Microsoft Pays Bloggers to Tout MS Slogan

Stony Stevenson writes "In an effort to inject Microsoft's latest slogan, 'People-ready business', into popular usage (and no doubt raise its Google page rank), Microsoft asked a passel of A List Bloggers to write blurbs on what this meaningless phrase means to them. Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Fred Wilson, Richard MacManus and a handful of others happily agreed to churn out some mush for Microsoft, which it later used in banner ads. What it really meant to these guys was income. Redmond paid the bloggers for every user who clicked through to the PRB microsite. That caused other bloggers, lead by Gawker chief Nick Denton, to rightfully question their ethics. A spitball war has been raging ever since."

Comments

Nothing unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

Any blogger that supports their site through ads is making money through a marketing campaign. You can even pay Google to put other peoples' ads on your site for you. What's wrong with that?

Re:Nothing unusual

[timmarhy]

the difference, is this is a cash for comments style scandal. no harm in having banner ads, but your opinions should reflect the truth not you advertising. otherwise why would we bother listening?

Re:Nothing unusual

[misleb]

Nothing, as long as Adblock catches the ads before I have to see them.

Re:Nothing unusual

[ozmanjusri]

Any blogger that supports their site through ads is making money through a marketing campaign.

This sort of campaign blurs the distinction between comment and advertising.

It diminishes the value of the opinions being blogged and potentially tars all tech bloggers with the same brush.

Re:Nothing unusual

[akzeac]

It's not the same. It's not a case of bloggers putting Microsoft ads in their blogs.

It's a case of getting paid for letting Microsoft quote them saying the "people ready" slogan.

See this link.

Re:Nothing unusual

[CRC'99]

This sort of campaign blurs the distinction between comment and advertising.
It diminishes the value of the opinions being blogged and potentially tars all tech bloggers with the same brush.

Isn't this what's been happening in most magazines now for years?

Re:Nothing unusual

[ozmanjusri]

Isn't this what's been happening in most magazines now for years?

Yes, that's why bloggers were initially percieved as a breath of fresh air in an arena dominated by shills.

The honeymoon didn't last long, and now many of the journos who used to tout in the magazines have transferred their skills (and bad habits) to blogs.

Re:Nothing unusual

[br14n420]

I get the feeling, most bloggers would be pretty open about this. "Hey guys, look. Microsoft wants to pay for me to come up with a 30 word comment on how I feel about __________. What an awesome deal! mood: chipper status: lonely music: brittney spears"

Re:Nothing unusual

[pasamio]

But most magazines have the legal requirement to either mark that its an advertisement (ever seen those full page magazine articles with 'advertisement' placed somewhere on the page) or that they derived some benefit from it (e.g. an article a while back from Angus Kidman with the text "Angus Kidman travelled to Orlando as a guest of Hyperion" (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/ 04/27/1224215)).

This doesn't have that sort of marking, there in lies the issue. Its not clearly linked with a company (e.g. blogs.microsoft.com) and it is them being paid off by companies. Cash for comment. Actually illegal in Australia (see John Laws on the same subject).

Thats the issue.

Re:Nothing unusual

[todd1000]

Well, I read the article. He didn't overtly support MS's campaign, but did mention the slogan a LOT of times in a relatively short article, same thing for marketing isn't it?

Personally, "blog", "blogger", "blogosphere" and the rest are definataly the most annoying new "words" that the idiot marketers have come up with regarding the Internet.

A "blogger" is not likely a journalist. If they can make some coin from MS, go for it.

The mainstream magazines and other supposedly neutral media are for sale. We've bought "awards" and good articles lots of times. They are there to make money, if someone can make money "blogging" (I cringe to use that word ;-), go for it.

If you're smart, you'll take all written opinions with a grain of salt. Everyone has their agenda... Most "journalists" want to keep their job, thay seem to be especially bad in the computer (I was going to say "IT", my second most hated term) world.

Re:Nothing unusual

[DarkIye]

I hope the consumer is intelligent enough (or will become so over time) to realise that anything a company's advertising presents as fact is usually massaged or outright inaccurate.

This is more or less the reason I stopped believing anything I read.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

People-ready business

Re:Nothing unusual

[PopeRatzo]

No, that's not what happened. If you click through TFA, you'll find they actually lathered up Microsoft's ass pretty good. "People Ready is a way of life, not a practice." was one of the blurbs they wrote.

But they weren't really "A-List" bloggers. "Michael Gaizutis" for example, who wrote the blurb above. I've never heard of him. In fact, I had to read his name closely to make sure it wasn't some gag name like "Michael Hunt" or "Dick Gazinya".

