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Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo
christor writes "Microsoft has fired a full-time temp employee after it discovered that the employee posted in his blog a photo and story concerning Microsoft's purchase of what looks to be around 18 G5s.
Check out the blog entry, Even Microsoft wants G5s, and the one that follows it. Microsoft fired the blogger, despite an offer to take the posting down. Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government. But it does present several other interesting issues, including that of the trade-off between the bad publicity that comes from the firing and whatever bad results follow when employees feel free to post such things."
Bill Gates is God, I just don't believe in him.
I bet they were going to Windows Longhorn R&D-department. :)
It is difficult to develop Mac applications without Mac boxes.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
I sure hope he's got unmetered bandwidth on that site.
First he gets fired and now Slashdot posts 3 links to his server? Poor guy!
Microsoft fired the blogger, despite an offer to take the posting down
And if he doesn't want to take it down, damn it we'll take it down FOR him.
Never confuse volume with power.
or just do what they always do, have reference machines so they can keep any eye on the competition.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Bill Gates fires the blogger, /. closes his blog.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
So, what was the deal? Was Microsoft genuinely spooked at his revealing what building he was in, or were they upset that it was revealed they purchase Macs? They do have a Macintosh business unit, so I would guess the former, but it does appear a little extreme.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm pretty sure that if I posted confidential information about my company, they would fire me too. All I have to say to this person is, duh.
While not *government* censorship, it's still censorship. You check your civil rights when you walk in your employer's door.
what's the big deal.
The employe is an idiot for posting that kind of information.
Maybe they bought them for employee moral. Go office space on all of them out in a field somewhere.
http://www.maximum-cars.com - My little hobbie.
I bet one of those Macs is for Billy himself.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
The person was fired mainly for taking a photo of the Microsoft Campus and posting it online plus telling people where he worked (short answer anyhow). Why is Microsoft so secretive about what is in the different buildings? I seem to remember a few other stories of people not being able to find anything on their land because nobody would tell them where anything was... it just seems weird. But I'm sure there is some sort of explanation for it. Anybody?
I don't see an issue. Imagine yourself running a small firm - if one of your employees were to go and make a post that clearly makes fun of your company, how would you feel about it?
The move may be a bit harsh, but definitely not anything to raise privacy issues - as an employee, you are obligated to look out for the well-being of your company.
As far as the G5s go, why wouln't MS want them? They have a bunch of products that target Mac OS, I would imagine they want to test them on everything from the G3 iBooks to the G5 desktops.
Ñ'
I'm pretty sure that every contract of employment I've had says that by doing anything to bring the company into disripute, I will have committed a serious breach, and can be fired without notice.
Maybe I just sign anything that's put infront of me though... But I thought that was a pretty standard clause...
Even Microsoft wants G5s
October 23, 2003 @ 10:34 PM | Macintosh
It looks like somebody over in Microsoft land is getting some new toys...
I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving). Three palettes of Dual 2.0Ghz G5's on their way in to somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. Hopefully they're all in good condition when they arrive -- the boxes are slick enough that a few of them took a bit of a tumble (you can see them back in the truck)!
October 27, 2003 03:08 PM
And that simply, as of about 2pm today, I once again joined the ranks of the unemployed. more
The day started like any other day -- get up, dink around for a bit, bus into work, and start working through the stack of jobs. Just shy of an hour after I got in, my manager came in and asked me to step into his office when I had a chance. Sure, no biggie, and I headed over as soon as I finished the job I was setting up.
"Okay, here's the first question. Is this page," and here he turned his monitor towards me, letting me see my "Even Microsoft wants G5s" post from last Thursday, "hosted on any Microsoft computer? Or is it on your own?"
"It's on mine. Well, it's on a hosted site that I pay for, but no, it's not on anything of Microsoft's."
"Good. That means that as it's your site on your own server, you have the right to say anything you want. Unfortunately, Microsoft has the right to decide that because of what you said, you're no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus."
And that simply, as of about 2pm today, I once again joined the ranks of the unemployed.
It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation. The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line. Merely removing the post was also not an option -- I offered, and my manager said that he had asked the same thing -- but the only option afforded me was to collect any personal belongings I had at my workstation and be escorted out the door. They were at least kind enough to let me be escorted out by one of my co-workers, rather than sending security over to usher me out, but the end result is the same.
More frustrating for me is that, having read stories here and there on the 'net about people who had for one reason or another lost their jobs due to something on their weblogs, I thought that I had done what I could to avoid that possibility. To my mind, it's an innocuous post. The presence of Macs on the Microsoft campus isn't a secret (for everything from graphic design work to the Mac Business Unit), and when I took the picture, I made sure to stand with my back to the building so that nothing other than the computers and the truck would be shown -- no building features, no security measures, and no Microsoft personnel. However, it obviously wasn't enough.
So, I'm unemployed. I am somewhat lucky in that I'm not technically unemployed -- I am still on the roster for my temp agency, who has been very good to me so far (and hopefully will continue to be), but as their ability to place me anywhere does depend on the current job market, it's not a foolproof guarantee of employment coming in quickly. I've put a call into them and let them know of the situation and that I'm available and willing for whatever can be found, so with any luck, they'll be able to find a placement for me. However, it appears that it's also time for me to start hitting the streets and shopping my resume around again.
Wish me luck.
... if they gave him a chance to take the picture down and he didn't, they can do this. And at least they gave him a fair chance.
Where I work at, you're not allowed to take pictures inside the workplace. I would image MS has a similar policy.
- sigs are for wimps.
Please. 99% of the public won't even hear about the story. And of the 1% that does, 99% of them won't give a rat's ass who Microsoft fired.
-- bearclaw
Yeah, Microsoft, is evil (here), but why the hell shouldn't Microsoft fire an employee for posting corporate information with the intent to embarass the MS?
Even if that information isn't corporate secrets, still shows that employee doesn't exactly have their employers best interests at heart.
I know that there have been other cases of people being `persecuted' = fired from their positions due to things they said on the blogs.
I have to question the legality of that kind of action as infringing upon the freedom of speech, of punishing someone for their opinions.
Perhaps it is naive to think that the non-discrimination due to race, creed, etc would also apply to thought.
Because in essence firing someone for what are their opinions and thoughts is a form of thought police.
While that doesn't relate in this instance, as this is far more foolish.
It's a laugh. MS buying Apples. So what? It's funny. I'm sure they have Linus boxes running somewhere also. What of it?
You'd think a company that wealthy would be able to afford a sense of humour.
Too bad it wasn't on a Microsoft server, that probably wouldn't have gotten slashdotted so quickly.
I recall reading a story awhile ago about a Coke employee who was fired for drinking Pepsi while working. This is along similar lines for justification of firing someone; however, in this case it is a little more iffy if they could actually fire him for this depending on what sort of contracts he signed when agreeing to employment with Microsoft.
In the Coke/Pepsi deal the worker had to sign something saying he wouldn't publicly endorse another product (by drinking it) while working. I imagine MS might have a similar deal.
What?
Most of the mainstream press doesn't even understand why Microsoft is considered distasteful by many people. I doubt that many news outlets will even consider this news.
The Blog Nation may spread it around for a few nanoseconds, but most of them are already open-minded enough to realize that there are viable alternatives to Microsoft products.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Was this just G5 processors? Or Macs with G5's?
In any case, Microsoft does write software (Office, IE) for the Mac, so what's the big deal?
#!/
...all the way to the book deal.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think there's more to this story we're not getting told.
Why would MS care if someone talks about MS buying Macs on their weblog?
1) MS *does* still provide software on the Mac -- Office if nothing else. That means they need Mac hardware to test on (yeah yeah, joke about MS and testing, but seriously).
2) Even if they DO care about being seen buying Macs, it's a frickin' weblog. This wasn't a videocap that got shown on CNN or something...
So, I'm betting this *temp* employee (which is actually a rarity at MS to begin with) was fired for some other reason. He obviously has a legitimate wrongful dismissal case if he was *told* he was fired for blogging about some Macs...
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
So through the course of someones job, they get some private information, then broadcast it to the world.
Well maybe this was a bad idea. Generally when you come across non dangerous information detrimental to your employer you shouldn't announce it, that's just unethical.
This obviously doesn't apply to matters of public safety, which is why we have/are working on whistleblower protection.
No matter how much you like them, buying Macs is NOT an issue of public safety.
However, there is probably more to this story than we are reading -- mainly because the site is /.-ed.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
This has to be the best advantage of subscription; you get to beat the rush to view the site before the stampeding hordes of /.ers kill the poor server :)
It isn't like he was working at some cool place or anything.
An agent of Microsoft lies when they make up a person who switched from Mac to Windows. That person does not get fired. But when Microsoft actually does switch, the person who points it out gets fired. Very funny!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Believe me, I know full well that high tech companies should, and do take security VERY seriously. Even Apple fired a retail store employee who accidently left pictures of his login info to the support database on his website. (The pictures were then picked up by a particularly nasty rumor site) However, at least in that case IIRC the company had the common courtesy to be polite about it rather than telling someone "you're not welcome on the Microsoft campus." However, this issue is just anal. Microsoft's Mac Business Unit routinely brags about being the largest Mac software developer outside of Apple and having the largest Mac lab for development. It stands to reason that they might want G5's. Plus, the pictures don't really show anything other than the G5's themselves.
For those who can't get to the article, he wasn't fired for posting the pic about mac's at Microsoft. As he pointed out Microsoft is widely known to have used Mac's in different operations (like their Mac software unit) for years. He was fired for a fairly innocous describing of part of the physical layout of their campus. While I'm not exactly fond of beast of Redmond, they do have some pretty valid security concerns. After all, if you made something that routinely pissed off millions of people every year you'd probably be a little paranoid about your security too.
It is hard to say wether or not we should have sympathy for this guy. Was the information he posted sensitive? If it was he should be fired. But if he was fired for telling everyone that MS bought some Macs, that would be a different story. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that MS needs a Mac in order to develop on a Mac.
So until we have more info, we cannot take sides here.
I enjoy bashing Microsoft as mych as the next guy, but we must still be fair.
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Even Microsoft wants G5s
October 23, 2003 @ 10:34 PM | c:9 | tb:17
It looks like somebody over in Microsoft land is getting some new toys...
[Pic | Truck backed into loading dock with three palettes of G5's as he describes below. Yes, one of the palettes had taken a fall.]
I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving). Three palettes of Dual 2.0Ghz G5's on their way in to somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. Hopefully they're all in good condition when they arrive -- the boxes are slick enough that a few of them took a bit of a tumble (you can see them back in the truck)!
I don't like MS. Yeah, some might say I was an OSS zealot. When I gave up MS at home I went as far as to give away my MS Wheel mouse and replaced it with a Logictech.
Chances are he signed paperwork saying that he couldn't disclose company secrets. He took the pic at work and posted it on the web, there are often policies about this. He let the world know what MS was up to.
No matter how much I like MS they did exactly what they should have done.
I know I'm up to my neck in NDAs and ethics processes, something like that would be a direct violation of all of them. I even try not to talk about what I do to my wife. Coporations keep secrets for a reason.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Apparently, his financial situation is a tad bit dire, so if you really wanna stick it to the man, you might consider paypaling him a buck. Even better, give the dude a job...
My other computer is your Windows box
"For Cause".
Unless you have enough money not to care, or are in a union powerful enough to stick by/up for you, that is the terms of employment in 21st Century America.
Welcome to your well-regulated life. The schools cover it with "Code of Conduct", and businesses continue it with "Policies and Procedures for Employees".
When you retire, you'll probably be covered under "Retirement Home Procedures for Residents".
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
What he did was to leak corporate information. No-one else knew that MS had Macs. If the company felt it was to their disadvantage for other competitors to know this information, then it would be grounds for dismissal. It would be like blabbing what you heard at the watercooler to the world.
I wonder what the Macs were to be used for though. It probably wouldn't be new information if it was for the Office dev crew, but perhaps they are considering porting Windows to the G5, or emulating G5 on Windows with their VirtualPC acquisition.
That's right. Depending on what you do to me, I can have you prosecuted for any criminal acts (kidnapping, etc.) you commit, or I can bring a civil case against you (emotional pain, etc.). It's *NOT* a First Amendment issue.
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
I think Microsoft realised a couple of years ago that the really powerful thing about OSS was actually the community. And they want to try to make such a community themselves. That's one of the reasons I think there seem to be so many MS staff who have blogs - they want to be seen encoraging an MS community. And why they have taken to "accidentally" releasing alpha/beta stuff into the wild recently.
Some of their efforts have been laughable in the way that they have tried to make corporate efforts look as if they are really community based. I've tried to find evidence of a genuine MS community but there isn't much about. The only equivalent to Slashdot for MS lovers in ActiveWin, which has about a dozen people that post to it, mainly when a story about Linux or critical of MS comes up.
There is a lot of activity on GotDotNet, but mostly it is technical queries.
Are there other, genuine examples of MS community sites? Or alternatively, attempts that are obviously MS driven? I'm just interested to compare the strength of the OSS community with the MS community (yes I know they are not logically exclusive, but in reality it seems to be pretty much the case).
But it does present several other interesting issues, including that of the trade-off between the bad publicity that comes from the firing and whatever bad results follow when employees feel free to post such things.
To me the big thing to think about is this...MS would know that this would get out. The only benefit to this is if their are a lot of other embarassing points that could make blogs, their employees will think twice. So there must be a lot of shinola on their floors.
It's not like he said "Wow! Windows must really suck for them to want G5's!", he just stated what he saw, nothing defamatory. It's a well known practice to purchase the products of competetors so you can compare them with your own, or even work on a cross platform version.
I don't see how what he did was wrong at all. I also don't buy the "security" bull shit his boss fed him. IMHO, this was seen as an embarassment to microsoft and the decided to grind the poor guy under their heel.
The most disturbing part of this, however, is that MS Security was either watching his blog, or running searches on all MS related postings to scan for things they didn't like. MSBig Brother is watching evidently, and firing poor joe's for it when they feel like. I personally don't like the idea of the titan breathing down my neck every day.
This probably means that MS Security is reading this posting right now. Good thing I never hope to be employed by the evil giant, because Microsoft, all I want to say to you is SUCK IT!
This is a raw deal, firing an employee for nondefamatory, nonsecurity breaching posting. Becareful what you say in the future as MSBig Brother makes itself available to other employers.
Yeah way to rub salt in his wounds guys!
G5 = OSX 10.3 plus $3000 in shipping & handling :)
... and what should worry you too is his job description, full-time temp employee. Sounds like Microsoft was getting all the benefits of a full-time employee without having to worry about any of the associated costs. And if companies like Microsoft, with its $60 billion cash reserve can pull this kind of crap, what does that say about today's job market, labour laws and how skewed they are in favour of big business?
/.ed). But should he have been a "full-time temp employee"? No fucking way.
Heck, being a "temp" probably made firing him that much easier.
