childish pranks posts - The Open Road

September 4, 2007 3:09 PM PDT

Microsoft is apparently banning dirty words like "Linux" on its XBox Live site. Really.

Okay, what happens when you like Linux, and decide to change your Xbox Live gamertag motto to "Linux rules"? Well, Microsoft black flags you, that's what. According to xbox-scene.com, Linux and Unix prompt the following response:

Your motto contains inappropriate language. Please try again.

I can confirm this as I just tried it myself. Also, according to some xbox-scene.com forum-goers, variations on Linux such as "L I N U X" or "L inux" also are banned.

I'm sure it stems from some Microsoft developers' little chuckle one night, but it's childish in the extreme. And, unfortunately, "I want to sell my firstborn to Microsoft" is taken, so I'm all out of nicknames to use on the service.

Topics:: Microsoft

Tags:: Microsoft,; childish pranks

Share:: Digg; Del.icio.us; Reddit; Facebook; Twitter

About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

Add this feed to your online news reader

The Open Road topics

Most Discussed

Inside CNET News

Scroll Left Scroll Right

Business Tech
U.S. trade agency eyes Samsung-Sharp spat
Samsung's claim of LCD-related patent infringement by rival Sharp draws the attention of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Gallery
En route to GPS-based air traffic control (images)
Technically Incorrect
Facebook, Twitter: How we chose to live in public
The end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 see much commentary about how living your life in public has become the norm. Is this technology's fault? Or is this what people always wanted?
Beyond Binary
Visual Studio launch delayed by 'a few weeks'
Microsoft says it's still working to resolve some performance issues related to the Visual Studio 2010 developer tool suite, which was slated for a March release.
Video
Deep-sea volcanic explosion--part 2 (video)
InSecurity Complex
Q&A: Researcher Karsten Nohl on mobile eavesdropping
Researcher who tackled smart card security last year talks to CNET about how easy it is to listen in on GSM-based mobile phone calls now that the encryption has been cracked.
Video
Deep-sea volcanic explosion--part 1 (video)
Deep Tech
'Don't-be-evil' Google spurns no-evil software
One open-source software programmer's joke--'The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil'--is a serious matter at Google.
The Space Shot
Soyuz craft docks, boosts space station crew
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked with the International Space Station Tuesday after a smooth, automated approach, boosting the lab's crew back up to five.
Gallery
NASA trains WISE eye on the sky (photos)
Crave
Robots in 2009: The wackier, the better
No surprise here--some of the silliest and oddest robots of the year gone by were to be found in Japan. But who could top Taiwan's kissing bots?
Green Tech
Green-tech venture investing cools off in 2009
Green tech is still attracting billions of dollars a year, but the amount of money has shrunk significantly as investors began to focus on start-ups with the most potential.

The Open Road

Could Microsoft really be this childish?

Most Popular

15 sites that went kaput in 2009

Top 10 news stories of the decade

About The Open Road

The Open Road topics

Apple

Case study

Cisco

Collaboration

Development

Google

Industry news

Licensing

Microsoft

Number crunching

Odds and Ends

Oracle

People

Product review

Red Hat

Research

Rumors and Gossip

Service review

Startups

Strategy

Most Discussed

Inside CNET News