Re:Nothing unusual

[Arancaytar]

And magazines have huge, page-wide advertisements. The difference is that all reputable magazines clearly distinguish the content that they are getting paid to include from the content that they produce themselves. And of course that no content fits both of these.

Re:Nothing unusual

[dhalgren]

I'd like to believe that too.

My heart broke a long time ago.

Torben

Re:Nothing unusual

[nschubach]

You hope for too much...

Re:Nothing unusual

[Joebert]

otherwise why would we bother listening?

Because we listen to them anyway ?
Microsoft's not digging Deliverance-style rednecks out of the backwoods to promote their stuff here...

If we've been listening to them for awhile, how do we know everything we've been listening to wasn't motivated by some no name companies' money ?

You don't have to tout brand names to get people thinking about a product or service, specially if you're only one of a handfull of companies providing the product or service.
Isn't it funny how bloggers always want to tell you about this new thing they found ?

It's fine if you want to believe you're not good enough to make your own decisions based on information, but don't assume everyone is like that.
Be thankfull that society allows us to use a system of credit to survive, if it wasn't for money the same people who get you to work for nothing would be crushing your skull & eating your brains to survive just like the animals do.

Re:Nothing unusual

[speaker of the truth]

Many bloggers often comment on how cool an advertiser is. This is often a shallow attempt to get people to click on the ads. Nothing new here. And I never hear outrage of bloggers who do what I've mentioned.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Jobs signed an unknown deal with slashdot to publish every single note on the iPhone. Scary, isn't it?

Re:Nothing unusual

[backwardMechanic]

Shouldn't that be 'tarred with the same command'?

Re:Nothing unusual

[SatanicPuppy]

One of the biggest issues with blogging is that there is no separation between the person who is writing, and the person who is trying to make money. Most other media outlets have separate departments for those things to create a division between content and advertising.

There is always friction between the two, but it is much harder to attempt to be objective when you can sit and rationalize it to yourself. This is not to say that no one has ethics stronger than their profit motive, but it's no surprise to find that the reverse often holds true.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Ajehals]

They'd make no money from your viewing their blog, but in writing a blog entry that is, for all intents and purposes, an advertising piece, does mean that advertising (which you clearly don't want to see) was smuggled past your anti-advertising measures.

Of course this is pretty much the same for every technology site out there, the only difference between them is the amount of transparency on what is advertising and what is comment.

Re:Nothing unusual

[bubblah]

Sorry folks, the question I have is did the bloggers know that they would be used in advertising? If not, ok, lesson learned, if yes, then they should have disclosed, just like with pay per post. My 2 Cents

Re:Nothing unusual

[Random BedHead Ed]

Looks like we'll need to modify Adblock's settings to filter out entire blogs. Then we'll have a true, dependable People-Ready Browser.

Re:Nothing unusual

[hanshotfirst]

Many bloggers often comment on how cool an advertiser is. This is often a shallow attempt to get people to click on the ads. Nothing new here. And I never hear outrage of bloggers who do what I've mentioned.

This is basically the Ziff-Davis business model, just blogs instead of print, right?

Re:Nothing unusual

[daveisfera]

I find it ironic that Google was recently praised for paying people to lobby for them, but if Microsoft pays bloggers, then that's just horrible. It's just the classic "not in my backyard" type of thing.

Re:Nothing unusual

[QMO]

This is more or less the reason I stopped believing anything I read.

I used to belileve your comment, until I read it. I never believe anything I read either.

And, since I used the preview button, I can't even believe my own comment.

Re:Nothing unusual

[SatanicPuppy]

Eh. It's not the evil magazine people moving in to corrupt the pristine blog environment. As soon as money becomes a part of the situation, people will start selling themselves.

When there was no way to profit from blogging, then blogging was pure. As soon as you could get paid for schilling, the schilling began.

Re:Nothing unusual

[misleb]

Oh, i was really only commenting on the banner ads and such. I can't respect any author/blogger who knowingly presents advertising as their own genuine opinion... or worse, objective fact.

In this case, I think such dishonesty would be pretty obvious. I can't imagine reading a blog entry talking about how great Microsoft's new marketing nonsense is and taking it seriously. And at least blogs have comments so you could let the author know what a shill he/she is. So there is that.

Re:Nothing unusual

[IceAgeComing]

When there was no way to profit from blogging, then blogging was pure. As soon as you could get paid for schilling, the schilling began.

This line of arguing, namely "If I didn't sell my soul to the Devil, then someone else would" is pretty lame. I plan on taunting anyone who has to resort to it.

