back to article Microsoft: Purveyors of the finest BORK since the 1990s

When it comes to bork, Microsoft has always been ahead of the game. To be honest, we should have seen this one coming. We at Vulture Central do like our acronyms after all. However, it took veteran Microsoft employee and current Azure Stack HCI customer lead Carmen Crincoli to remind us of the true meaning of bork. BackOffice …

  1. Paratrooping Parrot
    Happy

    Back Orifice

    I still remember chuckling at the name of the cracking tool against Microsoft BackOffice being called Back Orifice.

    1. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

      Re: Back Orifice

      Like this?

      User Friendly used to be "the geek's strip" before XKCD came along.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Unhappy

    "whenever the topic of bork comes up, Microsoft is invariably invoked"

    And yet Borkzilla is not what you decided to use.

    Shame.

  3. s. pam Silver badge
    Trollface

    It always reminds me of the old...

    Netnews group alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork and makes me chuckle whenever I see a MSFT Bork in the news

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: It always reminds me of the old...

      Ah yes, That brings back memories...

      I wonder what The Muppets are up to now-a-days?

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: It always reminds me of the old...

        "I wonder what The Muppets are up to now-a-days?"

        You can find old episodes of The Muppet Show streaming on demand at Disney+ ...

        ... However, unfortunately the hand-wringing namby-pamby set have managed to force Disney to graft on an Offensive Content Disclaimer. On the Muppets. Really. You can not make this shit up.

    2. Charles Godwin

      Re: It always reminds me of the old...

      I think the term BORK in the context of computer fail is based on the chef's phrase. If it showed up in Microsoft four letter initializations I think it was someone's successful effort to inject a little humour in to a stuffy organisation.

      1. KarMann Silver badge
        Paris Hilton

        Re: It always reminds me of the old...

        I'd assumed that it's based on a common typo of 'broke', much like 'teh' for 'the'. Although I also figured its popularity owed much to association with the Swedish (or Japanese) chef's catchphrase.

      2. jake Silver badge

        Re: It always reminds me of the old...

        "I think the term BORK in the context of computer fail is based on the chef's phrase."

        I've read a 1968 log book from SLAC describing the software keeping an eye on a detector array as being well and truly b0rked. It was hand-written, with a slash through the 0, so there is no mistaking the intent of the author.

      3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: It always reminds me of the old...

        "I think it was someone's successful effort to inject a little humour in to a stuffy organisation."

        Or, more likely, a useful coincidence. There were a number of Resource Kits emanated from MS, all the way back to the original Windows 1.0 Resource Kit[1]. Even that may have been pre-dated by others for DOS or other products, but the Win 1,0 Resource Kit is the first I ever saw.

        [1] IIRC it was a a bunch of libraries, tools and graphics resources for creating Windows based programmes, before they became known as Resource Kits became SDKs.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It always reminds me of the old...

        I heard it was named in honour of this guy:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork

  4. HammerOn1024

    Wrong!

    Muppets... only Swedish muppets!

  5. jchang

    don't forget that SNA Gateway was part of BO, including the Small Business kit - obviously for the small business mainframe

  6. MonsieurTM

    "Microsoft: consistently crap since 1993"

    1. jake Silver badge

      "Microsoft: consistently crap since 1993"

      I'd say since at least 1976.

      See Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists".

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