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Through The Steve Ballmer Looking Glass
Class Act Dynamo writes "I was browsing for a video clip I saw the other day, and I came across this clip from 15 years ago of Steve Ballmer pitching windows 1.0 in a television commercial. All I can say is WOW. Apparently, there was a big demand for integrating "LOTUS 1-2-3 with Miami Vice." You'll understand when you see the clip." Let it not be said that Microsoft has no sense of humor.
I really fail to see how this is News for Nerds or Stuff that Matters. It's just as bad as Bill Gates in 1983 Teen Beat Magazine.
Editors, can we have a Childish Microsoft Bashing section so I can filter this crap from my frontpage?
Do they expect their employees to laugh
/if the parent isn't flamebait, then neither am I, right? :)
I laughed. At first I laughed because I wasn't at the company meeting, so I thought the commercial was real and quite ridiculous. After I found out the truth, I laughed because it was clever -- and hey, how many CEOs are willing to make fun of themselves like that. Now, I laugh because slashdot fell for it, like I did.
Then again, being on the inside of a company that fulfills me intellectually with a dizzying variety of possible projects to work for, almost daily seminars on one topic or another, and the knowledge that my code will be run by millions of people, might make me a little more ready to have a good time and laugh.
That is only one more reason not to work for Microsoft. Do they expect their employees to laugh? Like the post just after this one, I felt sorry for him. It's embarassing.
rbanffy, a while back you made the following statement. Have your forgotten?
Spoof videos are a tradition at Microsoft, both company-wide and within individual teams. Some are better than others, and they're all somewhat cheesy, but they're usually a good icebreaker and it's refreshing to see executives, management, and fellow employees willing to poke a little bit of fun at themselves. Quite often they involve inside jokes, and a better understanding of the personalities of the people in the video, so I guess it's not that surprising when they occasionally leak and people outside Microsoft don't get the joke.
Regardless, it helps keep employees from taking themselves too seriously.
Judging by a lot of /. comments, people here would be well advised to take your original advice. The religious ferocity that they defend open source and bash Microsoft and other entities that don't adhere to their world view -- even over silly things like spoof videos -- is rather... unhealthy.
You misunderstand my argument. I was not arguing that the guy from London and the guy from Liverpool must sound exactly the same. Far from it. My point was that even though there are clear and well defined distinctions, multiple accents (or fruits) may be justifiably lumped together based on their similarities.
It is plainly not the case that these accents are "completely different". They are after all all speaking the same language. Even if your well trained ear finds the comparison ludicrous, an untrained ear won't pick up on those differences.
For example. To a trained apple eater a Red Delicious is "completely different" from a Granny Smith. One's sweet, the other's tart. One's mealy, the other is firm. Yet any 5 year old can tell they're both apples.
So yes, the OP was ignorant when he said "british accent", but there's nothing wrong with that. There's so much information in the world that everyone is ignorant about almost everything. Have you ever complained about a help-desker with an indian accent? Did it ever occur to you that in a country as big and as old as india there will be many different dialects and accents? Can you distinguish between a Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Colombian, and Chilean accents? Can you tell which borough a New Yorker is from just from his accent? No? Well, that's ignorance.
But it's not stupidity. Stupidity is an inability to understand things. Like the fact that distinct things can have similarities.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!