Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia

Unpaid Schill writes "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."

Comments

Honesty....

[BWJones]

This is not new behavior. Remember when Microsoft tried to hire "individuals" to perform "grassroots" work including writing letters to the Department of Justice and letters to the editors of papers around the country concerning the anti-trust trial? Look, I have friends at Microsoft and there are truly some brilliant folks up there, but what the hell is the marketing department doing? Are they *that* ethically challenged? Or is it that they are *that* desperate to be cool and loved? How about a policy of honesty and if there is something that you want, then why not have your Microsoft PR department make the edits? Is that too obvious? It would certainly present other ethical dilemmas, but at least it would be more honest than hiring supposed "impartial" third parties to do your work for you.

Re:Honesty....

[wpegden]

A policy of honesty?

How about a policy of let's make as much money as we can!

I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics? Perhaps you're suggesting that they would make more money if they didn't have "unethical" policies like this... but that's not at all clear from your post. It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations. (Let me rephrase that: this is obviously not the case.) Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money. So far, they've been very successful at that. Probably their PR department played at least some small role in that. Don't get me wrong, I despise them too, but let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.

Re:Honesty....

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

what the hell is the marketing department doing? Are they *that* ethically challenged?

As a matter of fact, yes they are. Corporations (and therefore their various departments), by definitions, only have in mind the interest of their shareholders, therefore if being unethical furthers their interest and a corporation can get away with it, they will be.

I suggest you watch a documentary called The Corporation: they very clearly demonstrate that the laws governing corporations make then sociopathic by nature.

Re:Honesty....

[imess]

If you read the article, that guy was hired to make technical correction in the Wikipedia entries. Why would you expect that only MS PR people should do it?

The quotes around the work "Correct" in the summary headline is just another Slashdot spin...

Re:Honesty....

[Scrameustache]

what the hell is the marketing department doing?
Are they *that* ethically challenged?
Or is it that they are *that* desperate to be cool and loved?
How about a policy of honesty Their job.
Yes.
That's their job.
That would be the anti-thesis of marketing.

Re:Honesty....

[AuMatar]

You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization? Or should standards of ethics and non-monetary issues be forced onto corporations by society (government)?

Corporations as they exist today are a mistake. A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design). But the idea that it should be done by a pseudo-person with no sense of morality, whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed.

Re:Honesty....

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

What are you saying? That because a corporation wants to make money that we shouldn't criticise them when they're caught acting unethically?

That's just stupid.

Re:Honesty....

[DragonWriter]

You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization? Or should standards of ethics and non-monetary issues be forced onto corporations by society (government)?

Its worth noting that it used to be that governments were far more restrictive about the corporate charters they would approve, and far more willing to revoke charters for corporations violating the public interest. The special privileges granted with a corporate charter were viewed more as a privilege granted in the public interest and conditioned on good behavior than as a virtual right the way they are now.

What we have now is not some intrinsic necessity for the corporate structure, a remnant of late 19th Century subservience to big business.

Re:Honesty....

[vyrus128]

Sadly, although you are right on, I have found that espousing such a view will get people to look at you as though you have a third eye. Much as most people believe in a right to "intellectual property", everyone also seems to believe in an inherent human right to form corporations, and they cry out in horror when you suggest that granting the privilege of incorporation unfettered is a bad idea. I can only conclude from this that people are idiots.

Re:Honesty....

[thelost]

excuse me, did anyone ask you to get in the way of a good ms bashing opportunity?

Re:Honesty....

[nuzak]

The special privileges granted with a corporate charter were viewed more as a privilege granted in the public interest and conditioned on good behavior than as a virtual right the way they are now.

A slightly less rose-tinted view of history suggests that corporate charters were granted when there was an assurance that the ruling prince of the city-state, or his cronies, would get a cut.

Re:Honesty....

[Otter]

How about a policy of honesty and if there is something that you want, then why not have your Microsoft PR department make the edits? Is that too obvious? It would certainly present other ethical dilemmas, but at least it would be more honest than hiring supposed "impartial" third parties to do your work for you.

You did read the link, right?

This isn't some random anonymous goofball being paid to insert text Microsoft gives him; he's an (apparently) recognized figure, not especially MS-friendly, being paid to provide corrections in his area of expertise, with his reputation on the line. I'd trust that more than edits made by the PR people. He certainly made his case a lot more credibly than the Slashdot submitter made his.

I mean, I can still see where there are questions to be raised, but the write-up here is completely dishonest.

Re:Honesty....

[Cstryon]

I think the only honest companys turn out to be Mom and Pop shops that never go very far. It sucks, but you don't make money in America unless you arn't completely honest. I even exagerate on my Resume to get the job that I CAN do but my completely honest resume would say I can't.

Re:Honesty....

[steelfood]

At least said third party has explicitly stated that he's being paid by Microsoft. And at least Microsoft has not barred him and others they are paying from doing the same. How much more honesty can you ask for? If Microsoft told a bunch of PR people to edit Wikipedia, they'd probably not have told anyone, and no one would've known Microsoft was paying PR people to subtly skew articles in their favor.

Third parties are usually where corporations finds impartiality, even if the third party receives a cheque from the company on a monthly basis. Most other industries use a third party for impartiality--e.g. auditing in the financial industry, security audits, etc. are essentially asking a third party to review existing data for disrepencies. Why can't Microsoft do the same with their products and/or standards?

Re:Honesty....

[BWJones]

I mean, I can still see where there are questions to be raised, but the write-up here is completely dishonest.

The O'Reilly link timed out on me (twice), so admittedly I took the article/Slashdot post at face value (and prior experience) before responding. Thanks for the clarification and I'll be happy to take my moderation lumps now... :-) Of course this is another example of Slashdot's poor editorial policy and why I've been spending less time here than in the past.

Re:Honesty....

[Qzukk]

what they're "supposed" to.

And murderers are doing what they're "supposed" to, after all, thats why we call them "murderers". Who decided that the profit motive was supposed to be superior to honesty? I think you'll find that fraud is not accepted in standard definitions of "free market" or "Capitalism", so where has the idea that lying for money is permissible come from?

Re:Honesty....

[DragonWriter]

A slightly less rose-tinted view of history suggests that corporate charters were granted when there was an assurance that the ruling prince of the city-state, or his cronies, would get a cut.

Since I was (though I didn't make this clear) referring to earlier US history, I'd say that's more of a view of a different part of history, but sure. And certainly neither the earlier US practice nor the more recent one was or is free from the corrupting influence of cash and the cronyism of the connected.

Re:Honesty....

[sokoban]

Corporations as they exist today are a mistake. A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design). But the idea that it should be done by a pseudo-person with no sense of morality, whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed. Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else. If a sufficient majority of shares demand that a corporation act ethically, then the corporation will have to operate as such. Most shareholders want maximum returns on their investments, and honestly do not care about ethics. This stems from the fact that corporations and investment are economically motivated decisions. Economics is incapable of accounting for such intangible things, since economic decision making is based entirely off monetary values being assigned. The environment, ethics, and other very important things cannot be assigned a monetary value, and thus can not be properly accounted for in any economic system.

Re:Honesty....

[paeanblack]

You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist?

Absolutely. Entities that exist for a sole purpose are inherently "trustworthy" by the pragmatic meaning of "trust"...they are transparently predictable. Predictable is good.

Beyond a certain size, a corporation can no longer be anthropomorphized to an entity capable of emulating human behavior. They have no "soul", no "conscience", nor any sense of "good" and "evil". They are simply successful or unsuccessful, determined by the only metric with any meaning to them...money.

We find corporations to be useful entities, but we cannot expect them to police themselves, because it is simply not in their nature. That we must accept, while also accepting and upholding the task to monitor and contain them. If we shirk that responsibility, that's society's fault, not the corporations'.

If one wants to see what happens when a corporation attempts to police itself, one must examine any large socialist government. They are certainly not the first organization one would call upon if one wished to actually accomplish any useful work.

Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?

A wolf is not a sociopath; it's just a wolf. The sociopaths are the citizens who do nothing while a wolf behaves as wolves do.

Re:Honesty....

[s20451]

Much as most people believe in a right to "intellectual property", everyone also seems to believe in an inherent human right to form corporations, and they cry out in horror when you suggest that granting the privilege of incorporation unfettered is a bad idea. I can only conclude from this that people are idiots.

Actually, the grandparent denounced corporations while acknowledging the necessity of a corporation-like object by saying: A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design).

It's incredibly short-sighted to say "X sucks and should be banned", when X provides a useful service, and when no alternative is proposed. Say we banned corporations. Because of the necessity of a corporation-like object, it is very likely that such an object would quickly appear, and over time would evolve into something indistinguishable from today's corporation.

It's appropriate that you likened the argument to the argument over intellectual property. Again, IP sucks in many ways, but has useful consequences. If IP laws were repealed, and nothing replaced them, it is likely that content creators would re-create something similar to the IP system using complicated contracts (e.g., you would have to sign a lengthy agreement prior to purchasing an album at a music store).

Re: Honesty....

[Dolda2000]

I think that you, too, miss the point. Even though corporations may be pseudo-persons with no sense of morality and with the sole purpose of amassing money and power, I think it is important to note that they are, indeed, pseudo-persons. They have not actually any consciousness, will or deciding ability in themselves. Normally, that task is carried out by actual humans.

Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia. He must also have presented it to his boss (unless it was some boss who thought of the idea himself), who in turn must have ordered someone to carry out the plan. Shouldn't an obviously unethical plan such as this have been stopped at some point in this chain? Shouldn't that boss figure have some kind of conscience which should have stopped him from doing this? Another problem may be the current inability (real or imagined) of "peons" in a corporation to themselves stop such plans when being ordered to carry them out. Generally, I believe that the lack of personal responsibility for actions being carried out "in the name of a corporation" is the real culprit.

Also, aside from the ethical standpoint, must they not have realized that this would leak out?! I mean, this cannot be considered positive PR, right?

Re:Honesty....

[kickingandscreaming]

I was taking a Business Law class a couple years back and we were going over the basics of corporations. I asked the "Professor" (Civil Lawyer posing as adjunct faculty) his opinion of corporate "personhood." He looked at me blankly and then asked me what I meant. I then asked him whether he thought it was a good idea to have corporations considered "persons" in a court of law. He said that he'd never thought about it.

Re:Honesty....

[MeanderingMind]

Their job.

Being the PR department, their job description probably involves maintaining a positive PR image for the company. A fiasco such as this is them failing at their job. This is "doing their job" in the same way Uwe Boll makes movies.

Yes.

I honestly can't make a call here. I'd like to assume that all marketers are terrible people lacking ethics, moral restraint, and any worth. However, not knowing any marketers personally I can't claim they are swampy morasses of evil.

That's their job.

This is true, although in this case they didn't perform well.

My personal preference would have been an interesting public press release regarding factual errors in the wikipedia articles, suggesting editors could check the facts for themselves and amend the issues. That way MS couldn't be said to have interfered with the objectivity of wikipedia while at the same time allowing it to be more accurate.

Not a perfect solution to be sure, but one that might show much more respect, tact and tolerance than ninja editing wikis.

That would be the anti-thesis of marketing.

While this is perhaps the case with much of marketing now, it needn't be.

For example, Nintendo. I would say that their marketing is honest. Their advertisements show a wide variety of people playing games with the new controller. Whether or not we agree that this is fun, Nintendo has worked hard at making their system fun in this way and believes strongly that this has been accomplished. The very successful sales of the system back this up.

If the system failed to sell well because Nintendo had failed in their goal to make such a system, they wouldn't be dishonest for having tried, felt they succeeded, and then attempted to share their success with everyone. However, they would be dishonest if they began/continued to make claims about their system that were divorced from reality.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

were you paid to say that?

Re:Honesty....

[dtfinch]

should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist?
Society is formed by people, who allow such organizations to exist by purchasing their products. Even if they're wrong to support Microsoft, it's their freedom. To take the decision out of the hands of consumers would be to deny them market freedom. Imagine saying "No, we won't let you buy from that company, because we've decided they're too dishonest and profit driven."

Investors who are willing to risk their own money decide which start-ups to invest in. Consumers decide which company will ultimately be successful, and a successful investor will try to identify those companies.

Re:Honesty....

[soft_guy]

I might be more inclined to buy their products if I thought of them as honest and trustworthy. Instead, they engage in widespread astroturfing, multi-year disinformation campaigns against OpenGL, and all manner of other nefarious behavior. So, when it comes time to choose what I'm going to use, I'm a lot less likely to choose Microsoft because you can't believe what they say.

Yes, I have an anti-MS bias. The question is why do I have an anti-MS bias. And this is one of the big reasons.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations as they exist today are a mistake. [The idea of] a pseudo-person with no sense of morality, whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed.

Yeah, there can be only one Government.

Re:Honesty....

[dtfinch]

People like you make companies think my resume is exaggerated. I really have programmed in over 20 languages, and dabbled in almost every field of CS imaginable, since I started programming 15 years ago at age 9. I have to condense my resume and omit a lot of the cool parts.

Re:Honesty....

[derrickh]

You sir, are a communist.

D

Re:Honesty....

[foobsr]

Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?

"Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older -- about one in four adults -- suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year." c.f.

I bet it will turn out to be hard to look for funding for research on whether above areas are somehow connected.

CC.

Re:Honesty....

[GreedyCapitalist]

You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? A corporation is just a way for people to pool their assets together and make common investments without putting property they did not invest at risk. If you do business with a corporation, you acknowledge that you can't seize an employee's house if his company goes bankrupt. If an employee of a corporation commits a criminal offense, he's still personally liable. He just doesn't have to put his personal property at risk if he commits a civil offense. Furthermore, if corporations are "people" then our government is guild of serfdom. Their every dollar must be tracked so politicians can seize the loot, they are subject to more regulations than any other organization, they have no right to free speech, they are taxes double (personal + corporate taxes), they are not allowed to sell stock, split, or buy without permission, and their executive can be arbitrarily jailed for unethical, but non-criminal behavior (see insider trading). Even their right to defend themselves from looters in Congress and the electorate is being taken away. Businessmen are America's most persecuted minority.

Re:Honesty....

[Skadet]

should standards of ethics and non-monetary issues be forced onto corporations by society (government)?

They already do. Antitrust laws exist because it's (supposedly) unethical to monopolize a market and then leverage that monopolization to penetrate other markets. If it were all left to the fickle finger of the free market, bad products simply would not last, in theory, as consumers would vote with their wallets. Even so, the government regulates this activity because it's unethical.

Re:Honesty....

[0xABADC0DA]

Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else.

Actually this isn't the problem with corporations today. The problem is that employees are not responsible for the companies actions. Instead, corporations are now "people" who are responsible for the actions that the employees take. There's an obvious disconnect there; the "person" responsible is not the person actually doing the crime.

Corporations typically have a hierarchical structure just so that somebody can be held accountable. If a corporation does something illegal then the person behind that decision needs to be tried for it, not the corporation. If the company hires somebody to do something illegal then the person authorizing that is responsible and the people who knew about it are accessories and the people who found out later and did nothing are accessories after the fact.

This is the real problem today. For example, Microsoft gets convicted of criminal restraint of trade and there are absolutely no personal consequences for the people authorizing it and perpetrating it. There are plenty of people in MS who knew of this and would not have allowed it to happen if their own butt was on the line.

Re:Honesty....

[Otter]

Thanks for the clarification and I'll be happy to take my moderation lumps now... :-)

Heh, I wouldn't worry too much on that score... :-)

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of grassroots see www.anyofficesuite.org

Re:Honesty....

[kabocox]

The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?

It's obvious from that statement that you don't have much stock invested in any company.

Re:Honesty....

[MillionthMonkey]

It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations. (Let me rephrase that: this is obviously not the case.) Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money. So far, they've been very successful at that. Probably their PR department played at least some small role in that. Don't get me wrong, I despise them too, but let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.

Oh God, I don't know what's the matter with people anymore. Everyone is so brainwashed with these right wing talking points.

A corporation's goal is to maximize profit. While a corporation's officers have a fiduciary duty to work toward this goal, they must do it within the law. A corporation is a legal instrument and is constrained to operate within the law like the rest of us. Its goal to maximize profit doesn't give it license to commit vandalism. I mean, it's my own goal as an individual to maximize the amount of money I have myself. I can't simply cite that my goal requires me to break the law.

While there are not yet any laws against it yet, it's pretty obvious that this is vandalism of a public resource.

Re: Honesty....

[rbochan]

...Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia...

Exactly.

Porter: Who makes the decisions?
Carter: Well, a committee would make the decision in this case...
Porter: One man... you go high enough you always come to one man... who?

Re: Honesty....

[SydShamino]

At some level, everyone who works for someone else has to make trade-offs in their employer's interest.

For example, I personally try to buy products made locally from local retailers, or, failing that, buy products made in my country. This helps subsidize the industry of my own country, even if I could have purchased alternatives from elsewhere for less.

When making purchase decisions for my employer, I look for whatever is most reliable and cost effective. If we are confident that a supplier from country X produces a quality product, can provide support when needed, and will deliver what we want on time, my first choice is to use them over the local guy that costs more. I could never justify any other decision to my boss, and neither could he to his boss, all the way to the board of directors. If they made such a decision, and it got out, shareholders would sue.

Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia. He must also have presented it to his boss (unless it was some boss who thought of the idea himself), who in turn must have ordered someone to carry out the plan.

Not many people these days think buying internationally is unethical. Still, my example shows how someone who has made personal decisions about ethics and morality can make different choices in a corporate setting.

I would love to see companies chartered as not not-for-profit but not solely for-profit, but somewhere in between. Let companies be chartered to make a product, compete in markets, and make a profit, but then let them state that they will never give dividents, instead donating all that money to save the rainforests or something.* Maybe no one would invest in them and they would die off, but maybe there would be enough people willing to invest in such a company (and buy its products) that it could compete.

* Yes, I know companies donate to charities now. However, they only do so to the extent that the PR yields a net increase in shareholder value, by law. I'm talking about companies donating more than is necessary for just PR, to causes that might not generate periodic good press releases.

Re:Honesty....

[The_Wilschon]

I'd trust that more than edits made by the PR people.

I would too, if he weren't taking MS's check. Money has this curious way of interfering with most people's thoughts and consciences. I don't know the man personally, so I don't know that he wouldn't be affected by this. The truly honest thing for him to have done would be to refuse MS's money, but make the corrections he thought were best anyway. That is, he ought to have treated MS's offer as a bit of information that something was wrong and in his power to fix. The fact that he didn't means that he isn't perfectly ethical to start with (of course, who is?), and since I don't know how ethical he is other than not perfectly, I don't trust him any more than MS's PR department.

I have occasionally made corrections to articles in my own area of expertise. Those who pay me don't have any real reason to be biased one way or another on those matters, unlike MS paying this chap. However, also unlike this guy, those who pay me neither care nor know that I infrequently contribute to wikipedia. Really a very big difference.

This isn't some random anonymous goofball being paid to insert text Microsoft gives him; he's an (apparently) recognized figure, not especially MS-friendly

It doesn't sound like you have ever heard of him either. He claims not to be MS-friendly in his article; he manages to suggest that his reputation is on the line; he appears surprised that MS approached him. However, in true conspiracy theory form, this is exactly what he would claim, suggest, and appear if he really were some goon born and raised in Redmond. He probably isn't. But why should I trust him any more than anyone else? (Naturally, somebody who has heard of him, or knows him, could give plenty of good reasons one way or the other. But from what you've said, I would infer that you cannot.)

the write-up here is completely dishonest.

Yes. It is. Still does not imply that the original article is not also dishonest.

Re: Honesty....

[violet16]

I think it is important to note that they are, indeed, pseudo-persons. They have not actually any consciousness, will or deciding ability in themselves. Normally, that task is carried out by actual humans.

There's an interesting view emerging that it's actually more accurate to view a corporation as a self-aware entity. The reason that corporations routinely engage in behavior that would be considered obscene by a human being is not that there just happen to be a few "bad eggs" in positions of power, but rather that the structure of a corporation encourages and extracts bad behavior from otherwise reasonable human beings.

There are endless examples of this, and an intriguing discussion in Wade Rowland's Greed, Inc.. It's convenient for corporations to blame "bad egg" individual employees, because people can be easily replaced, and ignores the reality that the true root of the problem is systemic.

Re: Honesty....

[BlackSabbath]

Technically you are correct - corporations are non-thinking entities made up of thinking humans. However they are a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Of complex, sometimes unpredictable behaviour arising out of systems with relatively few, simple rules.

Anybody that has worked for or with large corporations knows that they have a unique "culture" that is different from one to another. This culture largely survives changes of individuals within it. It is hard to identify where the culture "comes from". There is no single source of it - in some corporations you could replace the CEO and his direct reports and the culture would not change in the short or medium term (or ever cf: government).

One analogy would be the human brain. Many brain cells - individually very simple - governed by few simple imperatives generating very complex behaviour which is hard to pin down to any single brain cell (or even small group of cells).

"Mob rule" is another example of this kind of thing - where behaviour arises that exceeds that which any of its individual elements would necessarily countenance.

Here's a thought...
If evolutionary pressure was enough to select for "morality" and "ethical behaviour" in individuals, could it be that over time, these new entities will eventually evolve these traits as well?

Re:Honesty....