Should he have been fired for breaking confidentiality? I don't know, because I can't even see his side of the story (as his site is
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Google to the rescue (the first blog)
Yeah this guy was stupid. He acts like he is uncovering some conspiracy when all he is doing is talking about stuff he shouldn't. Of course they need Macs, how else will they develop software for them? Maybe it's to test Halo (ha). More likely it's for their next version of VPC (the one where they change something other than the logo)
I can't believe that there's anyone that doesn't think that an organization of Microsoft's size wouldn't own a little of everything. Certainly they have G5's. I'm sure they have some Suns in their organization somewhere too. I'm sure they have linux boxes, if only to study. Every company of any size has people who get paid to use the competition's products, to compare them to their own.
However, what he was really fired for was divulging info about what's in which building. This seems way over the top, but I guess MS can set whatever security rules they want.
Atricle 8
I haven't experienced firings in this way, but I know you can't send software patch CDs to the USPS via UPS or any other way but their own express mail service - they simply won't accept them!
-- Real Stupidity is the Artificial Intelligence of the 21st century
Having an employee point out that MS bought some Macs? Or having the press pick up on the fact that they fired an employee for outing them?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Even Microsoft wants G5s
October 23, 2003 @ 10:34 PM | Macintosh
It looks like somebody over in Microsoft land is getting some new toys...
I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving). Three palettes of Dual 2.0Ghz G5's on their way in to somewhere deep in the bowels of Redmond. Hopefully they're all in good condition when they arrive -- the boxes are slick enough that a few of them took a bit of a tumble (you can see them back in the truck)!
This guy hit it on the head.
If I posted pictures of my companies semi-secret lab on the internet for all to see I would think I'd get fired too... This has nothing to do with microsoft in particular.
Hate to side with the oil tycoons of this century but I'm glad they fired this guy.
He obviously thought enough of Microsoft and it's Microsoft monopoly money to work for them. With work comes responsibility and loyalty. He snapped pics, which I'm sure Microsoft security just loved, and posted them. What if this was a snap of the new Microsoft XP 2010 in action with details of the server the code was located on? Surely trade secrets would be at risk.
This guy got what he deserves. As a future employer I would be wary of him and his loyalty to my company.
to hire a new APPLECopy employee.
Did the author honestly think Microsoft cared about bad publicity?
At the current rate they already are receiving it with all the viruses and anti trust law suits?
I thought so too... Welcome to the reality. :-(
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
But not for emulating the G5 on x86 with Virtual PC.
Virtual PC for Mac doesn't run on the G5s right now because it takes advantage of an endian-switch mode that only exists on Motorola's G4s. Microsoft needs some G5s to test against, plain and simple.
I don't see the story in this article. Eh? "So what" is what I'm thinking. Did this temp worker have to sign some sort of NDA which disallows talking publicly about company procedures such as this? In any case this is hardly "Your Rights Online" since a blog isn't exactly a journal/diary, but more of a narcissistic stream of usually crap which is publicly viewable. I think we've seen many similar cases of this before, no? Company gets pissed off at some loud-mouth and then fires said loud-mouth. Plus this idiot had a camera on MS property taking photos of the G5s and posting the publicly. WTF?! How many businesses would tolerate that? I don't think I would.. in any situation with even the smallest business. Especially from a "temp" worker who has no serious concern for the business itself other than to make a little money and move on.
Dijkstra Considered Dead
Microsoft did the correct thing. Anyone that works for a company, allows the company to pay their bills, and then launches a public ad campaign against the company is a low life, scoundrel.
It would be different if this person was a whistleblower, turning them in for illegal deeds. Nope, this person is a cretin, collecting a paycheck from a company while trying to damage the company.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
I mean, even the Devil reads the bible.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation. The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line.
Apparently Microsoft Security is very sensitive about their buildings and what is in them. Microsoft obviously buys Macs - they develop Mac software. This was likely all about having a picture of a piece of the building the guy worked in, and identifying what was in it. He didn't say anything 'embarassing' about Microsoft, but he did compromise their idea of security.
Why would they be embarassed about buying Macs? How do you develop Mac products without Macs?
--- Ban humanity.
Many corporate companies I have worked for explicitly forbid bring a camera of any sort onto the campus. If a person is unhappy with such a restriction they should work somewhere else.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Can't side with an employee that does that. Where do people get the idea this is as defensible as a smoking gun? If he showed pictures of Balmer selling reefers to school children I'd feel differently, in this case he simply revealed something his employer wanted kept under wraps for good reason.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Who said anything about the first amendment? It is a free speech issue.
All things in moderation; including moderation
Most workplaces have restrictions on cameras and photos.
The guy is a moron.
I feel so dirty...
Of course it's a free speech issue, it's just not a first amendment issue.
Maybe you sit on it? Happens to me all the time after I have laughed mine off...
I'm glad about this because blogging bloats my precious google results.
Mirror of the Image:
http://www.jeffwilhelm.com/files/msg5.jpg
of indiscriminate blogging. Information is power. Thus, it is foolish to post personally identifaible information about your employment, personal life, or family for the consumption of strangers.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
> this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server
.sig is about to change to:
So, I can do a blog and say my neighbor's home is an eye-sore (or some such), but I cannot report some bone-headed-ness of my employer?
I think my
"I'm constantly impressed by how far my expectations have been lessened."
Nevermind that MS develops for apple. Even if you were just talking about the Windows vs. Mac OS X debate, do you really think no McDonalds executive has ever had a whopper? At least to see what it tastes like and see what they are up against?
I would love to see things from your point of view. But I can't seem to get my head that far up my ass
if you want to wreck on your boss or your company, you send anonymous email people!
send the photo to a popular blog or site with a little blurb.
i don't care who the company is or what the circumstances are, if you publicly bad mouth your company, you're asking for it.
we do have free speech, but we also have to be prepared to recieve the consequences of that speech. do you tell your spouse they're as sexy as rotting milk and not expect a negative reaction?
?
m.
ps mod parent up! insightful!
Good luck to him finding work again. "So why did so-and-so leave his job at Microsoft?" "Oh, he was fired for posting company secrets on the Internet."
Great job, moron.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
You may be right that there is more involved than what the story indicated. However, even if he was let go for the reasons stated, he doesn't have any case for dismissal, since he was never an MS employee. The main benefit for temps is that they're just that, temporary. Companys hire temps (and pay a premium to the actual company the temps work for: the employment agency) for just that reason, they can let them go whenever they want; and generally they don't have anywhere near the rights that normal employees have. Fair? Yes, it's fair as I'm sure MS has a air-tight agreement with the temp agency (if not, what are all those lawyers doing up in Redmond!). The temp agency is the one doing all of the payroll withholding, MS is simply contracting with them. The individual in this case, has much less rights than an employee does.
OK, to quote the Beatles, all together now:
MICROSOFT DEVELOPS MAC PRODUCTS .THEREFORE THEY OBVIOUSLY WILL BUY THE LATEST MODELS.
Seeing as they claimed to be working on the G5 glitch with Virtual PC already, one can assume they already had some G5s.
--- Ban humanity.
I'm going to get modded down for advocating the MS position, but, despite reading the blog entry where he says he was fired for revealing MS's deep dark secret, I tend to believe there is something else going on here.
After all, MS develops office for Macs, amoung other software packages they port for Apple computers. This would infer that they at least test these ports once or twice, and they would obviously need macs for this.
The idea that he blew the whistle on something is bogus, at least IMHO.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
No, it's a kidnapping and forceable restraint issue. There are good old-fashioned laws against those actions. For what's it's worth, however, I don't think that it would have been such an issue, if he didn't include a picture of the warehouse (I haven't seen it) and/or if he had a different title.
What I think is a real issue is "Why did someone in Microsoft see it. Was it was a friend (obv not a particularly good friend), a manager checking up on him, corporate security keeping an eye on the mac guy, or some automated system that just watches the web or certian key words (like "Microsoft campus")?
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
like it is e. g. here in Germany.
If it does not interfere with how I do my job, my private opinions and doings have to be of absolutely no concern for my employer! (Except for actions that bring harm to the employer by purpose)
The site's hammered. Cache of the first entry. This is the really interesting one, though.
Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
Microsoft fired the blogger, despite an offer to take the posting down.
and from his the fired guy's website:
I would certainly have preferred that they simply request that I take the offending post down (which I would have done in a heartbeat), but for whatever reasons, they chose not to take that route.
By firing this guy, they brought more attention to his blog and therefore the pictures and comments that are still there either way. Seems kind of dumb of them to fire him.
Doesn't MS develop software for the mac?
Joe Blow cannot infringe upon your right to free speech. He need not be the Government ...
The issue in this case would seem to be the blogger's right .. and that is a constitutionally-guaranteed right. It would be a sad state of affaires, indeed, if for example every company could restrict what any or all employees might wish to say on any matter at all... an 'anti-union' concept if there ever was one!
Hopefully some attorney here can shed light.
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
And it looks like he left with his eternal soul intact.
"Anyone that works for a company, allows the company to pay their bills, and then launches a public ad campaign against the company is a low life, scoundrel."
;)
OK. What about his post was negative toward Microsoft?
"Nope, this person is a cretin, collecting a paycheck from a company while trying to damage the company."
How would that picture have damaged the company? Microsoft writes and sells a lot of software for the Mac -- it's not secret that they have Macs with which to develop that software, and not surprising that they take delivery of the latest-n-greatest Apple hardware. They'd be silly not to
Violating stated policies ("don't take any pictures of the place for public consumption" or "do not ever discuss what hardware Microsoft uses to develop software") is one thing, even if rules like that tend to be enforced spottily. Looks like in this case, he was the spot.
But from the posted photo and blurb, I don't see any animus against MS. If the guy likes Macs, it seems like a positive statement (from his perspective) that MS seems to agree with him.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
i think there is a valid reason. Micro$oft bought connectix who made the virtual pc windows emulator and then rolled it into the pro version of their office suite. it has been stated that virtual pc does not work with the g5 . so those machines were probably to get that working.
and while i hate m$ as much as the next guy, (at least as much as the next guy who runs a m$ free machine which i do) every time i have contracted to some large corp i have had to sign AT LEAST an NDA and i pretty much bet what that guy did violated that NDA.
Microsoft Security doesn't want anyone to know that somewhere on their sprawling campus, they have a loading dock for the purposes of shipping and receiving goods from the outside world?
Yes, I can see how the disclosure of this confidential information will cause the destruction of the company. As we speak, hordes of Linux-loving commandos are probably filing into semi trailers purporting to be carrying cases of Jolt Cola or some such, in a classic "trojan horse" maneuver.
~Philly
No it is not a free speach issue its an assult issue. Maybe false imprisionment issue. But defently not a free speach issue
madness takes its toll please have exact change
I'm no MS fan, but substitute any other company for Microsoft in this story, and it's not worth wiping your ass with, let alone /. material. The guy blogged some info that MS considers confidential, so he was fired. Wake me up when someone posts a real story.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
You are a dicksplash.
Temporary work is not necessarily part-time. It just means you knew when you signed the contract that the job was not guaranteed to be kept open till you turned 65. Part time means you do less than 40 hours a week. You can do full time permanent work, part time permanent work, full time temporary work or part time temporary work.
The contracts we use at the company i work for, allow us to do a lote more then to just fire you for disposing any company secrets we don't want you to expose. We'd give you at least a 5000 euro fine on top. But then again, this guy get's to pay that anyhow for the bandwith his blog is now using :).
But seriously: he was wrong, MS is right in this case. He himself says he was trying not to compromise any rules, he should have thought harder....
If MS wants to be secretive about their location and has her reasons for that, they are fully in title to.
Here's the first amendment. There's a lot of big words, so you may want to use a dictionary.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It's no surprise. My employer considers possession of a camera on its campus a firable offense. What the guy did was stupid and unethical. Because he stated be was an MS employee and made available pictures obtained within the campus, it would be reasonable to to claim he represented his employer in his communications. Since the communications were unapproved and possibly reflected badly on the company, firing was the appropriate thing to do. What's with this "full-time temp" business. He was a freakin' temp, not even an actual MS employee!
human need food. human need water. government own water. corporations own food. government and corporations demand money for food and water. human need money. job give money. human get job, :. money, :. food and water.
human lose job (:. money, :. food and water) for acting like human.
corporations seem to forget that they are comprised of humans.
Absolutely. Not only does this have nothing to do with MS in particular, it has nothing to do with Macs. He made a mistake, they came down hard, but entirely justifiably.
That said, best of luck to the blogger in getting a new job.
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
It didn't take me long to realize that the company (or a contractor) had some spiders out there looking for websites with key words (company name, nuclear, etc) and probably found my blog. So, the easiest way to defeat them and still have my blog was to put up a simple login/password to my site. Only my friends/family view it anyways, and I just create one login account for everybody.
Since then, I've had 2 other friends (A teacher and a programmer) go through almost the same thing, and they've all put passwords on their sites. I would recommend ALL bloggers to do that if they decide to post anything about work, co-workers, etc if they value their jobs. If this guy did that, I bet he would still have his job.
I've contracted for and worked for big players like M$, and part of the pile of paperwork that required my John Hancock was disclosure of company information. I have little to no love for M$, but in this case I am sure that a signed written form had it's agreement breached. Harmless as the information may be that was revealed it could show also other more sensitive information might not be protected. Not only could it be endangering a project or part or even the whole company...but perhaps even the jobs of the people there |337 enough to have blue and orange badges.
P.S.
Billy still just can resist dipping into the Apple Pot eh Steve?
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Microsoft can fire him but only Slashdot can flood his website.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Geez, when you get a speeding ticket does this mean the state is watching your every move waiting for you to screw up?! Seriously, people read peoples blogs, right? Maybe someone at MS actually reads his site and when he saw what was done, he mentioned it, and things went on from there. Naw, much more likely that MS is watching every move all 50,000 employees are making.
Hell, there are no rules here. We're trying to accomplish something. - Thomas Edison
a cell phone without a camera? sucks to be you
So even Microsoft uses Macs for graphic design. Guess Windows doesn't cut it.
I can understand having Macs in the MacBU just as Apple has had many Windows machines for developing and testing their software and keeping an eye on the competition.
All the design software is available for both platforms AND Microsoft has preached to the design community for many years that this software works as well or better on Windows...but they still use Macs themselves. Hmmmm....very interesting.
Anything I post that's work-related is set to be accessible to people on my friends list only. Got to compartmentalize... work isn't life, and life isn't work. Keep the two separate.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
...until after Panther started shipping with new machines to get their G5s.
:-)
Folks, those dozen or so G5s in the photo represent the entire Longhorn "Aero" R&D budget.
Maybe now that he's been fired he can get them pissed off at him again and make Microsoft looking worse by revealing what we all have known all along:
Longhorn is nothing but a gussied up version of Windows 3.11.
Bringin' back the DOS, baby.
I see a lot of posts talking about the EMPLOYEE being fired. No employee got fired. A contractor got fired. There's a HUGE difference.
