Idiot Ball: Difference between revisions

See also [[Villain Ball]], [[Hero Ball]], [[Distress Ball]], [[Idiot Plot]], [[Forgot About His Powers]], [[Alcohol-Induced Idiocy]], [[OopsComedy Iof Did It Again]], [[Three Is CompanyErrors]], [[Too Dumb to Live]], [[What an Idiot!]], [[Conflict Ball]], [[Bullying a Dragon]], [[Mugging the Monster]], [[Failed a Spot Check]], [[Ping-Pong Naivete]], [[Third-Act Stupidity]] <small>*big breath* </small>, and [[Out-of-Character Moment]]. A [[Stupidity-Inducing Attack]] is essentially what happens when a character deliberately throws the '''Idiot Ball''' at another character.

* HBGary was a very important and security company, so much that the founder wrote the book on rootkits and it worked for the federal government and big corporations. Yet somehow, when [[Image Boards|Anonymous]] hacked one of their employees and then the whole company, it was evident that HBGary had made tons and tons of security mistakes that are dealt with in even a beginner's book. Unable to suspend your disbelief? [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-speaks-the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack.ars Read this arstecnica article]. The hindsights made in HBGary are so hard to believe that some people in the security world are speculating that maybe HBGary were acting as some kind of [[Obfuscating Stupidity|Honey Pot]] to [[Epileptic Trees|trap anonymousAnonymous later]].

* [[World War I]]: For the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915, the British very carefully calculated exactly how much artillery fire they would have to apply over how long in order to break through the German defences. They picked up the Idiot Ball after that, though, hardly even bothering to do the same calculations again until much later (with predictable results). To be fair, by the time they were running assaults on the scale of the Somme, the pre-war arms industry hadn't grown enough to supply them with enough shells and they had to settle for firing off everything they had and hoping it was enough (which it too often wasn't). Later, when they had all they wanted and could break any German defence system at will, they handed the idiot ball to the Americans... who refused to learn from experience and were determined to reinvent the wheel.