[McFadden]

I'm so glad to hear there's at least one other person in the world who share's my repulsion at the way we've let big business's pursuit of profit at all cost completely dominate our lives. I'm sick of hearing how a company has decided to reduce it's workforce by 10% to 'make efficiency savings' shortly after it announces hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. Why is it so necessary to fuck up people's lives when the company was already healthy and had impressive profitability?

But hey... A company like Craigslist comes out and says that profit is not their main motivation and company culture is more important to them, and they're described in the media as "communist". Well more power to communism in that case!

Re: Honesty....

[aeoo]

Shouldn't an obviously unethical plan such as this have been stopped at some point in this chain? Shouldn't that boss figure have some kind of conscience which should have stopped him from doing this?

Me and you would like to think they "should". But reality is that they are protected behind the shield of that pseudo-person. Even though ethical mistakes belong to individuals making them, when it comes time to present your complaints, you have to address them to Microsoft, the pseudo-entity and not to a particular person.

The reason those pseudo-entities are so dangerous is that they make people faceless when they act on behalf of the company.

And that was actually the whole point. The point was to limit damages to the real person by creating this fictitious person who could accept responsibility instead of real people. This is perhaps OK when the damages are purely monetary (like unpaid debts), but when the damage is done to our culture, I like to think that corporation pseudo-person should be powerless to protect the individuals. And yet, in practice that's exactly what happens unless the problem reaches scandalous proportions, a la Enron, and then they punish some figure-head for it instead of putting the whole board of directors and all of the C citizens into jail, like it should be done.

Re:Honesty....

[maxume]

Monopoly behavior is regulated because it is inefficient. A monopoly has little incentive to improve its products or find other ways to better serve its customers, and plenty of incentive to prevent other people from doing so. Note that some industries, mostly those that involve installation of extensive physical systems(notably power and communications networks) are often granted a heavily regulated monopoly, as this is assumed to be more efficient than competition(imagine three sets of power lines in rich areas and none in poor areas, kind of a bummer).

Re:Honesty....

[Otter]

Money has this curious way of interfering with most people's thoughts and consciences.

Sure, but Wikipedia doesn't require saintliness from its contributors. (Not that obsessives and kooks are necessarily more saintly than employees, anyway.) As long as the guy is technically sound and is being paid to make technically sound edits, he seems like the least of Wikipedia's problems. If there are problems with his edits, he and the submitter can slug it out like any other arguing contributors do.

However, in true conspiracy theory form, this is exactly what he would claim, suggest, and appear if he really were some goon born and raised in Redmond. He probably isn't. But why should I trust him any more than anyone else?

I'm proceeding on the assumption that O'Reilly doesn't just hand out blogs on its site to any random person Microsoft sent over -- if they do, that's a bigger story than the one we have here. Anyway, three years of posting technical pieces on XML folowed by publically disclosing your new connection to Microsoft seems like a rather inefficient use of conspiracy resources.

Re:Honesty....

[maxume]

I've decided that any company that I don't have a controlling interest in has access to my capital; I certainly don't 'own' them in any meaningful way.

Re:Honesty....

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

I've probably dabbled in that many too, but I'm not that great a coder and I'm certainly nowhere near as I thought I was at 19-23. It may be your soft skills getting in the way. "I'm right, you're an idiot," is sometimes an accurate viewpoint better kept quiet. This is especially true at big companies.

I'll tell you that I've known about ten unbelievable programmers, and five of them would never have said, "I have programmed in over 20 languages." Of the other five, I am absolutely sure two are regularly unemployed and the last three aren't unbelievably famous.

Of course, you're welcome to call me an idiot all you like. I majored in Philosophy, I can take it. AND I work primarily in VBScript, meaning I have developed balls of steel from being kicked in them again and again and again.

As a side note, your resume is impressive, and if you moved you would have no trouble finding more interesting work. Not many do software development in Medford. I can think of three or four companies offhand in downtown Portland that would be completely happy to have you. A few tips on the resume:

"Minor Tech Support for legacy apps I have written," should probably not be on your resume. Don't tell anyone about things you will end up doing in your own free time. Are they supposed to pay you for it?
Life goals make poor career objectives. Pick something you'd like to do (in your and my case, "Work with a small, tight knit team to produce revolutionary technology grown out of the extensive background I have developed with a lifetime of computer work and training," might be appropriate, except I omitted the lifetime of training)
Some of your wording can be compressed. A good resume is MAX 2 pages long, and your HTML one seems to be about four.
I'd suggest dividing your resume differently - put a summary of your skills at the top, then divide it by important project.
Classes are great to have taken, but they don't mean much elsewhere. Link to source code if it's particularly brilliant, in an addendum to your resume called, "More interesting code projects."
Link to projects if possible, or make the source code available. This can be done in an Office document of any type you choose. Throw some code samples in text format on your website. Remember to document these samples a whole bunch.
Overall, your resume reads a little like a tech reference book; this is kinda bad.

As a disclaimer, I don't know what kind of companies you're applying to. Generally, you tailor your resume to the position you apply for. They want Java? Write a resume that shows all the things you've done with Java. They want C-based driver work? That's when you say, "I loves me some math." But don't complain when people pad their resume; just live up to yours in your interview.

Re:Honesty....

[Eloquence]

If so, on this basis one would accept a company boiling babies for soap, provided that it was highly profitable and they could get away with it.

Contrary to popular belief, boiling babies is simply not a very economic way to make soap. Forced labor, on the other hand, is quite popular and common where corporations can get away with it; so are death squads against unionists or protestors. And as to evidence that corporations collaborate in even the worst crimes in history, look to the Holocaust -- from the machines used for processing and killing, to the valuables of the victims (including their teeth), corporations and banks got into as much of the action as possible. Including American ones.

Re:Honesty....

[mysticgoat]

Are they *that* ethically challenged?

Well, the other way to look at it is that Microsoft's successes have been partially due to the fact that they are not ethically encumbered. Others have used a financial model, and state that Microsoft's profitability is due to their minimal ethical overheads. Either way, the concept is that they don't carry a lot of unnecessary baggage that would slow their pursuit of profits.

Re:Honesty....

[hartmaier]

Standards being imposed on corporations has been tried...its called communism. Welcome to America where the almighty dollar rules. The beauty and flaw of capitalism is that whatever makes the most money will prevail. Ethics have no place in the corporate world unfortunately and instating them goes against what is America. Corporations will shift policy when it provides them with a better market share (see Apple, Google, etc). Happy customers are more likely to return.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Another conflict theorist...sheesh!

If you are such an erudite historian, how about you stop prevaricating and pony up the truth: it used to be that governments granted monopolies all the time as a means of raising money (licensing monopolies) or as a means of saving money (rather than award gifts or offices, monarchs were notorious for granting monopolies). Indeed, governments were more restrictive about granting corporate charters, but for reasons not elucidated by you.

All of this not withstanding, we have more government regulation of everything today. To finance this, we also pay significantly higher taxes than the barbaric colonial Americans who dumped all of that tasty tea.

Re:Honesty....

[obeythefist]

Corporations remove personal responsibility from individuals. So individuals will do unethical things they otherwise wouldn't contemplate "because it's their job". Therefore, corporations will be unethical whenever unethical behavior provides profit.

And yes, government is there to enforce ethical behavior through laws and punishment disincentives.

Corporations are the easiest facsimile we have to generating a viable free market economy. They allocate relatively scarce resources reasonably efficiently.

The alternative you seem to be working to is what we call a "command" economy where a centrally responsible body determines allocation of resources (including investment funds) for the good of the whole. The best example of this I can think of is Soviet Russia, the USSR. Unfortunately as we have seen, this does not develop into a particularly efficient mechanism.

In this particular example, however, MS has stepped once more into territory they can't hope to dominate - Wikipedia can "be edited by anyone!", so whatever they spin, there will be hordes of volunteer MS bashers to set it straight, the article will be marked as under conflict/controversy, and readers will get at least some meaningful and slightly unbiased information from it.

Openness and freedom of information is the enemy of unethical behavior.

Re:Honesty....

[wpegden]

No, reread the post I responded to. This was not his point. If this was his point, I promise, I would not have missed it. To make this point, one has to realize that the original poster's criticism of corporations ("unethical") is ridiculous (read: irrelevant) from within the current framework of corporations and capitalism. Thus, if we are to expect something different, something bigger has to change (society, government, etc.) than just Microsoft. I hope just as much as you do that that change will happen. But if you hold the original posters view as I read it (Microsoft is unethical, why can't they be a "good" corporation like everyone else) you're not going to get there anytime soon.

Re: Honesty....

[RAMMS EIN]

``Generally, I believe that the lack of personal responsibility for actions being carried out "in the name of a corporation" is the real culprit.''

Absolutely. To take this to the extreme, soldiers have also been known to carry out atrocious acts because they had been ordered to do so, or even had their lives threatened if they didn't do it. Going to the other extreme, Gandhi demonstrated that by just not complying with such orders, you can change the world for the better.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed.

You make it seem like this "corporation" has a mind of its own. I would like to meet such a corporation and steal its brain as it is light years beyond anything we have today.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

The sheer ignorance of basic economics on the part of many /.'rs is simply mind-boggling. A corporation is a structure that amasses money, reinvests it in capital, uses that capital to produce profit, which it then reinvests in more growth, and redistributes to shareholders, in order to cause them to invest more but also allowing those people to buy things from other companies.

The motivations of this company, like everyone and everything else on Earth, are self-interested, but its function generates a great deal of utility and is indispensable to an efficient market. It creates valuable goods, supports the productions of other goods, provides employment, maximizes the efficiency of the bulk of large currency movements, promotes economic growth and the rate of increase in the standard of living, etc.

Fraud is inefficient, and not within the bounds of market functions. Contrary to popular belief, fraud, injury, etc. are not in the natural and correct remit of a corporation; they are indicative of a misbehaving, malfunctioning corporation.

If wikipedia's policy is to host nonbiased, accurate information, MS' embrace of conflicts of interest and tacit acceptance of the biased nature of their information by using paid third parties to distribute it causes this action to constitute fraud, which is in no way a market activity. It has nothing to do with the usefulness or necessity of corporations as a set of economic structures.

Re:Honesty....

[DragonWriter]

This isn't some random anonymous goofball being paid to insert text Microsoft gives him; he's an (apparently) recognized figure, not especially MS-friendly, being paid to provide corrections in his area of expertise, with his reputation on the line. I'd trust that more than edits made by the PR people.

That's probably why the PR people hired him—its certainly the reason corporations hire those with respect in the community as public faces rather than putting their own PR staff in commercials, too. On Wikipedia, it is also strongly discouraged by Wikipedia conflict of interest policies (which directly covered outside paid agents equally to members of interested organizations), with those feeling they need to make edits in such circumstances strongly encouraged to recommend the edits on discussion pages for inclusion by a neutral editor, rather than making them directly.

Re:Honesty....

[BurningPi]

In Soviet Russia, the government controls Microsoft!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Re:Honesty....

[Capsaicin]

I then asked him whether he thought it was a good idea to have corporations considered "persons" in a court of law ... I then asked him whether he thought it was a good idea to have corporations considered "persons" in a court of law. He said that he'd never thought about it.

I'm not an American lawyer, but I hope this in some way redresses your "Professor's" ... um ... lack of reflection?

The fact that a corporation is a legal person is the very criterium by which a corporation is defined (limited liability is itself the result of such personality). Being a person allows a corporation to own property in it's own right, sue and be sued in its own name etc.

Before the development of the Corporate form (ie. a company with legal personality), the the joint stock company (a kind of giant partnership) was the predominant form of organising shareholders. This was dangerous for shareholders since they were jointly and severally liable (ie. any damage comitted could be recouped from a single shareholder, all of the shareholders, or anything in between). This did not make investing in overly large companies particularly enticing. When it became necessary to raise large sums to fund the massive capital development which we know as the Industrial Revolution, Parliament addressed this impediment by creating the Corporate form, that is to say a company with legal personality, which could deal in its own name, and take the wrap for any wrongdoing on its part.

This history is instructive in two ways. Firstly it demonstrates that our way of life is predicated on the Corporate form. Corporations, though their influence is occasionally (some might say largely) negative, are necessary (well at least if we want to live in the kinds of mercantile culture we inhabit, and enjoy the standard of living this entails). Secondly, there is absolutely nothing natural about corporations (even in the way a partnership might be described as 'natural').

Corporations are creatures of Parliament. They were created for the social benefit they bequeath, and they were granted limited liability, which is in effect a cost imposed upon everyone else in society. In other words it is a quid pro quo. Consequently there can be no objection to the regulation of corporations, as if this constituted intervention into some natural right of individuals to form corporations. Indeed, when the sacrifice made by society, (in terms of limited liability, lower tax rates etc.) is not being returned by corporations, when the mischief the corporation makes is greater than the mischief Parliament sought to cure, then Parliament ought to address the regulation of corporations. Needless to say, such regulation, must not strangle the goose that laid the golden egg.

Re:Honesty....

[DragonWriter]

How much more honesty can you ask for?

How about following Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest guidelines? Is that too much to ask?

Re:Honesty....

[AuMatar]

No, not really. I'd be a communist if the world only held 100 or so humans, communism is probably the best way to deal with things on the small scale. It doesn't scale well once the group grows. I'm not sure exactly where the delimiter is, but probably when you can no longer know everyone by name. A more accurate term for me is a socialist, or a progressive. I believe that the good of the group is sometimes more important than the good of a single individual, and that society and governments purpose is to make life better for its people, especially the less fortunate.

Re:Honesty....

[AuMatar]

WOuldn't matter if I did or didn't- I don't have enough money to own enough stock to make a difference. If I'd invested every cent I'd ever worked and moonlighted a 2nd job, I still wouldn't own a tenth of a percent of any major corporation. So I'd have no effect on their actions.

Beyond that- I prefer to invest local. I'd rather invest in a small shop that will help its immediate than participate in the legalized gambling which is the stock market (which is all the stock market is- outside of IPOs no value is ever created via the stock market).

Re:Honesty....

[Teun]

Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else.
Yeah right, where are you from that there are no laws governing the behaviour of corporations?
Shareholders have a great interest in legal behaviour of the company using their monies as it might otherwise be lost forever.
Even unethical behaviour can cost dearly once the clients or public get fed up enough.

Re:Honesty....

[Simon Garlick]

Wow, you're 24? I never would have guessed.

Re:Honesty....

[McFadden]

Speaking as someone who used to interview candidates for tech jobs on an almost weekly basis, I'd say that it would make little difference whether you've worked in 3 or 4 commonly used languages, or 2 In order to get to 20, you'd have to include a fair bunch of obscure languages which tend to only get rolled out for academic/experimental use and rarely have any relevance in the commercial arena -yes, I've worked with Eiffel, Prolog and Miranda too but I wouldn't waste the time of an interviewer who couldn't care less because they're looking for someone with good Java.

At your age, which appears to be around 24, I think most companies would be interested in your previous work experience so far and what you've done in the short space of time since you graduated (assuming you attended university/college).

Re:Honesty....

[aztektum]

You do know who their CEO is right? That guy does not, never has, and short of having the violent portion of his brain surgically removed, come off as an altruistic and peaceful guy to me.

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"Corporations as they exist today are a mistake."

One idea I have that might make a positive difference is to only allow humans to own shares in corporations.

Any thoughts?

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"If IP laws were repealed, and nothing replaced them, it is likely that content creators would re-create something similar to the IP system using complicated contracts (e.g., you would have to sign a lengthy agreement prior to purchasing an album at a music store)."

Actually, wouldn't a true free market proponent say that the market would be able to come up with an even better solution than the government granted monopolies that we have today?

"Because of the necessity of a corporation-like object, it is very likely that such an object would quickly appear, and over time would evolve into something indistinguishable from today's corporation."

Surely this is not a given. What prevents us from changing how corporations work now? Why not only allow humans to own shares for a start? Any thoughts on the results of such a change?

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"I suggest you watch a documentary called The Corporation [amazon.com]: they very clearly demonstrate that the laws governing corporations make then sociopathic by nature."

Taking this as true for the sake of argument here... Doesn't this then indicate to us that the laws need to be changed so as to fix this issue?

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[teal_]

Public Relations is all about bias. You're paid to be biased and to spin things your employer's way. Indeed they are just doing their job, I assure you that Apple's PR people do the same thing. Tony Snow is paid to tell us that George Bush was not saying mission accomplished from the deck of the aircraft carrier (3/5th down) and he has to do it with a straight face. His job description didn't change much from his days at Fox.

But the point is, that's what PR is all about. If you don't want to have to lie for a living, then don't get into PR.

Re:Honesty....

[CrazyDuke]

Perhaps all that is neccessary is the realization that as any entity gains significant power over people, it becomes an ad hoc government, regardless as to whether or not it is elected or is explicitly called a government. There are reasons why government should be limited. Just calling a government something else does not change that fact.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not even as hypothetical as you make it sound. Microsoft has been found guilty of abusing even current laws and regulations again and again. They show no signs of curbing this behaviour.

Let me repeat that - even existing law is no deterrent to Microsoft. Adding new laws (whether you believe that is good or bad) to the books will not change that.

Until governments start taking real, serious action against Microsoft, they will continue to break existing or new laws as they please. Fines and "Microsoft Vouchers" are not serious actions.

Re: Honesty....

[dryeo]

Also, aside from the ethical standpoint, must they not have realized that this would leak out?! I mean, this cannot be considered positive PR, right?

MS has been doing this for at least a dozen years (in slightly different forms) and it sure hasn't hurt them much yet.

Re:Honesty....

[Achromatic1978]

Why not?

If it's good enough for Jimbo Wales to ghostwrite edits that are more favorable to him, why shouldn't this be the case for Microsoft?

Re:Honesty....

[Jason Earl]

Best Post Ever.

Re:Honesty....

[nexu56]

The quotes around the work "Correct" in the summary headline is just another Slashdot spin...

And how much are Microsoft paying you to "correct" Slashdot? ;-)

Re:Honesty....

[dryeo]

Microsoft is a good example. They did not get where they are on consumer freedom. When better products came out they did more or less what is described in this article to misinform consumers, even going so far to put messages in Windows about not trusting the competition (DRDos then).
Continued the behaviour against OS/2 (BBS and Usenet).
And also manipulated the market in such a way that there was no choice when buying a prebuilt computer.
I know I have ended up owning too many copies of windows especially since Win 3.1 was enough to teach me that I didn't want to purchase it again

Re:Honesty....

[dangitman]

I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics?

What's wrong with that? Shouldn't corporations be held to a standard of ethics?

Re:Honesty....

[Registered Coward v2]

You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist? Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization? Or should standards of ethics and non-monetary issues be forced onto corporations by society (government)?

Its been tried. Didn't work. Governments have a poor record of distributing scarce resources and ensuring good behavior. See USSR in the Wiki.

Re:Honesty....

[dangitman]

Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else.

Huh? Aren't they also accountable to the laws of the land and the government? And their customers, and the general public to a lesser extent?

The environment, ethics, and other very important things cannot be assigned a monetary value, and thus can not be properly accounted for in any economic system.

Economic systems only exist with social and cultural systems, so therefore, are subservient to social and cultural whims/needs/standards.

Re:Honesty....

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I really have programmed in over 20 languages

And I've driven over 20 kinds of car. So what?

Re:Honesty....

[Brandybuck]

You could ask Jimmy Wales the same questions about why he told wikipedia admins to "correct" his biography.

Re:Honesty....

[cheater512]

I think the culprit is the shareholders.

There is only so much a company like Microsoft can do with their oodles of cash.
If they werent trying to impress shareholders they might just spend some of the cash on the community.

Re:Honesty....

[tubapro12]

Here's my question: why haven't there been any anti-trust suits against Microsoft? They look like a monopoly to me.

Re: Honesty....

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Yes, I know companies donate to charities now. However, they only do so to the extent that the PR yields a net increase in shareholder value, by law.

Where do you get this stuff? There's no law limiting corporations to only do things that yield a profit.

Re:Honesty....

[slugstone]

Of course, you're welcome to call me an idiot all you like. I majored in Philosophy, I can take it. AND I work primarily in VBScript, meaning I have developed balls of steel from being kicked in them again and again and again.

+1 for ball of steel.

Re:Honesty....

[Xenographic]

It's not so much *him* I'm worried about. It's all the other people they probably hired who aren't or haven't disclosed anything of the sort.

And if you read some of his "corrections" they're technically right, but highly misleading. True, a conforming application does not have to support the legacy crap. But they won't be able to read your average Word document saved as OOXML if they don't.

Which leads me to another point--why'd they name it OOXML? Office Open XML? Pretty slimy to try and pawn itself off as something related to Open Office when it's a Microsoft format. Not unlike what they tried to do with C++/CLI. Sadly, they know too well how governments work, and how they demand silly certifications even if they don't mean anything--that's why they hope for an ISO rubber stamp on this piece of crap so they'll have fewer troubles trying to sell stuff to those pesky governments that were barely starting to realize that they want something open--i.e. something that won't lock them in to a single-vendor solution and leave them with old, unreadable Word documents should Microsoft ever die.

Re:Honesty....

[localman]

Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else.

You're right. And Eichmann was only accountable to his superiors but ended up hanged anyways. Sorry for triggering Godwin's Law, but it is worth noting that there is widespread consensus that one is accountable for their actions even if accountability is not explicitly apparent in the system. I think that most of the SEC regulatory hoops and penalties are a not-wholly-unsuccessful effort to include ethics in the economic picture, so it's not true that they can't be accounted for. But it is a bit of a tragedy of the commons though since, as usual, the shortsighted people who misinterpret "corporations are only accountable to their shareholders" to mean "there's no place for ethics in the market" make an expensive pain in the ass for all of us.