Even the most experienced contractor is lower on the food chain at a large company than the new employee refilling the toilet paper. I've heard executives talk without flinching about how a company saved a lot of money by firing all the contractors. It's a given that they aren't "one of us" and they shouldn't be fooled into thinking they enjoy the same level of respect and consideration a regular employee would.
At my own company, I often hear of a three strikes system -- three minor violations warrants some kind of nastygram to your executive. I've also heard of people getting fired for relatively small offenses in quick succession. I would imagine that these rules are strictly for employees, and contractors are held to a significantly higher standard. Bear in mind also that because the contractor may not have been vetted to the same degree that an employee might have been, the security organization may have made policy to ensure that they remove the offender rather than risk dealing with an unknown quanitity who now has demonstrated the ability to compromise security.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
- Invent sob story about being fired from MS
- Post to slashdot
- ???
- Profit!
I'm not buying it.Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They had to ask whether it was hosted on their own servers or not.
What, they couldn't find anyone who knew how to look it up?
Not that I am sure of this, but from what I have heard Microsoft is doing its Mac-app development, not in Redmond but in San Francisco.
Anyone who knows for sure?
It isn't that I don't feel sorry for the guy, but being a student of best security practices, I know that you don't go posting pictures without permission. The most basic reason is if there were something in that picture that could help out a thief, it would be a breach of physical security.
In this case, I think the breach regards corporate strategy. Obviously, the Mac's are a superior system in many ways. (The fact they don't crash every 24 hours is a good start). So I'm sure Microsoft wants to examine them thoroughly. But to advertise this fact to the world is a breach of corporate security. Microsoft could easily slap this guy with a corporate espionage charge, and based on the number of lawyers they have, I'm sure they would win.
There is a difference between freedom of speech and the duty of every employee to protect company workings.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Given that much of Microschlock's legal department is tied up with the tail end of the anti-trust case not to mention helping SCO out with a small linux coding issue, this guy has a good shot at a wrongful dismissal suit against his former employer.
Hey all you reptilians, chase after this guy: there's work - and possibly - FAME for you!!
G5's arriving at MSFT
All he said was that they received some G5s. I would hope that a software and OS company like MS has 1000s of compeditors or target os machines. They do write apps for the MAc and they do compete with it in the OS space. "Do I buy a MAC(OSX from the consumer point of view) or a PC(Windows from the consumer point of view)."
I assume they have lots of these things. I would assume their GUI teams have OSX, Gnome, KDE, Win 31, and every other GUI out there running somewhere to study.
So, since it is obvious that the post doesn't give any new information away, why is MS upset enough to fire him?
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
Outside of fascist dictatorships, your employer is not allowed to fire you on account of something you did outside of company time - it would constitute unfair dismissal. Even if you took a piss through the boss's letter box, or sparked up a big fat doobie and blew smoke in his face, or wandered around town in a T-shirt saying "XXX CORP SUCKS", as long as you weren't on company premises and/or on company time there is nothing your boss can do about it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
was basically that MS buys G5's and that he works in a particular building. So what? He didn't draw a map, just stated he worked in a single, solitary building. He didn't even say where the building's physical location was. Check the excerpt:
(MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving).
but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line.
Okay, for this to be a security risk, someone would have to know where shipping and handling is in the first place. So what? If I ask the FedEx guy, he'll tell me where S&H is. Even if he's been told not to tell, a $50 bill would probably loosen his tongue. MS Security was a bit out of line here.
I tried posting it:
2002-03-16 21:43:39 Al Qa'eda Targets Microsoft (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
but it was before I kept a copy of submissions in my journal, so I don't have the content anymore.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Legal or not, Moral or not. Did he really think Microsoft would like what he did? I'm more surprised that someone actually reads his drivel. Dude, just cause you can post your thoughts on the web doesn't mean you should. Microsoft will be replacing him with a machine anyway. Guess he better go back to learning 'python' heh heh.
Blar.
i would guess they're in part pissed off because that would indicate that for their desktop publishing they use Macs.
this would be a non-issue if these were being sent to the Mac Business Unit, but they aren't. hence the egg on face nature.
one might ask why they don't try using Publisher for all of their Publishing needs. it would certainly cut down on the number of items they published in a year.
and have his face used on a "switcher" commercial. :D
I guess they still don't "Get It"(tm). Security through obscurity is NOT security.
-Eldurbarn
He identifies why he was fired. "The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line."
And then goes on to say "To my mind, it's an innocuous post. The presence of Macs on the Microsoft campus isn't a secret (for everything from graphic design work to the Mac Business Unit), and when I took the picture, I made sure to stand with my back to the building so that nothing other than the computers and the truck would be shown -- no building features, no security measures, and no Microsoft personnel."
They told you why they fired you dumbass, you identified which building one of the departments is housed in, it had nothing at all to do with the Mac's.
Judging by the posts on his blog, I'm surprised he hasn't blamed his dismissal on Pres. Bush. I'll check his blog in a few days to see if he has corrected that oversight.
cr
There's already one that is pretty similar as "most viewed story."
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
....Apple would get a lot of mileage out of this. Toss him in the mail room, but get him hired.
On the blog, he says, "I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving)."
This suggests to me that MS is using Macintoshes to do their print work (advertising/marketing/etc.) instead of eating their own dog food.
Why did I read the title as "Fries Big Mac"? Must be almost lunch time.
One picture like that made him fired? What about this picture?!
Will this satellite photo piss off Microsoft so much that they send their ninjas off to assasinate me?
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
As long as Congress doesn't mess with what you can say, you don't care.
P.S. Maybe I can introduce my bondage boys to your zoophiliac family and their pets?
All things in moderation; including moderation
He makes a valid point.
He was fired for a fairly innocous describing of part of the physical layout of their campus. While I'm not exactly fond of beast of Redmond, they do have some pretty valid security concerns.
"VALID SECURITY CONCERNS" from a message which says 'I took this shot on the way into work on the loading dock (MSCopy, the print shop I work in, is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving).'???
If your security is compromised by this kind of absolutely insignificant amount of information then I'd say that you need to seriously review your security procedures.....
It seems to me that he was very careful both in the text and in the picture not to give out any information about Microsoft Campus, and I don't understand the amount of postings on the tone of "they were right to fire him because he posted confident data in a weblog". The only explanation I can guess is rampant paranoia from the readers.... it's scary to see how the 9/11 mentality creeps anywhere. For Microsoft it wasn't paranoia: the confidentiality thing is just an excuse to fire him as he posted a joke putting Microsoft in bad light (= they have to copy from Apple).
*shudder*
Blar.
... that most everybody on Slashdot hates Microsoft (so it'll generate postings).
Look, it's really simple. Just about every temp, permanent, part, full, salaried and hourly employee in the United States is an "at will" employee. "At Will" means you can leave anytime you want and you can get fired, terminated, laid off or otherwise asked not to come into work anymore at anytime by your employer for just about anything that isn't considered discrimination by some legal standard.
Now, if this guy had some type of express or implied employment contract for a certain period of time (a year, five, life, whatever), that's a different story. MS would be responsible for paying him his salary for the remainder of the contract.
I can't speak for most states, but in Pennsylvania, there is a presumption under the law that your employment is "at will". Absent some type of written employment contract, it is really hard to prove that you are anything other than an "at will" employee (and NO, your employee handbook usually does not count as an employment contract!).
I feel bad for the guy, but it should be fairly obvious that if you post something negative about your employer that you may get canned.
-A
Everyone thinks he's gotten canned for posting the picture, when the guy himself states that's not the reason he was let go.
In his post, he mentions the building he works in, and that it's part of MS Shipping/Receiving. You may think that's no big deal, but let's say you were casing the place to make a heist. Every snippet of information like this would help. Couple with the fact that he's just a temp and posting semi-sensitive information in an area (shipping/receiving) that he has nothing to do with...well they'd be silly to *not* take some action. Though I think they should have taken him up on the offer to take the story down as well, but they probably didn't want the legal hassle, especially since it was on an independant server, of freedom-of-speech.
I am sure MS goes around firing people for posting holiday and birthday pictures taken at work, as well (all of which are much less likely to occur at the loading dock and more likely to capture code).
Learn something about business . . . the MS lawyers probably said that this employee was too costly to the company's goodwill and wanted to make an example of them.
No doubt MS reserves the right to fire people for taking pictures on the campus and posting them online, but they excersize this right carefully.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I think it was a Pepsi employee drinking Coke, actually.
Anyway, this is not the same problem. First because he wasn't using a Mac, or endorsing Macs. Second because Microsoft does not manufacture computers (and, even if they did, it would make perfect sense for them to test the competition's systems). In fact, Microsoft makes software for Mac OS, so they need Macs to develop and test it (and you don't need a picture to know they have them, you just need common sense).
What this guy did was post a picture taken without permission in a private property, quite possibly in an area where it was expressly prohibited to take pictures (and where he may not even have been authorised to be).
They hired someone stupid enough to talk about work on their blog? What kind of fool thinks it is OK to mention details of their employers' business on a publicly accessible site? I don't care if it is MS, almost all employers would do the same thing (the ones who don't will soon be out of business). What kind of bad publicity will come of getting rid of the half-wits that work for you?
... I'd hire that guy at once. Just for the heck of it (and for publicity of course :))))
No, not even that. All we know is that the print building has a loading dock. What large building does not have a loading dock?
"Security violation" my ass. Would that be like selling your source code to China or the former KGB after swearing on a bible in court that a source code leak would be a national security risk?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Doesn't anyone want to know how Microsoft discovered the picture and the story? Do they routinely check up on any website's from their employee's to make sure that no information has been leaked? I would guess they do (don't want that windows source code to be released) but I think that'd probably bother me if I were an employee. What if I wanted to post how much I hated my boss? Or how I'd like to bang that hot new girl in marketing? Those are things you might want to share with the internet that you don't want your co-workers finding out.
I feel bad for the guy that he lost his job but were I his manager, I would have done the same thing. He was not shafted, he was not unfairly treated. Posting internal information like that however inoccuous could damage competitiveness. Let's forget about Microsoft's overall stance on competitiveness for a minute. People where I work have been summarily dismissed for taking and publishing photographs of R&D related objects.
If it was your company you'd do the same.
Speak truth to power.
A few days ago, I happened upon these photos, which seem a little more worrisome to me than a pic of a friggin' truck parked somewhere. But nothing appears to have happened to the guy who took them and made them available on the web-- he seems to have completed his Microsoft internship unscathed.
Wouldn't you think Microsoft Security would be a little curious about someone shooting photos of Bill Gates' office from outside the building? Who's to say that guy won't be sneaking a sniper rifle or RPG launcher into work?
I appreciate the offer; I need to hear about these things. I'm not going to pursue it though. I am dusting off my ASP, though, as in most other local companies I'll need it. I'll keep holding out, hoping for an offer from someone I trust and really like working with, and running this little constantly besieged fiefdom.
Apple's sent its share of threatening letters to rumor sites, hasn't it? I have a relative working in one of their retail stores, and Apple takes its non-disclosure rules seriously. The employees know to respect the policy; it couldn't be clearer that I'm not meant to ask about future products. Steve Jobs wants to do the introductions -- he's good at them -- and the employees know not to let anything slip. Period. (When the Canadian Time story about the new iMacs broke, we all imagined heads rolling, didn't we?)
Granted, when it comes from MS we tend to hear Darth Vader's breath rasping along in the background, but this isn't that horribly radical a move. Whether the punishment was proportionate to the crime, that's another set of questions. But other companies have done similar stuff.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
in other news:
-Pizza fresh from the oven found to be HOT!
-water inhalation the leading cause of most drowning deaths!
-dogs like potato chips!
c'mon people, this dumbass was a TEMP. Temps already have one foot out the door. Couple that with a guy that thinks it's OK to snoop around with a freakin' camera at work, and I'd fire his dumb ass too.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Perhaps Microsoft didn't want anyone to know that they hadn't been on the ball with G5 development until now,and this guy was exposing them.
Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps they waited to buy the G5s until Panther was out, which was probably a good move; the Longhorn team had already seen Jaguar several times by now and where fresh out of ideas.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Hmmm...
I wonder if Microsoft leaves all the building doors unlocked and hopes that if no one knows where the doors lead, or even are, then no one will break into their campus.
I understand now, they are truely appling their security philosophy to ALL aspects of the company.
Cheers
do it. he makes a good point
The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line. Merely removing the post was also not an option -- I offered, and my manager said that he had asked the same thing -- but the only option afforded me was to collect any personal belongings I had at my workstation and be escorted out the door.
Even his manager wanted him to stay. Its not like the guy was doing something worth being fired over. He said he worked at the MSCopy shop, the same shop as shipping. Thats it! The picture didnt have 1 thing of value in them, it was just a picture of some Macs on a truck.
Really, major over-reaction on Microsoft. You dont fire everyone for making harmless mistakes, (which it wasnt). The guy was a good employee that the Manager tried to fight to keep.
Lots of people on slashdot lately have posted thats its OK, to get fired for some pretty petty things. And even things that are not business related, or they do on personal time. When it comes down, do you do the job correctly, and do you get along with everyone at work, what else is there? Youre at home blogging activities? You wore jeans to work? You said you like a product from another company? Getting a little crazy people, step back, mistakes are made that might not seem to be mistakes. Tell the person to not do it again, and move on. Firing someone should have a little thought put into it...
BTW, Youre Fired!
Someone read his review of Kill Bill and got the wrong idea :)
Seems quite fitting that Microsoft's COPY shop is getting G5s with Panther. :-)
Well it's nice to see that MS is at least consistent in not grokking security. It's not just their products, it's their 'campus' too.
I bet they lock down all the vents and leave the doors wide open too.
The Microsoft campus is NOT a gated community! The line of public vs. Microsoft-private is drawn at the door to each building, which has (surprise) access control locks.
The campus infrastructure, or whatever, is ordinary public streets. Hell, there are even jogging trails there.
(I used to work for Microsoft. Been there, even on the jogging trails.)
So, yes, the picture does image a loading dock, a truck, and a public street.
The employee is free to leave for any reason at any time with any amount of notice. The employer is free to terminate the employee for any (legal) reason at any time with any amount of notice.
That is the whole story. There is nothing sinister here. The company exercised its mutually agreed upon rights. This is no different than if the employee decided to quit for a new job, to go back to school, or because he didn't like the flavor of the doughnuts in the snack room. This story is about rights, but every party acted within their rights and no one's rights were infringed upon. You may not like the company's decision but that doesn't make it a violation.
In other words...nothing to see here. Move along please.
I wish people like you wouldn't post to slashdot. Can you fucking read the post? Can you fucking click on a link? Can you fucking process something other that which has been explained to you in terms a two-year old can understand?
