"Hi is that the Division of Motor Vehicles? I have an issue with my numberplate. It does NOT say what the fuck. How do I get this rectified?

WTF...

I wonder how the World Taekwondo Federation feel about their name being considered offensive.

WTF is their problem with WTF?

Sorry, had to be said

I'd have expected North Carolina to go after OMG first. After all, isn't religion more important than obscenity down there?

wtf ftw!

Surely it's other people who would find it offensive, you don't look at your own number plate do you?

Paris because she knows WTF

What about CuNTs and TaRDs ? ;)

Not to mention DRuGs, GAY, LeSBos...

I'd like a PH, because she might be into all that stuff.

The DMV was using "WTF-5505" as the sample plate on their web site: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1118273.html

and so on...

I guess my buddy William Terrance Franklin is just SOL. Hmmmm.....SOL??? Looks like a real FUBAR to me. Hmmmm .... FUBAR??? I guess it's just too frakking bad for the WTF users. Hmmmmmm .... TFB??? Well, you know, for the national conscience it is a big frelling deal. Hmmmmm .... BFD???

Hmmmmmmm .......

If it were awesome I certainly would.

We had such interesting number plates in the UK

I'd pay for that one.

Wonder if I can lodge a request with ICANN to register that as a TLD

Having a slow Friday - can El Reg invent some news, please?

But "a 60-year-old technology teacher" doesn't sound too hopeful for the students!

Unless it's a History of Technology course and they are learing about technology from 60 years ago.

this is stooooooopid...

I have always found LOL to be far more offensive.

Zurich Central Station has the letters "SBB CFF FFS" above the entrance. FFS.

Makes me smile whenever I go past.

http://railroadpictures.net/Stations/Zurich_Hauptbahnhof/IMG_9354_tn1024.jpg

A good friend of mine in Melbourne has WTF (just the three letters) as his custom numberplate, and there wasn't a problem getting it issued there.

http://www.dvlaregistrations.co.uk/home/en/Search/p/global?string=wtf

Why the fuss?

i seem to remember a few years back a similar incident over here, when the P reg came in and the the DVLA refused to issue the number 'P155 OFF'

but that may be just wishful thinking on my part!

"I guess my buddy William Terrance Franklin is just SOL. Hmmmm.....SOL??? Looks like a real FUBAR to me. Hmmmm .... FUBAR??? I guess it's just too frakking bad for the WTF users. Hmmmmmm .... TFB??? Well, you know, for the national conscience it is a big frelling deal. Hmmmmm .... BFD???

Hmmmmmmm ......" ... By Doug Glass Posted Friday 27th June 2008 12:51 GMT

Hang in there, Doug, Angels AIWay..... Help on ITs Way with the Bitch Biker's Tour of Galaxy. ...... Seventh Heaven, Global Communications HQ @ ITs Work 4 Rest 2 Play.

Welcome to Merlin, the MetaPhysician's, Cinderella/Sin der Elle MultiPolar Order Program. Another Tentacle of Octopus, Mr Allen?

There's also http://www.wtfgroup.com/

And for the William Temple foundation (http://www.wtf.org.uk/) it says

WTF's 60th Anniversay Lecture Series - Archbishop Rowan Williams, John Atherton, Francis Davis, Bob Langley

There's the Workforce Training Fund (WTF) in mass.gov/wtf

And the Obama WTF (What's The Facts?)

Which makes me think that someone hasn't got better things to do on a Friday afternoon - just like me!

I see,

Well then I'd be changing mine to something like- "SMD" or "BMN" or "KMA" or "FYS"... or my personal favorite- "FUB". See if you can figure out what those mean!!! LOL!!!

WTF (Work Time Fun) is a great PSP game... what's offensive about it?

...to the ingenuity of people who want a "rude" number plate. Many years ago in the UK I saw "4 COF". I expect that would be OK in North Carolina, since they wouldn't get it.

Coat icon, coz I'll just 4 COF now.

When working in business sales for BT, all orders placed had a reference number which consisted of several numbers and 4 letters. We actually had a about 2 weeks of order reference numbers with C-U-N-T in them, and we HAD to give the reference number to the customer :) Oh the joys of arguing with people thinking you are taking the piss and having to call your manager over to confirm to the customer it was a genuine order number...

This was towards the end of 2006, in case anyone has old paperwork sitting about form then... Have a look...

"WTF's 60th Anniversay Lecture Series - Archbishop Rowan Williams......."

Given the Archbishop's hard-earned reputation as a clueless beardie with a tendancy to spout complete bollocks in public, surely that one's the usual meaning?

Apparently he's speaking at the Foundation for Universal Christian Knowledge and World Interfaith Tolerance next week........

When they released their Werewolf: The Forsaken game.

It's real, check amazon

or take advantage of the publicity and auction it for a couple of grand.

I just need to find something equivalent for SFC and the plate will be worth more than the car.

LMAO and ROFL! How FUBAR is that? What a bunch of SOC's!