Cheers.

Re:Honesty....

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

A slightly less rose-tinted view of history suggests that corporate charters were granted when there was an assurance that the ruling prince of the city-state, or his cronies, would get a cut.

Of course, getting his cut is exactly what a prince would define as "the public interest". Life was so much simpler back then... :)

Re: Honesty....

[Bugbear1973]

You raise a good point and I agree with you. I recall seeing a documentary some time ago where the narrator suggested that the corporation could be inadvertantly actively seeking out psychopathic individuals.

While this sounds like a wild statement, consider this: have you ever seen a job advertisement where a company wants to employ someone who will do 'whatever it takes' to achieve a goal. A person who would be willing to lie, cheat, assault would be ideal for such a position because they clearly are willing to do 'whatever it takes'!!

Each individual has ultimate responsibility for their own actions.

Re:Honesty....

[drsmithy]

Actually, wouldn't a true free market proponent say that the market would be able to come up with an even better solution than the government granted monopolies that we have today?

It would. That solution would almost certainly be DRM that actually worked (or came a lot closer than it does now).

DRM exists today (from an anti-copying perspective) primarily to _inconvenience_ "pirates". It's not really meant to offer strong protection, because the _law_ does that and is able to do so far more effectively (in particularly, the law can actually enact punishments and recover "losses"). Were DRM the _only_ protection from copying media had, you can be assured that DRM schemes would be more invasive, more comprehensive and a lot harder to crack.

Re:Honesty....

[drsmithy]

Much as most people believe in a right to "intellectual property", [...]

That the vast majority of people frequently and wilfully infringe on both the letter and principle (especially the principle) of copyright, suggests otherwise.

Re:Honesty....

[vyrus128]

Hmm, you're right... perhaps I shouldn't have said "most people." But I _would_ say that, if you asked most people what the difference is between the "right" to instellectual property and the right to real property, they wouldn't be able to tell you -- certainly few people understand the "bargain" inherent in intellectual property, and that the ultimate beneficiary of the bargain is supposed to be the public domain (and hence the public), not the copyright holder.

Re: Honesty....

[SgtChaireBourne]

That was also the theme back in 1975, but not 2002. It seems to be one bit of information that corporatists wish to remove from common knowledge: someone came up with the plan, and other individuals were involved in approving it and trying to carry it out.

Re:Honesty....

[SgtChaireBourne]

... Which leads me to another point--why'd they name it OOXML? Office Open XML? Pretty slimy to try and pawn itself off as something related to Open Office when it's a Microsoft format. ...

Because it took a chunk out of Open Office's Google ranking starting the very same day MS announced the new name. The same reason that the next MS boondoggle got named Vista, after our esteemed Chairman Gates decided to turn his guns on healthcare systems. He even took a try at RMS.

Re:Honesty....

[crazyeddie740]

>>Look, I have friends at Microsoft and there are truly some brilliant folks up there, but what the hell is the marketing department doing? Are they *that* ethically challenged? Or is it that they are *that* desperate to be cool and loved? How about a policy of honesty and if there is something that you want, then why not have your Microsoft PR department make the edits? Is that too obvious? It would certainly present other ethical dilemmas, but at least it would be more honest than hiring supposed "impartial" third parties to do your work for you.

Actually, I think there is a Wikipedia guideline that says it's a bad idea for people to edit their own biographies. (I heard about it because there was a flap over Jimbo editing his bio, contravening the guideline.) Something similar probably applies to corporations. In light of this guideline, it seems to me that what MS is doing actually does resemble ethical behavior. I don't know if this particular "consultant" or whatever you want to call him is "impartial" or not, or even if he is, if MS's other Wikipedia consultants are. But come on, this is the Wikipedia we're talking about here! Impartiality is not exactly a requirement for contributing to the Wikipedia.

I suppose a lot depends on how much actual editorial control MS exercises over these consultants. Hopefully, these consultant are friendly or at least not actively hostile towards MS (otherwise MS probably wouldn't pay them), but they might be less likely to just follow the company line than actual PR suits or other MS employees, which means that they're free to compromise with other contributors who are a bit less friendly. If that's the case, then they might fit into the Wikipedia community all right. The regular contributors should be able to keep them in check - especially if the consultants reveal themselves as such.

I think this might be okay, provided that both MS and these "consultants" give full disclosure - MS should publish a list of the people they are hiring as Wikipedia consultants, and the consultants should 'fess up on their userpages.

Quite frankly, I've been wondering how long it would take a corp to come up with something like this. It seems to me that they don't really have too much of a choice. If an article gets something wrong about your company, what can you do? You can sue the Wikipedia for libel, but who do you sue? You could sue the Wikimedia Foundation, but they don't have any real editorial control so you're not getting to the source of the problem. Plus you annoy the Wikipedia community into creating a perfectly factual but quite negative article to replace the libelous one. You could go after the individual contributor who first inserted the libelous claim, but that could take a while to track down, you can't get blood from such a small turnip, and you probably look like even more of a bully than if you went after Wikimedia. You can take matters into your own hands and edit the article yourself, but that gets you accused of astroturfing. It seems to me that getting a friendly but independent third party - with full disclosure all around - to intervene might be the least of the possible evils here.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the grandparent denounced corporations while acknowledging the necessity of a corporation-like object by saying: A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design).

A more socially conscious design for corporations would distribute the power democratically among the employees that work for a corporation. If CEOs worked for their employees, I bet you would see a lot more intrinsic concern for the well-being of employees and the good of the company as a cohesive working body.

The major focus of the corporation would then move from "maximize profit" to "sustain the employment of the employees and secure wage growth whenever possible."

Re:Honesty....

[ajs318]

Yes, but DRM is mathematically incapable of ever working. It's not the case that "something just needs to be invented". There's nothing anyone could invent that would make DRM work, just like there's nothing anyone could invent that would make water not wet.

To put it simply, if a recording can be viewed, it can be copied. And experience has already shown how the public will put up with a hell of a lot of degradation rather than pay for content.

Re:Honesty....

[Weedlekin]

You're thinking of trade and manufacturing monopolies, not corporations, which didn't exist prior to the 19th century. Mediaeval / renaissance Europeans had an Aristotelian mind-set that would have regarded giving a company the status of a person as totally ludicrous, and even if somebody had come up with the idea, the massively influential and powerful Catholic Church would have regarded it and the concept of absolving such a man-created being from the moral and ethical obligations that God-created ones were expected to follow as a double heresy. As the Knights Templar discovered, having vast wealth and lots of influence with the crowned heads of many nations doesn't help much when being accused of heresy means (a) that one is automatically guilty, (b) all possessions go to the Church and its "allies" (a powerful motivation for finding rich heretics!), and (c) there is a high probability of getting burned at the stake or imprisoned for life, both of which probably seemed rather pleasant after a few weeks spent with the Inquisition.

In this particular case point (b) was of course the main reason for the Templars being accused of heresy in the first place, but that merely underlines the fact that this was a period when the extremely wealthy had to be even more careful about what they said and did than everyone else (Ballmer's "monkey dance" and chair throwing could for example have been presented by jealous rivals as evidence of obvious demonic possession, thereby opening Bill G. to accusations of sorcery, and anyone else associated with him to the same).

Re:Honesty....

[Omnifarious]

I believe this trend can be bucked by various individual corporations while remaining generally true for all of them. Sociopathic behavior is a very strong draw for corporations because of all the forces surrounding their existence and maintainence. For example, I generally like google because I think they try hard to buck this. I don't think they will succeed forever, but I respect that they recognize that their corporation has moral and ethical responsibilities.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

When you think about it, some slashdotter had to make a conscious decision to write up a heavily spinned view of the situation, and a slashdot editor had to ok the write-up, seeing that it would provoke controversy and lots of pageviews. Did neither of them at any point stop to think about the ethics of their actions? What about a simple policy of honesty, in place of all this calculated sensationalism?

Re:Honesty....

[ady1]

Did you? I was with the guy in the beginning of his post but after reading the whole thing and the comments and how he replied to them, I would say that he biased towards MS to some extent at least.

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"It would. That solution would almost certainly be DRM that actually worked (or came a lot closer than it does now)."

Hmmm. I wonder why they keep going back for more and more laws then? Why not ask for copyright to be done away with and go with market based solutions?

All that GPL code people want to get their hands on would suddenly be fair game.

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[optimus2861]

For example, Microsoft gets convicted of criminal restraint of trade and there are absolutely no personal consequences for the people authorizing it and perpetrating it. There are plenty of people in MS who knew of this and would not have allowed it to happen if their own butt was on the line.

That sounds well & good, but the complexities of corporate structures and criminal law lead to the problem of figuring just who to hold to account for actions in a corporation the size of MS. I sometimes wonder if there shouldn't be a form of "jail" for the corporation itself, not just the people behind it, when the case against the corporation is a slam-dunk even if the case against individual employees of it is murky. I think the only form of jail that makes sense for a corporation is for it to surrender its profits to the state for a period of time upon its conviction. How fast would shareholders demand fully above-board behaviour if they knew that their own profits & dividends could go up in smoke if the corporation is convicted?

The trouble with this idea is that the state could promptly treat the surrendered profits as a windfall and do god-knows-what with the "found money" in the form of political graft, kickbacks, and the like, not to mention launching politically-motivated prosecutions to extort funds from firms, play themselves up to the electorate, and the like. No easy solution to this one, and until one is found I think the disease is moderately preferable to the cure.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

all right, genius, what's the "mathematical" proof that you can image a brain in real-time accurately enough to record a drug trip in sufficient detail to perfectly reproduce it? Because obviously a DRM scheme could be invented that left content totally encrypted until it physically manipulated your brain into experiencing the encoded content. (like my "drug trip" example.) In that case, you can "view" (experience the viewing of) content without any way to reproduce it, any more than you can reproduce a drug trip, except by trying to paint it from memory or something. Duh.

And experience has already shown how the public will put up with a hell of a lot of degradation rather than pay for content.

Are you seriously arguing that the public would rather watch flip-book sketches of a popular movie made by someone who has seen it, rather than see the movie for themselves??

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

And murderers are doing what they're "supposed" to

To be fair, I haven't successfully killed anyone. :/

Re:Honesty....

[rtb61]

It really doesn't matter what it was, all that matters is what it is and what it will be. The corporation as a person is now just blatantly used to hide the criminal actions of the executives of that corporation. Why should the shareholders of a company pay a fine when it is the executives and the directors of a corporation that break the law.

Every effort should be made to make the executives of a corporation criminally liable for the actions of a corporation, so when a corporation takes actions that results in the deaths of people then the executives should face the full weight of the law and be charged with murder.

Not only that but the inherent size of a corporation should be limited, why should the general populace be forced to foot the bill when a mega corporation fails, obviously when they are worth billions of dollars the limited liability feature is just a joke and laws are required to specifically limit the size of corporation and reduce the cost to the community of the failure of any single corporation.

Corporations do not lay golden eggs, they just steal every bodies else's nest eggs. From failed pension fund, to failed investment funds and failed banks, the consumers goes broke while the corporate executives and corporate directors walk away with millions.

Re:Honesty....

[drsmithy]

Hmmm. I wonder why they keep going back for more and more laws then? Why not ask for copyright to be done away with and go with market based solutions?

Firstly, because DRM would eventually be broken by professional "pirates", even if the average consumer never saw a major benefit from it.

Secondly, because only the law allows you to sue for damages, etc. DRM does not. The best DRM gives a content producer is time - Copyright gives them means to retaliate.

Re:Honesty....

[PodBayDoor]

This realisation has been a long time coming.

Today through methods such as patents, financial leverage (as supplier and as a consumer of other suppliers), political leverage, marketing/PR, as an issuer of shares owned by citizens, and as an employer of staff who are directly dependent, corporations exert *massive* control. But the signs have been there for years...

1) Science-fiction has long predicted the rise of mega-corporations that are essentially beyond the control of governments, eventually capable of implementing their own security force, legislation and potentially even taxes (especially if a corporation invests in developing infrastructure), although the funding and tax breaks that large corporations receive are already a form of indirect taxation
2) Naomi Klein's "No Logo" described the mechanics and effects of globalisation
3) Companies funded by VCs and shareholders are naturally driven by short-term needs in their operation; we want companies to be successful and we don't need to know how they actually achieve success

Even ignoring corporate "visionaries" like Tom Peters (especially in "Reimagine!") who foresee most of us being effectively employed in PSFs (Professional Service Firms, either as teams within a corporation or as out-sourced resources), most of us will effectively work for an increasingly small number of ever larger corporations. A company that de-merges is in a temporary state before it either dies or is re-absorbed.

The US is the most advanced state in terms of empowering corporations in these ways (using the term "advanced" in the way it's used in medicine for, say, cancer). By virtue of these methods of control, the trend is inevitably towards ever-larger and more global companies (where "larger" includes both in-sourced and out-sourced employees, even if the latter are nominally employed within a small private company).

The only hope of delaying or reversing these trends is to enact legislation that reins in one of the above methods of control. However this would require an overwhelming display of "democracy" or exertions of individual "freedom" that I find hard to believe in; most of us are just too focussed on the short-term and our immediate circle of concern to actually do anything other than rant here on /.

But please, prove me wrong!

Re:Honesty....

[glesga_kiss]

Who decided that the profit motive was supposed to be superior to honesty?

The shareholders did at the AGM. While I am actually joking here, I've seen questions of honesty and morality raised by shareholders in these meetings. Never have I seen one of them voted in successfully.

so where has the idea that lying for money is permissible come from?

From the same place that tells us that lying is permissible for dating(1), job interviews(2) and story telling. It's a part of our culture, one of our last throwbacks to evolution. The logic is; 'every one else does it, so I'm just playing fair'.

1) tidying your house before she comes over, creating a false impression of your home life

2) embellishing, bending and outright distortion of facts. Never "I left because my boss was a jerk".

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

[ Actually, wouldn't a true free market proponent say that the market would be able to come up with an even better solution than the government granted monopolies that we have today?

It would. That solution would almost certainly be DRM that actually worked (or came a lot closer than it does now).]

"Firstly, because DRM would eventually be broken by professional "pirates", even if the average consumer never saw a major benefit from it.

Secondly, because only the law allows you to sue for damages, etc. DRM does not. The best DRM gives a content producer is time - Copyright gives them means to retaliate."

Which is it to be? Can the free market come up with a better solution than government granted monopolies, or can't it? take your pick, but please don't argue both sides so close together.

You say that the free market can come up with a better solution. You say that solution would be good DRM. then you say they don't want a better solution becuase the worse solution is better for them?

Can you explain? (Now, it could be that the ones wanting the laws are not free market proponents, but they do trot out the "let the market decide" meme from time to time don't they?

all the best,

drew

Re: Honesty....

[marcosdumay]

Only if the environment requires that. If evil corporations are the sucessfull ones, they'll just become more evil.

Re:Honesty....

[Richy_T]

Which is it to be? Can the free market come up with a better solution than government granted monopolies, or can't it?

Realistically priced goods and services.

Maybe more people would be inclined to support local musicians too, having the side benefit of providing more funds directly to the artists. If a a $17 dollar CD gives $50c to the artist and makes them super rich, that same $17 could support many many *more* artists to a good standard of living.

The current situation leaves us *very* content poor.

Rich

Re:Honesty....

[kabocox]

Beyond that- I prefer to invest local. I'd rather invest in a small shop that will help its immediate than participate in the legalized gambling which is the stock market (which is all the stock market is- outside of IPOs no value is ever created via the stock market).

I do too. My family buys only from Walmart since they are the only local company that has been in town for 20+ years. I always laugh seeing how other communities don't like Walmart or want to keep them out. If you have businesses that die because they can't compete, then they should die a quick death. I'm biased though I'm from Arkansas where the Walmart Supercenter defines the community. Drive through Arkansas some time and not just on I30 and you'd literally see what I mean. Without Walmart all that was there was a farms and mom and pop gas station. With Walmart, we have a shoe store, a food store, a gas station, a place to buy home goods, a place to buy vacuum cleaners, a sporting/hunting goods store, a freaking electronics and book/mag. store. Walmart isn't uniform either. My mom and wife routinely shop at 3-4 different Walmarts for the different stock each has. A properly run Walmart is localized to its community's buying/social standards. My wife owned a percentage of 1 share of Wal-mart from when she worked as a cashier there briefly. We laugh about it since we don't really make any money off it and I think Walmart might have cashed her out when she changed jobs. She didn't have much invested with the company. I know people that have been with Walmart for decades and Walmart is the company stock that they've always bought. They have a really healthy nest egg.

Local business can be or become a gaint multinational global company. This is a good thing and should be encouraged more.

Re:Honesty....

[Geno Z Heinlein]

Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist?

If these corporations would simply seek to maximize long-term profit they would automatically seek to serve others by putting out the best possible products. The problem is that neither producers nor consumers have long-term memory. (People who read Slashdot don't count: statistically, Slashdotters are better educated and thus more aware of long-term consequences.)

The only solution to these corporations sociopathy is to educate people to be aware of and care about long-term results. At that point, you have to realize that the "we, as society" you speak of isn't the "we, as society" others are taking about. Most people don't care about the long-term picture, and they certainly don't want you telling them or their kids about it. Shall we forcibly educate their children to care about the long-term results that we care about? I find that ethically distasteful. Shall we reason with them? I'm so done with that.

Suggestions on what to do with the mundanes so as to enable faster species progress are welcome. (I already have "Soylent Green" and "Did I say death camps? I meant happy camps!" already, no need to post those again.)

Re:Honesty....

[ajs318]

A player which worked by directly stimulating the brain sounds as though it would be very much a person-to-person variable ..... even assuming it was possible to create such an interface in the first place, it ought to be just as hackable as anything else. Even if you never manage to recover a visible image, you only have to record the sensory-stimulation signals {whatever form they may take} and reproduce them with sufficient fidelity. Remember: a digital recording is an unchangeable list of numbers, nothing more and nothing less. A replay device has two "blocks": one for retrieving the numbers from the storage medium, and another for converting the numbers into sensory data. If you can feed the same sequence of numbers into the second block, you will get the same effect.

If you have a HDTV set with a cathode-ray tube, you can use this to decrypt your signal. Get the red, green and blue intensities from the electron gun grids and you can get the position of the beam from the scan coil drives. This should be enough information to be going on with. You can (assuming the beam is scanning normally, which is a fair assumption) create a sync signal in sympathy with the starts of each horizontal line and vertical field. Then just adjust the RGB voltage levels to match the RGB inputs found on all modern sets, and feed the decrypted picture to another television or monitor. As soon as you have got hold of some unencrypted form of the movie, no matter how good the original protection may have been, it's worthless. You can make as many copies as you like of your unprotected version.

Are you seriously arguing that the public would rather watch flip-book sketches of a popular movie made by someone who has seen it, rather than see the movie for themselves??

The public have been accepting egregious degradation from audio and video cassettes for years. The film E.T. was probably the most pirated in its day; it wasn't released on video for something like ten years, so there were a lot of dodgy camcorder copies (and such camcorders as existed in the early 1980s were enormous) about. But a flickery rendition with people walking about and making noises is better than nothing.

I don't know whether your example of "flip-book sketches" is at all realistic.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's read the paragraphs referred to, shall we? [emphasis added]

... Q Tony, this goes to your previous acknowledgment that the President is aware of public anxiety about the situation in Iraq. What would your guidance be to a public that has seen the President stand under a "Mission Accomplished" banner, proclaim an end to major combat operations, the Vice President talking about the "last throes" -- how should the public go into viewing this speech tomorrow?

MR. SNOW: I think the public ought to just listen to what the President has to say. You know that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was put up by members of the USS Abraham Lincoln. And the President, on that very speech, said just the opposite, didn't he? He said it was the end of major combat operations, but he did not say it was the end of operations. Instead, he cautioned people at the time that there would be considerable continued violence in Iraq, and that there would be continued operations for a long period of time. That single episode has been more widely mischaracterized than just about any aspect of the war.

Q We can debate whether the sign should have been there, whether the White House should have not had it there, but the fact is he stood under it and made the speech.

MR. SNOW: You're right, after people had been on a 17-month deployment, and had said "Mission Accomplished" when they're finally able to get back to their loved ones, the President didn't say, take down the sign, it will be bad. Instead what he did is he talked about the mission. ...

Re:Honesty....

[TheLink]

Uh, if you ask them of course they will say they believe in the right to intellectual property.

That's because you are using the brainwashing term called "intellectual property". That term is used to help spread the lie that copying is theft. And as you will see, most people fall for it.

Even so most people still don't think it should be wrong for them to make a copy of a CD track so that they can play it on their mp3 player.

But soon if the **AA have their way, in the future people may eventually think it's not right for them to replay a song/video in their artificially augmented brains[1] without getting permission or pay for the "privilege".

And that's why people should be more careful on what they allow.

[1] It's not impossible in the near future people could add a "photographic memory" feature to their brains. Nor impossible that certain Corporations would instantly want mandatory DRM on it.

A penny for your^H^H^H^HThe Copyright Owner's thoughts?

Re:Honesty....

[TheLink]

If I'd ever want to hire a good artist it's not that important to me whether the artist knows how to draw using 20 different tools. Or a writer/programmer knows 20 different languages.

