Hell Warming Up?

[maclamb]

I think their request and Apple's response was cool

23K ibooks is a lot.
I think they (VA) are entitled to object (why they object is a different matter - I tend to agree about the wildly over-litigous nature of our society - probably wouldn't have happened in europe)
And I respect apple for pulling it
It was basically a joke (a good one, I think) and was up for quite a while and we and lots of others got it.
Time to move on.

 

[hvfsl]

I am a christain, but dont mind that Apple put hell on its website. But Apple has to respond to the needs/wants of its comsumers if it wants to make money. Apple could have kept the word 'hell' on the site, but what would have been the point? To show people they dont care what customers think.

This kind of thing happened to Nike when they started out, their first logo looked a bit like the Islamic symbol and many muslims complained. So Nike changed the logo to what it is today. Nike could have just said, how cares, we will just not sell to muslims. But then they would have made less money.

Apple removing the word 'hell' does not make their products any better or worst, I think the people in this forum and the people complaining are making a big deal about nothing.

 

[pscates]

Originally posted by Raiden
I happen to be one of the people in the richmond VA Ibook program (senior at godwin high school), and on the behalf of all the kids here who think beurocratic nonsence like this, I would like to thorowly appoligize for the removal of the hell freezes over joke.

BTW, im posting this on my ibook.

Any chance that iBook has some sort of spell-checking capability built in?



I sometimes wonder if technology is being hyped/implemented at the expense of "the basics"?

Schools might do well to worry less about "a laptop in every lap" and instead making damn sure everyone they pass/graduate can spell, add, write, subtract, etc.

It's cool that iBooks, wireless networks, digital media-based reports and so forth are becoming common in schools. But it isn't the end-all/be-all point, you know? Cart before the horse, and all of that.

An iMovie about Washington crossing the Delaware that's full of typos in the captions/credits isn't cool.

 

[hvfsl]

Originally posted by Photorun
What the hell! Stupid humorless bible thumpers. Hell is using peecees so clearly there's hell on earth. People who lack humor need to go to hell.

Like you?

 

[the_mole1314]

Lets get some thing straigt:

a.) Every kid in the school system can see this phrase, from kindergardeners on their iMacs to Seniors on their iBooks.

b.) If you had a kid and whenever they start IE or Safari they see "HELL FROZE OVER" and they were young, woutl you let them see it?

c.) It's only a matter of time before parents come to bitch and moan. Look at the parents who are suing to stop their school from using wireless networks because it might have effects on their kids! Idiots!

 

[Les Kern]

All things being equal, we need to remove "under god" from our pleadge asap.

 

[the_mole1314]

Everyone makes this discussion religious, it's not. It's a simple fact that the school dosn't want little kids exposed to 'Hell Froze Over'. I think that's a fine trade off IMHO.

 

[Powerbook G5]

I loved the "Hell just froze over" caption. It amused me, but really, before too long it will be removed from the front page and replaced by something else and soon forgotten, anyway. Besides, according to Dante, the 9th circle of hell has always been frozen over due to Satan's flapping wings cooling it off to a deep freeze.

 

[1macker1]

And you are absolutely correct.

Originally posted by the_mole1314
Everyone makes this discussion religious, it's not. It's a simple fact that the school dosn't want little kids exposed to 'Hell Froze Over'. I think that's a fine trade off IMHO.

 

[FlamDrag]

It's not uncommon for companies to change their ads due to consumer backlash. However mild many consider "hell" to be, they lose nothing by removing it and gain something by doing so. It makes perfect sense to me.

Still, the headline should have read "No f**king way" Maybe they're saving that for one of the following:

1. iWalk / iPod PDA
2. OS X on x86
3. Powerbooks on Tuesday.

 

[Powerbook G5]

No ***** way would be "Macs--Now compatible/shipping with Windows XP"

 

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by Les Kern
All things being equal, we need to remove "under god" from our pleadge asap.

Let me know if I'm off on this but didn't the pledge originally come "under God" free? I thought I read it was early 20th century when congress passed a resolution to add "under God" Anyone?

 

[imbriumink]

The pledge of allegiance has nothing to do with this forum. I think the under God was added due to the communist scare since they were "godless" communists.

 

[allpar]

The addition of Under God was indeed a 1950s addition that would repel some of the Founding Fathers, whose religious beliefs would make them enemies of the Pat Robertson gang. It was again added under the belief that all atheists must be Communists because officially Communism was atheist - at least, in the Soviet Union, which did allow churches and synagogues to continue with roughly the same freedoms, that is to say not too many, as the czars allowed.

