Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Laptop Recipient Auctioning Laptop
Salvance writes "While most bloggers who received the controversial Vista powered Acer from Microsoft are keeping them, Laughing Squid has decided to auction off his free laptop from Microsoft and donate all proceeds to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation. (EFF) He saw this as a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and some other bloggers are following suit. What's funny is that Microsoft is now backpedaling and telling bloggers to send back the laptops. Do they even have a legal right to do so?"
For the price of these laptops they could have sent out complimentary Vista discs to thousands of these so called influential people.
Well given that Microsoft clearly said they could be sent back or given away when they gave them out initally of course they can. Also Microsoft have not asked for the latops back. They asked that they be given away or returned to them when reviewed, very big difference.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
For reference, see SCO and their trialmania.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The kicker is how they received it and what the prior to receipt emails constitute. I went through a bunch of blogs and most just say they received it but not how. One simply said a courier arrived (suggesting not USPS) but one did specifically mention DHL. So the below may not apply....
h tm
In the ENTIRE United States, if MS sent the item by the POSTAL SERVICE without contacting them first, it's considered unsolicited merchandise. And they can keep it.
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/merch.
Not only that, it's considered ILLEGAL practice by Microsoft to do so in the first place if by USPS, not sure if in general though (someone may want to look into that).
Not to mention, insisting that you return it MAY also be illegal (if received by USPS) esp. if they demand it, since they are under no obligation to do so, and if they are asking you to incur some debt to return the item.
Note that I'm aware that companies do this all the time by sending stuff to reviewers in hopes of getting a review posted. There is a private courier versus postal system distinction here it seems, so this all may not apply. Furthermore, it's not clear what sending you an email and you replying with your address constitutes--are you agreeing to solicitation or not?
It seems it depends on what the PR department said or contacted the blogger; if they say "gift" or "present" then my guess is that the blogger can do whatever. However, it does not seem that all the bloggers had the same communication with MS (not to mention received the same thing).
Regardless, this is great. MS tried to buy off bloggers. Bloggers blow who tried to pay them off with gifts. Bloggers give Vista bad reviews. MS tries to STUPIDLY backpeddle, thus making it more public that they tried to pay off the bloggers, have a crappy OS, and now have sour grapes and want their crappy OS back, showing their immaturity at reaping what they sowed, crappy PR, and anti-competitive tactics.
Win. Win. Win. Win.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to buy myself a MacBook.
The article isn't misleading at all. One blogger has decided to auction his laptop and give the proceeds to the EFF. Separately, Microsoft has decided that keeping the laptops is no longer an option. That's how I read the article summary. On reading the linked articles it becomes clear that they are concerned about the conflict of interest so they either want them back or they want them donated to somebody else. All of this seems reasonable (if a little odd) to me. The only unreasonable thing about the whole affair is that Microsoft didn't seem entirely clear about what the conditions should be when they sent out the laptops.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
- "I'm working on getting some hardware out to key community folks, and I'd like to offer you a review PC."
So right away we know its purpose is as a review PC and that it's being offered, conditional upon acceptance by the blogger.- "Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it."
Additionally, this lays out a gentleman's agreement on what can be done with the laptop: send it back, give it away, or keep it. Of course, I'm assuming that all bloggers got a similar letter. So this wasn't an unsolicited gift. They get a letter saying "Hey, I'd like to send this to you... do you agree?" and if they say "Yes, send it" then they should adhere to the gentleman's agreement they made. Does it have any legal teeth? Maybe... or maybe not. But who cares? Selling or auctioning it off, regardless of where the money goes, is not part of what they accepted the laptop for and behaving in such an apalling fashion doesn't seem honorable in the least.Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
And the sooner these fashion followers/brand junkies start making informed decisions about what to spend their money on then the better it will be for the rest of us - because then these corporations need to start creating good, value for money products rather than something with a pretty logo on it.
And as for your post, sitting there in your anonymous little dark cupboard ready to just throw abuse at anyone who posts something you don't personally like (perhaps you're a fanboy yourself?) is trollish behaviour if ever I saw it.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Unfortunately that tends to be "We are going to lose, but don't know it" speak. I wonder how many politicians have been elected on the platform of "We don't have to lie because we are better" great...and you also aren't elected so your policy of not lying really means about squat because the guy who is telling all the lies is the 'decider'. Not that I really advocate lying here, just playing devil's advocate a bit.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
But there are other benefits to Microsoft besides unintentional bias.
Just having enough influential bloggers get used to using Vista and writing about it may well help to increase its popularity by word of mouth (assuming it's not actually dramatically worse than XP). This is the "first hit is free" or "cinema preview" effect.