That was intellegent. Perhaps you'd like to (a) step up to the mic and not post anonymously, and (b) tell us exactly what the hell you're talking about. What in the parent post is it, exactly, that led you to believe he didn't read the article? Because I read both the article and the post, and it was spot on, mate.
I'd be happy if M$ would fire people for lacking discresion, morals, taste and hygine, but alas such things get you promoted.
Get your facts straight, M$ justified it as a "security violation". It gave terrorists valuable information about a section of loading dock and the back of the truck that look like any other truck and loading dock. No, that makes no sense but we are talking M$ here. Sensless and dishonest are par for the course.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
MSFT does Mac software, so DUH?
God, is everyone here an idiot?
Can you please stop obscuring any passwords, private keys, and credit card numbers you have? There's no security risk, I promise.
We used the ultra sensitive data about the MS Campus that leaked out to get revenge for the poor guy. I mean, now that we now that MSCopy is in the same building as MS's shipping and receiving, Redmond is ripe for taking!
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The post isn't interesting - it's completely wrong! Clearly "thatguywhoiam" didn't even read the article. And if you're moderating, you should read the article!
This guy takes a picture (stupid) and gets fired.
Ballmer pulls a hamstring while looking insane, on stage, in public... and gets a couple of days off to recover.
Cruel, cruel world...
If I posted pictures of my companies semi-secret lab on the internet for all to see I would think I'd get fired too
The picture is the point - It's not a secret lab, it's one entirely innocuous picture of the back of truck.
It's in no way comparable with someone posting multiple pictures of a 'semi-secret lab'.
It's well known that of course Microsoft has PowerPC systems (how else would they write all the Mac OS software they do?). So the secrecy on that topic isn't an issue.
Somehow I can't see this head line: 'Burger King worker takes a picture of a McDonalds Milkshake in a Burger King car park, post it on his homepage, gets fired.'.
It's so objectionable because its just trivial nonsense over a non-event.
He didn't in any way portray his employees in a bad light and their is no breach of security here. He stated MSCopy building is near the Goods Delivery building (something that someone in Security objected to, according to the blog) but that blissfully ignores the fact that the buildings are going to be clearly sign posted in particular the Goods Delivery Area (and it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out).
There are no legitimate concerns here that warrant firing an employee, just a trumped up power tripper in Security/HR/middle management with nothing better to do than callously harm in the lives of others - all they have succeeded in doing is making the world just a little gloomier.
I can't think the mother of the person responsible for firing this hapless employee would be proud of their offspring's achievements that day - and the same goes for those involved who stood by and let it happen. I think the middle manager who stood for this and failed to stand up for his (even temporary) employee is spineless wonder and ought to be ashamed of themselves. We are always telling our children to stand up against decisions we think are wrong and unjust, it's sad that we as adults seldom practice what we preach.
Like many things in life, it happens because other people are afraid to stick their necks out and say 'No, wait a minute, that's not fair.' and put their foot down.
What's happend to this employee is clearly not right, and you shouldn't need your mother (or another Slashdot poster) to show you that.
This was a picture taken without permission in a PUBLIC property, in a PUBLIC area, where it is quite permissible to take pictures, with the photo facing AWAY from anything related to his employer, save the arriving truck and shipment.
Apart from the NDA, it comes down to a general lack of trust. This individual photographed these products to prove that Microsoft made this transaction with Apple. This is no different from scanning an the invoice and blotting out the dollar amounts and account information then posting it on the web. Doing that will get you fired almost anywhere.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
The lesson here is that one should NEVER put something like this on a blog with your name in the URL (or anywhere else on the blog page). Yes it sucks, but I'm not at all surprised that M$ would fire this guy over something like this.
So if you need the job, use some sort of pseudonym when posting stuff like this.
What bullshit. The dude took a picture of a loading dock and the back of a truck and said it was at the print building. Nothing else was identifiable. Tell me, what big building have you seen on a "campus" that did not have a loading dock?
I hope this employee makes and posts drawings of the campus, and all the floorplans he can remember. He might as well because he's been and will be treated as if he did.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not only Windows, but all of Microsoft has a security allergy. For the sake of security someone was fired, and now a lot of bad information is being spread that wouldn't have been if it were handled by Microsoft a different way.
The funny thing here is to see just how eager Mac fans are to bash Microsoft for this, yet every one of the knows that if a temp at Cupertino were to blog images of shipments arriving at Infinite Loop, he'd be gone faster than he could say "Steve's Wrath".
Which company do you guys think is more secretive?
Marko Karppinen
The act of purchasing several pallets of G5's may not be a trade secret for MS but I'm sure their NDA covers many facets of their business information including purchasing and shipping & receiving. Fool breaks agreement, fool gets fired.
Raytheon will destroy your phone if it has a camera and you take it into the labs. So. yes, companies can and do ban camera cellphones.
But they would do it better :-)
I don't have any time right now to look into this, but unless this guy runs a very popular blog I find it very strange that he hasn't been /.ed into oblivion by now. Are we sure this isn't some kind of setup?
He wasn't forced to work for them in the first place, now was he?
How is one supposed to develop not only applications, but html without testing. Microsoft, even in their "forged" attempt at a switch campaign needs to ensure that the html appears good. I don't agree with one mistake and your fired. Management really should have taken the employee aside and discussed it. That may have been done already however. Michael Merry www.merryworks4u.com
Michael Merry
Merryworks
Fact is: he took pictures of confidential stuff at work. Then he posted them to the internet. Companies don't like security breaches or employees that work against the company. If you don't like Microsoft's tactics or don't agree with them, don't work for them. If you do work for them, then take every care not to belittle their operations.
What I don't understand...
Why would the guy bring a camera to work? (Was he *looking* to take pictures of sensitive insider stuff?) Good grief.
What if a temp employeee took a snapshot of a bunch of Dell computers being unloaded at the loading dock? Would he be fired?
Yes.
I am not a big fan of Microsoft, but they acted in their best interest. I have worked inside of several of the largest computer / technology companies, and there has never been a question about the no-camera policy. Every NDA I signed has specified that I can't bring a camera on campus without permission. (This has caused some problems for the folks with cameras imbedded in their mobile phones.)
If it were really for security purposes, not sure how damaging that would what with all 10 of his claimed readership compared to now with all the ./ ruckus, it's probably in the thousands or more. Real smart.
Besides, if anyone really wanted to know details about the Microsoft Campus, how hard would it be to get a job (in say the loading dock or print shop), and take pictures?
Whatever the reasoning behind his being fired, it certainly seems to have backfired.
... Had microsoft not fired this person I would never have seen the picture or read any of this guy's posts, and I wouldn't be a bit suprised if it was the same for most of the people posting here. If microsoft was trying to keep this post quiet, I think they've failed miserably. It's kinda like the Diebold memos, the more they go after them, the more slashdot posters give us links to them ;-)
Fucking slashdot editors are the stupidest god damn fuckers in the entire world.
FUCK YOU MICHAEL.
FUCK YOU TACO.
FUCK ALL OF YOU.
You all suck!
Disclaimer: This is my opinion, not anything I saw on a Microsoft web page or anything like that. But I suspect it's the real reason.
The guy posted a picture of a Microsoft loading dock, and posted exactly where it was located. You'll notice there was a lot of very valuable cargo sitting on that loading dock. Yeah, it was shrinkwrapped and might be hard to boost, but a lot of other valuable cargo goes through that loading dock, some of which might be small enough for someone determined to steal if they got the opportunity. A picture could help that process.
Maybe this particular picture/description was innocuous, but you don't get to be a security professional by letting people get by with violations of the policies you're supposed to be enforcing.
I hope the guy can find something pretty soon.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Seriously, what is it you think I missed. They did tell him 'we don't like your posting and so we're firing you'. They are a huge Mac shop. So, please, what are you on about.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
This article got accepted but my article about the Diebold memo's getting pulled down didn't? Either someone's not RTFA or they have some screwed up priorities...
Blake
All corporations hate you and everyone else.
Though in this case I think they are justified in firing him. I mean if people just start posting pictures they take at a closed source business proprietery secrets could be leaked.
I became concerned when I read MS fired a "full-time temp employee" that perhaps Ballmer was let go -- after all aren't ALL MS employees, except the Great One, temps?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I've never been into reading blogs much, and this is the first time I'd seen just how those trackback things work... Damn! talk about uber-cross linking. No wonder google is being hosed by this stuff...
>am still on the roster for my temp agency, who has been very good to me so far.
This changes everything. The guy wasn't fired at all. All MS did was tell his temp agency they wanted somebody else. It's a little odd that they would even meet with him about this directly... You can't be fired from a company if you never worked for that company. You can't sue over being fired if you were never fired.
It's really odd that Microsoft fires someone because he implies that they have good taste in hardware and software.
... so all you have is the blogger's WORD that it's taken at Microsoft -- not that I doubt it, of course. Steve Jobs used to love his IBM ThinkPad (still may, I don't know), there's the famous picture of Bill Gates with a Mac Classic on his desk behind him, and Microsoft buying a few G5's is CERTAINLY no more incriminating than the Linux-loving Slashdot editors all abandoning Free Software and buying into proprietary Mac OS X in such a big way. Oh, and Doc Searls, editor of Linux Journal, uses his TiBook to write articles about GNU/Linux. I guess NOBODY eats their own dog food except RMS, and that's because he's got ethical reasons to use it. The rest of us are just whores selling out to the prettiest GUI and most mindless (ie., 'ease-of-use') interface we can afford.
...oh never mind.
I fully understand corporations having policies of not taking pictures, but really, management should be able to make adequate decisions based on the circumstances and seriousness.
Given the fact that the picture is merely that of boxes of computers (and could have been anywhere really) I would have thought that management could have just given him a warning. Did he have to sign a policy prohibiting this? If not, then he may have some legal recourse but it probably wouldn't be worth it.
I've met Microsoft managers before and they are extremely inflexible, heavy handed and non-human in their ways. The management of the MSN chatrooms is a complete mess, especially concerning the 'child exploitation' they crowed about. I'm amazed they can run a company at all.
If no actual classified discussion is taking place in that room, it doesn't matter. But if classified conversations are happening in that room, it should be taken out. I delt with the classified stuff while I was in the Air Force. We had to go to great limits.
I'm surprised Apple doesn't take this photo (and blog entry) and make a Switch commercial out of it.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
that it's interesting that they didn't make him take the pic/commentary down?
I mean if they fired him for it being a security issue, and were concerned about letting out secrets, or even if it was becuase of the bad press, couldn't/wouldn't they have been able to make him take the picture/ down *in addition* to firing him?
it just seems strange
I don't see what's the big deal. Doesn't Microsoft develop/support software for the Mac? It's not like they were running Unix.
The person who did this is, at best, naive (and/or foolish). Of course he was terminated. Most any large company with any security concerns would have done the same thing. Some companies would have called the cops on him just for having taken the pictures. (I once contracted for a very large computer firm where even having a camera in our building without a signed slip from management and security would get you fired.) Publishing them with any sort of description is absolutely against policy at almost any technology firm of any size. I would be astounded if he'd never signed anything that obviously covered such behavior (whether in so many words or not).
He needs to do three things.
1) Recognize that he screwed up.
2) Admit it publicly, since he made the rest public.
3) Learn from this and move on.
In this case, Microsoft is (IMO) completely justified in its reaction.
I wasn't aware that Microsoft's campus was public property. When did they become the government...?
Perhaps he'll have some success here [jobs.apple.com]
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
Ok, so I'm not aware of who owns the GROUND the campus is located on. Specifically, I'm not aware who owns the ground which are not covered by buildings.
What I do know is that it's publicly accessible, and that it makes no sense to prohibit an employee from photographing trees which may be on campus grounds when any passer-by can do it.
A few months ago the CEO of the small business I work for did a search for his company name on Google and my personal site came up as one of the top ten. Not surprising, because I get more hits to my personal site than the company. Anyway, my site came up because I have a little portfolio page in which I list the sites I've done. I included the company's site, and said good things about the site and the company. I also mentioned that the site uses a little flash, dynamic html, php, style sheets, and javascript, and is in proper xhtml/strict format.
So the CEO is pissed that I've mentioned that I work for the company and that I was the web designer behind the site. He told the HR guy and my boss, and had a few meetings with them. They thought I'd done something wrong until they saw the site and saw the good things I wrote about the company and its web site (lies, all lies). After the first of those meetings my boss told me about it, and I thought I was about to get fired for it. Fortunately, I wasn't fired, but the CEO made me remove it from my site (yet he wouldn't tell me this to my face). I'm currently searching for a new job, and in my exit interview, this will be one of the reasons I cite for wanting to get out of the company. (So you can understand why I'm posting anonymously)
to fire this guy. If Im a company that is doing
research into my comptitors products and some jackass contractor takes photos of my research and puts it on the web without permission of course Im going to fire his ass. If this were any other company this would not be news. This is not a free speech issue, this is not ominous for the future, its a dumbass breaching his confidentiality agreement...oh well.
I'm not at this point going to go into why Microsoft is buying Macs or whether or not the guy was right to post what he did. In other words, I'm not going to go into the specifics of the article.
I do, however, want to address something in the framing text that christor wrote: "Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
While I acknowledge that (in the USA) First Amendment rights are limited to government action, I don't agree that non-governmental organizations cannot repress free speech and their actions cannot raise free speech issues.
It is pretty clear that private sector organizations can provide negative repercussions that will discourage individuals from saying or writing things that will provoke them. This can range from dismissal to lawsuits to, in some cases, industry-wide blacklisting that may prevent someone from continuing to work in his or her chosen profession.
If we as a society consider that "free speech" (the ability of an individual to express ideas, no matter how controversial, unpopular or challenging) is a value worth preserving, then we should take seriously threats to that ability, no matter where they originate.
If I want to say something but don't, because of the chilling effect of foreseen consequences, then my "free speech" has been compromised, whether or not those consequences come from the state or private individuals/corporations.
We may find that other values that we hold come into conflict with the "free speech" value. The value that an individual should be able to control his or her own property may come into conflict (leading to the expression that "Freedom of the Press belongs to them as owns a press" which I remember from my days of active involvement in Usenet, where it was often quoted by sysadmins). Conflict with other values lets us put other restrictions and negative repercussions on those who freely express whatever they want to (slander and libel laws from the state; the ability to shun someone who says unpopular things at the individual level).
We may decide that these other values/ considerations outweigh the value of free speech in a particular case and allow the government or private individual/corporation to act to restrict the person's ability to speak freely. But if we don't allow the issue to be raised at all as a free speech issue, then we've lost already.
Respectfully, David Tallan
NDA's cover PROPRIETARY, as in only known to the company and it's partners that have entered into an NDA, info.
Microsoft buying G5's isn't proprietary and the reseller could legitimately disclose this info- they can expect MS to NOT continue doing business with them if MS didn't want that info disclosed, but it's not something that could be considered proprietary all the same.
The fact that this individual worked at a specific location on the MS campus isn't proprietary info either. Otherwise you'd have people violating the NDAs all the time.
