back to article An unfortunate bit of product placement for Microsoft as Liverpool celebrates winning some silverware

There has been a tinge of Scouse to our bork column this week, which culminates in a football win for Liverpool - it won the English Premier League yesterday - and a pleading for activation from Windows. Spotted by eagled-eyed Register reader Tony G, while a red-shirted football player celebrated a victory, a ghostly pleading …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT Sbork

    You'd think they'd be able to afford a Windows key based on my average bill...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: BT Sbork

      Did you not notice what they paid for the football?

      They might need to add a few more digits on the lefthand side of the decimal point to recoup that investment before everyone gets sick of paying for the odd game here and there...

  2. Smartypantz

    Dont understand anything this "article" is about!?!"?!

    WTF football? Windows Som'thing? Liverpool? A city in my book, not men-in-shorts

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dont understand anything this "article" is about!?!"?!

      I think your attitude is what's stopping you reading this coherently.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More a case of..

    One of the official internal laptops (called a BT webtop 10, which don't allow zoom to be installed) was wiped and a clean, non-corporate image installed.

    Anon because I might just have one that I avoid using at all costs (totally useless to develop on, or browse... Or type... Or you get the idea).

  4. disgruntled yank

    Clarification

    Americans don't insist on call that sport football, they just call it football. It is affected for a native-born American to refer to any other sport as "football", roughly on a par with referring to the "boot" of a car or proposing to travel vertically in a "lift".

    Hope this helps.

    1. SW10

      Re: Clarification

      ...and the personal pronoun for teams in Brit English is ‘they’, not ‘it.’

      Thus:

      “win for Liverpool - it won the English Premier League yesterday“

      should be:

      “win for Liverpool - they won the English Premier League yesterday”

      Strange, I know. But there you go

      ,

      1. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

        Re: Clarification

        Yes, "they" indeed, but certainly not "we": I find it weird when when people that watch the kicking-ball thing and happen to like a particular group of ball kickers say "we won". Makes me think of when a toddler "helps" in the kitchen – probably enjoying themselves and having a fun time with the person doing the actual work, who in turn may enjoy the presence of said toddler – and then says triumphantly, "we made a cake". I guess it's cute, in a way.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Clarification

          Bookmakers would probably disagree with you, given the home team is always shorter odds compared to the reverse fixture.

        2. wjake
          Go

          Re: Clarification

          As I am an owner of (a small part of) the American Sports League Team from the Green Bay WI area, I can happily and correctly say that "we" won!

        3. BrownishMonstr

          Re: Clarification

          Isn't it just like saying "we won the war" when you were never a part of it. You identify with that team/community so you feel their victory is yours.

          I personally don't watch football, I tried to as a kid but couldn't stand it for more than a few minutes, but I wouldn't say it's weird. Especially not when your hard-earned money goes on to buy your favourite team-branded clothes, season tickets, and whatever else that would go on to support them (i.e. their inflated salaries).

          Arguably, one could say exclusively shopping at Asda would mean you should therefore see their success as yours, but that sounds silly.

          1. Michael Habel

            Re: Clarification

            Arguably, one could say exclusively shopping at Asda would mean you should therefore see their success as yours, but that sounds silly.

            Yes but, that is because we don't have Supermarktes dabbling in weekly death matches. Though if we did... But, I'm sure this could be more logicaly concluded as a person who owns a lage share of Fruit Stock. Who slams the plebian based Materrace for using an innfirior product than what the Fruit Factory released last week.

            1. BrownishMonstr

              Re: Clarification

              Hm..death matches. There are those black-friday and pandemic fights, however.

            2. Someone Else Silver badge

              @Michael Habel -- Re: Clarification

              You're Amanfromars1, and I claim my $5....

        4. Michael Habel

          Re: Clarification

          Well They wouldn't have much of a carrere playing stupid backyard games. if it wasnt for the "Roayl WE" who go out, and buy the Season Tickets, Other Merch, and the BSkyB Licence to make sure that even the lamest person in the squad can have his very own Porsch-mobile. So yes I think very much bloody do have a right to claim some right to any win.

      2. Big_Baldy_Bloke

        Re: Clarification

        There is no absolute position that the personal pronoun for a team in Brit English is ‘they’ (see, eg, Noun-verb agreement on BBC Learning English at

        https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv358.shtml).

        We can use singular or plural verbs with many collective nouns depending on whether we are thinking of the group as a unit or as a collection of individuals.

        In this case, “win for Liverpool - it won the English Premier League yesterday“ is what I would write but I think "they" is fine too.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Clarification

        and, in fact, the proper name for "Brit English" is "English".

        1. Michael Habel

          Re: Clarification

          I thought it was English (UK)

          As opposed tp

          English (US)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Clarification

      Sounds like you're insisting it to me...

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Clarification

      "Hope this helps."

      Here's a scale for you to demonstrate how much use of the foot and hand in a game nominally called "football" by the locals"

      Foot.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....|.....Hand

      Now, "foot"ball in the vast majority of the world is right up against the left edge of the scale because any use of the hand on the ball is against the rules. Now, where on that scale would you like to place US style "foot"ball"?

      1. Clunking Fist

        Re: Clarification

        RFU says STFU?

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: Clarification

          Yes, technically it's "Rugby Football" but in common parlance it's just "Rugby", occasion declared as either "League" or "Union" in times of war.

      2. Kubla Cant

        Re: Clarification

        I think the reasons for the name are historical, rather than a reflection of the way the ball is manipulated.

        The English game that was called "football" for many centuries seems to have involved so much hand activity (throwing, catching, punching, gouging, wrenching, twisting etc) that it's puzzling that it was so called. When it was split into various flavours by codification of the rules, most of them retained the ball-handling element and the foot-related name.

    4. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Clarification

      "Americans don't insist on call that sport football, they just call it football."

      They insist, because from what I've seen of it on any number of American movies, they pick up the damn ball, toss it to each other, and then cross a seemingly arbitrary movable line, lob it to the ground, and then half the audience cheers. There's very little kicking of the ball. You know, with the feet, that might otherwise justify calling the game football.

      I mean, jeez, it basically looks like rugby being played by crash-test dummies.

  5. the spectacularly refined chap Silver badge

    All that money

    And he manages to put his T shirt on back to front.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All that money

      And the IT angle?

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: All that money

        bootnotes?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: All that money

          But it's Bork and it does have an IT ANGLE

          Instead snide people just mocking Liverpool

          Windows Activation is the subject.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: All that money

        About 180 degrees!

  6. MacroRodent
    Pint

    Well that was

    eagle-eyed! Small text in the corner, wth "the bork" even fainter. Cheers!

  7. Fursty Ferret

    What am I missing?

    It's not a bork or product placement.

    If you can't be bothered to license your software properly though either incompetence, laziness, penny-pinching (or, no doubt, a combination of all three) then you have no-one to blame but yourself.

    Don't forget the overwhelming satisfaction back in the day that used to result from replacing a popular hot-linked JPG with another image. It was up to you whether you went with the "Stolen from [insert website name here] or went straight to the Lemming porn.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What am I missing?

      It's a bork by BT. You can't seriously think they wanted to broadcast Windows asking for activation

  8. SuperGeek

    I thought Bork meant "break"

    Therefore this article isn't a bork, it simply needs a key, it hasn't crashed, blue screened, caught fire or shown an error, it's simply an informative message.

    Slow news week??

    1. FrankAlphaXII

      Re: I thought Bork meant "break"

      Well if a company the size of BT can't figure out how to activate Windows, its kind of a bork, more of the beancounter variety though

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like