Frank Bitterlich

Spam isn´t that bad. At least it´s good for a laugh every once in a while. Like this one…

Sorry, guys, viewing it in my browser won´t solve the readability problems of this

Der Bau von Minaretten ist verboten.

— Swiss Federal Constitution, Article 72, Paragraph 3

4.

— Total number of existing minarets in Switzerland.

“The construction of minarets is forbidden.”

Rarely has such a short sentence of legislation caused such a stir worldwide. But as small Switzerland is, as powerful is its economic; and in parallel, as short as this addition to the swiss constitution is, as explosive its consequences may be.

An overall of 57% of swiss voters supported this addition, causing reactions from utter disbelief and shock to suggestions to follow this example by right-wing parties all across Europe.

Switzerland has long been known for restrictive immigration policy, reservedness against refugees and generally a good bit of xenophobia among parts of its people. But this decision has caught most of Europe and even Switzerland by surprise. But why? Read More »

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…