I'd be more interested to know what they have actually created for work and fun, and intend to create in the future.

But then, I'm not working in HR or a boss of a company, so what do I know...

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"Realistically priced goods and services."

I am not sure how this actually answers the question asked. Can you explain.

"that same $17 could support many many *more* artists to a good standard of living."

You will not find me making loud objections if this occurs.

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously you don't have any clue what the word "encrypted until" means. It means that only the target can decrypt it. And before you spout off about what's mathematically possible, do consider that the target is WITHIN your brain. Obviously, if you're dumb enough to "imagine" a scheme in which all 6 billion people on Earth share the same private key, then yeah, recording the bitstream is sufficient. If, on the other hand, you have two of your own brain cells to rub together, you would obviously imagine instead a scheme in which a particular, encoded stream, would result in an appropriate image only for the wetware designed to be its recipient. Or what, you don't think a few cc of brain are enough to calculate secure public key transactions? (When a tiny twenty+ year old processor is). Or what, you think you can record the stream, then, with the private key still in the wetware, perform a live lobotamy in the attempts of recovering it? Or do you just have no idea what the word "mathematically" impossible means? I suggest investing in a dictionary and a biology and computer science degree, before you continue your rabid ramblings. And before you ever say something is mathematically impossible, please please get a doctorate in quantum mechanics. Rub that together with your half a degree and you might begin to understand. There is NO signal until the experiencing of the product, and there is NO signal afterwards. Capische?

Re:Honesty....

[botik32]

You did read the link, right?

I did. And he makes a very good effort to downplay the objections to the OOXML proposal, hiding behind technicalities. Still, his arguments are weak and read like spin.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Honesty....

[Jesus_666]

Corporations do not lay golden eggs, they just steal every bodies else's nest eggs. From failed pension fund, to failed investment funds and failed banks, the consumers goes broke while the corporate executives and corporate directors walk away with millions.

See? Aggregation of capital. Corporations do a mighty fine job in aggregating capital at no personal risk for the people in whose pocket the capital gets aggregated...

Re:Honesty....

[drsmithy]

Which is it to be? Can the free market come up with a better solution than government granted monopolies, or can't it? take your pick, but please don't argue both sides so close together.

"Better" for whom ? Buyers or sellers ? Seldom do both agree on what is "better".

You say that the free market can come up with a better solution. You say that solution would be good DRM. then you say they don't want a better solution becuase the worse solution is better for them?

"Worse" is a matter of perspective. From the media companies' perspective, copyright law is a much better solution than anything the market could produce, because it's a) monopolistic and b) enforced for free by the government.

Can you explain? (Now, it could be that the ones wanting the laws are not free market proponents, but they do trot out the "let the market decide" meme from time to time don't they?

I doubt many people riding the copyright gravy train trot out "let the market decide" (and actually mean it) very often. Most of them aren't under any illusions market forces will give them a better result than the government-enforced monopoly of copyright.

Re: Honesty....

[Jesus_666]

Of course they want psychopaths. People who are completely ruthless generate more revenue, which is the sole measure of a corporation's performance. If you make less money you're less desirable - and ethics will bring you into that situation as you refrain from doing profitable but unethical things. Being a sociopath is an important soft skill for upper management. The "weak" are quickly rooted out; it's survival of the fittest at its best.

As long as there are no incentives besides profit for a corp this won't change. Since our whole society is built around the concept "money = good" I doubt that we'd see less antisocial corporations without a paradigm shift in the society.

Re:Honesty....

[dtfinch]

I suppose that didn't come out quite right. Sorry if I offended anyone with my self loving comment. And I really haven't been looking for work.

Re:Honesty....

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that the enrichment of the Executives forms no part in the deal.
The limited liability is extended to shareholders.
Note how well shareholders are served by the failure of high profile companies NOT.

The issue with corporations is precisely the one raised by the Grandfather post. According companies the rights of people, but not the liabilities leads us to the present failure of the corporate system. Companies are not people. They are aggregations of capital with shareholders liability limited to their investment in the company.

Nothing requires that the executives of such an operation are invulnerable to the consequences of the actions of the company they direct. Shareholders liability is limited to their stake in the company. Companies do not carry out reprehensible actions, Executives do, mandated by shareholders. Requiring that the company state its objects and abide by them and the law is entirely reasonable. Dissolving the company is an entirely reasonable response to failure to conform to those requirements.

Re:Honesty....

[zotz]

"I doubt many people riding the copyright gravy train trot out "let the market decide" (and actually mean it) very often."

They do trot it out though. When people are calling for the government to step in and fix some of their mess. I just think we can start by calling them on it when they do.

all the best,

drew

Re:Honesty....

[DogBotherer]

A first step, as was hinted at above, might be to revisit the concepts of a corporation enjoying all the benefits of (potentially immortal) "personhood" with only limited liability.

Re:Honesty....

[mdfst13]

The problem is that employees are not responsible for the companies actions. Instead, corporations are now "people" who are responsible for the actions that the employees take. There's an obvious disconnect there; the "person" responsible is not the person actually doing the crime. That has nothing to do with being a corporation. That's just as true of a sole proprietorship or a partnership. I.e. take away the "personhood" of the corporation and instead of the corporation being responsible for the employees behavior, the owners would be. It's basic tort law, respondeat superior: the supervisor is responsible for the actions of the employee (and this works transitively up to the top). A corporation's personhood makes responsibility stop with the corporation. Otherwise, responsibility would go to the shareholders.

Respondeat superior is not absolute. If you commit a criminal act (e.g. murder), you are *both* responsible. In other words, if the Godfather tells you to whack someone and you do, then both you and he are subject to criminal prosecution.

Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted. Criminal acts occurred.

A lot of the complaints against corporations are not criminal but civil. Microsoft was not "convicted of criminal restraint of trade" as you put it. It was found civilly liable for antitrust violations.

Europe fined Microsoft a half million euros for not unbundling their media player from the OS. Should they have put Bill Gates in jail? Instead? Or in addition to the fine? Should they have sued Gates instead of Microsoft? What if they did so right after he donated his stock to his foundation. Should they take the money back from the charity? Since he's not a European citizen, should the US arrest him and send him to Europe? What if he never set foot in Europe? Should he still be subject to European law?

Re:Honesty....

[ajs318]

Firstly, you can't use quantum encryption to get a message into the human brain because we don't have quantum sense organs. You could modulate the quantum-encrypted message onto a non-quantum carrier, but that makes it every bit as hackable as a non-quantum-encrypted message. (And anyway, the quantum communication process is inherently unreliable. It can never give better than 50% efficiency and is really only good for semi-secure key exchange. I say semi-secure because you still require a non-quantum backchannel to verify the key you exchanged over the quantum channel; and a MITM attack is not impossible, just supremely difficult and highly dependent on luck.) Secondly, what about cinemas? All the content being shown on one screen must be encrypted against the same key if everyone present is going to be able to view it. What about live concerts? The unencrypted material most definitely exists in the most eminently hacker-friendly form. And thirdly, implanting a different private key in every individual's brain would cost more than making the content it was supposed to protect in the first place. Sounds like you've been staring so long at a means that you've forgotten what the end was supposed to have been.

The public aren't going even to begin to fall for this. Even if some content providers do go down this route, somebody somewhere is going to realise the benefit of what I call the "newspaper method" (almost every newsagent's shop has a photocopier, but nobody uses these to "pirate" newspapers because it's cheaper just to buy one) and release unprotected content at a price which is low enough to make copying economically unfeasible. Once customers suss out that they're paying more for the packaging than the contents that they can get cheaper elsewhere, you'd better get used to what a person looks like from behind; 'cause that's the only angle you'll be seeing them from.

Now, go back to wanking over your science fiction pamphlets (and this time, lock the door in case your mother walks in). And log in next time you want to have a serious discussion.

Re: Honesty....

[SydShamino]

Show my a state that allows for-profit corporations to incorporate without requiring that they place shareholder equity as their number one goal.

Re: Honesty....

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I checked washington state, and it didn't mention anything about that. It mainly dealt with taxation issues and fees. Do you have an example where it actually does?

Re: Honesty....

[SydShamino]

Here's a good article on the theories behind corporate law and duty. In fact, it makes a case that the law is more ambiguous that I stated.

http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article =2238&context=expresso

The sources include links to legal scholars make the case that corporate law requires shareholder equity to be the primary corporate duty, as well as to those that argue for ethics to be considered as well.

Bit of FUD Himself

[AKAImBatman]

For example, in the Wikipedia entry, it currently mentions that "the members of ISO have only 31 days to raise objections", the implication being that this is far too short a time; yet, if I understand matters correctly, ODF was submitted in a fast-track procedure that didn't even allow these kind of objections.

That would be because respondants have had over 4 years to respond to the OASIS specification. Since it's already a standard that has been reviewed by the industry, the ISO committee can choose to adopt it on a fast-track as a way of putting their own stamp of approval on it.

Re:Bit of FUD Himself

[AKAImBatman]

I just realized that most Slashdotters probably didn't read the article, and I didn't quote quite enough to get the point across. Basically, he's saying that the ODF supporters are hypocrites by claiming that the 30 day window for OOXML review is too short, as they are using a similar 30 day period to get their own ISO approval. Which completely obscures the fact that ODF is already standardized by an industry standards organization (OASIS) while OOXML is not.

Re:Bit of FUD Himself

[I'm Don Giovanni]

What the hell are you talking about?
ECMA has just as much credibility as OASIS, if not more.

Re:Bit of FUD Himself

[AKAImBatman]

How long has the ECMA-376 spec been available to the public for review? How long was the OASIS ODF standard available to the public before being published as an ISO Standard?

Answer: 1 Month vs. 1.5 years respectively.

So, Microsoft rams a specification through the ECMA in a quarter of the time as ODF was moved through OASIS, significantly increases the volume of the standard over their original specs, at least one major partner voted against it, then gives everyone exactly one month to review it before it becomes an international standard, and somehow that makes the industry a bunch of whiners for complaining about having only one month to review their standard. Right.

Re:Bit of FUD Himself

[iluvcapra]

ODF is already standardized by an industry standards organization (OASIS) while OOXML is no

Aha! You cursEd Linux shill ;) , OOXML is standardized by ECMA, and this is what earned them their accelerated process.

What is unstated, of course, is that ECMA would standardize a Tuna Melt if you paid your fees on time.

GASTRONOMIC NOMENCLATURE -- PREPARED ITEMS -- SANDWICHES (COOKED)

ECMA 984.5(2007): TUNA MELT

Normative Terminology:
* In the foregoing, "TUNA" shall refer to saltwater fish endemic to the oceans of the Earth, classified ...

Microsoft is better than Linux

[heauxmeaux]

Microsoft has *always* been better than Linux.

Re:Microsoft is better than Linux

[Ash-Fox]

Microsoft has *always* been better than Linux.

So, how much is Microsoft paying you?

Re:Microsoft is better than Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ash-Fox is a known alias for Emmanuel Goldstein and is unable to bellyfeel heauxmeaux's writings. All crimethinkers are to report to the joycamp by order of Miniluv.

Re:Microsoft is better than Linux

[TheNetAvenger]

Microsoft has *always* been better than Linux.

Linux is a company now? Wow... :)

I guess you are right, especially in the early 80s. :)

Isn't this just spam using robots?

[WillAffleckUW]

I mean, seriously, hiring someone to contribute to Wiki and pretend they're an objective source when they're actually paying to publish your FUD and distorted views, is akin to spam from zombie computers.

Can they do it? Apparently.

Should they do it? No.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[MillionthMonkey]

Just do what Stephen Colbert did, and tell your audience the edits you want to see!

If Microsoft were smart, they'd set things up so that a friendly Wikipedia edit would extend your Windows license for a few days.

As for the rest of us, we may have to write worms to infect Windows computers if we are to orchestrate massive distributed Wikipedia editing campaigns.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[russ1337]

....would extend your Windows license for a few days.

You mean it runs out???

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[MillionthMonkey]

You mean it runs out???

I said if they were smart. ;)

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[LWATCDR]

"when they're actually paying to publish your FUD and distorted views, "
What if it is the truth? I have found lots of whacked out stuff in wikipedia. The posts that Microsoft wanted corrected seem to be less than useful. Why this ban on interested parties anyway. What exactly is an uninterested party and why would they post to the Wikipedia to start with? If you are posting to the Wikipedia you have some interest in the subject and a view point. I thought that the Wikipedia was supposed to be self regulating. Imagine if Salk wanted to do an article on Polio for the Wikipedia. Would you want to prevent him from doing it since he is not a neutral party?

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[s20451]

Just do what Stephen Colbert did, and tell your audience the edits you want to see!

It's much better, much more subtle, and much smarter than that.

Colbert basically encouraged every jackass in the universe to run over to Wikipedia and replace the page on elephants with "ELUPHUNTS R AWWQSOMEzors!!!!!1!!one!1". This is very easy to detect and stop.

Microsoft is encouraging people who are eloquent and well-spoken, and possibly already respected contributors to Wikipedia, to subtly modify entries to cast it in a more favorable light. This is much harder to detect, and could be impossible to stop.

One of two things will happen. Microsoft will either get away with it, or a NPOV holy war will break out, causing serious damage to Wikipedia. Either way, Microsoft wins.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[MeanderingMind]

How does Microsoft win if its actions damage Wikipedia? I'm not sure I understand the second win of your proposed win-win for MS.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[Jasper__unique_dammi]

I disagree, Microsoft should pay thousands of people working on GPL-ed projects to make sure all wikipedias reasons saying OOXML is a steaming pile of crap are correct.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[fritsd]

Because then, they can pooh-pooh the reputability of the Wikipedia articles that cast them in an unfavourable light.

Re:Isn't this just spam using robots?

[oldgeezer1954]

Well you don't need to hire someone if there's something there you don't like. If others revert your changes just offer wikipedia some bucks directly and see if they take your offer. The history of J V Merkey at that site is a testament to such actions although he rarely delivers on any promises of cash or other things.

For or Against?

[kaleco]

So is the submitter for or against Microsoft's corrections? I was unable to gauge his tone.

Re:For or Against?

[letsgolightning]

I know, it's crazy. It's almost as if the submitter is trying to stay neutral and let you make a decision for yourself.

Re:For or Against?

[KermodeBear]

Isn't that a good thing? I would prefer people who submit stories to be like this; Give me the information and let ME decide, for myself, if it is good or bad.

Re:For or Against?

[larien]

The tone I was getting was that he was in favour of real corrections, cutting out the plain untruths that the Wikipedia entries are garnering. If he does this in the name of truth & correct reporting, I'm all for it. Bear in mind you'll be able to track what changes he makes and if you don't think they're accurate, you can make your own edits back.

Re:For or Against?

[lastmachine]

So is the submitter for or against Microsoft's corrections? I was unable to gauge his tone.

Sacre Bleu! Hang on a moment Slashdotters, but we may have come across a rare specimen of un-biased journalism!

I, for one, welcome our new, well, um... Hey, how about that? We're free! WE'RE FREE!

Re:For or Against?

[LiquidCoooled]

I have a problem with Wikipedia.

Everything must be in neutral POV for it to be acceptable, however sometimes an objective POV is better.
I would like to see a wikipedia branch which offered different perspectives upon an article.

It would be good to see the Microsoft POV on themselves and how the public perceives them.
It would be good to know the facts about Manchester United football club, but since I support them I also don't mind reading about extra detail, where the best pubs are, bitching about the opposition and all other stuff someone who doesn't follow won't be interested in.

With microsoft I might want to see the party line on events actions and (for instance) the reasons behind those, I might want to be an investor who is looking more closely about the accounting details or a ravid linux fanboy wanting the conspiracy theories.

I would want to set my preferences like slashdot moderation groups and see the wiki-content I want.

All of this is available and is constantly created and destroyed in daily edit wars about POV.

Re:For or Against?

[AKAImBatman]

Everything must be in neutral POV for it to be acceptable, however sometimes an objective POV is better.
I would like to see a wikipedia branch which offered different perspectives upon an article.

That's not really Wikipedia's job. Wikipedia is a starting point in researching a topic. To develop a complete view of the subject, you should visit other sites that make more objective points about the topic. Wikipedia usually links to many of these as citations for its various sections.

Re:For or Against?

[LiquidCoooled]

Wikipedia does a VERY good job at keeping hold of user input.
It does not throw it away.

Currently there is a whole goldmine of good information buried inside the wikipedia history files.
It has been edited out of view because somebody did not agree with the content.

Why not just moderate these phrases instead of hiding them?

Sure, theres lots of drivel and spammy vandalism, but that might actually be of interest to someone.

We write a hell of a lot into our keyboards, we are infinite monkeys at our keyboards and I sense there is another work of shakespeare hiding away within our collective edits.

Re:For or Against?

[Opie812]

Did you read the article? If you consider what the submission to be neutral based on the contents of the article, I've got a bad feeling about these new 7 digit uid'ers. The future of the intrenets is in bad shape.

Clearly, the submission isn't presented in any sort of neutral way. I'd say FUD all the way.

Having said that, I hate micro$haft (hahahaha get it $ and shaft!!!!11!!!) as much as the next uber-linux geek. W00t!!

P.S. If you're kidding and the joke flew over my head, I'm truly sorry...it's been a long day.

Re:For or Against?

[Creepy Crawler]

The idea that one could vote up or down phrases sound good in theory, but look at kuro5hin.org

That site went that way, along with votable articles, and not many people rate comments there. For a while, trolls were mass-modding down everybodys article, thereby triggering a "hidden user", akin to slashdot's no-post for a day when modded down dramatically.

In other words, it doesnt work.

Re:For or Against?

[belmolis]

Everything must be in neutral POV for it to be acceptable, however sometimes an objective POV is better.

If by "objective POV" you mean that, for example, the article on the shape of the earth could come down on the side of "spherical" rather than "float", I think that the NPOV policy allows that. The intended interpretation of the policy against POV is, as I understand it, that where there is an issue all sides should be presented fairly. That means that one mentions that there are people who believe that the earth is flat, and to the extent that they have rational reasons for their belief, presents them accurately, but that one can still say that the scientific consensus is that they are wrong.

The idea that the NPOV policy means that an article "can't take sides" is, unfortunately, a common misconception among people who edit Wikipedia articles. I have seen, for example, people object to including crank "archaeologist" Barry Fell's work in the pseudoscience category on the grounds that this is POV. This is actually a fairly serious problem with Wikipedia since it means that proponents of silly ideas (usually crank science or nationalistic pseudohistory) get far too much leeway. In sum, at least as I understand the intention of the policy, you're wrong, but in practice, you're right.

Re:For or Against?

[StikyPad]

They ARE giving you the information and letting you decide -- just like Fox News.

FACT: Microsoft is doing terriffic work cleaning up poorly maintained and clearly biased Wikipedia entries, and they've even provided a boost to tech-sector employment by hiring several full-time workers to do the work. Without their contributions, Wikipedia could devolve into groupthink and/or factfinding. Three cheers for Microsoft!

Re:For or Against?

[David Gerard]

There is such a fork: wikinfo.org, a Wikipedia fork which has a Sympathetic Point Of View policy.

Re:For or Against?

[David Gerard]

What you're after is http://wikinfo.org/ .

NPOV

[truthsearch]

Wouldn't either side of these debates violate the neutral point of view policy of wikipedia? Aren't all of those opinions supposed to be deleted?

Re:NPOV

[Petrushka]

No one said anything about "opinions". As a poster below has said, "corrections are corrections". If all that's happening is that errors are being corrected, that's a good thing. If it should be the case that the corrections all happen to be on one side of an argument, then, well, no one said truth is neutral.

Now, having said that, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if there were some astroturfing, but the article presents nothing to suggest it. Your comment seems to express concern not so much about correction of factual errors as about misrepresentation of the debate itself. The article suggests that this campaign is more about the former than about the latter.

Re:NPOV

[owlnation]

Technically, but although I hate to defend Microsoft, why should they be singled out for trying to do this. I have no doubt that other firms, organizations, and individuals do exactly the same thing. There's plenty of articles on Wikipedia that look like they've been written directly by that organizations marketing dept. They don't get deleted either.

Any firm that's not trying to use Wikipedia directly, or through grassroots shills, to manipulate its image is wasting an easy opportunity.

Re:NPOV

[Divebus]

why should they be singled out for trying to do this?

Because it's laughable and easily spotted. Like a drunk: "really occifer.. I only had tee martoonis and got all sober to sunday up in". Yeah, I'd believe that. It was clear they tried to build astroturf consensus for the Zune as well. Many blogs had entries about the Zune with exactly the same broad notions: this is wonderful... but nothing concrete about it. Sorry, I don't appreciate being spoken to like a fool.

Re:NPOV

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is not "neutral".

If you don't agree with the "wikileet's" world view, you'll be shouted down in nothing flat.

Wikipedia was a nice idea at the time, but it's going the way of Internet news groups.

Re: NPOV

[Dolda2000]

By no means. Just because the sides in a debate aren't neutral, does not mean that reporting on a debate cannot be done from a neutral point of view. If you look at the Wikipedia page on the matter, you'll see that (except the things which remain to be cleaned up) it mostly writes about facts -- such as "OpenDocument is defined by OASIS, a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards." -- and for the opinionated points, present them as being someone's opinions -- such as "Alex Hudson, J. David Eisenberg, Bruce D'Arcus and Daniel Carrera of the OpenDocument Fellowship wrote an article published by the online journal GrokLaw that argues OpenDocument has several technical advantages over Office Open XML (Hudson, 2005[1]). The article examined some problems based on the original draft of the Office Open XML standard (which has since been superseded), and claims the following differences:".