Legend has it that here in NY USA, somebody got away with having SMEGMA as their vanity plate for some time before an alert minion spotted it at renewal time.

Apparently FTW (ooo it's an anagram, how handy) these days means "For the Win".

In my day it meant "Fuck The World".

So, WTF FTW ...

IJGMC.

To be honest I'm surprised that the Catholic Church hasn't been up in arms about File Transfer Protocol.

... DMV also means Dick Meets Vag?

should use a BFH on the plate and just smash it flat.

There's an older gentleman that drives a '60s Ford Falcon ranchero around town with the California custom license plate TIHSEPA. No, I'm not kidding! Read _that_ one backwards!

Stagecoach have been running an extended advertising campaign for weekly passes on their buses. The adverts are a huge vinyl wrap-around, that covers the whole of the rear of the bus, I'm sure everyone knows the type. The image is a cartoon washing line with clothing on it, with a letter for each day of the week over each one. As you're probably guessed by now, the items for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday just happen to be the ones that appear on the rear of the bus.

I often wonder, as one passes me of a morning, who the genius was in their advertising department who got that past their management, and how sad is it that I appear to be the only person over 30 who appears to have noticed it.

I live in North Carolina. I must now get a personalized license plate of "WTF"

Sorry to rain on your parade

The DVLA would have never released 'P155 OFF' in the previous incarnations of number plates...

The letters 'I', 'O', and 'Z' (and a couple of others, I think, but those are the ones I remember) could not appear in the final trilogy of letters it was said that they could be misconstrued as numbers, 1, 0 and 2 respectively.

So P155 OFF would never have happened!

"...The letters 'I', 'O', and 'Z' ... could not appear in the final trilogy of letters it was said that they could be misconstrued as numbers, 1, 0 and 2 respectively. So P155 OFF would never have happened!..."

how's about 'P155 AFF' then? that would still work in scotland and ireland [and possibly parts of 'zummerzet']

"Sorry to rain on your parade

The DVLA would have never released 'P155 OFF' in the previous incarnations of number plates...

The letters 'I', 'O', and 'Z' (and a couple of others, I think, but those are the ones I remember) could not appear in the final trilogy of letters it was said that they could be misconstrued as numbers, 1, 0 and 2 respectively.

So P155 OFF would never have happened!"

I think you'll find it was I, Q and Z.

If you check the DVLA site you can easily get a plate with "OFF" at the end. in fact P70 OFF is only £250.

Sorry, but I had a plate once that was x 733 OWW so you could. have had OFF as part of the plate.

Alberta recalled newly issued license plates with the letters BSE a few years ago. Apparently they were offending some people at the time.

...they should STFU.

Alright already, I'll BO...

WTF WJD

Isn't that what it means? It says so in my Altos manual (it was from 1985 or so). The error message for unknown input to the ROM monitor was: "WTF?". Then the ROMs were all programmed and ready to go, and they wanted an explanation. They got it.

Of course, one could go to: http://thedailywtf.com/ to see the REAL problems of the day.

... TLA stand for Tits, Legs, Ass?

Things work differently, er . . . strangely. Not only has WTF been taken out, but so has XXX.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1107923.html

I grew up here, but moved back last year after living in New York city for 10 years. Geeeez, things are sooooo provencial. I laugh at ordinary citizens complete ignorance every day. I need to get on back up to NY. This place is weird.

I'm in Austria. Just this afternoon had a car go by with number plate IM 3 WAY. What would Carolina make of that one?

Last year we have our very own banned number plate word in Edinburgh: SN07, which was Not Appropriate and instead TN07 was used.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6897494.stm

Florida DMV has a lack of sense of humor to ban vanity plates for someone with a nice Impala... you can't get a plate with "PIMPALA" in it.

Down here in Aust. there were a whole bunch of banned plates featured on TV a few decades back. My favourite was 6ULDV8 (The 6 should be read with a New Zealand accent as in "6 is between 7 and 8").

ETA for enlightenment?

My dad is a regular participant in a 3000 mile cross-country motorcyle rally. Because of the sheer endurance required, it has been aptly named the "Ironbutt" competition. Riders who finish or win the competion are given an "IRONBUTT" certicate... iron plaque, etc. As a finisher he naturally felt very honored.

But when he innocently tried to get "IRONBUTT" put onto hîs North Carolina vantiy bike plate.. well the DMV said no (coz it was "inappropriate").

So he had settled for "IRONBOT" instead which successfully slipped past the DMV plate nazis.

Ride free.....or die

That famous (in the UK) Porn star from the 1970's Mary Millington had 15 5EXY on her yellow Jaguar XJS!

PH because she 15n't EXY!

give me FUD anytime

but then I'm and old RPG'er

UR PWNED as my next reg plate

...but you can get A55 RGY, which--when combined with the large orange that decorates Florida license plates and looks like an O--implies another interesting hobby.

Paris, because she has interesting hobbies.

WTF?

i live in NC. the plates are generated with a 3 letter prefix, a dash, and a suffix of 4 numbers.