Letting bloggers who are likely to try Vista use a super-fast PC to give them the best possible user experience is also likely to cut down on negative comments.
At this stage, when Vista adoption rates are not yet decided, Microsoft would be happy to give away Vista machines or even pay people to take them. But that looks too much like bribery, which is bad PR, and it looks like they backtracked because they realised that.
In retrospect, they probably should have only sent out review copies and asked for them to be sent back, to get the positive effects of publicity without the accusations that they were trying to buy good reviews.
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
Thank you... I hear this all the time in political/religious discussions. "Well, X side spreads so many lies, we're at a disadvantage, so if we exaggerate from time to time, it's ok because it balances out!"
Balances out? How about instead of the world coming down to their side or your side, it comes down to what's true and what isn't true?? And if so, how is putting out even more false information balancing anything out?
And if that isn't working... quite frankly, if you're the underdog, participating in falsifying information is especially risky from a pragmatic point of view. Why break the status quo to adopt the thinking of someone you've caught repeatedly lying/exaggerating to you? Cynicism and the idea that you can't trust any side generally seems to eventually beat people down into just accepting the status quo: which is not you.
I estimate zero. All politicians lie.
He's not giving it away, he's selling it. What he does with the money doesn't change that.
If a blogger wants to write a savage review of Vista, that's awesome. I hate Microsoft, and enjoy seeing them fail.
If a blogger wants to donate his own money to the EFF, that's also awesome. The EFF rocks, and deserves our support.
If a blogger wants to sell something which he accepted on the condition that he would "return, give away, or keep", that's dishonest.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Every community has its fanatics. It just comes with the territory when dealing with people. Whether it's a religious, political, social or technological faction; there are foaming-at-the-mouth busybodies with agendas and megaphones and there are reasonable rational participants. In most cases, the fanatics are only a tiny minority. They're just a lot louder.
If your goal is to spread truth (e.g. if the main reason you oppose X is that it is based on / spread by lies) you may find yourself faced with just the sort of decision you describe. But you have mischaracterized the alternatives. Your actual options are:
Remember, winning the battle is a means to an end. If you do something to "win" the battle that prevents you from obtaining your ultimate goal, it does your cause more harm than good.
--MarkusQ
The environmental left, which seems to be run by anti-capitalist intellectuals and the general misfits, though the foot soldiers are normal caring people that want to leave the world better, not worse, adopted the Marxist/Leninist ends justify the means, and it blew up in their faces. For example, there is now pretty much incontrovertible evidence that humans ARE causing an unprecedented shift in certain chemicals that tend to correlate with climate change in the past, and evidence that we are causing climate change. However, the champions of this are the same malcontents that championed global cooling, zero population growth because we were going to run out of food, and other problems that do not exist. They BLEW there credibility.
The peak oil analysis is interesting (I don't agree, I think that the Saudi Prince put it best, the stone age didn't end because people ran out of stones), but the market is more resilient than the "keep trends constant" analysis that it does, and ignores that as the long-term price goes up (not short-term spikes), certain fields become profitable and oil flows, in addition, alternative energy sources that weren't viable at $20/barrel are at $40, more are at $60, and at $80-$100/barrel, a whole bunch of technologies championed by environmentalists become economically viable.
However, when you blow your credibility, then people trust you less. Fighting Microsoft on the business communications front is stupid, that is their strongest point. They have never hit their shipment or technology targets, never released innovated software, but they DO put out roadmaps and communicate well. Fight them in software land, and keep nibbling their market. Remember, software is a high fixed cost, zero marginal cost game, every lost sale to them comes directly off the bottom line, weakening them for the next round. It costs the same to develop NT 7.0 whether they hold 95% of the market or 80% of the market, so losing 15% of the market no doubt hits profits by 30% of more. It's a game of inches.
However, if you blow your credibility, its REALLY hard to get it back. Microsoft's Cairo and Longhorn debacles have strained their credibility, which is why both Linux and OS X are making strides, Microsoft's miss-execution invited competition. There is no need to blow your own credibility.
This is not a zero sum game. It's not a win or lose thing. By participating in open source we create more points so that we can all win.
Yes, Microsoft is trying to crush open source. No, I don't think they have a hope in hell. No, I don't think we can sit around and do nothing to resist them. No, I don't think we have to lie. I think our best hope lies in pointing out the obvious contradictions and lies they're making. You don't see politicians do this (for the most part) because they are almost all liars. They can't go pointing out the lies of others, because they live in glass houses themselves. The tactic is simply not available to them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"