The two tidbits combined isn't proprietary info either.
If it's not proprietary info, it's not coverable by an NDA.
He wasn't ejected from the MS campus over a breach of an NDA (By the way, do you have any idea how silly you look making it sound like this is a worse thing that a leakage of IP to the world?)- it was someone at MS taking Umbrage at the blog entry and using "security" reasons as an excuse to get him booted from the campus.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So...does this apply to would-be whistleblowers too? You work somewhere and there is unethical or even illegal activity taking place (perhaps animal cruelty, sweatshop conditions, some form of evidence of anti-trust violation inspite of legal rulings to prevent such, etc). You take photos and publish them. You get to be fired because it was the "right" of the corporation (a nonhuman, artifice that cannot have any "human" rights or Constitutional Rights as these ONLY apply to actual entities called "people") to hide their activities?
I do believe that an NDA is trumped by whistleblowing. Be that as it may, it IS absurd that M$ would fire him. It is imperative that M$ have Mac computers since they STILL produce software that is to run on...that's right, MACS! I would think that this would be no problem at all. M$ "develops" software (right, they TAKE it from those who actually create software and rebrand it) for platform X. Damn right they'd better have platform X on hand to test their handiwork. They should neither feel that this fact needs hiding, nor act as if they are harmed by someone innocuously indicating that they do this.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Maybe I can introduce my bondage boys to your zoophiliac family and their pets?
Sure, come to the US -- better yet, to Texas -- with your "bondage boys" and threaten someone's family and pets. I'm certain you'll get a lesson in our Second Amendment as swift and as strong as the one you got in our First today.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Imagine an Full-time temp hired by Apple posted photos of someone unloading wintel boxes at Cupertino to their blog.
They would be canned immediately as well.
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
What alot of you DEFENDING this guy aren't realizing is this guy was working there through a TEMP Agency. So he wasn't exactly one of their most valuable employees. They did the right thing.
its not nessicarily legal to post any information you want about your employer. life is a bitch, you can't always blame microsoft.
He got fired for G5's
Did you think they were content to rest on the laurels of their swiss cheese OSs? Bah! As always, MS is looking to expand into new markets.
t this page. I mean he posts the picture one day, and the next day he;s fired.
Does MS Google for it's own name? Do they Google for their employers names? Do they follow all the sites/blogs/usenet posts/ etc of all their employees??
Perhaps being fired without a previous reprimand is a bit harsh (and indeed, now draws more attention to the reason behind it), but it strikes me as fair play.
You could've hired me.
Yep. Probably Cyveillance. They run a private search engine and report links with certain keywords to the companies that hire them. They make a living out of finding just this sort of stuff on blogs like yours.
The issue is not the content of the picture, but the fact the picture was taken at all. The company I work for has a clearly worded policy which states that use of recording devices for non-management approved purposes is forbidden. So yes, if I walk down the hall of our secure headquarters, snapping photo's, and tell security its to send to my friends they could fire me.
It might be draconian, it may be a bit over-the-top, but its the rules.
I am quite sure MS is not embarassed that people know they have MAC's.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Sorry, but taking pictures of your company's loading dock and posting them to the web is just stupid. That has nothing to do with Macintosh or anything like that, it has to do with rules against taking pictures at work. Companies are justified in being worried about leaks of proprietary information. People pictures at the company picnic may be tolerated, as may be outside shots of the building, but taking pictures of what gets shipped to or from a company definitely crosses the line.
their beginning to secure themselves from evil villians within the company.. lets get real. since when is it a "security threat" to take a picture of a computer? microsoft reminds me of one of those people that think everyone is trying to hacksour them or something. omfg i need a firewall and 4 virus scanners installed.. and dont forget to fire the evil hacker who took a picture of our g5's.
I got fired from Microsoft because I watched my district manager cheat on his wife. How come I didn't get a Slashdot story? (Phil, did your wife ever find out?) I would have been real pissed except the woman he was doing was also doing my best friend and he was getting promoted constantly.
Oh well, it's no big deal. With the number of available programmers there are waiting for jobs people should expect to get fired for smiling. There probably was a desire to fire the guy for some other reason and this was the convient excuse, just like in my case.
Cmdrtaco is in trouble for snapping pictures as well
No change. I still think it an over-reaction.
And I still detest Microsoft.
you get burned. what would you expect from the most evil company in the world?
lose != loose
Well, its a blog right? So other people would be reading the blog. One of those other people may have been a co-worker, who then told some other people about it. It could have been the source of some jokes around the water-cooler that morning who knows. As the joke circles around the office eventualy somebody in a position to do somehting about it hears the story and thus you have the whole what have you.
Surely you remember in grade school how after somebody played a prank on the dorky kid, the name of the culprit would eventually end up in the hands of the teacher? same thing here.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
The rationale is, if he takes a picture of the loading dock and puts it on the web without permission, What else has he taken pictures of and posted on the web?!?
This guy presented a dire security risk. If it were me, I would not even have let him collect his personal belongings, nor taken his camera with him (if he had it on him). He would have immediately been either arrested or at the very least escorted by security to the property line.
I think employers can bar you from retrieving personal belongings until a later time after legal agreements are in place regarding your visit... not sure about it thought - ALCTC?
He obviously has issues not understanding company policy. Especially in post 9/11 America, companies (especially ones as big as Microsoft) are VERY cautious about thier operations. All corporations have a public face and a private face. This guy was taking pictures (and describing in detail) in an area that could cause pose potential security risks should it become compromised.
Listen who wants an employee who talks shit about your company? If he's talking shit chances are given the opportunity he'd do some bad shit.
I worked for a major copy shop while I was going to school (clue: blue aprons). We had on-site production facilities on many major business campuses. And believe me, we were made to sign the most strict, detailed C/NDA's that you have ever seen. Most on-site copy shop employees can be fired for many things more trivial than posting photos and locations online.
Now, it is very logical why you would want a contracted employee in the copy shop to be held to very high standard of confidentiality. When you work at a copy shop, you see all sorts of confidential information. Additionally, you are also in a position to leverage that information if you are unscrupulous. For example, we had an on site facility at two competing companies in the same field (biotech). I saw things at Company A that I could have easily sold to Company B for at least an order of magnitude of my annual salary (I didn't).
I think Microsoft's logic in this situation is that if this guy is willing to post pictures and information online just to get a couple of chuckles from the visitors of his blog, what is to say that he would not give confidential information for money?
... for Apple. They should hire the guy. Trumpet it all as a David and Goliath story; Apple helping out a down-trodden supporter!
... only real.
"APPLE DEFENDER OF THE SMALL!"
"OWN A PIECE OF A KINDER, GENTLER COMPANY. BUY A G5."
It's soooo obvious that you wonder why it hasn't happened. Then the truth dawns on you. The guy was really a MOLE working for Apple! My gawd will they stop at nothing to shame MS! First a superior OS and now proof that Bill himself owns several G5's. It's like a reality show
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Those with a "borg mindset" that the corporate collective is always to be obeyed are forgetting an important point. If Microsoft wanted to maintain secrecy about anything this guy posted, they most certainly should NOT have fired him. That creates a news story and gives everyone on the planet the opportunity to discover details about shipping docks etc. A simple warning or perhaps an unpaid day off would have been enough to make their point.
Microsoft's real problem is that they treat most Temps like dirt. When I worked there as a Temp, I had connections that meant I was treated quite well. But I've seen them crammed, elbow to elbow, in a tiny, poorly ventulated windowless office--college grads being paid barely above minimum wage month after month with no benefits, not even the employer half of Social Security. That behavior was the subject of IRS action in the late 1980s, followed by a class action lawsuit. When you think Microsoft in its growth phase (maybe still), think sweat shop. It's not simply that being ethical never enters the minds of their corporate elite, it's that even what's clearly illegal will be pursued until they're forced to stop by legal action like that of the IRS or more recent lawsuits.
Besides, I seriously question whether Microsoft's non-disclosure claims could stand up in court. Somewhere in my clutter is a photo of me taken by a Microsoft employee inside Microsoft when I did some work for them as a Temp in the late 1980s in an area far more sensitive than any loading dock. Neither that employee nor I had any idea that a simple photo showing nothing of importance was a corporate crime. We were careful about what really mattered, but not petty nonsense.
Also, if this develops into a lawsuit, I suspect Microsoft would be in the embarassing position of trying cover up all the employee photos that have been taken on the job and getting nasty enough to stop that sort of thing in the future. In turn, that sort of behavior is likely turn away the most talented potential employees and talent isn't something Microsoft can afford to miss. The worst sort of employees tend to be the rigid and inflexible sort who obey rules without thinking--the corporate borgs.
And this whole fuss is quite silly from a security perspective. The Microsoft campus is quite open. An outsider posing as a tourist could drive through, stopping, observing and photographing far more important details than this simple Temp revealed. If he were willing to play dumb, he could even wander around on foot, holding what seemed to be an email message and claiming to be meeting a friend on campus for lunch. Give the manufactured friend a project, and he could quickly connect every project with a building. Make your spy a pretty young lady, and all Microsoft's lonely bachelors would talk their heads off.
So, what will Micro$oft do when someone posts a satelite image of the campus? Is that a "violation"? I'm sure that with a few minutes time, I could gain physical access to the microsoft campus and draw a pretty good map of the entire place.
Hell, someone who was really determined, could just eavesdrop at the local bars and figure out enough.
Like I said, nothing worrisome, companies do this all the time.
That in itself is worrisome.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Microsoft makes 2 major Mac products (Plus a few little ones no one cares about)- Microsoft Office v. X, and Virtual PC. Virtual PC was originally done by Connectix before Microsoft bought it. However it does not work on G5's because of the difference in proccessors. Microsoft said they were working on Virtual PC 2004 which would be written for the G5. Hm. I wonder why they'd need G5's?
(Not that I'm a Microsoft supporter or anything. Did anyone else notice that just about everything in Longhorn is ripped straight off from Macintosh? The new thing on the side is a clone of the Dock, and the new Internet Explorer's look is ripped off Safari's brushed-metal interface. And btw, Apple came up with a start menu type idea with System 7, before Windows 95 came out.)
One thing most secure people would think is what else pictures was taken.
.
And I think this was the real reason he was fired.
If there was no camera policy, then he was playing with fire admitting he was taken that picture.
And who knows maybe he has some more interesting pictures waiting to be published
I don't understand why MS would fire someone for posting a photo of a crate of G5's and saying "looks like these dual 2ghz are headed for the bowels of redmond" (psuedo quote from blog site)
The photo doesn't reveal enough to even prove to me that it was even taken at a MS fascility - from the photo I see a white truck unloading several G5's. I don't see any labels and I don't see any indication of where this is. For all I know this could be a shipment to the macwarehouse by my place in San Jose, CA.
My guess is he got layed off or fired for being a lousy temp, and blamed it on the photo he had taken so that he could get some publicity to his blog and stir up some zealots to flame MS for being evil.
Of course if they did actually fire him for posting the photo, it would probably be more of a security issue - I know my boss wouldn't be too happy if I started taking pictures of say our security camers, loading docks, and alarm systems...
Ave Molech Setting
and not just in the production of Mac Business Unit software. I visited the Redmond campus - their "multimedia production area" - back in 1996. I met one of the guys working on their CD-ROM titles. He made music for them. He had some Kerzweil, Ensoniq and other neat music gear in plain view. Back behind the smoked acrylic door was hidden a PowerMac 9500 or 9600 (IIRC - one of the big beastly suckers of the time). I asked the dude what he thought about using a Mac. He said he was glad they let him use the best tool for the job. When I rejoined the marketing type Softies that invited us, I commented about the Mac and they didn't believe me for a while. They basically were clueless.
:)
I wonder if that guy was fired after I left
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Nope, they don't confiscate stuff at the airport (generally)
/., I'll bother to point out that someone here definitely got stuff confiscate at the airport by a guard who didn't understand this or, at least, didn't bother to illuminate your options. But that doesn't mean you couldn't have legally refused. I'm also not claiming that having a camera in a defense establishment wouldn't get confiscated.
The power to confiscate your stuff is much harder to establish than the power to deny you access. At airport security, you have the option of keeping your nailclippers and leaving the TSA line. Usually you'll "voluntarily surrender" your nailclippers instead of missing your flight.
Just after 9/11, a friend of mine left the line and convinced his airline ticket counter to hold onto his knife until he returned home a week later. But he had enough time to do this and go back through the security line.
They could confiscate things that are illegal to posess, like drugs explosives or concealed firearms. They can confiscate stuff, I think, AFTER you pass through security, if they determined you were trying to get it past.
Since this is
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
yeah, so I posted twice. Shoot me.
As a somewhat silly example, I was at a convention (ok, I'm a geek, it was GenCon) where they didn't allow you to bring in outside food & drink. They weren't subjecting you to close inspection. One person tried to bring in a 24 case of soda, obvious upon inspection.
The security guard told them they had to give them the soda. The poor security guard unfortunately had to deal with an energetic, geeky law student. IANAL, but as I understand it the guard could legally refuse entry but not confiscate, but wasn't trained very precisely for this. The student started ranting about how that was illegal search and seizure (which, I think, only applies to governments anyway) and just kept doing it until he was well inside. But I believe the student was technically correct that the guard couldn't actually seize the soda.
The security guard relented.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Come on, people. So maybe this guy committed a mild form of "corporate espionage". He probably violated some part of a hideously restrictive contract, whatever. None of this matters.
Folks, when you're on the internet, use a little common sense. The internet is the perfect tool for disseminating information for those who understand how it works and how to use it. Instead of buying the domain name "michaelhanscom.com" ( Gee... I wonder which one of our employees' blogs THIS could be?), there are countless numbers of ways that his blog could have been nearly anonymous. Why didn't pay for offsite hosting? If he was a cheapo like me, how about hypermart/geocities ? Or even.. How about hosting it himself, with a domain name that doesn't directly point to him?
Microsoft didn't even seem competent enough to do a traceroute on "michaelhanscom.com" , they probably wouldn't even know how to do a domain lookup. Not that those necessarily have to contain real information...
All I'm saying, is, the Internet has really afforded the average citizen MORE privacy as it has grown more robust. In ten years, we will probably have true encrypted P2P anonymous information networks (ala Freenet, only working). In the meantime, just take common sense measures to ensure that if anyone (your employer, present/future employers) don't need to know more about you than you want them to. After all, that's exactly the way they treat you.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
You're right--the blogger wasn't fired because of security reasons--the picture didn't reveal any secrets in their strategy. Hell, it's fairly common knowledge that BillG carted in Lisa's and Mac's from the start. MS makes a mac version of office among other products--how the hell are they supposed to do that without having access to Apple hardware?
