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."

Comments

so what ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates is God, I just don't believe in him.

Re:so what ?

[Farce Pest]

Your analogy might be better if he had been going around stealing people's souls with his camera., although some would argue Macs *do* have souls. Perhaps Microsoft was worried that he was cutting into their territory.

Where were those G5 going?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they were going to Windows Longhorn R&D-department. :)

Re:Where were those G5 going?!?

[azzy]

> I interviewed at Microsoft last week. One of my interviewers had both a Linux machine and a G5 in his office.

That's it, you're not going to be hired now.

Re:Where were those G5 going?!?

[jez9999]

You can't take a cellphone of any sort into a secure US government facility. ANYTHING which might be capable of carrying data out of the building must be surrendered when you leave.

That probably explains the lack of braincells in the US government.

Re:Where were those G5 going?!?

[matth]

Interesting.. don't they MAKE the camera phones at Samsung? :)

Re:Where were those G5 going?!?

[dipipanone]

Even stores and restaurants (like McDonald's) have policies against cameras being used and at the very least will escort you out if they catch you taking pictures inside.

Damn. So when you see all those snaps of happy smiling kids being entertained by Ronald McDonald at their birthday party, five minutes later, security arrived and escorted them off the premises?

If that's true, the McDonald's executives should have hot cups of coffee poured all over their genital areas as punishment.

Uh Oh

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Uh Oh

[bhtooefr]

It's his own server - and it appears to have melted. Hopefully it wasn't one of the G5's, because that'll hurt Apple BIG TIME, and I was thinking of switching (I WILL NOT buy a PC with a hardware DRM implementation!)

Offer to take the posting down

[Mr 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.

Is /. a Kro subsidiary ?

[mirko]

Bill Gates fires the blogger, /. closes his blog.

Office Space

[ShishCoBob]

Maybe they bought them for employee moral. Go office space on all of them out in a field somewhere.

Re:Why are they so secretive?

[buddhaunderthetree]

Well, you probably won't like the answer but I have it on good authority that in case of emergency, (i.e. the Govt. really enforcing anti-trust laws) the buildings on the MS campus will transform into giant robots, march on Washington D.C. and install Bill Gates as our new overlord.

Re:Why are they so secretive?

[Blob Pet]

Like this?

Re:Microsoft and the "community"

[mcrbids]

Are there other, genuine examples of MS community sites?

Well.... there's this one called slashdot! I mean, everytime a Microsoft employee belches, it makes front page there!

Security violation?

[phillymjs]

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

Re:I side with Microsoft on this one.

[zonix]

I even try not to talk about what I do to my wife.

So I guess there's no chance you'll post a picture of her then? ;-)

z

The Real reason he was fired...

[Cybertect]

Someone read his review of Kill Bill and got the wrong idea :)

Re:Microsoft and the "community"

[aridhol]

Wrong! It uses you!

Only in Soviet Russia.

Re:Non-issue

[Rary]

I hope that if you posted confidential information about your company online, in addition to firing you, your employer would take immediate actions to remove that confidential information, rather than leaving it where it is, declining an offer to remove it, and drawing attention to it so that the entire Slashdot crowd sees it, rather than just the 10 people who regularly visit the site in question.

hahaha

[holmengraa]

lmao @ american worker rights

Re:MSFT does Mac software, so DUH?

[websaber]

from the blog

"It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation"

LOL

This is a microsoft's version of a security flaw but leaving ports open isn't (and all of the other long list of items)? Go figure.