6 ms·
If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best. That said, this is a hilarious story and reminds me of the things people used to do in th
by rasengan 6y ago
If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best.
That said, this is a hilarious story and reminds me of the things people used to do in the early days of the internet in terms of trolling and such. Unfortunately, after groups like the GN*A and others successfully trolled the world several times, nation states figured it out and started trolling to actually control the narrative of the internet!
And here we are today.
- throwaway894345 6y ago> If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best. If that's the best case scenario, what's the worst? Firing squad?
- ma2rten 6y agoThis is a good example of how human language is ambiguous. You should read it as in the worst case in prison and in the best case fired.
- throwaway894345 6y agoHah! That interpretation didn’t even occur to me, but yes that makes more sense.
- gkop 6y agoNo, we have tone and punctuation to disambiguate the two interpretations here. Parent commenter interpreted correctly. If the grandparent’s intention was otherwise, they should have used a comma.
- iso1210 6y agoIt's a good example of how ambiguity can arise when humans use (or don't use) punctuation and other features of a language that's been evolving for centuries, to communicate across an instantaneous worldwide medium with little effort
- gkop 6y agoWell said.
- caslon 6y agoThey didn't interpret it correctly, and there's no rule stating a comma is necessary that's universal in every style-guide.
- gkop 6y agoThey interpreted incorrectly per English grammar. We don’t know whether they interpreted correctly or incorrectly per the utterer’s intention, as the utterer has not clarified their intention. This isn’t a question of style, but one of grammar.
- dalbasal 6y agoPrecisely.
- Dylan16807 6y agoIt's not that simple. Commas are lawless.
- photoangell 6y agoExpelled.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoterminated!
- 88840-8855 6y agoTrue that. The reason for this is simple. Stock price. Investors would wine around, price could move. It is all about money today: serious business.
- commandlinefan 6y agoI think it's deeper - and more insidious - than that. People with no sense of humor, or even awareness of their lack of sense of humor, have clawed their way into positions of real power. They used to just run the parent-teacher council and try to get TV shows cancelled, but now they've moved on to control nearly every aspect of our lives. And their power is growing.
- MattGaiser 6y agoHaving a sense of humour is dangerous when you need the approval of others because most sense of humour differ from the ones others have.
- dinkleberg 6y agoDo you think this is any different than any time throughout history? There have always been and always will be people without senses of humor in all walks of life.
- commandlinefan 6y agoI don't know about the rest of history, but this is the first point in my lifetime where they've been in control of so many aspects of day-to-day life.
- Arainach 6y agoThis is pure nonsense. Look at any portrayal of large operations (satirical or biographical) in recorded history. The leadership of GM, Ford, IBM, the military, and any huge organization have always been portrayed as humorless.
- 6y ago
- gumby 6y agoPrison? That seems over the top.
- addicted 6y agoThis would be a massive SEC violation at minimum. A prison sentence would not be surprising at all. The only reason they likely didn’t get it in 1995 even is that MS PR (the one this person derides as PR flacks) apparently successfully convinced the world that this wasn’t done by MS insiders.
- juotlrjrb 6y agoHow can a regular non-executive employee be guilty of a SEC violation, for something like this? If I'm a Tesla employee and I make a fake image about a future Tesla airplane, is that a SEC violation?
- xwdv 6y agoYou are attempting to manipulate the stock price, likely for personal gain.
- hedora 6y agoIt is difficult to prove intent, especially if the press release is absurd, released on April 1st, and you’re attempting to prove it wasn’t intended as a prank. Having said that, I’m holding a bag of SO stock because I thought they really were going to start monetizing by charging for copy-paste. /s
- bagpuss 6y agowhat a strange way to obfuscate that GNAA acronym!
- beaconstudios 6y agoAssoci*tion
- city41 6y agoThey might have gotten fired in 96 too. They certainly seemed afraid of that based on things in the story not to mention waiting 25 years to tell it.
- paxys 6y agoYou would also have been in prison in 1996 had you tried it at a larger and more "strict" company than Microsoft.