You're DEAD WRONG on another front--you infer that the blogger was wrongfully terminated because of "Microsoft bullshit". I'm a Linux evangelist myself, but in this case I think Microsoft did the typical and understandable thing in dismissing him. After all, do you think Red Hat would be happy if an employee released a picture of himself or a co-worker happily clicking around Windows XP at work, wrote an article entitled "We like BillG's stuff" and posted it on the internet? Doesn't matter WHO the employer is, I think he would've at LEAST had some interesting words with his boss.
This guy was quite likely breaching conflict of interest policies by embarassing his employer. He posted a picture of a load of Macs coming off a truck in a loading dock and identified it as being on the Microsoft campus. Not a violation in and of itself. Then he proceeded to identify himself as an EMPLOYEE of Microsoft and the author of the picture! I'd say if he wrote a blog entry flattering to Microsoft (along the lines of "look--MS wants to be multi-platform and play nice with others"), maybe he would've kept his job.
No..he was foolish enough to write a blog entry RIDICULING HIS EMPLOYER. ANY compnay would do the same thing if ridiculed by an employee in a very public forum.
Coca-Cola would (and has) fired employees for releasing pictures of pallets of Pepsi sitting in a warehouse surrounded by Coke and making the suggestion that "Coke was trying to learn a thing or two from Pepsi" (Both Coke and Pepsi bottlers have policies regarding how competitors products are to be handled on their premesis--you could be fired for drinking a Coke product in a Pepsi lunch room, particularly if you are caught with it by media representatives or a plant tour group).
GM would not tolerate the publication of a person identified as a GM employee enjoying a cruise in his Ford Mustang--if that employee was a willing participant in the activity.
Even a local mom-and-pop pizza joint would take issue with an employee eating Domino's in view of customers-or even just talking about how he or other employees prefer the competiton.
Was termination justified? I'm not quite sure. Some form of discipline, however, is completely understandable.
Bad judgement.
In his blog, he says that he thought about this:
"when I took the picture, I made sure to stand with my back to the building so that nothing other than the computers and the truck would be shown -- no building features, no security measures, and no Microsoft personnel."
So, he thought about it enough to take the picture carefully but didn't take the extra mental step of asking "Is posting this picture a good idea?". Did he think to ask someone at Microsoft if this was ok? Frankly, if you've gotta ask someone else about something like this, it's a good sign that it's a bad idea.
I'm sorry that this guy got fired but he did something that was really dumb and he should have known that. If he didn't, he's got horrible judgement (reason enough for a temp to be let go) and if he did realize it was a bad idea, but did it anyway, then he's even more foolish.
fh
Somehow I missed making a point.
The point is, this blog posted information about a company, and readily identified that company and the location of said photograph.
If I publically posted where I work, and possibly provided pertinent information on the various facilities within my workplace, including location and what they do, THAT WOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE OF ME. I could easily be fired for that, and possibly prosecuted.
Employees need to understand that their workplace is not their property, and they need to respect the fact that being on that property is a privelege. Most companies have written policies against disseminating ANY information about facilities without proper authorization, and they usually have to sign such a clause at hire time.
This isn't whistle-blowing, MS isn't breaking any laws, so there's no exception. If you are stupid enough to take photos and identify the location, AND slap your name on it, then you deserve to be fired.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
...ever got fired for choosing... oh wait.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
You know, last time I checked, Microsoft developed a lot of software for Macs. In fact I'm prety sure I read an interview a few years ago with the President of Microsoft Canadam where he saidthat, on average, Microsoft makes more money per Mac sold than per PC sold. This is because of all of the extra competitors in the PC Office etc. market. Plus there's that whole Microsoft owning a big share of Apple thing.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
because Microsoft is not, yet, the government
Are you really, really sure about that?
Obviously, the Mac's are a superior system in many ways. (The fact they don't crash every 24 hours is a good start).
To be fair, Windows crashes every 24 hours, and OS X does not.. It has very little to do with the hardware.
Options:
1. Blogger showed a co-worker and the co-worker snitched to the supervisor?
2. A department within Microsoft, tasked with surveillance of all employee personal web sites, spotted it and notified the appropriate people?
Yep, as long as those things are illegal. Back in the day, the legal right for a civilian to carry a concealed weapon in Texas was limited to "travelers." There wasn't a good, legal definition of traveler but there were a few court cases on point. In general, it was considered foolhardy to rely on your travel status to justify carrying. But there are the exceptions. For years, whenever anyone was caught with a concealed weapon at Intercontinental Airport in Houston, the person would be denied access to the gate area but the local prosecutor would decline to prosecute. Obviously, if you were about to get on a plane you were a traveler and, thus, your concealed carry was legal under state law. And since the screeners caught you before you got into the secured area of the airport, you hadn't run afoul of any federal law. The only real consequence was that getting all this sorted out was guaranteed to make you miss your flight.
At this point, given everything we've already seen, how could anything that Microsoft does possibly be considered "bad publicity"?
/. will run a story claiming "Microsoft Kicked Puppy in Street". It will include lots of +5 Insightful comments about that time Microsoft Stole Cand-E from a Baby. Meanwhile, Microsoft will continue to rake in billions of dollars.
Tomorrow,
It's great publicity for the guy who just got fired though, all he has to do is put up a paypal link and he'll have plenty of breathing room while he searches for a new job.
[o]_O
The guys a moron. He takes photos of a loading dock area that "could" have potentially contained locations of security cameras or information that could be used to help a thief. The guys a liability and should be fired.
As far as the G5's um... who cares - MS makes Virtual PC, Office, and a few other apps for Apple. What do you think they write their apple software on? What do you think thay test their Apple software on?
The reality is he could have taken a photo of the loading dock empty or with beanie babies or with Dual Xeon Intel or AMD 64bit whatever - it doesn't matter. If he has enough free time to wonder around the building taking photos of areas with potential liabilities. His ass is fired. End of story.
Ave Molech Setting
Use the "GIF image" number trick to foil bots.
I.E. "type the number you see above to enter"
best solution is to post anything like that anonomously on public forums though... never EVER attach your name to anything that might bite your butt.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"I don't see an issue. Imagine yourself running a small firm - if one of your employees were to go and make a post that clearly makes fun of your company, how would you feel about it?"
Now you know why Microsoft's EULA's forbid releasing any benchmarks that make the company "look" bad.
So, if Microsoft was embarrassed by this (I don't know why they would be - they make Mac software) they have even more problems than we already know about.
You stated:
Not only would they have to tolerate it - drive by any auto plant and you'll see competitors' vehicles in the parking lot. It's not a big deal.You also wrote:
Seems to me that once you leave your place of work, you're free to eat whatever you want to. I know restaurant owners (good food, too) who patronize their competition. It's not a problem, unless their egos are really delicate. And its' a good way to keep up with the competition. Ford buys GM cars, and GM buys Ford, and both buy Volks, and they strip them down to see what they can learn.So, how was saying "Even Mcrosoft wants G5s" an embarrassment to anyone?
Obligatory 911 "He's a terrorist!" post.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
What's the big story anyways? some idiot got fired. people get fired for all kinds of reasons, some dumb like peeing behind the office building (what are you staring at?) and some not. So some poor fool got fired. sucks to be him. Some people don't even get the opportunity to be in a position to be fired
did you forget to take your meds?
by scum like Cyveillance, which also falsifies user agents and shifts IP subnets to avoid being blocked from crawling pages.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Parent poster is totally right about this. If my company found me posting pictures of their facility on some blog I would be fired on the spot.
1) The guy takes pictures and makes public, things that he probably signed an NDA agreeing not to do.
2) From what I remember of my time working at Microsofot. MS Copy is a more of a "Copy Center" than a print shop. What does it say about the skills, intelligence and ambition of the guy operating this blog when he is basically a temp at Microsoft's version of Kinkos?
The point is that he is a dumbass, and he got what he deserved.
...receives a LOT of art and and media from outside sources. A lot of whom use macs, and software that is proprietary to the mac. At most, he has revealed that Microsoft isn't forcing it's vendors to use Microsoft solutions.
My god it's a scandal!.
Well, that's really up to the language in the NDA that he signed, isn't it? NDAs cover whatever information the lawyers who wrote them decided to cover.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
OK this idea came to me last night, and it made perfect sense, there used to be a version of NT for the PPC platform, why mess around with i386 emulation when you have a perfectly good PPC HAL lying around. maybe MS is investigating updating the ppc hal and instead of virtual pc use it for windows on mac via a ppc hal and virtual OS, if done right, you wont have the i386 penalty and ms can merge the mac and the i386 office together. hell if the G5 runs good enough they could have a version of server that runs on IBMS p970 blades next year.
some of the moderators are on crack again. who are the brain dead twits who labelled the parent flamebait and troll? it was polite and reasonable and intelligently written.
lmao @ american worker rights
This is what you want, now have a really good look at that campass : MapQuest
Actually it wasn't the photo that got him fired but the fact that he mentioned where he worked...
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} ^1\.2\.3\.4$
RewriteRule ^/$
If you have Apache set up properly you can use domain names instead of IP Address ranges
dave
--> stuff
lets summarize what youu just said. mac fan takes photo, get's fired. OOOHHH SNAP!!! better stop those crazy kids at apple, and all those silly linux distrubutions before they start desiging SIMILAR BUILDINGS
Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean it's always appropriate to exercise it.
What a dumbass.
All right boys, cuff him and toss him in the van. Let's go.
Quite true. Context is everything. If he said that was his back porch nobody would have cared.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Locally, a delivery driver for Coke was recently fired for being seen drinking a Pepsi while on a break on his route. Same deal here - this dude had it coming. MS has a right to not want some snot nosed temp giving them bad advertisements.
Elliott Smith Tribute CD available now on Double D Records! Visit www.doubledrecords.com to order.
You guys are BRUTALLY cold hearted. In all the discussion I see very little about the misfortune of the poor guy who got fired over a simple mistake. This is a truly sad occurence. This sort of thing could happen to any of us at any time (although it is rumored that many Slashdotters are unemployed). If it happened to any of you would you not hope for at least a little sympathy or help???
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
Washington State is a "Right to Work" State. This guy has no recourse. You don't even need a reason to fire someone in this state, you just show them the door.
This was blown out of proportion. Microsoft has a whole software division dedicated to Mac development. Of course they're going to buy some macs from time to time.
Who gives a f'k if some guy took some pictures of the delivery man dropping off some new Macs. It's no a big deal. Do we expect MS to develop Mac software on Windows boxes?
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Isn't it interesting how this story separates the blindly devoted from those who just want what's right in this world?
I don't want to be prejudiced, but I've yet to see anyone who chose "security" as a profession be very "thoughtful". This is just a knee-jerk reaction. But that's security dweebs for you, make lots of noise and hope the bad guys run away. The photo shows nothing discernable--they should have just warned him.
Now everyone will know their using G5s to authenticate users. There goes the "security through obscurity" initiative.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Okay, forget this specific issue for a moment. To quote the poster:
"Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
So, what he's saying is that, as long as the government isn't involved in censorship, it's not a free speech issue?? You have GOT to be kidding me! Ignoring the merits of this particular case, if any reasonably powerful entity is involved in punishing another individual for exercising their right to free speech, that entity is involved in censorship. Not only are they censoring the individual, but they also effectively intimidate, and silence, anyone else who might also speak their minds, thus effectively censoring them as well.
As an example, this is no different than journalists being coerced into supporting a particular view (say, not criticising the president because it's "anti-American"), for fear of losing their job. Like it or not, this is censorship, and this is ABSOLUTELY a free speech issue. Just because some company is doing it, doesn't make it any less dangerous. After all, it's these companies are not apolitical entities, as much as you'd like to believe it.
So don't believe for a moment that free speech is only an issue when the government is one of the parties involved. Frankly, I'm amazed that someone could be so blind as to actually believe this.
lets summarize what youu just said. mac fan takes photo, get's fired. OOOHHH SNAP!!! better stop those crazy kids at apple, and all those silly linux distrubutions before they start desiging SIMILAR BUILDINGS
So you believe that he came onto the campus, took one photo with his digital camera, and that's it? You don't know what else he might have photographed, who he might have sent it to, or how it might have been used.
You apparently don't know how industrial espionage works. Industrial spies often collect information from many sources in order to determine what directions their competitors are taking. The delivery of a pallet or two of G5s might not be enough in and of itself to do much, but put that together with other information and it might reveal quite a lot.
I certainly agree that M$ better have Macs around to test M$ software, and for any other purposes. (I'm sure they'll use at least one as voodoo dolls).
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Blogger takes pictures of G5's destined for Windows on OS-X project.......
Your right of course, but I only wish they would be as obsessed with the security of their software.
Its funny, read back in his journal a few days before the photo and the results thereafter, he mentions the dangers of blogging, and what your boss might not like.
Take your own advice chief, sorry.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Nope, they don't confiscate stuff at the airport (generally)
The power to confiscate your stuff is much harder to establish than the power to deny you access. At airport security, you have the option of keeping your nailclippers and leaving the TSA line. Usually you'll "voluntarily surrender" your nailclippers instead of missing your flight.
Just after 9/11, a friend of mine left the line and convinced his airline ticket counter to hold onto his knife until he returned home a week later. But he had enough time to do this and go back through the security line.
You are wrong, but it is easy to understand your mistake, given the luck you had in your experience. I have had things confiscated in line before 9/11 and there was not an option of leaving the line or of having the security guard hold the items. They were confiscated and destroyed. I was not even getting on a plane.
Post 9/11, there have been highly publicized literal mountains of confiscated nail clippers, etc, so I am thinking it is a safe guess that yes, they do confiscate things.
Just so you know, your local Malls also have a policy of NO PICTURE TAKING ALLOWED within their premises. Why? Not security related, but they don't want other would-be merchants taking pictures of store designs and merchandise store-owners are keeping.
If you were a merchant, would you like someone coming in and taking pictures or making a comprehensive list of what your selling and for how much?
I don't think so.
If you hired a contractor, say an electrician, to fix your wiring and you later found that electrician wandering around your house taking pictures of your artwork and posting them on his personal web page, how would you feel?
Would your natural tendancy to protect your own privacy lead you to violate the electrician's "free speech" rights in his blog?
And don't tell me it's different. It's not.
YRO indeed. What piffle.
At my work i can get fired for just having a camera on campus...I am not a MS fan, but what happened to this guy is jut PLAIN EXPECTED...
Dont mix your pleasures, love and hate with your job, only then they will fire back at you..
The lunatic is in my head
Who gives a f'k if some guy took some pictures of the delivery man dropping off some new Macs. It's no a big deal.
It's a big deal if you are part of Microsoft's corporate security and you don't know what else the guy has been taking pictures of.
Extrapolate. Consider the circumstances. He wasn't an incredibly valuable employee. He was a temp working in the print shop. If you have even an inkling of concern about the judgement or trustworthiness of someone in that position, you replace them. End of story.
This is a free speech issue. It may not be a constitutional rights issue, becuase (as the writeup says) MS isn't the government. Firing this guy probably isn't illegal, and you may not think it's unethical or unwise. But it is an attempt by the company to censor others' speech.
