Frank Bitterlich

By reading one press release after another from various players in the IT industry (none of which, amazingly, contained the word “sorry”) about different kinds of stupid blunders unexpected features, I got the distinct feeling that we seriously need to regulate the corporate PR departments a bit more.

Here`s my first suggestion…:

Terms that should be banned from press releases and advertising by the IT industry…:

1. “limited number”

   As used in: “Only a limited number of customers have been affected by the problem…”

   My suggestion: Replace limited with finite. Closer to the truth, but still implying that at least one customer didn`t have his OS completely destroyed by a careless blunder in the product.

2. “up to”

   As in “… bandwidth of up to 16 Gbit/s…”

   Suggestion: replace “up to xxx” with “you will never see xxx, but we will bill you for that anyway.”

3. “committed to”

   As in, “… we are committed to continuously improving the security of our products…”

   Suggestion: Replace “committed to xxx” with “we couldn`t care less about xxx, but we would never be caught saying that in a press release.”

If you want to participate in this kind of bullshit bingo a bit, here`s some suggested reading:

• McAfee false alert snares innocent JavaScript files, The Register
• CA auto-immune update trashes systems, The Register
• AVG slaps Trojan label on Adobe Flash, The Register
• TomTom admits Satnav device is infected with virus, DaniWeb

Any more suggestions? Feel free to post a comment…

Who said that an “Album of the Week” has to be posted every week?

This week I stumbled across BlueMoon X DreamScape Time by a spanish guy named PeerGynt Lobogris. A fine example of harmonic, even dreamy electro-rock that is ideal for “background noise” while working with buggy Javascript implementations. It cools you down, blurs your focus a little bit, which helps with getting the big picture… Believe me, it works – I´ve tried it

You can listen to the album (and many more) for free on Jamendo.