Re:NPOV

[Air-conditioned cowh]

Yes. I guess all Microsoft are doing is playing the game like everyone else there. Believe me, I am no fan of Microsoft and I don't their OS at home or even at work.

On the other hand, how does any organisation deal with a Wikipedia article that is POV, factually incorrect and biased against them? It's catch 22,

Org : Yo Wikipedia dudes!

Wiki : Yo!

Org : This here website of yours is doing us in. We are losing customers/members/reputation because your stinking, biased, factually incorrect article is hurting us.

Wiki : Well, you can fix it yourself if you like. We only take libel seriously if it applies to biographies about living people.

Org : Not happy. It's a waste of our time and resources but OK, we'll cop it. We'll start contributing to the article.

Wiki : Oh, and by the way, you are "strongly discouraged" from editing the article because you have a conflict of interest and are "single-purpose" editors.

Org : Thanks a bundle! But if we don't sort it out who else will?

Dear Microsoft

[All_One_Mind]

I'm available for hire. Please send me a Ferrari notebook, Office 2007, and a contract to sign away my soul. Did I mention I also blog?

Re:Dear Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

MS, I have been using and abusing your products. I gladly fix any errors/FUD that are incorrect. I'd request a laptop but isn't needed.

Please hire me. Please contact me for rates. (rebelphotographer!!RemoveTHISandBangs!!gmail.com)

Re:Dear Microsoft

[dangitman]

I can partially help you. I'll run over your notebook with my Ferrari, on the way to my office, some time in 2007. And I'll take that pesky soul off your hands free of charge. Deal?

Re:Dear Microsoft

[StikyPad]

I'll take the Ferrari minus the notebook please. Did I mention that I could be Jim Wales?

Re:Dear Microsoft

[mgblst]

Only on slashdot would someone request a gift of a Ferrari NOTEBOOK!

What, they make cars as well??

No wonder there's a problem ...

[operagost]

... if the average Wikipedia author is as biased as this article summary. "Corrections favorable to them?" Corrections are corrections! In TFA, you'll see that there are errors in the OOXML article (as there are in many of them) and Microsoft enlisted a pretty unbiased guy to find them. If anything, one would expect him to be biased against OOXML and for ODF considering that only free time has kept him from contributing to ODF.

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[nagora]

if the average Wikipedia author is as biased as this article summary.

They are.

"Corrections favorable to them?" Corrections are corrections!

That's true, however I doubt that Microsoft or any other company pays people to correct entries where they are credited for something good that they did not in fact do. In other words, they only pay for "corrections that are favorable to them".

TWW

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[oGMo]

It doesn't matter. What they're doing is underhanded and shady. It doesn't matter how "unbiased" you think the person is, the facts remain:

1. There is public information Microsoft doesn't like.
2. They are privately paying a non-affiliated individual to fix it because they have been barred access.

This is, in irc terms, ban evading. It doesn't matter if the guy who banned you was a jerk, you're still ban evading. If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the wikipedia editors detailing what is wrong, why, and the proposed corrections, and subject them to review.

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[Kelbear]

Parent has a good point.

If Microsoft is hiring these editors to place facts onto the entries and not opinions, then there's nothing wrong with that. Corrections are good if they're valid.

If what they're placing is half-true but disputable, then truths from both sides should be placed in the entry and tagged as being under dispute.

If outright lies, then hopefully they can keep reverting the page to older revisions.

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[Rycross]

And? So what if they're favorable to them. What matters is if they're true, not whom they're favorable to.

If, for some reason, these Wikipedia entries are spreading lies that cast them in an unfavorable light, or are being used to convey the opinions of the hordes of "M$ SUX" fanboys that permeate the internet, then they're perfectly justified in correcting them to be accurate.

In fact, I'd say that its desirable for MS to present their side of the issue on Wikipedia, so long as they present facts and sources. After all Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral. If their entries are innacurate, then they can be corrected. If they abuse it they can be banned.

The only reason this is on Slashdot is because slashdotters tend to knee-jerk categorize anything MS does as evil, to the extent that they will make up crap on the spot. But its ok, right, because M$ SUX!!!

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[nine-times]

If anything, one would expect him to be biased against OOXML and for ODF considering that only free time has kept him from contributing to ODF.

Maybe that was their evil plan... to hire ODF supporters and give them busy work so that they couldn't contribute!

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is one of the only places I visit where I regularly see people modded up for calling action toward factual accuracy "underhanded and shady.

No wonder so many people think this place is crap.

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"There is public information Microsoft doesn't like. "

What you refer to as "public information" is actually disinformation put into Wikipedia by ODF-advocates. Who cares if they were paid directly by IBM or not? The fact is, they favor ODF and hate OOXML, and wrote the disinformation regarding OOXML in that light. That disinformation *needs* to be corrected. Or are you trying to "win" your format jihad via a disinformation propaganda campaign. IBM is certainly doing your dirty work by spreading FUD regarding OOXML, but do you really want Wikipedia to be used in that manner?)

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[Kelson]

This is, in irc terms, ban evading. It doesn't matter if the guy who banned you was a jerk, you're still ban evading.

Has Microsoft actually been banned from editing these articles? Even if you consider it to be Microsoft editing its own autobiography, I think it would be acceptable to remove blatant errors -- if "MS wants to enable death squads with their UUIDs" were in the article, I doubt anyone would object to Microsoft removing it.

If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the wikipedia editors detailing what is wrong, why, and the proposed corrections, and subject them to review.

And yet, Wikipedia encourages you to be bold and make changes yourself, rather than simply saying, "Someone should change this."

Just because they're Microsoft, they have to jump through extra hoops?

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the wikipedia editors detailing what is wrong, why, and the proposed corrections, and subject them to review. ...In which case /. would have a link^H^H^H^H "article" titled "MS threatens Wikipedia, wants all negative statements related to MS removed"

-W

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[nagora]

And? So what if they're favorable to them. What matters is if they're true, not whom they're favorable to.

I'm just pointing out that you can make corrections which are true and accurate and still be exhibiting bias by ignoring corrections which would be just as true but not to your advantage.

The only reason this is on Slashdot is because slashdotters tend to knee-jerk categorize anything MS does as evil,

I doubt that the same story being told about IBM or FSF would have any difficulty getting on Slashdot. Indeed, a very similar story about Jimmy Whales himself has been on /. at least twice.

TWW

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[shutdown -p now]

It's wrong because Wikipedia has a specific policy aimed against this sort of thing. Note that it applies regardless of whether their edits are factual or not - the reason being, it can at times be very hard to try to verify the nuances, and at the same time, it is very likely that someone with vested interest in the subject will have a bias, even if subconscious.

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[quux4]

They are privately paying a non-affiliated individual to fix it because they have been barred access.

I missed the part where Wikipedia barred Microsoft access? Can you provide sources for this allegation?

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[quux4]

It's wrong because Wikipedia has a specific policy aimed against this sort of thing.

You might want to re-read that policy. Start at the paragraph that begins with However, in clear-cut cases, it is permissible to edit pages connected to yourself ...

Re:No wonder there's a problem ...

[shutdown -p now]

Why not give the full quote? Nevermind, I shall...

... So, you can revert vandalism; but of course it has to be simple, obvious vandalism, and not just a content dispute. Similarly, you should feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself, such as marital status, current employer, place of birth, and so on. However, be prepared that if the fact has different interpretations, others will edit it.

Of course, what is a fact and what isn't is at times not so easy to decide. The result is that, as usual, the application of this policy largely depends on community consensus. I've seen WP:AUTO not being invoked when it clearly was applicable; it usually happens when the person in question is sufficiently trusted by other editors of the same article (and even then they keep a close eye on the edits). Of course, Microsoft and trust do not go well together, so...

Removing FUD.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this acceptable and ethical?

There is A LOT of Anti-MS behavior and FUD out there. Therefore, MS is contracting PR agents to "fix" this publically available (and incorrect(?)) (mis-)information.

I don't see a problem provided they don't alter the FACTS.

Troll article

[chris_eineke]

legal@microsoft.com? Are you shitting me? CmdrTaco should seriously think about adding article modding to slashcode.

Same ol, same ol Microsoft.

[LibrePensador]

Isn't this the same company that had dead people lobby Congress to avoid being broken-up during the anti-trust years?

This is the tip of the iceberg as it is rare, Halloween Documents not withstanding, to know the real extent of Microsoft's ongoing disinformation campaign.

Were public opinion to turn around and evaluate many of the existing technologies on their own merits, without being told by the media that they are too dumb to use something like Suse 10.2, Mandriva or Ubuntu, it would hit Microsoft very hard, provided, of course, that there was an OEM there with enough balls to offer preloaded computers with another OS.

So Microsoft fights and will fight to the death for mind-share. This is the single most important thing that drives Microsoft. Once computers,operating systems and office suites are demystified, a process which could be greatly helped by open standards such as ODF,and people are no longer afraid to lose their valuable data in a transition to a different product, Microsoft either innovates in real valuable and tangible terms or begins to have to tap its reserves, which huge as they are, would "only" carry them for another fifteen years at their current size.

Re:Same ol, same ol Microsoft.

[karlthemed]

yeah, b/c mom and pop are looking at wikipedia articles on OOXML to stave off dementia. that's how MS is trying to win the mindshare war!

Re:Same ol, same ol Microsoft.

[LibrePensador]

No, Microsoft expects to win over enough of the so-called "experts" so that these experts then do their bidding with mom and pop shops.

Re:Same ol, same ol Microsoft.

[Cheesey]

Isn't this the same company that had dead people lobby Congress to avoid being broken-up during the anti-trust years?

Holy shit! They can make zombies do their bidding? No wonder they have a 90% market share.

I'd say business as usual...

[PingSpike]

Marketing is all about this kind of stuff, fake individuals that are invented to love whatever crap you're pedaling. There was a pretty hilarious 'sony fan' blog that was posted recently. The Simpsons I remember had an episode that touched on this with the dog character they added to Itchy and Scratchy. Usually the marketing department fails at meshing cool and product placement, resulting in a transparent poser character that may as well have been a traditional ad. Even the viral marketing campaigns usually produce individuals who are quite fake because of their bizarre over enthusiasm.

The trouble with this though is its akin to paying one of the guys at websters to change a dictionary entry for you. People don't expect those to have any signifigant bias.

So what?

[MSFanBoi2]

People have been ravaging ANY Microsoft related entry on Wikipedia for just as long as it has been around with utter crap. Be it back handed comments at Bill Gates or blanking the Zune entry repeatedly.

Maybe Microsoft SHOULD pay the better respected press memebers to keep Wikipedia on track until those that think that putting "Bill Gates has no penis" in the Windows Vista entry grow up.

Re:So what?

[Dogtanian]

Maybe Microsoft SHOULD pay the better respected press memebers to keep Wikipedia on track until those that think that putting "Bill Gates has no penis" in the Windows Vista entry grow up.

They wouldn't be "well-respected" for their journalism if it ever got out that they were being paid by MS.

Anyhow, "Bill Gates has no penis" is blatant vandalism and abuse, and as such isn't likely to prove a problem for MS. Not unless it really *is* plausible that Bill Gates has no penis; and if that were true, the best way to avoid publicising the fact would be to act as if it weren't :-)

Re:So what?

[MSFanBoi2]

So just what does Bill Gate's penis have to do with Windows Vista? Thats right nothing.

Thats the point being made here, Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral. Thats the whole point. Thats why Microsoft went out of the way to find someone who wasn't pro-Microsoft, in fact even a little anti-Microsoft to provide more level headed input into Wiki.

Re:So what?

[sconeu]

Nah, Gates is probably OK. It's only that guy from the EPA who has no dick.

Re:So what?

[moogs]

I agree completely. I'm no MS fanboi, having experience with both Windows and Linux, but there are a lot of good things that could be said about Windows, which are just being left out of intellectual conversation largely because most contributors are MS-hating fanboys. I could think of a number of criticisms of Linux off the top of my head - non-intuitive installation, difficulity for newb users to switch platforms easily (whether because of intentional design or simply because of it's mass spread throughout society as a whole, the Windows interface is, for the large part, intuitive.) But just look up "Criticism of Linux" on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_linux/ and it's nothing but a poorly worded paragraph with links towards criticisms on the windows OSs. A very easy way to get modded Troll or a low mod score in /. is simply to write anything in support of Windows.

Nobody is denying that there is nothing wrong with MS, and Windows. But say what you want about shady business practices, if people continously, consistently remain on Windows, there must be something in it they like, something that works for them. I know many people who chose to use Windows, even after knowing of Linux. To quote author of TFA, that's just the stream they CHOOSE to swim in.

Microsoft has been badly ravaged by mostly childish, backhanded insults on Wikipedia and other forums. It's about time they take some positive action to boost their good name. It is a company, after all.

Why do I have a feeling I'll be modded Troll? Hell, screw my karma, I'm sleepy.

-Mugi.

Re:So what?

[MSFanBoi2]

Bingo.

Nail on the head.

But per usual it will get modded down... *sigh*

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"So just what does Bill Gate's penis have to do with Windows Vista?"

Got pics?

Re:So what?

[mangu]

I think your own post shows several of the characteristics of pro-MS bias that gets many people trying to counteract it by posting opposite views. Let's see:

I could think of a number of criticisms of Linux off the top of my head - non-intuitive installation

Last time I did a Linux installation, I popped the CD in, booted and had to enter just *one* piece of information: my name. How could that be more intuitive? Have you ever done an XP installation to see how "non-intuitive" it is?

difficulty for newb users to switch platforms easily (whether because of intentional design or simply because of it's mass spread throughout society as a whole, the Windows interface is, for the large part, intuitive.)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. To me, KDE is pretty much the same interface as XP, only easier to use in some details. For one thing, the main menu (the "K" menu, that would be the "start" menu on XP) shows items detailed by type, such as "internet", "graphics", "multimedia", etc, while on XP it shows by vendor, "electronic arts", "firaxis", etc. Not much difference overall, but Linux wins in the "intuitiveness" part for new users.

Now, for the more experienced people out there, Linux has so many nice tricks that it wins the ease of use dispute hands down. For instance, how does mid-clicking to paste selected text compare with "CTRL-C,left-click,CTRL-V"? Remember you are a newbie only once, but you stay experienced until Dr. Alzheimer gets you...

A very easy way to get modded Troll or a low mod score in /. is simply to write anything in support of Windows.

Oh, really? Try criticizing Apple to see how quickly you get modded to the -1 basement. Slashdot is like that, there are fanboys who get mod points, you should live with that.

if people continuously, consistently remain on Windows, there must be something in it they like

Well, perhaps they are getting a pre-installed system in their computer? People get used to things and start accepting things that seem inevitable. Or do you think men would like neckties and women high heels if they weren't just what "everybody" wears?

Microsoft has been badly ravaged by mostly childish, backhanded insults on Wikipedia and other forums

If your post is an example of their best defense, then maybe those insults aren't totally undeserved, after all?

Re:So what?

[moogs]

meh, I'm not suprised too. I've been reading slashdot for a long time, even longer than when i chose to register (that's what, a year ago?) and left even fewer comments (normally because I was too lazy).

I've been seeing stuff like this happen for a long time. Slashdot used to be about *objective* discussion, now it joins the net world in slinging Ms for anything they do. "Great Evil Company" and all that. Anything MS = Evil.

It's just pathetic.

Lemme guess. Troll?

Re:So what?

[DragonWriter]

Maybe Microsoft SHOULD pay the better respected press memebers [...]

Since being a "better respect press member" usually starts with being seen as unbiased and uncorrupted, being on the payroll of an interested party would probably stop the "better respected press members" from being "better respected".

Re:So what?

[EvanED]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. To me, KDE is pretty much the same interface as XP, only easier to use in some details.

And harder in others, arguably slower (at least on my box), and arguably uglier (at least any KDE theme I've managed to get installed compared to the admittedly hacked theme for XP I have).

Then when you add in GTK apps the situation gets worse... especially the stupid file dialogs.

For one thing, the main menu (the "K" menu, that would be the "start" menu on XP) shows items detailed by type, such as "internet", "graphics", "multimedia", etc, while on XP it shows by vendor, "electronic arts", "firaxis", etc.

That's not really a Windows thing though. I'm sure that if people regularily purchased the number of programs for Linux that they do for Windows the Gnome/KDE menus would look the same.

At worst, Windows does nothing to discourage this practice; it's 3rd party vendors that decide to put them in "Electronic Arts" instead of "Games".

Re:So what?

[Dogtanian]

So just what does Bill Gate's penis have to do with Windows Vista? Thats right nothing.

Which is why it's unlikely to be a problem beyond making WP look unprofessional. Unless people actually believe that Bill Gates has no dick and stop buying Windows for that very reason(!)

Re:So what?

[petermgreen]

Last time I did a Linux installation, I popped the CD in, booted and had to enter just *one* piece of information: my name. How could that be more intuitive? Have you ever done an XP installation to see how "non-intuitive" it is?
my take on installing windows and linux is that windows is easier PROVIDED you have the original disks/manuals for all hardware to hand. Linux is easier otherwise.

Both windows and linux make it fairly easy to reach the "its installed and sort of working but some hardware is partially or totally disfunctional" point, with windows its then a matter of feeding in manufacturers drivers (easy if you have the disks/manuals to hand, anywhere from annoying to very hard depending on how unusual your hardware is otherwise).

Linux tends to support more hardware out of the box but getting the remaining stuff (3D graphics and wireless are the biggies) working can require following fairly complex tutorials.

Apple gets its truth squad for free

[ToxikFetus]

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has an entire army of iZealots who work for free. No wiki or message board stands untouched by their version of iTruth!

Re:Apple gets its truth squad for free

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unlike Microsoft, Apple has an entire army of iZealots who work for free. No wiki or message board stands untouched by their version of iTruth!"

The Apple fanboys are certainly a pain. However, you have all unawares actually made a very telling point *against* Microsoft, namely:

Microsoft are so toxic that nobody loves them; consequently, no one who isn't paid by them will do anything for them.

Re:Apple gets its truth squad for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded Troll? Like it or not, it's completely correct.

Re:Apple gets its truth squad for free

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this modded Troll? Like it or not, it's completely correct.

Ahem...

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has an entire army of iZealots who work for free. No wiki or message board stands untouched by their version of iTruth!

Re:Apple gets its truth squad for free

[nine-times]

Now, this might not always be true, but to some extent: if a company inspires people to be fans of their work, if they gather massive amounts of extreme brand-loyalty, they're probably doing something right. If a company inspires hatred and distrust, there's a decent chance that they've done something wrong.

I believe Apple and Microsoft provide obvious evidence of this principle.

Re:Apple gets its truth squad for free

[Stormwatch]

No wiki or message board stands untouched by their version of iTruth!

Which we update every year for just $129!

My evil brain...

[Anonymous Coward]

...was ticking along one day, and I realized wikipedia is not going anywhere, and that corporate entities are going to want to have a very "respectable" write-up just to maintain image, to play up positives and downplay negatives. And so I envisioned this pitch: "Ensure your wikipedia entry is acceptable and not compromised by rumour and hearsay by subscribing to my service for $29,99 a month. My team of wikipedia nerds will ensure the integrity of your company's entry is maintained to the highest possible manner in accordance with veritable truth. For an extra $50 a month this truth can be considered as flexible as a gymnast."

Re:My evil brain...

[Dogtanian]

And how long is that going to work for, even if you never publicise the details of your scheme?

Re:My evil brain...

[ewhac]

Ensure your wikipedia entry is acceptable and not compromised by rumour and hearsay by subscribing to my service for $29,99 a month.

Get real. I know a firm out of Bangalore, India, that will do it for USD$4.49 a month.

:-),
Schwab

Re:My evil brain...

[EvanED]

You think your brain is evil? "That's a nice Wikipedia entry you've got there. It'd be a shame if someone were to vandalize it."

Correct This: Bill Gates IS +1, Incendiary

[Anonymous Coward]

More evil than the Al-Qaeda Commander-In-Chief.

Patriotistically as always,
Philboyd Studge

quick question, does this make them lobbyists?

[gumbi west]

will they have to register as lobbyists?

I'm impressed by Microsoft (kind of off-topic)

[Per Abrahamsen]

Apparently, someone in Microsoft got the idea to "pay some outsider to make corrections to Wikipedia pages we care about", *and* got internal funding for it.

If you have ever worked in a moderately sized organization, you will know how difficult it is to get anything slightly unusual through the bureaucracy. Yet a clearly outside-the-box proposal like this apparently got through. Presumably, it is even encouraged. That would never have happened in any of the organizations I worked in, except maybe for the small 3 employee upstart.

Re:I'm impressed by Microsoft (kind of off-topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

So maybe the idea came from the top?

The email is a joke, chum.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that your sense of humour is gone. Haven't you noticed a few... overly appropriate... names given for certain submissions? Those are probably mine.

The story is real enough--visit the O'Reilly link. I certainly can't fabricate such things. If it was made up, well, he'll probably be hearing from the real legal@microsoft.com. So it's quite true that the email address is not mine, but the point of it is to give a contact point for anyone interested in the story and that email address is far more relevant than my own.

