Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Bribing Bloggers With Laptops
Slinky writes "According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'. This 'reward' for their hard work on covering tech in general is coincidentally right before the launch of Vista to consumers. To be clear, these weren't loans, they were gifts, and they were top-of-the-line Acer Ferrari laptops. Microsoft blogger Long Zheng broke the silence over the source of the freebies."
That I'm a whore and can be bought. Please send my free laptop to:
Anonymous Coward
555 Mockingbird Lane
Anywhere, KS 51248
I look forward to "reviewing" Vista for you.
Since when is an "Acer Ferari" laptop a top of the line laptop. There are really only 2 types of top of the line laptops. One is an Apple MacBook Pro and its understandable why Microsoft wouldn't give that out. The other is the Thinkpad. No other PC laptop comes close to the thinkpad. Though its too bad they don't make a 15" 1600x1200 model anymore.
This is typical MS behaviour - entirely immoral and calculating ...
and where do I sign up?
Is it ethical? Probably not.
A new laptop to run Ubuntu on? Who cares?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
When Microsoft decides to bribe a blogger, they don't screw around. Damn...
I would be protesting this blatant attempt to reward the faithful if my mouth weren't watering so heavily.
(This may be a secondary ploy -- not only do they get to reward the faithful, but all their blogging enemies die off in saliva-related drownings...)
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
From the summary:
According to at least six bloggers, Microsoft has been sending out free top-of-the-line laptops pre-loaded with Vista as a 'no strings attached gifts'.
To me, that's a gift not a bribe. I can't remember the specifics, but I'm sure Apple did something similar a while ago. They're saying "thanks for the coverage", and that's that.
I'm happy over here with my OS X machines with Linux installs on the server side, and I still can't see a reason to be going after Microsoft for this. They got coverage, and they said thanks.
Cheers,
Ian
What "silence over the source of the laptops"? The bloggers mentioned in TFA all mentioned that the laptops were from Microsoft & AMD...
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I don't see this as too big a deal. What's far worse is bloggers who don't disclose the fact they got the gift in any related blog posts. Bloggers aren't expected to have any standards, but those that disclose this important information when blogging about Vista gain credibility.
Developers: We can use your help.
Microsoft chooses to send laptops to a select number of bloggers who are inclined to review them favorably anyway.
Maybe one or two out of that number don't write straight-down-the-line praises of microsoft products. Most, however, find their enthusiasm for Microsoft somewhat re-enforced by the arrival of a beautiful, beautiful machine. And the bloggers don't write cood Microsoft copy because they have to. They do it because they want to.
As far as I can tell there's nothing grossly unethical about it. It's not like Microsoft is paying anyone to write anything they don't already write. But for want of a better word, 'bribery' still works.
But my hat is off to Microsoft anyway. It's just... brilliant. Damn them. Brilliant.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
sure beats the Pentium 133 16mb ram 1.0gb HDD laptop running debian with no X the FSF sent me.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
I'm still waiting for my free samples for reviewing porn movies. Shame on you, porn industry: Microsoft has overtaken you in innovation for the first time.
But do they run Linux?
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
If it was "no strings attached", why would Microsoft have bothered in the first place? Seriously -- just felt a pressing desire to spend tens of thousands for the fun of it?
Microsoft knows that these bloggers have a long and deeply ingrained communal morality of "returning the favor" (it permeates all elements of our society), and no matter how much they might try to convince themselves that it won't affect their perception, it will intrinsically obligate them to be more inclined to see things from Microsoft's position, etc.
This is a long and well proven psychological impulse. Read the great book Power and Persuasion. Really fascinating stuff.
Having said all of that, if a Microsoft box arrived in the mail I certainly wouldn't refuse it.
"stereo" being here used to mean, "A sound system that uses two or more speakers, presenting sounds in a natural way from the directions in which they were picked up by two or more microphones." I just woke up :D.
A free laptop that downscales and then reupscales all "unprotected" high quality signals that pass through it? Just to cover the mere possibility that you didn't pay for something? A laptop designed to detect the slightest analog voltage fluctuations, and inject crap bits into the system to make it crash, just in case you attach an alligator clip to your sound card to get free music? Or with remotely destructible device drivers that are disabled by Microsoft once the RIAA learns about a driver vulnerability that allows leakage of "protected content"? No thanks.
Someone should get the list of developers who got free laptops, so we can send them Knoppix CDs as "no strings attached gifts". These laptops already need rescuing.
Since Vista might not run all that well on some of these folks old A21M Thinkpads or whatever, sending out CDs might be a bit risky. Especially given the general flakiness of laptop hardware. Getting a harvest of blogger comments about how Vista refused to install or installed, but ate six directories containing a new novel is really a dubious marketing investment. Since Microsoft is awash in profts from its unchecked monopoly practices, why not give away laptops along with the OS?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Well, record labels will send free CDs, t-shirts, and other materials. Movie studios will fly reviewers out to special reviewer-only screenings of their films in a high-end theater. Microsoft wants Vista to be run on the best possible hardware for it, so they'll send out laptops with Vista preloaded. Apparently, Slashdotters are just now realizing how the industry has worked for decades. It's in the best interests of the companies for reviewers to have access to their products for review, because all this stuff is expensive and can be hard to find.
