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Back in the 90s, I worked on a "side project" that screen-scraped the daily Dilbert strip and added it to an internal "employee portal" website. A lot of people

Back in the 90s, I worked on a "side project" that screen-scraped the daily Dilbert strip and added it to an internal "employee portal" website. A lot of people liked it, including all the pointy-haired middle managers. However, after about a week, I was told to remove it immediately, not because of the legal/ethical issues around screen-scraping (stealing) the strip, but rather because this particular day's strip was about Dilbert's company laying off a bunch of employees so the company's executives had more money to buy vacation homes (or something like that), and, by coincidence, our company announced a massive layoff on that exact same day. The timing was totally coincidental, but perfect. Executives were furious; my boss told me he got yelled at by our VP. I loved it.

josephcsible 1y ago
Reminds me of when someone did an April Fools prank that printers would require payment to use, and then got in big trouble, but only because management was about to implement that policy for real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43543743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43543743
- alpaca128 1y ago
  Thanks, I couldn't remember where it was from but I find it so funny that he had to write a second apology, for claiming in the first that they didn't plan to do it.
maxlybbert 1y ago
That reminds me that he got lots of comments from upset readers because shortly after Mother Teresa died, one comic's punchline involved 100 nuns dying in a plane crash ( https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1997-09-13 https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1997-09-13 ). He swears that he drew the comic months before, and had no real idea when it would run, but many readers thought the timing was too good to be accidental.
dsunds 1y ago
I did the same thing, scraping those via telnet, before the company (Texas Instruments) supported HTTP to the world wild web. Fun, and simpler, times.

josephcsible 1y ago

Reminds me of when someone did an April Fools prank that printers would require payment to use, and then got in big trouble, but only because management was about to implement that policy for real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43543743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43543743

alpaca128 1y ago
Thanks, I couldn't remember where it was from but I find it so funny that he had to write a second apology, for claiming in the first that they didn't plan to do it.

maxlybbert 1y ago

That reminds me that he got lots of comments from upset readers because shortly after Mother Teresa died, one comic's punchline involved 100 nuns dying in a plane crash ( https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1997-09-13 https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1997-09-13 ). He swears that he drew the comic months before, and had no real idea when it would run, but many readers thought the timing was too good to be accidental.

dsunds 1y ago

I did the same thing, scraping those via telnet, before the company (Texas Instruments) supported HTTP to the world wild web. Fun, and simpler, times.