.Net framework.
Microsoft attempts at censorship are hardly unprecedented. Many of its EULAs now contain a clause where users must agree not to disclose benchmark tests of the
certainly what the blog seems to say. why would microsoft instantly belive that he was selling these pics to competing firm? aren't you innocent before proven guilty? doesn't microsoft have trust in there employees? why would you hire someone you wouldn't trust with a camera? even a temp agency. Or do they give the PRINTING department access to all the hottests and latest technologies? regardless... my orig. post was a joke. your sense of humor astounds me. you r 0wz0red.
"So, is it ok to shortcut, or flat out ignore any protocol if nothing bad happens?"
Spoken like someone who has never had to deal with the lack of resource tracking in the Windows TCP/IP stack.
Microsoft ignores any protocol they feel it's convenient to ignore, *particularly* if they can gain a business advantage, like forcing all the UNIX-based HTTP servers in the world o use up all their sockets in FIN-WAIT-2 state waiting for the second half of a shutdown notification that's never coming.
A protocol is a protocol.
- AC
Interesting, when I worked at Microsoft sometimes I would see a car at my building's parking lot with a Linux bumper sticker. I wonder if the owner is currently trying to scratch if off their car.
The dude you are giving shit to has posted two +5 and one +4 post in this thread. Take a hint because he knows his shit and other people know it. You mac fanboys piss me off. You are all dweebs who assume everything is some kind of anti mac prejudice. Get a life [and a new computer because the one you list in your profile came out when Christ was still on the cross].
This guy was a temp. As a temp, you don't work for the Client. Usually, you work for the agency. This guy took a picture of something at the Client's site, posted it to a blog, said he worked there, and basically denegrated the Client. So, the Client decided that they didn't want the temp there anymore. Perfectly within their rights to do so AT ANY TIME! If I was MS, I would have done it too. This idiot deserved exactly what he got.
All that matters is reality. Rights on a piece of paper mean nothing. We have the right to free speech... but not when it comes to the companies, which is how we make our living, how we eat and feed our children? Then we do not have the right to free speech. You can talk about principles, but if you are not able to speak freely, you don't have free speech. If you live in a fire-proof house and it's on fire, it's not fire-proof.
Maybe that's the way you or you or you want it to be, but don't tell me it's "free speech". So this -is- a free speech issue, we don't have free speech so don't fool yourself.
Same thing with democracy. People died fighting to have the right to vote. Once every couple years. For a limited selection of people. Meanwhile we spend 40-100 hours a week somewhere we have no democracy. Do we "live" in a democracy? Well, one layer of the onion is a democracy... but 8 hours a day there is no democracy. Again, maybe you don't want a democracy, I'm actually open to that. There are arguments against democracies.
But I'm saying you call a spade a spade, and the de facto reality is the only reality. If you can't speak freely, you don't have free speech, and the Constitution nor anything else has guarenteed you free speech.
PS: I just had a former colleague go work for Microsoft and he said many in the team he is going to use Macs... why not!? MS marketing and the technical staff's policies are two very different beasts.
PPS: and for all you neocon's that might think I'm just whining... no, I live up to my ideal. I'm not being oppressed, I have safe kept my right to free speech (though I'm sure there are nearby limits), and when I make comments like the above, I'm talking statistically what's possible in this culture, what goes on in reality, not in some idealized sense where you can "have" rights you can't exercise.
-pyrrho
1 Did anyone read the TEXT of that blog post? That entry makes not one single disparaging remark about Microsoft. 2. The Picture seems to show some pallettes of boxes that slipped. The Shipper might wince at this shot and be tempted to haul out ITS lawyers! Fortunately the shipping van is white on the side with no dicernable shipper's marks. The context of the post seems to be the lack of care this shipper displayed in delivering some valueable property. Probably property vitally needed by the destination company. 3. I read this fellow worked for Xerox..NOT directly for Microsoft. This means that MS is dictating hireing practices to subcontractors. Is that legal?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
...they could fire you if they wanted, for snapping pictures of a private area. i'm sure you agree to something when you get hired by microsoft, even if you don't see a contract.
the difference between all your examples and what happened to this blogger is employee/client. there's a difference. if you are taking photos at McDonalds they can ask you to leave the premises and not return.
they can ask you to leave the premises and not return even if you DON'T snap photos. private property.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
they can remove you from their property if they want. it's a right they have. they don't have to exercise it if they don't feel threatened.
i wish people would stop being so fucking 0/1 about shit. there are millions of possible situations in the real world. not every framework applies.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
..they saw him as a bigger potential liability in the future. good for them. maybe he was a shitty employee. maybe he talked back to his boss. we hear nothing from microsoft, because this guy's claims are to take the words from the mouth of other angry individuals,
typical microsoft bullshit
Please stop stalking me, bro.
If you look at yesterday's post, he says that he knows that it was probably legal for them to fire him because of contracts at his temp agency that he doesn't fully understand.
But what if he is still breaching them by continuing to describe the incident?
Does he want to get fire even from there? Or worse, have legal action taken against him?
If I got fired for something that seemed so trivial to me but realized that I was in over my head, I'd just shut up and let it go.
I'm tired of hearing that something or other isn't a "free speech issue" because the oppression is coming from the private sector rather than the government. Please. If Microsoft abridges someone's freedom of speech, there can be no justification of this simply because they are a private enterprise. It is wrong and tyrannical, plain and simple.
Was termination justified? I'm not quite sure. Some form of discipline, however, is completely understandable.
I was sacked for a blog post over a year ago and managed to take the company in question to court for being over zealous in punishing me. And I was successful too. I never debated that I was wrong in posting, but that the post just didn't warrant the 'nuclear option'- it was a mistake, I apologise!
If a company makes no effort to remove (ie. ask the site owner) what is an allegedly damaging post, it has dificulty making that same argument in court I think - then it just looks like they were looking for an excuse.
I don't think it matters that an employer isn't the government. If people can be materially punished by employers for expressing personal views in public, or in this case, making a trivial statement of fact, then people don't have the freedom to speak their minds.
There are many other cases where editing or suppressing employee speech is perfectly acceptable. For example, newspapers aren't obligated to print whatever their reporters feel like writing. But employers shouldn't be able to take punitive action against people for making non-libelous statements on personal websites.
Here's a great idea for a startup: create software that mines postings in online forums like Slashdot, associating online personas with actual people and looking for evidence of insubordination or unacceptable opinions. No subpoenas necessary, no court orders, just screen scrapers, AI and a database. If you worked for a large company that could afford such a service would you feel free to speak your mind online?
if you're unpleasant to the company or the customers or are costing money, etc. you can be asked to leave.
1. i think it probably is in writing
2. reiteration
3. reiteration
it wasn't just the photos. my point is that if i say, "you can't come in here and take photos, homey!" and then said homey takes pictures, i can make said homey leave.
i, as well as the management, regret to inform you, homey...
Please stop stalking me, bro.
And that is exactly the problem. The attitude that employees are expendable at a manager's tiniest whim is abhorrent. Employees are only supposed to be fireable for cause, but of course Microsoft (as well as many other companies) have gotten around that with "temps" who work full time without benefits or protections of being real employees.
Someone buy MS a few pounds of humour! Obviously Linux eats away their marketshare so quickly that they had to cut that budget.
And obviously they have macs at MS. How the hell would they develop mac software without having macs?
Free as in mason.
I'm sure many people here are outraged because the guy offered to remove the pictures...legal reasons for firing him aside, as everyone here knows, there's a great thing called a Google Cache...and countless other web caching mechanisms out in the great big ether. How many times have companies or individuals removed articles, etc. from their website, only to have /. readers post the link to a cached copy of the data?
MS might not write the best software in the world, but they aren't stupid...this isn't SCO we're talking about.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Maybe the blog post is not protected by the constitution because the government didn't fire him, but it is an issue of freedom. Does anyone honestly believe that the photo contained trade secrets or other information covered by non-disclosure agreements? Microsoft bought a few Macs - big deal. They also use various NIX products for some servers. The MS Image Control Brigade decided that someone might conceivably laugh at Microsoft because of the post.
... "), but this was clearly corporate disrespect for worker's religious freedom. The U.S. Constitution is a great document; it lead the way in formalizing certain freedoms. But the fact that a freedom is not protected by the constitution does not mean that it is not a freedom.
Henry Ford used to send his spies around to make sure that people were in church on Sundays. Not a violation of the Bill of Rights provisions that protect religious freedom ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion
--I agree with you 100%. This attitude on the part of employers as a whole is one reason the economy has been so bad for the last 3 years. People who still *have* jobs are being overworked, instead of the company hiring more workers to even out the load.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
In one sentence, the guys says his managers told him it was because he identified which building MSCopy was in, and in the next sentence, he starts rambling on how pictures of Mac's are inoccuous.
They told him why they fired him, he says why the fired him, and then rambles off on some tangent about pictures of G5's.
What "horrible and earth destroying" events would result if you actually exercise your rights as an independent thinking and acting human being outside of the narrow range of task accomplishment at a company?
Freedom of thought, freedom of opinion, and the freedom to communicate those two things are the most fundamental rights of every human on the planet. Some people/governments/religions/corporations may attempt (and succeed) in taking away those rights in part or in whole, but doing so is always wrong.
"Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
YET.
Im pretty fed up with *x users who seem very proud of their knowledge, it doesnr requiere an engineer to drive a car so it would not be necessary to be an engineer to use some basic things like e-mail, word processor and the like, its certainly that we are in the stone age in the computer thing today, if not, who would be arguing about tvs, telephones and the like? nobody because this things are commodities today, so will be e-mail and other in 10 or 20 years.
What bothers me most about this story is some of the reactions here, which reflect the worst sort of corporate thinking: "Someone makes a mistake - can him." Even if one concedes that Microsoft is within its legal rights, it was a senseless act on their part to fire him. Being right is no excuse for being stupid.
If the concern was really about looking bad for using Macs, they would have insisted he remove the post. I take it at face value that they saw this as a security breach. However, their approach to solving the problem shows how inflexible and rigid they have become, a bad sign for an organization competing in a highly dynamic industry.
On the self-interest level, they just generated for themselves more bad publicity, something Microsoft can ill afford. Microsoft management should be trained to take public opinion into consideration in every act they do, and to think carefully about the PR implications of their public actions.
On a more fundamental level, a corporation has no real existence. It is a group of people working towards some goal. Proper motivation of employees is a key to success.
If fear is the greatest motivating tool that corporate management chooses to make use of, that corporation is doomed to oblivion. Firing someone should be a last resort action taken only after other options have been exhausted. If management is seen as cruel and capricious, then the best employees who have a choice of where to work, will go find a more congenial working environment.
The proper way to have handled this was to ask the employee to immediately remove the offending post from his blog, and point out to him the corporate policies he violated and let him go with a warning. That way they would have avoided bad PR, limited the security breach and would have been viewed as an understanding employer. Microsoft lost on every level by taking this foolish action, whatever the initial motivation might have been.
I think he got away quite litely. When you consider how the Open Source community punishes such behaviour he did quite will.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
They're planning on using it to stress-test vaporware.
Never pet a burning dog.
You just supplied DETAILED information about his office! SECURITY RISK LEVEL A2! Kill him with his own resume!
Never pet a burning dog.
Actually, JC Penny & Wal-Mart forbid you from taking photos inside the stores. So does Fry's. Fry's even says that you can'd *sketch* the inside of the store at all.
:)
Look for the small print before entering a store.. it's interesting sometimes.
this incident seems similiar to their operating system. Have no security in place to keep a incident from happening ( no security to keep cameras/pictures from being taken in the first place ) then over-react later, once it's too late.
(i.e. issue a patch to address the vulnerablilty but don't fix the real problem) At least they are consistant.
GM would not tolerate the publication of a person identified as a GM employee enjoying a cruise in his Ford Mustang--if that employee was a willing participant in the activity.
What people do on their own time with their own vehicles is their business. This is a different example than the Coke/Pepsi one cited. This story would result in eye-rolling at an auto company. The G5s were a Microsoft comporate activity, not the same as if the blogger posted about his own iMac and gave it a rave review.
I was going to write something similar to your post. I'm saddened that so many people here have fallen into the binary trap. Black & White, Right and Wrong.
If we retrain ourselves to act like computers, what's keeping them from doing our jobs?
-pmb
it sure smells like free speech and since there weren't any technical specs nor anything revealing except the fact that there's a bunch of g5's, it's difficult for me to say that it's a security violation. More like retaliation for spilling the beans on m$'s stragedy (which everyone in the world already knows).
Actually, it would imply that.
Sean
I feel pity for you americans.
Your souls is in the hands of your company.
Democracy?
Freedom of speech?
His most recent blog entry:
:) I bet this guy will end up with better work than before after that story made it to /.
Oh my lord -- I've been slashdotted.
I have literally hundreds of messages in my e-mail inbox. I'll pop my head up as soon as I can.
I wonder how many of them are new job offers
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Well, I supervise a fairly large staff... and I wouldn't do that.
First of all, those were pictures of a truck -outside-. They were not pictures of confidential documents from a locked room, they were not pictures of developmental hardware, and they were not pictures of Bill Gate's wife necked.
The guy likes macs, a truck load of G5s roles up to MS front door, and he decided to take a picture. It's funny... I would've done the same damn thing.
Personally, I don't think this kid got fired because of the G5 pictures. This looks like a BS excuse given by his employer. If that position was important, and he was a hard working / non-obnoxious guy, then you really wouldn't want to fire him. You'd have to train someone else to handle his sh*t job... and that's always annoying.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were already planning to eliminate him or his position.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You are so right. It is important for the crack security team to find and punish the guy who took some innocuous photos of a loading dock after it has been posted and millions see it. His sins far outwiegh the guy who is taking photos of Longhorn, and selling them to Redhat (or whatever passes for competition) under the table. Glad they are keeping MS safe by chasing the right badguys!
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
AISI, the point is: do they have the moral right to fire him? And since it appears that this particular snap wasn't defamatory, obscene, or contained any confidential information or security risk, then I guess it comes down to this question: was there anything in his contract covering the taking of photos per se?
If so, then he should have known better. Regardless of whether or not this particular photo did any damage, by working there he'd agreed to follow their rules (right or wrong), and he should have known that breaking those rules could get him into trouble.
OTOH, if not, then I'd say he had the right to feel very aggrieved indeed. It doesn't look as if it was posted with any malicious intent, or there were any real security implications. Firing him as a deterrent to others is hardly fair if there was no indication it wasn't allowed.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
... that this was not a rational decision (to give Hanscom the sack). It goes to show Billy Boy and Thade are riled up and easily threatened. What's that adage Eric Raymond uses to describe the behaviour of the enemy?
I guess if you're a developer "star" like Chris Anderson then sending out photos of your office is OK? I think it might have been more to do with the details of the location on campus etc, altho Don Box is prone to doing that from time to time in his blog too (check out the entry entitled "old school fun" to see what I mean).