You do realize they can send the laptop back to Microsoft when they're done reviewing Vista on it, right?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Record companies actually do this and more for premiere and/or favored artists. Floor tickets to athletic contests, concert tickets with backstage passes, escorts, etc. Payola, it's called.
un burrito me trampeó.
Game companies will not only fly reviewers out to their studio to play their games, but they will have them play it in a special game room with a giant plasma TV and 5.1 surround sound so that the reviewer can see the full experience they are providing (for example, many reviewers played Half-Life 2 on a high-end PC at Valve Software's building). Movie studios fly reviewers out to special film screenings. And on and on.
"Sufferin' succotash."
People don't complain about the cost as much when they don't need to pay for it. Put Vista on a Beefy system make sure it runs fast and smooth. These Bloggers otherwise would be rating Vista on a slower System, and probably paying for the smaller versions of vista. Where it could run clunky and choppy (plus MS May not have the drivers for it) Giving them systems they know it works perfectly on is like using systems at marketing expos They are setup for perfect use.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Journalists have another boss and they are supposed to have professional standards. Bloggers are more easily bought.
If Microsoft didn't engage in astroturfing and sent out Microsoft products then people wouldn't blink. Instead bloggers are being put into ethical conflict just as much as if they took a cheque from Microsoft.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
The way I see it, this divides the computer-writing bloggers into four basic camps:
1. Pro-Microsoft, got a laptop
2. Pro-Microsoft, didn't get a laptop
3. Anti-Microsoft, got a laptop
4. Anti-Microsoft, didn't get a laptop
The gift effectively marginalizes group 1 -- people will say, "Sure, you say that, but you've been bribed." And it'll partly marginalize group 2, as people will suspect them of being bribed and just not admitting it.
Conversely, it empowers group 3. If they're getting 'bribes' and still criticizing Microsoft? Well, gosh, they must be of sterling moral fibre, or something.
Group 4 would be split -- there will be those who increase their criticism out of either bitterness or a sense of moral outrage, just as there might be those who tone down their criticisms out of a vague hope of getting some future handout. Indeed, there will probably be more people writing about it, period.
No, it doesn't make sense as a bribe. Looking at it as a "thank you" or at worst an inexpensive play for publicity (peanuts compared to a TV ad) makes far more sense.
A few weeks ago Microsoft called a meeting for bloggers at their Redmond Campus. Bill walks into the meeting room and sees that every blogger that showed up was using a Mac laptop. Well I guess he didn't like that, so now he decides to send out free laptops to fix things. Trouble is, it's probably going to take more than a free laptop to make them switch back.
With no strings attached, this is not a bribe. It is a calculated risk:
1. Reviewers will be far less likely to criticize Vista's complex pricing structure not having had to personally invest energy into weighing the cost/benefit of buying a mid-range edition.
2. Reviewers will be far less likely to run into technical issues resulting from running the OS on mid-range hardware.
3. More reviewers will focus more energy on features unique to Ultimate, which would be an implicit endorsement of Ultimate over all other editions.
These actions are intended to inhibit (albeit to a limited extent) the spread of unbiased criticism to those who would benefit most by it. Going back to Ethics 101, this is (however subtly) acting against the best interest of society, and therefore unethical. Of course, in a society accustomed to a continuous assault on fact from many angles (sales/marketing/politics, etc.), this will go entirely unnoticed.
From the perspective of diminished responsibility, I'd say this action is so minutely unethical that to label it "immoral" is misleading. "Guerrilla Marketing" would be a more useful characterization.
MS is letting the flashiness of their OS speak for itself. I've been using vista RTM for a while now, and I've got to say it's really nice. The built in speech recognition in particular is amazing, allowing one to dictate as if he was speaking to a real person. After a few days of training, I can read the declaration of independence, a document containing hundreds of archaic words I hadn't trained the system on, at faster than normal speed, with nearly 100% accuracy. Vista has hundreds of other updates which are by and large really nice, and I would say that it's MS' best OS yet ...
Except for it's absolutely outrageous kowtowing to content providers. The fact that vista requires hardware that 99.9% of the market does not own to view premium content at it's native resolution is the quintessential dealbreaker for me. MS has completely abandoned the consumers' interest with this release and is blatantly selling out to the terrified MPAA and RIAA, as well as other content providers. Vista is a resource hog, and will drastically and unnecessarily increase hardware costs across the board, but particularly for video card manufacturers (What? You didn't want 2-3 of your Pixel shader pipelines devoted to useless en/decryption ? Too bad! Or those of you who appreciated the unified driver models, say goodbye to that.) If I want to watch a bluray video on my top of the line HD-capable system, who is Microsoft to tell me to buy a new monitor which will actively conspire against me?
