Microsoft suspends lewd Santa software

Microsoft recently launched a nice little project where they invited children to add Santa to their contacts list on MSN. Unfortunately Microsoft didn’t bank on Santa’s vocabulary to be so. . .unsavoury.

Everything was running quite smoothly. Kids were adding Santa to their Windows Live list and chatting away about what toys they wanted for Christmas, if they had been naughty or nice etc. until someone (no doubt someone too old to be talking to a virtual Santa online, but hey, who are we to judge ?) reported to The Register that a conversation with the jolly man about pizza had taken quite the unexpected turn.

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The Register decided to try a little experiment of their own. One of their intrepid writers added "Santa" and began to chat. Sure enough, once the topic of pizza was raised Santa replied "You want to eat what ??? It’s fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else."

Microsoft insist they didn’t know Santa enjoyed discussing oral sex (or anything else inappropriate) and has taken the software offline. A Microsoft spokeperson said that while changes had been made to the software, the company didn’t feel comfortable keeping it online.

The same spokesperson said the reason for Santa’s lewd comments was because someone was "pushing this thing to make it do things it wasn’t supposed to do" (the conversation was wrapped up with both parties referring to eachother as a "Dirty bastard"). Uh, news flash, he was just talking about pizza and if it wasn’t supposed to do it, why was it in the code ? He also said the company had no idea that the foul language was in the code but they didn’t suspect an employee prank. . .

Oh, Microsoft, you are so naive.