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?"
Microsoft isn't demanding that the bloggers return the laptops at once, which is what the wording of the article suggests - Microsoft only said that after the review is completed, he has the option of sending it back. Just my $0.02.
For the price of these laptops they could have sent out complimentary Vista discs to thousands of these so called influential people.
Presumably, Microsoft read the same New York Times Op-Edon bias as everyone else, that basically says that people claim to be uninfluenced by things like this but that they really are fooling themselves and are biased. Microsoft wouldn't have done this laptop giveaway if they didn't think it would work- that is, result in at least slightly better reviews than they would have gotten otherwise.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =160068144458
Just a day ago we were all jealous and against anyone who'd dare to keep a laptop from Microsoft, and already we have to defend them? *BOOM* Good God, I can't figure out how I should blame Microsoft now. Please help me out, folks.
I once had an Acer Ferrari laptop a while back (I helped someone get an ebay business started and they gave it to me as a gift)
It actually was a very decent machine. It was pretty fast. The price tags are a little enormous though, especially considering the speakers were such crap you'd hear static on even low volume settings.
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.
Yawn is all I can say.
Okay, not the EFF, but how about
The Online Slang Dictionary
The real news here is how snobbish, foppish and whiny that blogger is. Is this what the blogosphere is like?? Is it really ruled by Mac-obsessed almost-hipsters with unwise facial hair and diagonal black-and-white photos of themselves? Do they really whinge on about how they're too clever to use Vista and how their webcasting startup will change the face of the Internet (sidebar on the right)?
Is this it, after 10 years of evolution?? Nathan Barley writ small, throwing a hissy fit because the wording of the letter on a review item was vague? THAT is a blogger important enough to merit unsolicited review junk??
Yeesh.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
First: a disclaimer (though I think it's irrelevant) I am a Microsoft MVP Now then, The little news blurb is misleading. The first time I read the post, I thought that Microsoft was unhappy that the blogger was donating his machine to charity and demanded the laptop back. Upon thorough reading of the included links, it is apparent that Microsoft has asked the blogger to give the laptops away (in support of the auction) or send them back to Microsoft. If you are going to include everything that Microsoft has done wrong, you might as well nail when they *actually* screw up. Trust me, there are enough of those to keep /. busy without misrepresenting stories.
wng
If you piss of MSFT, you get a Ferrari Laptop.
If you piss Steve off really well, you get the chair.
The writer for this article is spinning this article. According to the links, MS is asking them to return the laptops *OR* give them away as a gift. By reading the submission alone we are led to believe that MS is merely asking for them back. I'm not condoning their actions or anything but let's call an orange an orange!
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 pissed off Ferrari once, and they sent me a Microsoft sports car. I had a feeling they were trying to kill me when I was doing 200 KM/H on a German highway and my front windshield windows turned blue.
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.
You can't un-ring a bell
once the sound waves get out.
When I read a review
there always be doubt.
Were the words to critique?
Were the words to describe?
Is that glowing review
the result of a bribe?
They sent Ultimate insults
with Ferrari toupees
When they should have
just let the chips
fall where they may.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
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
There seems to be quite a bit of misinformation here regarding my "agreement" with Microsoft (there wasn't any) regarding what I can do with the laptop. I've updated my blog post with the following:
As I mentioned in my original post on the laptop, the only communication I received about this was an email from Edelman. The email stated that Microsoft was sending me a "present" with "no strings attached" (those were the exact words used in the email). They did not include any instructions at all regarding what to do with the laptop. Also, I did not receive the same email as the other bloggers, including the follow-up email that was sent by Microsoft to Marshall Kirkpatrick asking him to return or give away the laptop. I have asked Edelman for an explanation regarding this inconstancy, but have not yet received one. So just to be clear, I was never sent any kind of instructions on what to do with the laptop and I did not sign anything, including an NDA.
If you chose to lie, you deceieve others. You push a view on them that twists them from the truth, from reality.
You have then already lost. Whatever you think you can win that is not based on truth, will not prevail and will always be there in the back haunting you. Any pleasure you get out of it will come with a hook, back to the shady past.
Truth will set people free. Basically, the only evil, or rather the ignorance, in this world is when people believe the means justifies the ends. Nobody kills or steals just out of spite, or if they do, they have some serious hurt they are not able to cope with. Such self-destructive behaviour should be pitied and helped, not condemned or judged. Jesus allegedly said: For you shall yourself be judged - or put another way: When you judge others, you will judge yourself just as harsh - it's just that time makes the illusion of it not already happening.
Just happily playing God`s advocate. =)
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Microsoft's main blurb gave three options: return, give away or "hold onto for as long as you like". Sell was not an option.
This is really interesting in a legal, pedantic way.
Consumer law should may support the claim that "hold onto for as long as you like" = "you own it". Certainly, no court case that I'm aware of has ever supported the "not for resale" clause attached to practically every video and piece of software on the shop shelf.
But does consumer law apply here? Bloggers have been touting themselves as "citizen journalists" for some time now and here Microsoft have taken the very bold step of taking that claim seriously. With the odd exception (when the marketers foolishly described the laptop as a "gift for you"), the review kit was sent out in accordance with standard journalistic practice. I'm not in the press, but it's pretty common practice to send review kit with the option to give away. In the press, give away generally means a competition prize. What Microsoft wanted was more than just a bunch of reviews -- they wanted a few dozen free computers that everyone on the internet wanted to win. Off the back of this, they wanted Vista to become a prestige item.
Of course, being "citizen" journalists, the bloggers just weren't used to this sort of thing and didn't know what the letter meant, but the professional journalists would have understood it perfectly well.
If these bloggers are the journalists that they claim to be, then they should be able to take the bold step of adhering to journalistic conventions, rather than hiding behind consumer protection laws.
Bloggers can't have it both ways: either they're journalists, free to protect their sources (cf the leaks from Apple), or they're consumers.
Oh, and if they don't adhere to journalistic conventions, neither Microsoft nor any other major company will ever offer them competition prizes again.
Citizen journalists score own goal.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
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.
Hold that thought for a minute while I go sell my Apple stock.
"I've spent my whole life figuring out crazy ways to do things. It'll work." -- Montgomery Scott, "Relics"