NCDMV personalized plate checker / preview:

https://edmv-sp.dot.state.nc.us/sp/PersonalizePlate?serviceType=EXP

i don't think they banned WTF, they just offered to replace auto-generated plates with a possibly offending prefix. nothing about this seems mandatory.

"ETA for enlightenment?" .... By Fuion Posted Saturday 28th June 2008 08:23 GMT

Fuion,

The seeds are sown, Fuion, with some flowers/buds well ripened for purchase/display/enjoyment. Any wait you are encountering you can blame on Government and/or Gangsters for they both play a similar Game but with one glaring Difference. Only one of them is Honest to ITs Core.... whilst the other is Rotten and Destroying its Server Base/Shredding Executive/Administrative Documents/Incriminating Expenses.

And being a pretty straight kind of guy and/or a creature of eccentric, esoteric habit, you can rely on El Reg delivering to you all the News as IT happens...... ?

Well ...... they are supplied, but you can expect moles in any media communication organisation, working for hidden interests, to be tasked with scraping juicy news to other honey pots, rather than them generating honey themselves..... so it is as well to have mirroring resources elsewhere for back-up.

And where Safer or more Public Spirited than the Cloud Layers, from where IT can Rain down on whoever is in Need of its Energy/Intellectual Property Knowledge, with Virtualisation bearing All of the Costs and All Profits going to Exactly where they are Needed

Well, at least I can take a tiny amount of comfort that John Colby's reference to Obama WTF is to a site not directly associated with him. I would be unimpressed to find that two sequential US presidents couldn't actually use language coherently. A passing grade can be achieved for the equally pithy but at least grammatically correct "What ARE the facts?" or "What're the facts" to keep the crap attempt at the WTF acronym alive.

Disgusting behaviour.

@ some missing info

Suggestions from government agencies are many times tantamount to orders. Especially when the suggesting agency has been embarrassed or at the very least made uncomfortable. But ah'll bet you uh bucket of grits WTF disappears from Nawth Calina's license plates. If not by direct replacement, then by refusal to reissue.

I knew as soon as I saw "North Carolina" in the title that there were going to be a bunch of stupid comments based on sad and outdated stereotypes.

As the owner of a small technology company we relocated to Raleigh from Los Angeles a few years ago because of the abundance of intelligent forward thinking young people that live in the area. Raleigh's workforce is the most highly educated in the nation based on the percentage of young adults with college degrees and also has and one of the highest percentage of grads with doctorate degrees. The Research Triangle Park is home to many leading Bio-tech, computer technology and environmental tech companies.

Both Raleigh and Charlotte are progressive booming cities with economies, job markets and housing markets that the rest of the nation and much of the world can only wish they had.

Anyway, I really just wanted to point out that they were simply allowing people who might be offended to swap out their plates, they certainly weren't mandating that anyone doe so.

By the way, I was raised Catholic in New York but had already considered myself an atheist before moving to California as a teenager. Although there are a lot of "Southern Baptists" here who you might think wouldn't take kindly to either Catholics or atheists, it's simply not true, people seem to be nice to everyone here. I've got lots of friends here who know me, accept my views and are always glad to have us over for a barbecue and some beer.

So to all the simple minded people who can't see past their own stereotype, FO-Q2

WTC

My wife's H8DCYF, for i Hate the Division of Children Youth and Family, a state agency that violates the rights of parents and children every day, raised enough of a stink so that H8 is banned. The owner of H8TAXES had it recalled, but managed to get it back. A gas company got Methane (CH4) and Ethane (C2H6), but couldn't get Propane (C3H8).

http://wermenh.com/h8dcyf.html

Saw it a couple of weeks ago.. although '3M TA3' would be funnier 'cos you only get it when you see it in the rear-view mirror.

We only get six letters to play with here, so we have to be extra-creative.

Might be a good plate for Paris, I dunno...

Just a few days ago i saw a guy on TV in my country who refused to use a leased car because the leasing company gave him the number x-xx-GAY.

It's not the leasing company's fault because the numbers are generated randomly but the twist is the office that issues plates in my country wants 200$ to change the plate. Considering average monthly income here is 350-400$, it's a lot.

The same tv broadcast showed plates like SUG (suck in english) and FAG (which in my country can mean a tree or you know what in english)...

Vanity plate:

TIHZ HO

Looked great in a mirror.

Mine's the metal one made by prison labor...

... and see what you can find in Scunthorpe.

Just got some new plates and they are ### FTW. I guess the west coast of Canada doesn't have the same issues as NC....

Apparently this teacher has nothing better to do with his time, LIKE TEACHING! WTF is with teachers these day. All they want to do is be-atch about every thing.

Best plate I ever saw has to have been V461 NAL - on the back of nondescript Cavalier. Either the driver was completely unaware or he was a gynaecologist with a low-key sense of fun,

pctechxp> Wonder if I can lodge a request with ICANN to register that as a TLD

If WTF became a TLD? I'd for sure get a handful of domains under it. Would probably end up being one of the more successful custom TLDs created.

-- Smoovious