Probably already posted in some thread above, but I thought this would be cute: Windows for the G5. (Could have also been going to the previously Connectix developers for Virtual PC support for G5...)
I just took another picture. They ordered paper too!
I guess since we're dealing with Apple fans here, this is as close to religious persecution as you can get. Sue their asses! :)
When you own your own company, you can fire your employees as you see fit. Just make sure it doesn't look like you're discriminating against niggers.
Why would it be a suprise that Microsoft would buy g5s? I mean, what do you think they use to write Office for Mac and the other ports of their software? I mean, duh.
But seriously, it's not like he worked in the department that was using the machines and just mentioned it, he just saw something going on and took a picture and posted it on his blog. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do.
If I ran a multi-billion dollar company I wouldn't want ugly bastich going around snapping random photos of internal stuff and posting them on his blog.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Using a password limits access, not only to the employer but to random people as well, which may not be what you want.
I'm a big fan of pseudonyms, A.K.A. "pen names". Sure your employer might be able to figure out that it's you, but it'll take a lot more effort than a google query to do it, especially if you be non-specific in certain details. You can tell your friends and family about your pseudonym, just like a password, while still leaving your writings out in public with little fear of repercussions.
Pseudonyms are a sort of literary tradition, too. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens (as slashdotters may remember from the ST:TNG episodes "Time's Arrow" 1 & 2). Many other authors have used pseudonyms and not revealed the truth. Some people suspect Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare might have been the same person, yet there is no conclusive proof.
What's Microsoft's market cap these days? I know they have around $40 in cash on hand.
The point is, money is important to people. The more money, the more importance. Money (in sufficient quantities) is a lot more important to people then Privacy, saftey, and neuclear proliforation. If you give $10 to iraqi police at the border, they'll let you through without a search, even though you could be bringing in bombs to kill more cops.
The point is, you see a box of Macs, someone else might see "ooh, a bunch of Macs outside of... hmm... looks like building four, maybe for the AI research department?" Or maybe they thing. "Hmm. A bunch of Macs about to be installed in building four, they'll probably be in IP-range [whatever]. Since I know of an OSX exploit, I'll be able to hack in and see what's going on."
Is it likely? Probably not. But you never know. Corporate espionage is a big deal. And the risk of having someone going around taking pictures of happening's on campus isn't worth the cost of replacing this dude.
(Plus, is this the only picture he's taken? why is he walking around with a dc?)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The question isn't "Would you please take that picture down" the question is "why are you taking pictures of random happenings on campus?" and "What are you doing with those pictures, other then posting them on your blog?"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Let's see. A temp violates a company policy, and gets fired. Big Fat Hairy deal. Where I work, taking a picture can get you fired also. Taking the wrong picture will get you charged with espionage. If your phone or pda has a camera, and you take a picture without approval, you lose it. Don't like it? Don't work here.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Look, this guy did something stupid and got fired for it. End of story. Why should we pay him for it? Hey...Ive got a good idea. Ill go through the shared drives at my place of work (could be described as an unpopular telco, along the ilk of M$) and post up all the private memos on the web. When I get fired for it, Ill set up a PayPal account and everyone will give me money for it because "the company got what it deserved and had no right to fire me". Stupidity
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
You don't have to be some beurocratic bitch wearing really unflattering department of homeland security strech pants to see that this is a pretty big problem. Who knows else he was taking pictures of?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What's funny is, most Slashdotters love to rail against the media when they're sensationalistic and biased. Yet Slashdot does it everyday. "Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo." It's propoganda technique at its worst.
Seriously. Hundreds of geeks have responded to this post by philosophizing and speculating. yet, it's a non-story. The guy got fired for something his employer deemed naughty and that's that. The guy isn't suing them. He's not waging a publicity campaign against them. End of story. So, why exactly is this here? Slow news day, I guess.
Let's say you hire a maid or something and one day you read her blog and you see a picture of a box from Victoria's secret with a caption like "looks like mr. fmaxwell will be having fun with his wife tonight!" or something? How would you feel? Would you keep them on the job?
Of course, it's not just a question of the one photo, seeing that on her blog makes you wonder what else she's taking photo's around your house. And it makes you wonder why she's so interested in your personal life.
Now, the reason I picked Victoria's secret is that a purchase from there tells people a lot about your personal life, and those Macs do tell people about Microsoft's "corporate life".
And imagine if the stuff wasn't for your wife, but your mistress? You don't know what actual information that picture conveys to someone with the right context.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Lots of people are justifying the sacking of this poor guy, as if it made sense to think of a picture as a security threat. If you are threaten by pictures, How are you going to stop the small phones with cameras on them? Your enemies can take as many pictures as they want! (unless you are a military base).
It dosn't seem like a security risk to us, but we don't know what someone else might know.
Imagine you had a maid, and she posted a picture of a package, addressed to you, from Victoria's secret on her blog with the caption "Looks like gidds is going to have some fun with wife tonight!" Then a month later you wife sees the entry and thinks "Wtf, he never gave me any VC stuff!"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yeah, Right to work is a real piece of crap .
.
.
.
The corporations tout it as a fact that more companies
will show up and there will be more jobs, but at a cost
to the labor laws we have worked to make happen for the
past 200+ yrs
Right to work is a rip off
It just protects the wealthy business owners
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
In Soviet Microsoft, posts take YOU down.
You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!
Corporations now have more rights than the citizens who .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
work for them, and are victimized by them
US corporations are looked at as rapists of the
natural resources of the world, and war machine
sales pushers
Some ppl have speculated that the military industrial
complex whips up unrest so that it gets used
Vietnam was somewhat in line with this when LBJ had JFK killed
Bell Helicopter made oodles of money, and they were just
one of the players
Keep in mind that lady bird, his wife is part of the halliburton
family, and now to this day we have Cheney
Keeps ya thinking doesn't it ???
Microsoft is one of the most dispised companies amongst
the true computer scientists for there gunboat business
pratices
I think he should contact the ACLU and ask if he has a case,
he may or may not, as that state is a right to work state,
and they can just can you because they got an itch
Right to work, a law written by corporations for corporations,
to phuck the working class
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Perhaps automakers are just a very bad example here. I'm not sure about your Coke/Pepsi statements, but definitely automakers could really care less what their employees drive.
These lines are blurred further by the fact that Ford has controlling interest in several former competitors: Mazda, Volvo, Land Rover, Aston Martin, and Jaguar, for example.
Ford routinely purchases several market-competitive vehicles for comparison before they launch a new product.
I honestly don't know who told his boss about his BLOG but I do know one thing: there are a LOT of BLOGS out there and looking it up for one guy could be a daunting task. How and why did his boss look up this guy's BLOG? Or, if he didn't, this guy should keep his BLOG a fucking secret from his employers from now on.
I can attest to one thing, though: Microsoft is filled from the ground up with assholes, from the security guards right on up the ladder to Gates himself. As corporations are (legally) entities that cannot die I wouldn't mind seeing someone take a few pot-shots at this immortal just to see what happens.
The Mac Business Unit (where they do Office etc) is based in San Jose, NOT Washington, where this guy was working. The SJ campus is really nice. The Mac BU is in the "water" building (the buildings have elemental themes). To my knowledge, there is ZERO Mac development in MS outside of California. Trust me, I've looked.
Plus, there are only 3 pallets. About 33 G5s, by my count. That is less than half what it would take to give every MBU dev and tester one. Just doesn't add up.
Whatever those G5's are for, it isn't the Mac BU. My suspicion is that they are for the marketing/design dept, where they have always had them, going back into the early '90s. They are also very sensitive about those Macs, and have come down hard before on people who talked about them. Also, it would make sense to have the marketing dept. in the same building as the in-house printshop, which would explain why they freaked when this was disclosed.
This isn't as simple as it seems, and there's usually an explanation when someone overreacts this much.
M-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
It's a blatant violation of company security. NO CAMERAS ON CAMPUS. Jeez, people, clue in. To paraphrase Brian [Life of], "I hate Microsoft as much as anyone", but this just isn't an evil empire issue. It's an issue of an employee showing a flagrant disregard for company policy and then whining like a baby because he actually had to pay a consequence for it. Perhaps he'll think twice before doing something as foolish in the future [assuming all the sympathy he's getting doesn't spur him on to future stupidity].
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
This policy does not make sense: Since it is fairly obvious the 'security' breach rationale for firing this employee is merely a convenient reason for dismissal, there must be a real reason (after all, MS managers have leeway to consider what constitutes a breach, the seriousness and whether or not to enforce action. It is also obvious little information of significance was released as you point out).
The first and foremost underlying reason for this dismissal is probably the perceived embarassment of the company by being seen to be purchasing a truckload of G5 Macs. The fact that they would see this as embarassing at all reveals part of the management attitude at Microsoft. Would the managers have chosen enforcement action if he had taken a photo of a truckload of Dells instead? Unlikely. These were in all likelihood not Mac Business Unit managers involved: Would a manager in the MBU be embarassed by an admission that they purchase Macs? Hardly. It's apparent therefore that much of the (non-MBU) management at MS perceives a company adoption or use of Macs as an embarassment.
It's interesting that a "Not invented here" attitude like this pervaded Apple a number of years ago, and caused them no end of strategic problems. Ironic that a case can be made that it is now Microsoft with such a culture, whereas it's now Apple who has a much more flexible attitude.
It's that he said where he worked, and in which building the print shop is located.
MS Security came down on him like a ton o bricks.
"These are not the G5s you are looking for..."
(Hmmm... maybe that's Steve Jobs' line)
Only in Usa it is not. Here in Italy, if an employer is fired for his speech, a court will bring him back to work, with apologies. :)
It's not the fact that he told people there was a G5 delivery to Micorsoft that got him fired. It's the fact that he gave away too much information regarding security issues on the Microsoft campus.
Next time, RTFA.
"Programming is life, the rest is mere details"
Ethical issues aside, surely it is not that surprising that someone at Microsoft uses a Mac? After all don't Microsoft sell software for the Mac?
Also I expect all the creative people, like the guys producing box art, all uses Macs too.
Americans! They can even make threats sound like the closing lesson from Sesame Street.
;) )
I'm amazed actually that this whole thread has become so vitriolic. My original post was actually trying to point out the irony of considering free speech issues to be limited to government. Surely we (you) should be concerned with 'gagging' wherever it occurs?
The responses here just seem to have been drawn from the most basic American political rhetoric. I had hoped for a slightly more intellectual discussion.
(I do confess, however, to reacting badly to that assmuncher who made the quip about bondage
All things in moderation; including moderation
Create some rules then allow your employees to brake them to show how understanding you are.
Give us a brake wise man.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This is not about making sense, it's about laws. And the law says that you can't take pictures in a private property without the owner's authorisation. And experience tells me that companies usually do not give that authorisation to their employees.
I do agree.
I know that when it comes to law and corporation separately, there is no such thing as common sense. When law and corporation intermingle, things get even worse and there's no way of telling which way is up anymore.
Here's a good article about this situation. Turns out he's actually a Xerox employee, too.
Here's a truckload of G5s, obviously mishandled by the transport company (one of the palettes has tipped over, and been put back upright, but it's still all twisted, and some boxes are still on the truck bed).
What's a palette of G5s go for nowadays - 25-50k? So he's given Microsoft evidence that they can make a claim against the shipper for damaged goods, should any of the boxes not boot.
Instead, they fire him, ostensibly for "security violations", even though the loading dock is a shared area between his employer (Xerox - MS-Copy) and Microsoft, and there was absolutely no expectation of or breech of privacy (being shared between companies, its' a public area, at least to people working in both companies).
Perhaps I have been trolled. But I'll elaborate, just in case I haven't.
The guards are not required to inform you of your rights. In fact, there are only a few narrow instances where you are required to be informed of your rights at all. As I said, I bet someone here has encountered a guard who didn't know. There are a lot of them, after all.
The guards are NOT supposed to hold onto your items for you. Items you leave with the guards are destroyed. If you read my post, it was the ticket counter that would hold onto the item for my friend. Even then they certainly were not obligated to, and might have opened themselves to some liability if it had been lost. So this was certainly lucky. Returning an item to your car, for instance, would be reliable.
To reiterate, if you get stopped for something, and if you tried to leave the line with it, and if they confiscated it anyway, then that would've been illegal. And even illegal things happen every day.
I'll mention one more exception: It's may be (and probably is) a violation of law to attempt to circumvent their security. I don't doubt that they could arrest you and/or confiscate your stuff if they believed you were purposefully trying to circumvent them. But if you'd run afoul of that, you would likely have been interrogated, not just relieved of some item.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
"How did his manager find out about his website?"
More importantly, what business does MS have in monitoring the lives of their employees when said people aren't on the clock?
When I'm at work, fine, I expect you to be VERY concerned about what I do. My actions in the office directly reflect upon, and effect the lives of, everyone else I work with and, ultimately, my Employer.
But the minute I clock out, get your [CENSORED] nose out of my life.
I don't care if I decide to take up live chainsaw juggling, while bouncing on a trampoline, drunk off my arse, naked-but-covered-in-peanutbutter & being bitten by rabbid squirrels. It has NO reflection upon my employer, and is, more to the point, *none of their damned business*.
Sure, my work says I can't take pictures of anything inside the office, can't take anything from the office home with me that hasn't been cleared by Security & approved by management, and am not supposed to discuss what I do at work with anyone not AT my work...
But if I come to work 30 minutes early, take pictures of the flower garden & fountain-and-Koi-pond outside of the cafeteria (a publicly accessable space), and then post my critique of the architecture on my website when I get home, my employer has NO right to terminate my employment for my having done so.
Ok, so he took a photo of the inside of a delivery truck. It showed NOTHING proprietary, no internal trade secrets, no MS personnel, nothing that could, in any way, be identified except the G5 logos on the boxes. If it weren't for his admission that it was taken at work, and then identifying that "work" was MS, there's no way you'd ever know where the pic was taken.
So, as I see it, we've got someone who posts an innocculous picture on their blog, from their own machine, on their own bandwidth, on their own time, and when they show up for work, Employer fires them.
Where does it say that ANY employer is allowed to terminate your employment for something you've done OUTSIDE of work that wasn't illegal?
1. Yes, Microsoft has Mac operations. But that wasn't the building those G5s were going to.
2. The next generation X-Box will use IBM chips. http://tinyurl.com/th70
3. Why was he really fired? Because it fits a security issue related to theft, which has been a problem in the past. Basically the way it works is:
(Insider) Hey! There's a bunch of really valuable machines / RAM / whatever in the loading of building 138! No one's guarding them at all! Come and get 'em while they're hot!
(Accomplice) Got 'em! Thanks for the tip!
This is why the location pushes it over the edge. Without the location, it's clear there's no intent to steal because the Accomplice has no idea where to go.
No conspiracy. Just boring theft-prevention stuff which gets blown way out of hand because it's Microsoft we're talking about.