny the existence of ritual abuse after being offered solid resources to the contrary demonstrate that they don’t need evidence about its existence. Instead, when they continue to deny its existence in a seemingly obsessive manner, they are more likely trolling for new victims in hopes that responding survivors will – while more emotional – slip-up and provide vulnerable, personal information.
There you go. If you deny the existance of ritual abuse, it's because you're looking for new victims to ritually abuse.
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(129 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, December 14th, 2009
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5:45 pm - reviewer's of this ilk
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cesare
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Why should fandom_wank have all the fun? This gem was reported on Dear Author, a romance novel review site, second story in the post.
The action takes place in the comments section on L. B. Taylor's customer review of Electra Galaxy's Mr. Interstellar Feller by Candace Sams. The review is titled "save your money" and concludes, "All over a sad excuse for romance, mystery, and humor. Save your money, you've been warned."
"Niteflyr One" comments on the review: "It looks like this reviewer has something personal against the author. Apparently, he/she doesn't know that most titles of this kind are written to please an editor these days and the editors are sometimes wrong in asking authors to re-write to 'their' specifications. But this review was more a diatribe on a comparison of 'other' stories the reader liked as opposed to reading the title and reviewing based on the new kind of work that it was meant to be."
Read it well, for these leitmotifs will recur for the next fifteen (and counting!) pages of comments: everyone who argues with Niteflyr has a grudge against her-- oh yeah, spoiler alert: Niteflyr is Candace Sams, the author, who'd have seen that coming-- personally and/or professionally; it's all the editor's fault for controlling the book down to the last micron; regardless of editorial tampering, though, people who don't like the book are just idiots.
( 'Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.' )
If you read this, get used to those repetitions and ellipses. There are lots of ellipses. And watch for other classic wank maneuvers you'll find along the way, including You're Just Jealous, You're All In On It, and The Lurkers Support Me In Email. Also keep an eye out for the glorious moment when she tells commenters they'd need Hooked On Phonics to be able to read her work.
One last treasure from Niteflyr: "Why not go after ST. Nick since you're all in such a festive mood." Hey, good idea. Has he written any shitty romance novels we can review?
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(106 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
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7:36 pm - Ebook drama!
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elfwreck
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This is *fascinating*. Really. I never get to see real ebook drama; it's usually "oh, I could never give up the smell of real books!" vs "umm, 300 books in my pocket, yay!" And then there's some mumblings on both sides, and they both move on and read books on whatever media tweaks their kinks. But not this time!
I bring you... Alan Kaufman vs Mobileread!
Who, you might ask, is Alan Kaufman? I don't know! Apparently, he's written some books. And he blogs about writerly things. And a little over a month ago, he wrote The Electronic Book Burning, in which he compares ebooks to Nazis:The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle. Serious Godwin points for that. In an opening salvo, even. (It's okay, folks, he's Jewish, and that makes it okay for him to compare technological advances to the Holocaust. Erm.)
What's Mobileread? A website devoted to ebooks, ebook sources, ebook devices, and people who read ebooks. It's big. And active.
( Aaaaand they're off! In this corner, literary blogger Alan Kaufman. In that corner, the combined membership of Mobileread forums! )
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(128 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
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12:14 am - Scrapple, it's what's for breakfast.
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platedlizard
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Everyone loves vintage wank, and everyone loves food wank. So what happens when we mix the two of them together?
Pure Gold.
In thoroughly modern fashion, EPICURE’s recipe was almost immediately wikified. PORCUPINE warned against over-frying the scrapple, A HOUSEKEEPER swapped in Graham flour, and MIDDLETOWN gave her method for removing excess grease.
Only PHYSICIAN seemed content with the dish as it was, calling it “a positive luxury, throwing the Frenchman’s pâté de foie gras entirely into the shade.”
As always, the haters far outnumbered the fans: One reader declared that he’d just as soon fry bread in lard and eat it than partake in what others called an “abominable mess,” a “culinary fraud upon the stomach” and a great way to contract trichinosis.
Many thanks to the NY Times for the excellent wank report article.
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(70 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, November 28th, 2009
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1:25 pm - NaNoWriMo: The Bannination You've All Been Waiting For
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ladylauren
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marienbadmylove (profile now deleted) has been banned from the NaNoWriMo site for plagiarism.
i-rant-often had made a post dedicated to 'The Leech'. MBML took said post, ran it through his find-and-replacing and whatever other alterations he does, and posted it as his novel excerpt, thus violating the TOS of the NaNo site.
Part of the original rant: So far, this IDIOT writer of Marienbad My Love, supposedly the world's longest novel, has managed to attempt the weakest defense I've ever seen of his thieving ways. Of course, this comes in the wake of admitting to -- hell, I seriously think he was bragging about -- his methods of theft, and doing it on the NaNoWriMo forums.
MBML's alteration: TIRADE! To date, the MORON author of “Marienbad My Love,” allegedly the world's longest novel, has somehow launched the most pathetic excuse this covert government dream assassin has ever observed of these bold pilfering methods. Certainly, The Thug’s pleas and justifications are presented on the heels of acknowledging -- misery, I grimly believe he was swanking about – his methods of pilfering, and doing it on the Exogrid roundtables.
Protip: just because thesauruses exist does not automatically mean that using them is a good idea. Also, and this may seem obvious to most people, don't steal writing from someone who already dislikes you, as it is a recipe for banhammering.
In conclusion, i-rant-often dances on the grave:
At last . . . something remotely resembling justice!
(TRUE justice would require a steamroller with a defective transmission, several thousand wasps, a feather boa, a nest of red ants, an inept firing squad, a dull guillotine, eighteen metric tons of fecal matter from a pack of donkeys with gonhorrea, thirteen beautiful strippers unwilling to be touched by something as sick as the Leech, two dozen feral kittens and a catnip enema -- but I'll take what I can get!)
THE END (or is it?)
current mood: amused
current music: The Format -- 'Dead End'
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(36 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, November 12th, 2009
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6:43 pm - Go Google Go!
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jkefka
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Be ye warned: This is an incredibly nerdy wank and will involve a lot of programming jokes. That said, it's also pretty damn awesome. Picked up originally by platelizard in random_lounge.
Google, as we all know, is staffed by computer geniuses of the highest order, who program constantly. It seems that they found all the programming languages out there insufficient and clunky for their needs, so in a typically Google solution, they went and made their own. It even has its own mascot (the "Go Gopher"). Computer programmers everywhere jizz their britches, no wanking required. Google puts up an "Issue" form to report problems with the young language, and all is fine and dandy...
Until issue 9, titled "I have already used the name for *MY* programming language."
( 'Go,' 'Go!' and bad jokes no one will get )
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(57 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009
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1:54 am - NaNo: not just for wordsmushing any more!
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