As for the people saying "but they're paying for corrections!" Well, that presumes that the things they're correcting were wrong in the first place. For example, it's true that he has a very technical argument about 'conforming specifications'--they don't actually need the legacy stuff. Now, it'd be absolutely useless in practice to "conform" to that specification when you can't read the disgusting blobs of unreadable legacy application data present in tons and tons of documents, but he could be technically correct about that wording being incorrect. I'm often disturbed at just how much lying, err, sorry, I guess it's called "pretexting" now, we can manage by "correcting" tiny nits while remaining oblivious to all the elephants in the room like the fact that unnecessary legacy options should NOT be in a new standard simply because MS Word happens to use them, depreciated or otherwise, that a standard should only include things by reference that are actual standards, rather than more poorly or undocumented mystery meat formats, etc. ...

Anyhow, feel free to moderate this comment as you wish if it makes you feel better. But not you. You've already posted :P

A bit of an opinion in post?

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ isn't the only ones trying to influence readers..

Quote: "in light the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."

Wasn't the poster a bit opinionated?
P.S. I think the poster is probably right.

FUD is FUD

[NorbrookC]

no matter who is doing it. Microsoft has a long history of using FUD to advance it goals and maintain its position. No one, except MS flacks, argues that. But if it is wrong for MS to do so, and get (rightfully) slammed for it, then it is wrong to use FUD against MS to advance a competitor!

I wouldn't be surprised if there were contradictions or issues in the OOXML specifications. Any specification that runs 6000 pages is likely to have them! However, the real issues are whether they're addressable, and whether they're "killer issues" for ISO. In order to know that, we should cut through the FUD and look at the facts. Yes, ODF is an ISO standard, but just because it's our favorite standard is not evidence that OOXML is completely duplicative, or can't be made into an ISO standard, if the contradictions are resolved. The best way to argue this case is to drop the FUD, and let the arguments stand on their merits.

Re:FUD is FUD

[Max Littlemore]

...The best way to argue this case is to drop the FUD, and let the arguments stand on their merits.

But this is ./!

Don't you realise that M$ will sue anyone who doesn't implement the entire OOXML spec, even those who aren't writing office applications _and_ every time you save a document in ODF M$ will kill a baby kitten?!?

free?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, they are paying several of them through perks.

I've observed some underhand dealings over at Digg (yuck).

Re:free?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about some proof, dipshit?

Didn't think so.

needs tag: astroturfing

[Anonymous Coward]

Astroturfing is all about artificial "grass roots".

Does this mean I can expect ....

[3seas]

... spam that promises to pay me big money if I forward the spam to friends and relatives and edit wikipedia regarding and biased for M$?

Oh how the good ol'days can return....

Still waiting for my first big check from years ago...

I think companies should contribute

[Snarfangel]

... to Wikipedia. Not for nefarious purposes, but because accurate information can be an important sales tool.

For example, awhile back I was in the market for planar ribbon loudspeakers. I wanted to see what the difference between kapton and mylar/polyester was. DuPont could have easily expanded the article, rather than have potential customers track down bits and pieces of information through Google.

Even if they were rather excessive in their praise for the product, it would at least give a starting point for others to add to, and of course they should be held accountable deleting things simply because they weren't complimentary.

Re:I think companies should contribute

[Kalriath]

Except that they can't. They're forbidden by WP:COI from editing their own article - under penalty of change reversion and/or blocklisting.

Re:I think companies should contribute

[darkwing_bmf]

From WP:COI (emphasis mine):

Defending interests

In a few cases, outside interests coincide with Wikipedia's interests. An important example is that unsupported defamatory material appearing in articles may be removed at once. Anyone may do this, and should do this, and this guideline applies widely to any unsourced or poorly sourced potentially libelous postings.

Re:I think companies should contribute

[Snarfangel]

Oh well, I've only fixed a couple of spelling and punctuation errors in articles, so I didn't know that. I've seen a few articles where the information is available via Google, but scattered all over. Maybe if they had a process where companies could submit information for review, some of the stubs could be expanded.

Re:I think companies should contribute

[DragonWriter]

Note, this talks about material which, simultaneously: (1) violates Wikipedia's policies by being unsourced, and (2) is also defamatory. It also only applies to removing the offending material, not replacing it with other material.

That seems different from what was at issue here, a paid agent of an involved party rewriting material related to the involved party on that party's behalf and to make it more favorable (even if, supposedly, only by correcting "errors") to that party: that seems to fall squarely into the area strongly discouraged by the COI rules.

Re:I think companies should contribute

[llywrch]

> Except that they can't. They're forbidden by WP:COI from editing their own article - under penalty of change reversion and/or blocklisting.

Er, you misunderstand that. "Wikipedia: Conflict of Interest" is a guideline, not a policy. Someone won't get blocked from Wikipedia for violating it, but many people who violate it often also break many other rules & those are what lead to the block.

Contributors get hit with "change reversion" all of the time -- I've had it happen to me several times. It's known as a difference in opinion.

In short, it's a strongly-pushed suggestion not to edit articles one has a financial stake in, not a requirement. If there was a code of ethical behavior on Wikipedia, we might allow paid contributors to work on material related to their professions. But we don't (mostly because no one has thought of it or how to enforce it), so we just discourage people from doing it. Even if it might improve articles.

Geoff

Re:I think companies should contribute

[Kalriath]

In theory, you're correct. It is a guideline, not a policy. Unfortunately, the majority of editors hold the Guidelines to be sacrosanct and will revert virtually everything that doesn't follow them - no matter how high quality or relevant. And I wouldn't be remiss in pointing out that some of those with the power to blacklist hold similar misguided beliefs. With Wikipedia, guideline may as well be law.

did you read the article?

[hedrick]

I didn't see any problems at all. MS would have no reason to expect this guy to be slanted in their favor. His interest is in correcting errors of interpretation, of which it appears some exist.

If you can't get a good opinion...

[Foofoobar]

BUY one! Sponsored by the '$10 in your pocket to say Zune is great' campaign.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Honesty.... (and SOX)

[AveryRegier]

With the advent of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) honesty became literally the best policy for not losing gobs of money. SOX and the related securities law changes has made corporate ethics a very big thing. I hear a lot about how ethics violations have the potential of ruining a company. Corporations now go to great lengths to create ethics and business conduct policies and make sure every employee is well trained on them.

I'm not sure why Microsoft hasn't gotten the message.

to answer your question

[SethJohnson]

...but what the hell is the marketing department doing?

Check the Wikipedia entry for turning lead into gold.

Seth

Depends who's paying

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Perhaps this is a way of hanging out an "I can be bought" shingle.

it's called fraud down at the courthouse

[swschrad]

and "no freakin' ethics" elsewhere.

you are judged by what you do yourself. if you're too slimy and gutless to stand on your word, but have to whistle up shills instead, you're slime.

if MS is doing it, then they're fraudulently distorting records and public opinion. not the first, won't be the last. but I don't do business with them any more because they are screamin' weasels who can't even stand up with a stone face and tell their own lies.

Re:it's called fraud down at the courthouse

[Blappo]

Nice of you to admit that you didn't read the article. Which is what that was, a screaming admission of your ignorance.

Would you take the job?

[Per Abrahamsen]

If the Wikipedia articles in your area of expertise were of low quality, filled with anti-Microsoft spin, and clearly violated Wikipedia policies, would you accept money from Microsoft to clean them up. The mandate would be to correct technical mistakes, and make the articles follow Wikipedia policies.

In other words, being paid to do something you would gladly do for free, if you had the time?

Re:Would you take the job?

[rewt66]

Maybe.

Telling what I think is the truth is just something that I do. I may try to say it gently and with tact (and if my wife is to be believed, I regularly fail), but I don't say what I consider to be false.

If Microsoft was fine with that, then sure, I'd take it. Doing what I want to do is cool. Getting paid is cool. Getting paid for what I want to do anyway is wonderful.

But I'd have to make sure that they understood up front what my plan was - that I was going to say what I believed to be the truth. Not pro-Microsoft, not anti-Microsoft, just the truth as best I understood it. And then I expect I'd have to resist pressure to do "a little bit more" - to soften the phrasing here or there, or to remove a "less relevant" but negative fact, or whatever, and it could get all morally ambiguous, which I hate, and they'd be trying to make me feel bad for taking their money and not doing what they wanted. And then I'd have to worry about the apearance of selling out as well as the reality, and I'd have people saying that I sold out even if I didn't...

OK, so maybe I wouldn't do it. Maybe there are too many negatives. But I don't necessarily have a problem with someone who takes this gig.

Re:Would you take the job?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's vitally important that the anti-Microsoft spin be high-quality and correctly formatted.

It's not unusual

[RelliK]

Microsoft has been doing the same thing forever.

What about Google and Apple?

[mattgreen]

They're the exceptions to the rule, right? I'm not good at keeping up with groupthink.

Re:Honesty.... (and SOX)

[Maxo-Texas]

I would actually say that with the advent of SOX, obsessive compulsive behavior became the best policy.

We follow our procedures. The goal is to follow the procedures, not to be honest or to be productive.

Our executives can still write huge checks without even a co-signer.

Nice guys finish last

[DeadCatX2]

Generally, I believe that the lack of personal responsibility for actions being carried out "in the name of a corporation" is the real culprit.

So you're suggesting insubordination?

Thanks, but I'll take putting food on my table to losing my job because my employer's morals and ethics do not align with my own. And, with some of that money from the paycheck that I keep by doing what I'm told, I can even donate to charity, thus minimizing the Karmic backlash.

Re:Nice guys finish last

[maxume]

If you are willing to compromise it for money, it is a preference, not a moral or ethic principle.

Re:Nice guys finish last

[tepples]

So you're suggesting insubordination?

"I quit" is better than "I will commit a crime for you" under most legal systems.

Thanks, but I'll take putting food on my table to losing my job because my employer's morals and ethics do not align with my own.

Do there not exist more than one employer?

Re:Nice guys finish last

[DeadCatX2]

There may be, but it's actually quite hard for some people to get experience.

For example, I'm fresh out of college, even though I've got a year and a half of experience under me I would be hard pressed to find another job.

Especially if there was a high profile case of insubordination. Who wants an employee who doesn't listen?

I'm curious...what has happened to whistleblower's careers after they blew the whistle?

Re:Nice guys finish last

[Jesus_666]

I'm curious...what has happened to whistleblower's careers after they blew the whistle?

Actually, that's an awesome topic to write a book about.

How widespread is this behavior?

[Klaus_1250]

Does anyone know if there are any numbers floating around the web which give a rough approximation of how much companies are spending at these kind of tactics? I know you can hire people to leave good comments, forum-posts and reviews and edits wiki's, but how much money is in it? How worried should we be?

Yes we need these companies

[Shivetya]

because the vast accumulation of wealth is in the hands of individuals, not some "mythological beast" you seem to want to make corporations into.

Only large organizations can efficiently serve large populations. Governments certainly can't, go look to areas of the world beholden to government entities, most aren't anyplace you want to live. The primary reason is that governments don't have to get better and improve, they only have to maintain the status quo. Companies on the other hand grow because the people in charge want to succeed. This leads to innovations, more employment, better qualitiy of life, and yes more money.

Oh, but that evil money, where is it? Well the bulk of corporate wealth is held by retirement concerns, yup those evil teachers, firemen, police, and maybe even your coworkers are all part of the system.

Sorry, its childish to apply human traits to something that is not alive. Its a form of organization, nothing more. It succeed because of individuals and it fails because of them too.

Re:Yes we need these companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies on the other hand grow because the people in charge want to succeed. This leads to innovations, more employment, better qualitiy of life, and yes more money.

Then why is America, the land of corporations, such a shitty place to live with a horribly low quality of life, and a backwards culture?

Re:Yes we need these companies

[drsmithy]

Only large organizations can efficiently serve large populations. Governments certainly can't, go look to areas of the world beholden to government entities, most aren't anyplace you want to live. The primary reason is that governments don't have to get better and improve, they only have to maintain the status quo. Companies on the other hand grow because the people in charge want to succeed. This leads to innovations, more employment, better qualitiy of life, and yes more money.

Only large organizations can efficiently serve large populations. Companies certainly can't, go look to areas of the world beholden to corporate entities, most aren't anyplace you want to live. The primary reason is that companies don't have to get better and improve, they only have to maintain the status quo. Governments on the other hand grow because the people in charge don't want to get voted out. [etc].

Oh, but that evil money, where is it? Well the bulk of corporate wealth is held by retirement concerns, yup those evil teachers, firemen, police, and maybe even your coworkers are all part of the system.

Something like 95% of the wealth is concentrated in 2% of the population. While this ratio is probably better than it was, say, half a millenia ago, somehow I don't think that 2% is made up of teachers, firemen and police.

Sorry, its childish to apply human traits to something that is not alive. Its a form of organization, nothing more. It succeed because of individuals and it fails because of them too.

"It" succeeds because "it" is largely able to conduct itself in a manner that most _individuals_ would consider questionable, if not unacceptable.

Corporations insulate the people running them from the consequences of their actions. By doing so, they effectively encourage those people to act in the most cynical, selfish, rude and psychopathic manner possible.

Ironic that you use the word "childish" above, because that's essentially the manner in which most coporations conduct themselves - like children.

OOXML and its shortcomings

[stuartrobinson]

Regardless of how you feel about MS and its attempts at spin control, let's not loose sight of the really important thing here---OOXML is a bad standard. Its many flaws are well documented. Try any of these links to find out about some of them: http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections As a linguist, the pathetic language encoding (which ignores the ISO standard) is particularly galling: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archive s/004065.html

wikipedia's MS articles are anti-MS bashfests

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's well known that wikipedia articles regarding Microsoft are written by anti-Microsoft people, so why not balance it out a bit?

This is crap

[tvon]

I'm not a Microsoft hater at all, its just that I've swum in a different stream. Readers of this blog will know that I have differing views on standards to some Microsoft people at least.

So the author is not a Microsoft fanboy/drone/borg/whatever.

As a regular participant at ISO standards, on and off for more than a decade at my own expense(...)

I know some of the ODF people, I had some nice emails with the ODF editor over Christmas for example, and Jon Bosak asked me to join the original ODF initiative at OASIS (I couldn't due to time, unfortunately.)

So we can assume that the author knows what he is talking about, assuming he isn't lying (and he writes for XML.com so he probably isn't lying).

And after more "I'm no MS fanboy" bits, the author states that he received the Microsoft offer letter and:

I think I'll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see.

Sounds fair enough.

Just scanning quickly the Wikipedia entry for OOXML, I see one example straight away(...)

The guy who knows what he's talking about finds an error rather quickly...

(...) So that entry is simply wrong. The same myth comes up in the form "You have to implement all 6000 pages or Microsoft will sue you." Are we idiots?

That one just amuses me, given the Slashdot submission which says:

"Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."

Or to bring out the key points:

Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia.

Well, they're not trying, they're doing.

Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them.

Even the skeptical author of TFA stated that they seemed to want non-partial editors.

Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."

Nice one. In reality it was to correct information in Wikipedia that is just plain wrong.

Microsoft annoys the crap out of me, I use a Mac and before that used Linux for 6 years, but when Slashdot has stories like this it just makes us all look like assholes.

Re:This is crap

[arkanes]

Even the skeptical author of TFA stated that they seemed to want non-partial editors.

Are you a retard or a shill? Seriously. What kind of naive fool would you have to be to think that the PR department of a major corporation really wants "non-partial" editing of its wiki entries? That they are going to *pay* for? And this corporation in particular, which has a well-known history of controlling press and PR about itself very tightly. I'm not surprised they're hiring someone, but don't insult anyones intelligence by suggesting that they'd be just as happy to hire someone to write negative entries. They're attempting to correct what they see as negative spin.

Nice one. In reality it was to correct information in Wikipedia that is just plain wrong.

Well, nothing that he wrote in his article is "just plain wrong". Even his very first statement - the standard *does* define those sections, it does *not* provide implementation details, and while they are "optional", it's nitpicking at best to claim that they aren't a weakness in the standard and the inability for third parties to implement them is a problem.

The article in its current state doesn't say anything about "implementing the entire 6000 pages or MS will sue" and I don't feel like digging through the history in an attempt to find where he might have seen it. It's worth noting that the MS covenant only applies to conforming implementations, and there may have more been made of that fact in older versions of the article.

His final "inaccuracy" isn't anything of the sort, it's an accurate statement that he feels is unfair. He actually spends more time talking about this one than about any of the previous "inaccuracies", which might give you some insight into how he might edit the article. His stated reason for believing it to be unfair is factually inaccurate, too, which again indicates exactly how well researched and unbiased his opinions are likely to be.

Re:Stop feeding the monster!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone seems to hate Micros$loth for one reason or another, but in the end everyone (OK, almost everyone) keeps feeding the monster.

Until people stop feeding the monster their hard earned cash this kind of stuff will just continue.

Microsoft does this with bloggers

[gamer4Life]

...as well as review sites.

Trying to "pay" them off to write something favorable for them - giving incentives such as notebooks, advertising dollars, free software, etc...

They do this to promote Vista, Zune, and the XBox. Their goal is to try to create a fanboy circle of consultants, gamers, and audiophiles, which will automatically do this for them. But the initial seed is through the media.

Trust

[DeadCatX2]

I don't know what definition of trust you're using, but just because you can predict someone or something's behavior does not mean you can trust them.

If my exgf is a slut, and every time I get back with her she cheats on me, I know that her behavior is predictable and she has one primary goal. She is predictable, but definitely not trustworthy.

Re:Trust

[Irish_Samurai]

If my exgf is a slut, and every time I get back with her she cheats on me, I know that her behavior is predictable and she has one primary goal. She is predictable, but definitely not trustworthy.

She's completely trustworthy, you have just misplaced your trust. If you trust in her to be faithful, you made the mistake of mis-evaluating her actions. If you trust she is gonna cheat on you, you have accurately nailed the behavior and can develop contingencies for dealing with that behavior.

Trust is just a projection of your expectations in relation to your perceptions.

Re:Trust

[DeadCatX2]

Yes, I can trust that she will cheat on me.

I cannot trust her, especially if she lies about it and I catch her in the act.

Trusting something ABOUT someone is different from trusting them. We're all playing semantic games here, so let me offer up a definition of trust.

From the American Heritage Dictionary

Trust - 1) Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

I would say that, for the purposes of this discussion, corporations cannot be morally or ethically trusted (they have no integrity or character), but for the purposes which get them money they can be trusted.

Again, however, even if you trust that they will do everything they can to get money, you don't know what everything is. This is why corporations have Congressional lapdogs.

Insightful my eye.

[Ahnteis]

>>It doesn't matter. What they're doing is underhanded and shady.

Howso? From TFA:
"I think I'll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see."

Wow -- that sounds shady AND underhanded. No wait -- not even close. He admits he's been hired, AND he is only going to correct errors. Wow. Sounds EVIL.

>>1. There is public information Microsoft doesn't like.

No, this is public MIS-information that Microsoft doesn't like on a PUBLIC forum. They have every right to correct those errors, but they've gone one step further and hired a third party to examine the validity of the articles and correct any errors he finds.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[DragonWriter]

No, this is public MIS-information that Microsoft doesn't like on a PUBLIC forum. They have every right to correct those errors, but they've gone one step further and hired a third party to examine the validity of the articles and correct any errors he finds.

A paid agent of Microsoft is no more a "third party" in any meaningful sense than a regular Microsoft employee would be. Had Microsoft convinced a genuinely independent party with no connection to Microsoft to review the material for inaccuracies, and correct any errors in any directions that it found, that would be going a step further than submitting its own corrections. But having their own paid agent doing it is, well, the same as doing it themselves.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[belmolis]

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I don't think that just because they pay someone that makes it FUD. The is not who pays but who decides what edits to make. If they pay someone who decides on his own what to do, he is an independent agent. And in this case, since the edits will be public and reversible if other people find them incorrect, I don't see a problem.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[DragonWriter]

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I don't think that just because they pay someone that makes it FUD.

Who said it did? I said it makes it know different than if it was posted by any other paid agent of Microsoft. That doesn't mean its FUD, necessarily.

The is not who pays but who decides what edits to make.

That an interested party is paying for the edits at the vary least raises a conflict of interests. People who get paid for editing are naturally likely to want to give the people paying them what they want, because that will allow them to get paid for editting again.

And in this case, since the edits will be public and reversible if other people find them incorrect, I don't see a problem.

Apparently, Wikipedia itself does, since its conflict of interest guidelines (WP:COI) strongly discourages edits by paid agents of involved parties and strongly encourages such agents, if they feel they still need to make changes, to instead recommend them on talk pages for inclusions by neutral, rather than compromised, editors.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[belmolis]

What you're missing is that someone who is paid by Microsoft but who makes decisions independent of Microsoft and is not biased in advance, is not an agent of Microsoft. Pay often creates a conflict of interest either because the person paid is subject to the direction of the employer, but there is not a necessary connection between being paid and lacking independence.

A good example of the distinction is a special prosecutor when appointed due to a conflict of interest

Re:Insightful my eye.

[ClosedSource]

I doubt that any controversial topic written about in Wikipedia is written entirely by legitimate third parties. Slashdot proves that people will spend a lot of time and effort to support their point of view without being paid. Since many of us have opposite views, being paid isn't a requirement for being wrong or biased.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[killjoe]

I guess it all depends on what he defines as an error.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[DragonWriter]

A good example of the distinction is a special prosecutor when appointed due to a conflict of interest

Special prosecutors are an inelegant workaround to the problem of conflict of interest; you can't have a prosecutor genuinely independent of the executive power of the sovereignty against whom the alleged crime was committed (at least, in the US system); and they are not completely independent or without conflict, they are an instrument for minimizing conflict.