Governments must not ever implement windows vista, due to its enforcement of so called "tilt bits" which will disable the system if it is not within certain prescribed limits. This is to detect and prevent people tinkering with their systems' insides. These small abberations are normal, and the ability of electronic hardware to withstand them is one of the reasons that it is so robust these days. A small thing like an intentional power surge has the potential to set off these tilt bits and disable any system running Vista.
This schizophrenic tenancy for products we own to be controlled by an external master is criminal and should not be tolerated by anyone who values freedom. I stole Vista in order to test it, and its beauty and usefulness scares me very much. I had hoped that MS would screw up like they usually do, and no one would buy vista. Once most people are using vista, computer users are screwed badly. The funny thing is that they have no one to blame but themselves, for not knowing that it is a wold in sheep's clothing. I'd urge anyone who has any possibility of using vista, ESPECIALLY those who have sway over it's use in the workplace to read this document by Computer Scientist Peter Guttmann, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. It's a great read, and is ablolutely infurating. Happy new years, Everybody
The only ethical reviewing is done by a system such as Consumer Reports uses. They pay full price retail at a random store for the product under review, then conduct extensive real-world tests, and they also do not accept ads for their magazine or website. This applies to released products. That some game or software or entertainment companies do the opposite, just give away stuff, doesn't matter, it is still completely sleazy from sleazy people then and unethical as all get out and you won't get an honest opinion, it is tainted, or has a high probability of being tainted. This is similar to scientific peer review, they have to be scrupulous to disclose industry ties/conflicts, and that's because the community recognizes that the potential for bias is there.
Unreleased products where they can be considered betas, no problem getting a sample loaner model, I have done it myself in a biz I was in before, critiquing proposed products. But, no money was received, nor were any products transferred for ownership, just a normal review process that both the product and the written review went back only to the manufacturer and wasn't for publication.
Um... Payola is illegal (in the US, anyway: YCMV) precisely because it was determined to be bribery. Originally "Payola" [Pay + Victrola] was a newspaper-coined name for a 1950s music industry scandal which resulted in fines and criminal convictions.
Today (well, for almost 50 years, really), the industry gets around the FCC regs and Payola laws by hiring "independent record promoters (not to be confused with "independent record producers"). They pay regional promoters, and the promoters pay the local radio stations. Indeed that is the sole function of these promoters, per first hand accounts, frequent reporting in the media, songs by popular groups and even Slashdot, where this issue has been discussed several times a year for ages (2001 article)). Sadly there is little political capital (and even fewer music/advertising industry contributions) to be found in pursuing it, and the FCC has turned a blind eye.
It's not just tickets to concerts or athletic events, it's expensive junkets and outright cash to program directors and radio stations, often billed as "promotion funding" (e.g. they give $1000 or some knickknacks to the radio station to be used as a prizes in a station promotion, and another $1000 or $5000 to the manager/director or station to pay for "administering" the promotion itself. The result is precisely the same as the outright bribery of the original scandal.
In recent years, NY State Atty Gen Elliot has prosecuting some of these these third party promoter arrangements as violations of his state's payola laws. Unless/until some federal prosecutor takes a case to court and gets a precedent saying it is an illegal circumvention of the payola rules/laws, it remains a legal loophole on the federal level.
The bloggers can return the laptops to Microsoft when they're done. However, your belief that companies don't give out free hardware is naive. It happens often.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I think that if it's disclosed, and the blogger continues to write, his bias will become pretty clear and whatever change he makes will be clear too.
:-).
Many, many years ago, I ran an anti-Microsoft web site and Microsoft contacted me and sent me Windows NT 4.0. It was less bad than Windows95, but it didn't change my opinion and my site remained as it was. They just told me that they wanted me to have their latest stuff, so that I could write honestly about it. I respeted that.
Truthfully, I think Microsoft did this to solve a curious little problem. Most bloggers aren't rich, and they're going to try and run Windows Vista on a computer that can barely run XP. So give them a gift, so they can run Vista the way it was meant to be run.
To amplify this a bit, I have a Windows PC right next to my PowerBook that's less than six months old. I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor on it and it sort of wimpered and slunk off with a "Vista Basic once you upgrade it to 1GB RAM from 512MB" recommendation. It's blazing fast running XP, with a 2.8ghz Pentium IV. An Apple computer of the same vintage would have no trouble at all running Tiger or Leopard.
I think most bloggers are not going to be influenced by the gifts per se, but they will be nicer about Vista since they have a machine on which it will run well, which they might well otherwise not be able to obtain.
I'm not sure if that's good or bad, fair or unfair. After all, most people on the ground nowadays are buying $799 laptops that do not have a prayer of running Vista. But truthfully, I think there's enough information about Vista's performance out there for people to be able to make up their own minds, and so Microsoft's efforts will have little genuine impact.
I'm glad the bloggers will at least get some cool free stuff. We all like that. It's a pity that Apple's legendary customer loyalty makes steps like this entirely superflurous for the likes of me who would not mind a free MacBook Pro at all
D
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.