Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP Embedded
Embedded Geek writes: "Embedded Systems Programming has a piece
about Microsoft organizing its employees to advocate their embedded products in online newsgroups (part of "a new culture at Microsoft" making "an effort to shed the company's reputation as an incommunicative giant.") This is coordinated with Microsoft's launch of Windows XP Embedded at their Embedded Developers' Conference (the countdown clock on their homepage says Wednesday but the launch party is Thursday)." News.com notes that this will be used in slot machines and ATMs. Insert obligatory free-money joke.
To ensure that the developers truly address the users' issues, Microsoft has even assigned its own people to watch the news groups as spectators and look for any questions that go unanswered. If issues are left unresolved, the "spectators" prod the developers to respond.
Wow, working for them must be just like a non-stop party. "You vill reply to ziss NOW!"
It's just that we don't identify ourselves by our names. Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS, but we don't give out any identifying information. I pass on the commentary that I pick up here to my product group. Frankly, I think that the Pocket PC is stronger for it.
There are two classes of reasons that we don't use our real names. First, we as individuals don't want to get spammed any more than we already do. Individuals from MS have been targeted and stalked in the past; none of us wants to be the victim of some kook. Second, the company has a right to manage its own messages. Sometimes, obviously, that's a bad thing; our quiet lets the company get away with lying. Usually, though, there are a number of of people who have the right to know before the public does. (Our partners, for instance, may need to adjust their strategies in response to changes that we make along the way in our own. There's nothing so humiliating as not knowing some key point about a change, and having some reporter tell you that he just read all about it in a newsgroup.) We need to protect that orderly flow of information.
...as historically, slot machines have often been found to be controlled by criminal organizations. After they were affirmed guilty by the appeals court, MS realized that slot machine control was a natural extension of their business plan.