Since there can be Wikipedia commentors genuinely and completely independent of Microsoft, no such inelegant hack is necessary to allow editing of Wikipedia at arms-length from Microsoft. A editor paid by Microsoft is acting in Microsoft's interests: if they aren't, Microsoft management is violating its fiduciary duty to Microsoft's shareholders.

And that is a conflict of interest, which is why Wikipedia has a set of Conflict of Interest guidelines that, in the first place, strongly discourage any editing by people paid by an interested party for edits, and, in the second place, strongly encourages that, if such people still feel the need to make edits, that they instead recommend them on talk pages and leave inclusion of them on main pages to neutral rather than compromised editors.

Re:Insightful my eye.

[GaryPatterson]

I agree, but choosing to do this through a third party can only look bad.

Why did they do that, if not to obscure the link between the post and themselves?

bullcrap

[Anonymous Coward]

You and your pig buddies may think this is true, or want it to be true

"Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else."

Our society and governments and laws say otherwise. You have to follow the laws, a lot of laws ARE BASED ON ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS. You aren't supposed to be lying sniveling thieving asshole fucks!

FUCK you greedy assholes and your parasitic shareholders. FUCK YOU. You ARE accountable to the rest of society! Get that through your perverted thieving head!

Just keep pushing it, keep being more unethical, keep lying, keep demanding more and more profits for less and less work, keep exploiting and squeezing people for your percentages, and see what happens. If you want a hint, read some history when the elite pigs pushed too far, when the non workers pushed the workers too far. That is what will happen until you GET RID OF THAT NOTION that you are only beholden to your "shareholders". NO, YOU ARE BEHOLDEN TO SOCIETY FIRST, not your stupid profits..

I don't know what economic idiot taught you hallucination you uttered, but it is WRONG. It's not only wrong, it is wrong because it is universally recognized by honest and civilized people as being evil, stupid, counter productive. Do you get it? You aren't some predator out with no checks and balances in your "answering to no one" corporation. Keep acting like a rabid predator and eventually the people will treat you like one,exactly as you would deserve, history has proven this over and over again. When the Incans got pushed far enough by the conquistadores, they finally gave them all the stinking profits they could eat, by pouring liqud molten gold down their pig throats. Stuff like that is what you get when you think you are only beholden to your "shareholders" in your "corporation". Society has a way of altering your reality really quick once you have gone too far. Here's a hint number two-don't even approach that level. Stop being a greedy pig. Stop putting accumulation of monetary profit at the top of your list of what is important. Break the cycle of greed.

Learn from history or repeat it, you and your corporation are NOT special. Either get civilized voluntarily, or don't be surprised if one day civilization gets forced upon you by society at large in self defense. One way or the other, you WILL stop being predatory.

Re:bullcrap

[Irish_Samurai]

While I agree with the core sentiment of what I believe you are saying, there are some things that need to be realized.

Our society and governments and laws say otherwise. You have to follow the laws,

True, unless the laws cannot be enforced upon you. Law enforcement by its very function requires the ability to exert force of some sort to manipulate an entity to comply with the law when they don't choose to. If you have unbelievable resources, no physical entity to imprison, and the possible fallout of a negative impact on the local economy due to severe punishment - you become effectively ungovernable.

You ARE accountable to the rest of society! Get that through your perverted thieving head!

Well, they are supposed to be, but we are seeing more and more that they actually aren't. The consumer body has not chosen as a whole to respond uniformly to unethical business practices. As long as the consumer keeps passing the resources to these companies, they will continue to be empowered to exhibit this behavior.


I don't know what economic idiot taught you hallucination you uttered, but it is WRONG. It's not only wrong, it is wrong because it is universally recognized by honest and civilized people as being evil, stupid, counter productive.

Economics is what is keeping the flow of money going the way it is going. Wrong or not, the money is doing what is is doing. While terms like ethics and morals are often introduced into economic discussions at different points, they quit being relevant when the source of economic power is being supplied by those who don't care about such things. Share holders push for maximum profits and consumers willingly hand over their money in exchange for the supplied goods or services.

We may have to contend with the fact that "honest and civilized" either doesn't exist in the numbers it once did or has a different meaning altogether now.

Here's a hint number two-don't even approach that level. Stop being a greedy pig. Stop putting accumulation of monetary profit at the top of your list of what is important. Break the cycle of greed.

You're right. Don't let greed lead you. But people are strange things and money makes life easier. Its real easy to fall into the pit of greed with perfectly noble intentions.

Re:bullcrap

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are a complete fuckwit, aren't you!

You obviously know aboslutely nothing about the way corporate governance works, or how (and why) corporate officers are elected, and why so many people have a vested interest in the bottom line.

Never heard of pension funds, or investment trusts, or any of those other major institutions, that are interested in NOTHING other than that bottom line.

Granny Smith might be the nicest little old lady who doesn't have an unethical bone in her body, but you interfere with her pension check, and you'll be sorry! And if that means having to use less than ethical methods to do it, thenso be it!

A word of warning, ass-hole - DON'T FUCK WITH GRANNY'S PENSION CHECK!

I hate it when some stupid snot who was never taught the facts of life starts vomiting rubbish about who or what a corporate entity is beholden to. You try that sort of bullshit on the average corporation - you know what's going to happen? Off shore to a tax haven as quickly as it can be arranged, and double digitalis erectus to you, shit head!

Re:bullcrap

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking hell! Another political science and humanities student! What is /. coming to?

okey dokey

[snarfbot]

so basically what everyone is saying is this:

there is an inherent conflict between corporations, and the public.

the corporations want to make the pay the lowest salary possible, and charge the most they possibly can on thier product, while remaining competive.

whilst the employees want to get paid as much as possible, and the consumers want to pay as little as possible for X goods.

this relationship will never change, quick and dirty economics.

the real problem lies with the government, and the creation of laws that favor the corporations with thier lobbying (bribes), in direct opposition to the public that they are allegedly protecting.

and as for microsofts stunt here, well i have to agree with everyone that its pretty offensive, but id expect nothing less from them, and lets be honest:

microsoft is a pretty high profile company, imagine how many other companies get away with this kind of crap everyday.

i mean sony got caught doing the same thing as well, ill bet a large percentage of corporations get away with it.

welp!

Nope, you managed to be completely wrong twice

[Anonymous Coward]

"1. There is public information Microsoft doesn't like."

Nope, that's wrong. There is public information that MS believes to be innacurate. Not the same, nice try.

"2. They are privately paying a non-affiliated individual to fix it because they have been barred access."

Nope again, they are NOT ALLOWED BY THE RULES OF WIKIPEDIA to correct it themselves. Wrong again nice try.

"If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd...blah blah spiel spiel"

WHY? Why is your solution any better than theirs? They are using the system and working within it, and you seem to think that's a bad thing.

But you're wrong about THAT too.

Words mean precisely what I intend them to...

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Corrections favorable to them?" Corrections are corrections!

Therein lies the rub, my friend--you're not being very selective about it. Correct that which is wrong and unfavorable to you. Do NOT correct that which is wrong and favorable to you.

Please ponder this for a moment. I, the submitter, have absolutely nothing against real corrections.

But that again presumes that it is real corrections that will be made. He's already pointed out that, technically, conforming OOXML implementations do not have to contain the legacy features. Never mind that documents converted from MS Word are almost sure to contain those features, and that such documents will be unreadable masses of gibberish no matter how "conforming" your implementation is unless you understand those legacy features.

So, yes, that's a correction. He's even technically right. But is that a real correction?

Re:BINGO

[scott1110]

Slashdotters are all about the FUD.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wikipedia Accepted Practice

[Fforde]

Interesting except this is an accepted practice at Wikipedia.

Re:Wikipedia Accepted Practice

[Anonymous Coward]

No. [from the "Conflict of Interest" link prominently displayed in your link]

Look up the words: Social Corporate Responsibility

[LibrePensador]

A smart society will place limits on what any corporate entity can do. The accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake without clear benefits to society as a whole is not something that most societies should reward.

Corrupt corporations corrupt everything they touch and the bigger they are, the more pervasive their effects on society is. To a certain extent, this anything-goes bullshit that one often hears in Slashdot is a clear example of the real pernicious effect that massive corporations are having on our collective culture.

MOD PARENT UP!!

[MightyMait]

Wow, AC has my vote for President!!!

I will second this without anonymity!!

It's all about priorities.

I get paid to write pro-msft stuff on /.

[fishdan]

Ok, I'm lying. I don't write any pro msft stuff, and they don't pay. Maybe there is a correlation?

But seriously folks -- I wrote about this happening right here on /. 2 years ago

Re:Honesty.... (and SOX)

[Kineel]

With the advent of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) honesty became literally the best policy for not losing gobs of money. That is one of the more naive posts I have yet seen. So you contend that the Federal government was actually trying to achieve ethical business practices with SOX? Quaint, but quite impossible. What they hoped to do was provide laws that they could find companies violating so that they could convict them and impose huge fines, thus generating more money for the Federal Government.

SOX does not cause companies to behave more ethically, it causes them to mindlessly follow new processes and regulations in order to attempt to avoid paying the fines the Federal Government wants to impose. SOX is another excellent example of how NOT to regulate businesses.

On the up side, SOX has generated lots of smaller business opportunities for new companies who can "assist" the big companies in avoiding paying fines by acting as if they are obeying the laws. SOX has created jobs for bean counters, which I think was another of it's primary objectives.

This already happens

[init100]

Some Wikipedia articles about Microsoft products already sound suspiciously similar to their sales pitches and advertising material, so this is probably already happening. It might not be Microsoft employees themselves, but the article authors must at least be big fans of Microsoft.

It was some time since I read those articles, so I don't remember specifically which one I reacted on. So no link, sorry.

So MS wants wikipedia information to be correct?

[TheNetAvenger]

So MS wants wikipedia information to be correct? This has to be a good thing for Wikipedia, and is one of the final corporate stamps of approval.

Wow, this is very progressive, considering the money MS makes off Encarta.

Double Think

[twitter]

This supposed expert's head is filled with contradictions.

ODF has simply not been designed with the goal of being able to represent all the information possible in an MS Office document; this makes it poorer for archiving but paradoxically may make it better for level-playing-field, inter-organization document interchange.

That after saying that OOXML implementers do not need to follow all 6,000 pages of specs. If we accept his logic, OOXML will not be able to represent all the information possible in a M$ Office document. We, of course, should reject his logic because it's silly to think that M$ has anything that any normal typesetter could not represent.

That's double think and it's bad but what follows is even more amazing.

[it (original was a typo, "if", which makes me think he uses Word more than he lets on)] offends me a little to see the ISO process get slung with this kind of mud. I suspect that many technical reviewers for National Bodies will take a dim view of vague or stupid claims.

Is he really suggesting that the torrent of paid edits that's about to hit the Wiki is going to come from unpaid experts? Where were they before the M$ money came out? Yeah, right, that's what I thought ... they were writing the articles full of "FUD" to begin with. That or just ignoring it all and voting as they see fit. It's not like a real expert on a National Body wold be swayed by a Wiki Article, well not since M$ started paying to spam it.

Re:Double Think

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy

About OOXML (ECMA 376)

[fritsd]

Think for yourself.. would you accept *ANY* document as international standard if it said something like "implement this just like our closed-source proprietary computer program does it"? Do you know how MS Word 6 did linewraps? Where can I find this information?
I consider this a "killer issue" for ISO (but i'm not on any of the national standards bureaux so rest assured :-)), what is your opinion?
I quote this from groklaw: http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections #Ecma_376_relies_on_undisclosed_information):

Ecma 376 relies on undisclosed information
[edit]
Undisclosed proprietary specifications

Section 6.2.3.17 "Embedded Object Alternate Image Requests Types" (page 5679) requires implementors to support the proprietary Windows Metafiles.
[edit]
Cloning the behaviour of proprietary applications

Several sections require the implementor to clone the behaviour of a proprietary product, where the behaviour to clone is not specified in the specification. For example:

* Section 2.15.3.6 page 2161, autoSpaceLikeWord95.
* Section 2.15.3.26 page 2199, footnoteLayoutLikeWW8.
* Section 2.15.3.31 page 2209, lineWrapLikeWord6.
* Section 2.15.3.32 page 2210, mwSmallCaps.
* Section 2.15.3.41 page 2225, shapeLayoutLikeWW8.
* Section 2.15.3.51 page 2245, suppressTopSpacingWP.
* Section 2.15.3.53 page 2250, truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6.
* Section 2.15.3.54 page 2252, uiCompat97To2003.
* Section 2.15.3.63 page 2264, useWord2002TableStyleRules.
* Section 2.15.3.64 page 2265, useWord97LineBreakRules.
* Section 2.15.3.65 page 2266, wpJustification.
* Section 2.15.3.66 page 2268, wpSpaceWidth.

More can be found by searching Ecma 376 for the word "Guidance".

Specifications that say "clone this product", instead of explicitly stating what behavior is required, have no place in an international standard. It may also be illegal in some jurisdictions to determine what such a non-specification means, as discussed below regarding end-user license agreements (EULAs).

Compatibility Note
Attributes like these have no place in an international standard, and are not needed for compatibility with existing documents. The correct way to achieve compatibility is through generic tags. For example:

* autoSpaceLikeWord95 should be replaced by a generic character-spacing attribute that takes a numeric value or set of numeric values.
* wpSpaceWidth should be replaced by by a generic space-width tag that takes a numeric value or set of numeric values.

Even attributes as obscure as lineWrapLikeWord6 can be generalized into a line-wrap-style attribute. Using a more general solution offers far more extensibility and flexibility.

Re:About OOXML (ECMA 376)

[NorbrookC]

I consider this a "killer issue" for ISO (but i'm not on any of the national standards bureaux so rest assured :-)), what is your opinion?

Which is why I said that there are going to be contradictions. In fact, I doubt this is going to go through as an ISO standard as submitted. There are a number of non-standard calls in the specification, besides the ones you pointed out. The handling of dates, for example doesn't use the ISO specification, but an MS specification. Those are real issues that MS is going to have to address and change if it's going to expect to get this through ISO.

But that was my point. There are a number of real issues with OOXML which can and should be pointed out. There's no need to indulge in FUD , but it seems that some people just can't resist doing it.

Boiling babies

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to popular belief, boiling babies is simply not a very economic way to make soap.

Soap from boiled babies makes excellent economic sense for the producer because the profit margins are much higher. It also makes excellent sense for consumers that have skin sensitivities or perceive they may. True, the baby-based soaps costs more to produce, but because it is much more gentle on human skin and less likely to cause dermatological reactions, it has become a luxury item which can be priced as such. Mainstream soaps that are bovine tallow based are cheaper to make but that market is large and very competitive and margins have become very slim.

Believe it or not ...

[jchenx]

First of all, standard disclaimer that I work at MS (specifically the games studios). Anyways ...

Some Wikipedia articles about Microsoft products already sound suspiciously similar to their sales pitches and advertising material, so this is probably already happening. It might not be Microsoft employees themselves, but the article authors must at least be big fans of Microsoft.

It was some time since I read those articles, so I don't remember specifically which one I reacted on. So no link, sorry.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of "fans of Microsoft" that don't work here, contrary to what your average Slashdotter might believe. :) That said, you could be right, but just wanted to throw out the apparently not-so-obvious statement ...

As for TFA, when I first read the title, I was thinking, "Oh good lord, what the hell did PR do this time?". But after reading the actual article, I can understand a bit of the reason why they did it. (However, my personal stance is that it's still something they shouldn't have done)

I dislike FUD regardless of where it comes from, who it's targeted towards, etc. However, if you take your average Slashdotter's opinion, they'll think that all FUD must originate from big corporations looking out to take down the "little guy". While that's certainly the case for lots of things, it also happens the other way around. MS is arguably the biggest example of this, since it's by no means a "favorite" company for your typical Linux/OSS/etc-friendly Slashdotter. So it's not surprising that a lot of this FUD will stick on a site like Wikipedia, which (I would imagine) has a higher percentage of your tech-savvy "Linux/OSS/etc-friendly" userbase. I speak from personal experience as well, since from time-to-time I will run into some very vehement anti-MS zealots that really have an incorrect idea on how things work here, and refuse to hear anything otherwise.

Now, I'm not saying the actual article in question has a lot of FUD either way (I really don't have an opinion ODF/OOXML, nor do I really care). But I can understand Microsoft PR wishing there was someone more independent going through the articles. I think it's safe to say that a lot of companies and individuals think the same way about the same thing. The problem is that you can't self-edit, for very good reason, so you essentially just have to hope that "the right thing" happens in the end.

That said, I think it's still stupid for the PR department to through an incentive like this in the first place. But anyway, that's my 2 cents.

As much as I like Wikipedia and use it for so many things, it's things like this which make it very obvious that we users need to be careful about how we use the information. You could very well have FUD flying in both camps, and it'll be hard to tell what's right (or that there's a debate going on in the first place). I'm finding that reading what's going on in the "discussions" tab can be very important at times.

Re:Believe it or not ...

[NullProg]

First of all, standard disclaimer that I work at MS (specifically the games studios). Anyways ...
Thanks and OK. Most of us wont hold it against you. This article isn't just about Microsoft proxies.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of "fans of Microsoft" that don't work here,
Yes, they are members of "team windows". Ask around the campus about team windows. Hell, I just learned that Microsoft still sends team members to disrupt/interfere with the competitors product conferences. I met a few (Microsofties) at a Lotus conference (no I wasn't a conference member, I happend to be in the hotel, stuck in an elevator with Microsoft employees) in DC back in 1995. I can't beleive Microsoft is still practices this. Back in the day, Microsoft compensated these people with free software.

As for TFA, when I first read the title, I was thinking, "Oh good lord, what the hell did PR do this time?". But after reading the actual article, I can understand a bit of the reason why they did it. (However, my personal stance is that it's still something they shouldn't have done)
Your employers past history in this area is legendary. Since you can't use Google, let me provide a few links:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=microsoft +astroturf&btnG=Search
My favorite: http://www.prwatch.org/node/647
I'm pretty sure middle and uppper management does not inform you when they sic the PR firms on what they percieve as bad publicity. Your on the inside looking out. Most of us are on the outside reading stupid PR releases.

However, if you take your average Slashdotter's opinion, they'll think that all FUD must originate from big corporations looking out to take down the "little guy". While that's certainly the case for lots of things, it also happens the other way around. MS is arguably the biggest example of this, since it's by no means a "favorite" company for your typical Linux/OSS/etc-friendly Slashdotter
As of now, there are over a million slashdot IDs. You equate a vocal few with Anti-Microsoft feelings to mean that slashdot has a majority of anti-Microsoft users. You do know that a lot of us still run BSD/OS2/BE etc. We love computers for what they do for us, not what Microsoft says we are allowed to do with our computers. Most Linux users don't care or preach about anything Microsoft does.

I made a career choice back in the 90's to not be locked into any one technology (Microsoft DDE) . That decision has benefited me compensation wise very well. I can program in any embedded/PC/Mainframe envrionment. If your serious about your specialty (craft), I can look forward to seeing (purchasing) your games on a Wii/Linux/PS3/Mac system soon.

Enjoy,

Re:Believe it or not ...

[jchenx]

Your comments are typical of what I get from those critical of Microsoft. Unfortunately, I can't really answer them, because they're really "out there". Team windows? No idea what you're talking about, nor do any of the other people I've asked. I can't say anything about what PR does, since I really don't work in that area, nor would I really be able to do anything about it. As for this whole "locked into one technology" side, to be honest, I don't really follow any of that. It doesn't matter to me. Maybe it should, but this company is large enough as it is, and I can honestly say there are lots of things that it does that I wouldn't agree with. But in my little chunk of space, I think we're heading in the right direction, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

I think a lot of folks, like you, assume that if someone works in Microsoft, they MUST share the opinion of the entire company, that we're all anti-Linux, hate OSS, love DRM, etc. Frankly, that's not the case.

Your employers past history in this area is legendary. Since you can't use Google, let me provide a few links:

BTW, I can, and often, use Google. Why? Because frankly, it's currently a better search product, and I need to get my job done. I'm not alone either. Granted, there's a lot of incentive to try to get Microsofties to switch over to Windows Live Search, but there's also a lot of frank discussion of, "We'll use Live Search when it does what we need it to do". There's actually a lot of respect for what our competitors do, with obviously the goal to try to make our own products better as well.

I made a career choice back in the 90's to not be locked into any one technology (Microsoft DDE) . That decision has benefited me compensation wise very well. I can program in any embedded/PC/Mainframe envrionment. If your serious about your specialty (craft), I can look forward to seeing (purchasing) your games on a Wii/Linux/PS3/Mac system soon.

Maybe you don't understand the games industry very well, but being locked into technology is basically a given with consoles. So if you're trying to say that Wii and PS3 development isn't locked, then you're mistaken. :)

Anyway, if I'm serious in my craft, then the right choice is to go for the platforms where the users are, which are the major consoles and Windows PCs. As a maker of games, I don't really care about which platform I'm on. But what I really want to do is reach the most people. If, for some reason, we see that totally change and suddenly gaming on Linux is the big thing 10 years from now, well, you'll know where I be then.