I find it amazing that we can have 57,000 people excluded from voting in Florida (intentionally-wrongly marked as ex-felons), and that hardly gets a whisper of outrage, but the removal of the word "Hell" gets all this emotion. People are ASSUMING that this rumor about Virginia is true. People are ASSUMING this has something to do with political correctness. Perhaps it simply confused customers. Perhaps they wanted to add something else and felt the Hell message was diluting it.

 

[Rower_CPU]

It was their filtering software, as far as I heard. It flagged the word and refused to load the page.

It's a moot point anyway, because the iBook updates would have superseded the iTunes announcement regardless of its content.

 

[Steven1621]

i think it is pretty stupid to make such a big deal over a word, but certainly it is far more important to protect the opportunity that 23000 ibooks provides.

 

[x86isslow]

Originally posted by Exponent
Tipper Gore (husband of a certain Apple Board member) who pushed _that_ whole concept.

so lemme get this straight. tipper is Al's husband?

 

[Belly-laughs]

Originally posted by dricci
That's lame. Why are people so scared of four letter words?

Exactly! Most of us will probably end up there, so it´s nice to see Steve making it more comfortable.

 

[allpar]

If some people are offended by four letter words, what's the harm in simply not using them? Seriously... there are far more important threats to our freedom than not being able to cuss in print. Or is how we say it more important than what we are saying?

 

[edenwaith]

Thank the Lord!

I, for one, am very glad to see Apple making such an intelligent decision upon their part to get rid of that DREADFUL phrase, with that ever-naughty word. Since that ad came out, I've been involved in no less than three felony crimes, and I blame it all on seeing that one 'word' on Apple's site! Now, hopefully I can live a semi-peaceful life again now that Apple has had its corporate mouth washed out. However, I will be scarred forever after the events which have transpired in the past few weeks.

I must go now and get ready for my court date tomorrow.

P.S. I'm kidding! I use four-letter words every day. Such as will, then, send, long, term, must, have...even my keyboard is littered with those 4-letter buggers: home, help, page, caps, lock.

 

[Mudbug]

I wonder if it physically hurts at all to walk around every day having your sense of humor surgically removed.

It's sad we've gotten to the point of not even joking around anymore.

 

[rueyeet]

Like the_mole1314 and 1macker1, I think that this had less to do with lack of a sense of humor, religious morals, or over-sensitive political correctness than possibly with a) school filters nixing Apple's homepage, or b) parents faced with how to explain to their kids that they shouldn't use words like "hell" inappropriately when it's displayed prominently on Apple's homepage.

You certainly do have the right to freedom of speech, and I don't believe there's anything intrinsically wrong with such words, but not in front of the elementary school kids, if you don't mind; they don't yet have the appreciation of context and subtlety that proper swearing requires for maximum impact and meaning.

 

[Gabriel]

From the Henrico County Observer:

In other news the Henrico County school district has banned Dante's controversial classic The Inferno from high school curricula and is removing the book from the shelves of county libraries. Students and parents have been asked to hand in their books so that they (the books) can be burned in a public ceremony next week. It has not yet been decided whether students will be required to demonstrate the goose-step marches they have learned and sing "Deutchland Uber Alles" at the event.

 

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by hvfsl
This kind of thing happened to Nike when they started out, their first logo looked a bit like the Islamic symbol and many muslims complained. So Nike changed the logo to what it is today. Nike could have just said, how cares, we will just not sell to muslims. But then they would have made less money.

I think what happened there is Nike released a shoe with some curly meaningless script on it that looked like "Allah" in Arabic. Walking on the name of God isn't exactly welcomed (the feet are considered dirty), so they changed it.

Originally posted by imbriumink
The pledge of allegiance has nothing to do with this forum. I think the under God was added due to the communist scare since they were "godless" communists.

Yup.

 

[Gabriel]

If I remember correctly the phrase "under god" was added in 1954 during the Eisenhower administration. I don't know how much the godless communists had to do with that.

Personally I'm very suspicious of any type of absurd political correctness, but the folks who want to repeal the "under god" law have a valid point, this isn't something on a private companies website, like the "hell froze over" thing, its something kids are required to chant every day and that can (1) make someone who doesn't happen to agree with that mantra very uncomfortable and (2) promote something that the government has absolutely no business promoting.

Now it occurs to me that the Henrico County people probably are running into the same problem with "hell froze over" because it sounds like they left http://www.apple.com as the default website on 23,000 computers. If thats the case than they probably have a valid reason for asking Apple to take down the phrase. However, why are they leaving apple.com as the default website? Isn't there something a little odd going on when its okay to make 23,000 kids look at a corporate website every day from a school computer but its not okay to say hell on that website?