Go to google.com. Enter "Weapons of Mass Destruction." Then click on the "I Feel Lucky" button to read the very unique error message. And also be sure to click on all the links in the error message.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at July 4, 2003 11:59 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingThis is too funny... not to mention a little scary...
[[[shivers]]]
Wow.. I lughed out loud at that...
And you're right vocalyz, it is a little scary..
Type in "french military victories" and see what you get, too.
Type in "french military victories" and see what you get, too.
Posted by artimoff @ 07/04/2003 12:17 PM ET
I think that this one is even funnier. :-)
From the WMD error page, if you click the "I" button next to the top message, it'll take you to the homepage of the guy who put that together...it also has a link to a similar error message he did for the New York Times fiasco...
Regardless of a person's personal politics, I gotta say: That's funny! :)
One thing to keep in mind is that this page was created BEFORE the war, when the UN inspectors were loking for WMD.
The "french military victories" one is funny, but what's funnier is that a lot of people took it seriously and mentioned it in their anti-France rants as if it were fact.
What's funny about a error page? I get those all the time.
Heck, if you check out the Google Store (which is a few links down from the homepage), you can get "I'm Feeling Lucky" boxer shorts.
On a different note, anyone heard about the Viacom/Activision dust-up over Star Trek?
If you haven't, here's Activison's version:
http://www.activision.com/en_US/news_article_cc/a2d66498-9dde-49c0-ade0-fde70b0caab9.html
Here's what online comic strip Penny Arcade thought about it:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-07-04
Warning, they use naughty words. A full article by them is here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/
To me, they really nailed the feeling I get of Mr. Berman and the producers. I'll stop now before I rant. :)
StS
Of course the sad part is that it's written as an MSIE error page. It looks a bit out of place in Mozilla :P
Interesting link, StS. I especially like the comic strip...
You know what might be interesting? Give Berman and Braga their walking papers and offer ridiculously fat contracts to JMS and PAD to come on as executive producers. They could fix up ENTERPRISE and then do a second series where Star Trek does its best work: in syndication.
Let's see Jemas get on PADs case when he's the co-executive producer of the most powerful franchise in television history! =)
Matt
The French Military victries was hilarious. Just for kicks I typed in Italian Military victories and it took me to another site for French Military victories. Pretty much the same info though. But at the bottom was this statement:
Did you know they had to cancel the fireworks display at Euro-Disney? The French kept surrendering.
A convicing reply to the repeated "and the French surrendered, ha ha!" joke is here and here. Key take-away fact: the French surrendered after 120 thousand soldiers had been killed.
I tried the error and got an article on CNN.Com about Weapons of Mass Destruction in the middle east. Granted, their ethics of reporting during the war were pretty bad but...
I tried it , all i get is a policy paper from the White House (www.whitehouse.gov) . Didn't read it but it doesn't seem funy at all.
Yeah, someone at google took it offline... irritating after I told a half a million friends to look at it.
And remember folks... the french gave us the statue of liberty, they sided with us on the revolutionary war, they lost over a million people in World War I and they are the leading country on capturing al-queda operatives.
Just because their government is corrupt does not mean that the country and people are all bad.
Travis
So...what was supposed to come up, because the link clearing house from Montery Institute of International Studies isn't that funny.
I tried the error and got an article on CNN.Com about Weapons of Mass Destruction in the middle east. Granted, their ethics of reporting during the war were pretty bad but...
Oh, please! It was FOX and MSNBC that got into trouble with the army due to the mis deeds of their reporters.
I'll take CNN over the FOX Republican Crap-aganda channel and Bill O'Right-Wing any day. Fair and Balanced my ass!
I hate to sound stupid but I don't get it. Here's the link that google took me to.
http://cns.miis.edu/research/wmdme/
This does not seem like an error page to me.
I believe the "I Feel Lucky" button takes you to the top listed search result in Google. That was the weapons of mass destruction error page for a while and was just now for me, but I guess it isn't always.
Neil
And now there is a New York Times 404 error page. Definitely worth looking at.
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/blair.html
Neil
>Oh, please! It was FOX and MSNBC >that got into trouble with the >army due to the mis deeds of >their reporters.
CNN wasn't quite as bad as they were in the first war. (As in giving away troop movements on Live TV that Sadam and Company could watch). They still sucked up to the Information Ministry. Granted, they apologized. That doesn't make it right.
>I'll take CNN over the FOX >Republican Crap-aganda channel >and Bill O'Right-Wing any day. >Fair and Balanced my ass!
Don't get me wrong. I wasn't for the war. All I'm saying is the major news networks (Fox News, MSNBC and CNN in particualr) were willing to do anything to get a story even if it meant paying money for informants, sucking up to nasty people or grinding somebody's hand off with a sander. Call me old fashioned but I still believe that if you're ethical the first time, you don't have to apologize for it later.
A convicing reply to the repeated "and the French surrendered, ha ha!" joke is here and here. Key take-away fact: the French surrendered after 120 thousand soldiers had been killed.
Marc Bloch, who fought in WWII and was later executed after fighting in the Resistance, wrote a book, "Strange Defeat". He said the French basically gave up.
The author of the spoof has a piece in the online version of the Guardian newspaper.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,994676,00.html
Try this one on google type "weapons of mass destruction" and click "I feel Lucky" read the page very carefully.