A more accurate statement, perhaps:

[likerice]

I'm no fan of the corporation either, but oversimplifications of history accomplish nothing.

The function of the corporations in early American society was a matter of heated dispute. As of 1780 there were only 7 chartered business corporations in the United States. That number increased dramatically after the turn of the 19th century once the courts and legislatures recognized the legitimacy of private, for-private corporate entities. Ambivalence about the role of the corporation in early American law resulted from tension between those who insisted that corporations serve the public interest and those who believed that the public interest was inherently served by the chartering of private corporations and the creation of wealth that would presumably result therefrom.

On the one side of the debate were anti-mercantilists, Jeffersonian Republicans and artisans who believed variously that corporations were monopolistic in nature; that they the accumulation of vast quantities of capital in private hands characteristic of the corporate form was inconsistent with the civic virtues of a democratic republic exemplified in the American Revolution and would undermine democratic republicanism; and that corporations could be used to dominate markets, driving down the cost of production and thereby reducing demand for artisinal goods. On the other side were those who believed that corporations were a matter of necessity in order to promote the aggregation and investment of capital. In a society of relatively equal wealth distribution, as in the early years of the republic, capital must be drawn from large numbers of small investor/share-holders rather than from individual financiers or aristocrats as could be done in Europe. The structure of the corporation and its ability to centralize management and control represented the most efficient means of operating investments and therefore of developing the American economy, proponents argued.

While demands that corporate charters be granted only in the public interest, and that liability extend to shareholders were common in the early law of corporations, these rules which seemed rooted in longstanding English mistrust of the anti-social corporate form yielded to the demands of the market and of laissez-faire capitalists. These historical developments represent another unfortunate triumph of utilitarianism over tradition in American law.

Re:A more accurate statement, perhaps:

[Shaper_pmp]

On the one side of the debate were anti-mercantilists, Jeffersonian Republicans and artisans who believed variously that corporations were monopolistic in nature; that they the accumulation of vast quantities of capital in private hands characteristic of the corporate form was inconsistent with the civic virtues of a democratic republic exemplified in the American Revolution and would undermine democratic republicanism; and that corporations could be used to dominate markets, driving down the cost of production and thereby reducing demand for artisinal goods.

So, in other words, we saw it coming a mile off and still went for it.

Yay democracy!

Where was the application process?

[pupstah]

Man I miss out on everything. :(

ATTN MICROSOFT, contact me next time!

That's a good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Now how about exposing the fact that Microsoft hires astroturfers to spam every comment page of every website in the world with M$ propaganda?

Spend their money on better code?

[gelfling]

I think they should spend their money on better code and less on lobbying, public relations and propaganda.

Death Squads? WTF!

[Brandybuck]

'enable death squads with their UUIDs'

If I were Microsoft I would be editing that entry too! Is this what counts as a Neutral Point of View for Wikipedians? Sheesh...

he should give me a cut

[r00t]

I'll make the anti-Microsoft "errors" for him to correct.

I'm one of Wikipedia's big MS article writers

[Daltorak]

Okay, I think I'm probably more qualified than most people to comment on the state of Wikipedia's Microsoft articles, considering that I've personally started a couple dozen articles on Windows-related stuff, and I have more than 1,000 Microsoft-related articles on my watchlist. I work a bunch on Mac OS X articles, too... I don't really consider operating systems to be a worthy subject of religious advocacy; they make for a great hobby, sure, but that's about it. All I care about is making sure that the subjects are presented accurately and without bias in either direction.

Wikipedia articles are edited by people from Microsoft on a regular basis. Most of the time it's simple stuff, like fixing spelling mistakes, updating links, and putting some newly published information in about future releases. (This is one example of an MS employee edit to the Office Open XML article. Pretty harmless.) It's quite rare that someone at Microsoft adds in unabashed "pro-Microsoft" stuff, and when they do, I or other interested editors remove it entirely or tone it down. But, I have yet to see any kind of co-ordinated efforts to astroturf Microsoft Wikipedia articles... if anything, it's just individuals who are proud of their work and want to write about it... you can tell, it doesn't have that shiny PR veneer on it. I've had to remind a few Microsoft employees to stay within the encyclopedia's neutrality and verifiability policies, but it never turns out to be a problem; almost everyone who's new to editing Wikipedia needs to learn that.

Frankly, I see far more crap by juvenile pro-Apple zealots, like redirecting the Windows Vista article to Mac OS X and other such time-wasting noise. That's a reflection of the kind of uphill battle Wikipedia has to fight against vandalism.

Shit, after 7,000+ edits to Microsoft-related articles, maybe Microsoft should be offering to pay me to keep Wikipedia clean of anti-Microsoft crap, since I assuredly work harder at it than some dude with an O'Reilley blog. I wouldn't take their money for it though... or if I did, I'd make a public display of donating it all to the Wikimedia Foundation. They need the money more than I do.

If Microsoft wants to pay someone to write more into the OOXML articles, that's fine, I don't care -- but there's no damned way they're getting material inappropriate for Wikipedia past me & the other regulars. You can be sure of that.

Re:I'm one of Wikipedia's big MS article writers

[Switche]

Daltorak, thank you for finally pointing out that this is Wikipedia's issue, and for suggesting that Wikipedia is well equipped with objective opinions (as yourself) so that one way or another, Wikipedia and its advocates will keep this under control.

You, and all your posts, supportive of Microsoft or not, prove that some people still care about the facts, even in a flame war older than most people on this thread are acting.

I do not pretend to understand Microsoft's "ethics" as others do, because nothing has happened yet. Time will tell, and so will the Wiki logs.

I hope those who use this as an Appleseed spitting arena are better informed than they sound, and check back on this when the facts are in.

Frankly, I see far more crap by juvenile pro-Apple zealots lol.

All Corporations?

[kybred]

As a matter of fact, yes they are. Corporations (and therefore their various departments), by definitions, only have in mind the interest of their shareholders, therefore if being unethical furthers their interest and a corporation can get away with it, they will be.

Perhaps not all corporations...

Robert Bosch GmbH, including its wholly owned subsidiaries such as Robert Bosch Corp. in North America, is unusual in that it is an extremely large, privately owned corporation that is almost entirely owned by a charitable foundation. Thus while most of the profits are plowed back into the corporation to build for the future and sustain growth, nearly all of the profits distributed to shareholders are devoted to humanitarian causes.

Disclaimer: I used to work for a subsidiary of Robert Bosch in the US.

Re: Honesty & Evolutionary pressure

[Livius]

Corporations are perpetual and you'd think they are not subject to selection pressures, but they do seem to adapt and embrace new strategies, like buying politicians, and promoting globalization to escape national laws. Too bad we didn't see it before it was too late.

anti-, pro- or just true

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you so sure they are "anti-" anything. What happens if they are simply true? Not all facts are appreciated by everybody. *cough*tobacco*cough ... *cough*ms*cough* ... *cough*seatbelts*cough*

Re: Honesty & Evolutionary pressure

[BlackSabbath]

Corporations either wither away gradually (eg. Corel, Wordperfect) or spectacularly (eg, Enron, Worldcom). Sure some are pretty long lived. But if corporations are subject to evolutionary pressures, eventually they will adapt or die. At the end of the day, corporations have to keep "someone" outside of the corporation happy - customers, shareholders, politicians, employees - typically 3 out of 4, or else they (eventually) die.

If you want to study imminent corporate death throes in action just keep your eyes focused on the big-music-media corps(e). One or two might survive - only if they adapt. In this instance evolutionary pressures include the mass adoption of P2P by their customers, demand for unencumbered music and the rise of independent alternatives. See:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/20/kenswil_li cense_stuff/
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/22/15 44207

Re: Honesty & Evolutionary pressure

[Anonymous Coward]

Every theory of evolution that I have heard of refers to offspring. Corporations have no offspring so they may very well be outside the realm of evolutionary theory.

AND?

[jdcope]

More proof the Wiki is just a giant electronic op-ed page, and about as reliable as your local neighborhood gossip.

That's uncontrolled capitalism at work.

[Anonymous Coward]

AuMatar writes:
"You completely miss the point. Its obvious that MS's (and most other corporations) sole goal is to maximize profit. The question is- should we, as society, allow such organizations to exist?"

Why stop at microsoft? How about the Halliburtons, Bechtels, the arms industry who create misery, war, destruction and terror in the world and profit from it through lucrative construction, oil, and arms projects? The people who arm both sides, create destruction and reap the profits of rebuilding a shattered country?

How about the Enrons of the world who destroy people's lives and savings without a second thought, and would have kept doing it if they don't get fingered?

Given the country's support for such organizations, with so much money involved, with politicians and these huge corporations being such great bedfellows, with the power they command, what do you propose to alleviate the situation? I can't think of much, other than outright rebellion and overthrow, sort of like what the CIA does to leaders of other countries it doesn't like.

How to actually get something out of Wikipedia...

[gd23ka]

When you look something up on Wikipedia I recommend that you also read
the discussion pages _and_ browse the article history for what gets
deleted.

Wikipedia is teeming with gatekeepers.

Of Course We're Complaining!

[NickFortune]

I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics?

Well... yes. It's one thing to acknowledge the ethical bankruptcy of most modern corporations. That doesn't mean we can not or should not complain. In fact it's hard to see how this behaviour (which you concede is despicable) is ever going to be changed if we don't complain.

It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations.

And do you mean to suggest that our only grounds for complaint against Microsoft should be financial?

Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money

Frankly I couldn't care less about Microsoft want. It's what they do>/b> that bothers me.

let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.

Supposed to according to whom and by what criteria? If turning a profit by whatever means is the only consideration, we should legalise armed robbery and slave labour. Otherwise let's be clear that that Microsoft frequently attempt to fulfil an arguably legitimate imperative using methods that are undesirable and antisocial. Otherwise you're just framing the argument in such a way that Microsoft can never be criticised, and that's just silly.

That said ... you might have posted this intending to make an oblique and ironic comment about Microsoft astroturfing, and how it gets everywhere. Perhaps someone would like to mod the parent funny?

Shooting the messenger ?

[gungh0]

Go & do a Wikipedia search for OOXML, Go On DO IT NOW ! Top of the page it says "Some statements may be disputed, incorrect, biased or otherwise objectionable.". Wikipedia themselves realise the content of these articles is only as good as the people posting it. While I enjoy a harmless bit of MS bashing (thats why I 3 ./ ;)) its unfair to imply they are "correcting" Wikipedia with " around it. Wiki's are whatever is written in them, either by evil companies or nerds with an axe to grind, if you don't like it then don't read it.

Corporate Culture - The Monkey Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

A group of scientist placed a number of monkeys in a cage.
In the middle of the cage was a ladder and at the top of the ladder was a banana.
When a monkey tried to climb the ladder in order to claim the banana the scientist hosed all the monkeys with icy, cold water.
Soon enough the monkeys would stop trying to climb the ladder.
Now the scientists replaced a monkey with a fresh one.
The newcomer immidiately tried to climb the ladder and was at once attacked by all the other monkeys, who didn't want to get hosed.
The scientist now replaced another monkey and once again the newcomer would attempt to climb the ladder.
Once again all the other monkeys, including the first replacement, would attack the newcomer.
The scientist proceded to replace one monkey at a time until all monkeys had been replaced.
If any monkey tried to climb the ladder, the others would immidiately attack him, even though none of them had ever been hosed.

This is how corporate culture is established.

So how is this any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is MS's actions any different than that of the mouth-breathing Lunix community, who supposedly doesn't use Windows, but pules and gnashes their teeth about every tiny insignificant thing MS does?

MS has to protect themselves. And while I don't like astroturfing, it's really no different than the ignorant masses of Slashdot trolls who ceaselessly bash all things MS, just because they have OS penis envy.

Just a tip to the Lunix crowd: before you bash MS, try getting an installation packager which will run across all distros, and try getting an OS which can detect and autoconfig hardware at least as well as the venerable Windows 95. Because you might think having ten thousand text editors makes up for not having an installer or plug-and-play, but... it doesn't. It really, really doesn't.

hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[dmahugh]

The premise of this thread is a lie. Nobody ever contacted Rick and asked him to "make edits and corrections favorable to" Microsoft. Also, nobody from Microsoft PR contacted him. I am the person who contacted Rick, and I am a technical evangelist specializing in the Open XML file formats. And here is what I asked Rick to do:

"Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections ... Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today."
"Feel free to say anything at all on your blog about the process, about our communication with you on matters related to Open XML, or anything else. We don't need to "approve" anything you have to say, our goal is simply to get more informed voices into the debate ... feel free to state your own opinion."

I understand and accept that longwinded discussions of lies and their theoretical ramifications is a fascinating hobby for some, but since it's 100% my own personal actions that you're talking about, I just want to be very clear: the premise of this thread is a lie. Wikipedia's definition of "Microsoft (sic) Office Open XML" is not fact-based, and I think it would be a good thing if there were more participation by persons like Rick who are knowledgeable and interested in the actual facts of file formats, and less participation (or at least less influence) by those with specific agendas based on specific corporate interests.

Call Microsoft evil if you must, but in this case it's Doug Mahugh you're talking about. PR didn't know I contacted Rick. Hell, my own manager didn't know, although it seems likely he knows by now. You're talking about my actions alone, so I think my opinion is relevant. And in my opinion, the premise of this thread is a lie.

- Doug

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[jrothwell97]

Rubbish. Microsoft paying someone to 'correct' Wikipedia is obviously suspicious and anti-competitive. And a "technical evangelist" is a posh name for a "salesman".

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[Anonymous Coward]

"who can explain the difference between PR and evangelism?"

wait, wait, I know this one... Evangelists? Or was it PR people? Aw shucks, I forget :(

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Well, since you're out in the open, I might as well ask you the question:
Why not do this yourselves? If you think you can be more neutral about it than the current article is, why not follow the normal Wikipedia rules and just edit the article? Use your real name, use your professional title, do it above board, and save yourselves some money. Get authorization for someone who is NON-PR to correct the article as much as possible in a techie fashion then participate in the inevitably puerile fight until there is mediation. What ends up happening is all within the normal confines of Wikipedia's rules. Hiring someone to use their community standing to the benefit of Microsoft is apparently causing more than a few waves. And it just looks bad all around.

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[dmahugh]

It's a good question. I had tried to address some things myself (as you can see in the discussion page on that entry), but was reluctant to get aggressive because of how people might perceive "Microsoft" changing the entry. And some things were being decided by consensus that I believe are reasonably considered purely factual issues. I've also since learned that Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules state "avoid editing articles related to your organization or its competitors." That's something I should have known before floating the idea, of course, but it also seems to confirm that I would be in violation of Wikipedia policy if I were to correct the page in any way.

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

You might bring up - and this is a purely hypothetical point, because you're going to be going into the lion's den asking for fairness here - the fact that anyone who develops open source or code at all is ideologically in competition with Microsoft in some way, shape, or form.... Thus your competitors are obviously the only ones interested in editing the page in a completely negative manner at the moment. Unless your product is really that bad - I won't insert the proper dig here.

Point is, you should have a fair shake. That's not to say that the article - as I read it five minutes ago - is not pretty impartial as-is, IMHO. As soon as the legitimate beef came up, it became a pretty skeleton'ish thing with a (hopefully) intelligent attached 'talk' section that goes through the entire debate in all its horrifically standards-excited glory. Ergo, you got what you wanted and didn't even have to pay El Blogosphere for it. That's on time and under-budget if I ever saw it.

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[dmahugh]

> on time and under-budget

The Wikipedia page is already much better, so I think that's a results-oriented way to look at it. It will be interesting to see whether others agree with your analysis. :-)

Re:hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today

[Anonymous Coward]

The most interesting part of this whole situation, and what I think will be most representative of Microsoft, is how they deal with this situation, and, more specifically, you.

      Would you care to share the aftermath with us?

Not Really Surprising

[Auctori]

From what I gather the previous Microsoft file formats are for the most part a dump of the internal program structures rather than an unambiguous representation of the document (pretty much an entire record of the actions of the user to create the document and the program state at each step, not simply an encoding of the documents appearance and any associated meta-data).
I suspect that the OOXML format is similarly a large portion of the program state encoded as XML (pretty much exactly the old file format encoded as XML) and that a lot of it was generated directly from the source documentation i.e. somewhere in the Office 2007 source will be a data structure with a member called 'autoSpaceLikeWord95' and a corresponding comment of 'Emulate Word 95 Full Width Character Spacing'
The implementation is probably a no-brainer from the developers point of view. With all of the legacy source available it would be much easier pack the essentially unmodified data into a new container (requiring only minor transformations), and keep the old internal format.

MS/Google/NGO code of conduct?

[smithmc]

How does MS square this with their supposed recent attempts to become a better world citizen?

Re:MS/Google/NGO code of conduct?

[Herby Sagues]

I don't get it. Did ANYBODY read TFA???? I know, this is slashdot, but I cannot beleive out of a thousand posters nobody cared to read the article. The guy WAS NOT offered to be paid. Nowhere in the article it says that. The guy WAS NOT (according to himself) asked to say nice things about Microsoft. He was specifically asked to correct things HE thought were wrong. The guy WAS NOT contacted by Microsoft PR, but by a person that knew him and knew he was NOT a MS FANBOY! The guy, according to the story, was asked by somebody at Microsoft to get involved in a Wikipedia discussion, since he knew that his input would be less biased than the current discussion. To this IS an article about evil. About evil in reporting. Lies, dammed lies and forums.

Still don't believe Microsoft hires shills?

[Master of Transhuman]

and astroturfers to post HERE?

Or at Linux sites claiming to be Linux supporters who LOVE Linux - BUT Linux just has a "few little problems"?

All you Gates shills can come out now and mod me down.

Is that all you've got? Huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!

Mod parent up

[quux4]

Here it is: an open and apparently straight admission of what happened, by the guy who did it. You may not agree with him or his motives, but he had the cojones to step up and own his actions.

Doug: in the interests of complete disclousre, it might be worthwhile to mention what Rick was paid.

Re:Mod parent up

[dmahugh]

Actually, Rick has not been paid anything at all on this. I suggested it, he said he'd float it on his blog and see what people think then make his decision, and that's where it stands currently.

Re:Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that email the full text of your offer to him?

(You were going to have him name his own price?)

MOD PARENT UP, +1: Right

[Jesus_666]

The parent is right; corps are subject to the law and thus to the morals contained within them. If they weren't the USA might as well rename themselves "UCAS"...

Press and diplomatic work

[David Gerard]

Hi, I'm a UK press volunteer for Wikimedia and got quoted in some of yesterday's media coverage. As well as answering press calls all afternoon yesterday, I was writing emails back and forth and drafting possible press releases for Wikipedia all evening.

At this stage, I think the team at Microsoft have realised this isn't a good way to get their point of view covered sensibly in the article, and get the idea that this is a conflict of interest. So now it's an editorial matter, really.

IMO, the main problem to deal with is that both the OOXML and OpenDocument articles need serious attention from editors who are knowledgeable in the areas but care most about writing the encyclopedia. I put some calls out on the wikien-l mailing list for editors experienced in this sort of on-wiki conflict.

(What tends to happen is that an article or subject area attracts a core of editors who may have vast disagreements on the topic, but are (a) capable of writing neutrally in ways all sides can live with (b) are most annoyed when people they nominally agree with write stupid things.)

It should be obvious that paid editing from a very interested player is a conflict of interest, and no reasonable person should need more than to have it pointed out. That said, I've asked Doug Mchugh and Rick Jelliffe to keep contributing to the OOXML talk page and I hope they'll give some much-needed cluefulness to both the OOXML and OpenDocument pages. MS technical participation via the talk page is entirely appropriate.

And damn the advocates and anti-advocates; I certainly do, frequently.

Use the "talk" pages

[davidwr]

If you can't edit a page due to conflict-of-interest rules, use the "Talk" page to point out factual errors.

Also check all citations for accuracy. If a Wikipedia editor cites http://foo.bar for a bogus fact, you need to contact the people at foo.bar to fix it.

Finally, work with the administrators of Wikipedia to create a formal way for "conflict of interest" parties to recommend corrections to articles in the case of factual errors.

Re:Honesty.... (and SOX)

[AveryRegier]

That is one of the more naive posts I have yet seen. So you contend that the Federal government was actually trying to achieve ethical business practices with SOX? Quaint, but quite impossible. What they hoped to do was provide laws that they could find companies violating so that they could convict them and impose huge fines, thus generating more money for the Federal Government.

Well, actually I didn't say anything about what the Federal Government intended. I do mean that those huge fines have become incentive for companies to avoid ethical lapses, because the consequences of those ethical lapses can literally mean closing up shop. I am not a fan of SOX by any means. SOX, Enron's collapse, and other securities laws changes have had an effect as a whole.

BTW

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Microsoft (sic) Office Open XML" is not fact-based

The reason they refer to it as Microsoft OOXML is because "Office Open" is too likely to get confused with Open Office. Because you're addressing conspiracy theories now, you might want to realize that some feel the confusion was made deliberately, especially after seeing the sort of ugliness that resulted the OOXML vs. ODF conflicts in Massachusetts.

job requirements

[Scrameustache]

I honestly can't make a call here. I'd like to assume that all marketers are terrible people lacking ethics, moral restraint, and any worth. However, not knowing any marketers personally I can't claim they are swampy morasses of evil. Marketers have moral restraint like surgeons fear blood ;)