Re:Nothing unusual

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea, I hate that as well. Most people are dying to sell out, and when they get the opportunity to do so, they do, and then they get defensive and start rationalizing.

That's what gets me...The rationalizations. If they just said, "Yea, I'm a whore, I need the money," I'd respect that. But when they either claim they're not a whore, or that what they're doing is no different from what everyone else is doing, or that it doesn't hurt anybody, or that's it's completely no big deal...That stuff drives me up the wall.

Do what you like, but don't try and feed me a bullshit sandwich like I'm a fool.

Re:Nothing unusual

[lymond01]

I realize that any profession where you're touting fact or opinion to the public needs to rest on strong ethics, but I don't see many public speakers acting today without an agenda. It might not be personal profit (considered lowly), but it might bending facts about your political party, your goals both personal and worldly, etc.

Advertisers, which these bloggers at least temporarily became, get paid to produce flattering material for the company who is paying them, whether they like the product or not. As long as the blogger is straightforward in saying, "I'm writing this blurb as both a stint into creativity and to increase my wallet size. The words may or may not relate to my true feelings about the product." I don't see a problem.

That doesn't mean that, if you don't like Microsoft, you shouldn't stop reading their stuff, of course. That's your own prerogative.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Jeremy_Bee]

Your missing the point entirely here. It's not about having an agenda.

Unless one is a robot, *everyone* has multiple agendas. This is about having a hidden agenda and deceiving people into thinking you don't have an agenda when in fact you do.

It's about plain old honesty and integrity (or actually a lack of it).

Your argument, (like a shocking amount of posts here), seems to amount to "everyone does it" but as your Mother might have told you "If everyone else jumps off the bridge does that make it a good thing to do?"

Re:Nothing unusual

[brianosaurus]

Close. Its a case of Microsoft paying them to make a sound-bite. Maybe the payment is indirect (through ad clicks instead of a fat check), but the payment is the reason those quotes exist. Its blogger pay-o-la.

The bloggers didn't just happen to say "people ready" in the course of their normal blogging, and then Microsoft taking the quotes from context. Microsoft approached and asked them to write something about "people ready". Microsoft asked the journalists to write ad copy for them.

In the ads it looks the same as a quote lifted from an article, but its not. If not for the ad campaign, the "article" wouldn't exist. Microsoft isn't finding these quotes in the blogs, they're planting them.

Its bogus, but then that's what I expect from Microsoft.

Re:Nothing unusual

[spun]

"Michael Gaizutis" for example, who wrote the blurb above. I've never heard of him. In fact, I had to read his name closely to make sure it wasn't some gag name like "Michael Hunt" or "Dick Gazinya". "Michael Gaizutis" isn't that bad. From the article, "I'm not going to get into all the issues (PC World's Harry McCracken provides a fine summary of them here." "Harry McCracken?!?" Come on!

Re:Nothing unusual

[lymond01]

I see the problem. I hadn't found (through lack of looking no doubt) any of the original blog entries that masqueraded as opinion when they were actually paid advertising. I assumed that, somewhere in the copy, was included the fact the blogger was paid to do this. But I suppose that's what all the hubbub is about.

My general philosophy still holds: Get a second opinion.

Not sure how many times I've read a very complete and knowledgeable-sounding slashdot post, followed by another well-sourced reply that completely debunks it (and sometimes even that one is debunked). It can be like we're just creating our own realities (Microsoft products are great! Dell is the best PC vendor! George Bush left Kennedy in the dust!)...the problem is when we try to get others to agree with them.

Re:Nothing unusual

[DECS]

Exactly. And this isn't something new from Microsoft. During the anti-trust trial, it set up a fake grassroots movement to "condemn the government going after a poor criminal corporation just trying to innovate," and was busted by the LA Times. The Zune had a similar astroturf campaign that suggested real interest in the product, when all of the sites were simply parroting off a campaign.

Journalists have been reading ad copy on the radio for as long as there's been radio, but we know its an ad. Journalists with integrity present advertising as advertising, they don't present opinions about a campaign as part of the campaign, and intermingled with their other opinions. That's clearly a difference.

This is the same thing Fox News gets raked over the coals for: reporting a decreed spin on events from a central editorial board rather than facts. The media is too important as an information source to turn it into a commercial and political joke, just because it is financially expedient to do so.

Pod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf

Re:Nothing unusual

[pravuil]

I've seen them. If you ever go to forum sites for various Linux distributions, you can find them everywhere. Not only do they imply that MS creates better products but promotes MS's new products about to be rolled out. The worst thing about it during their discussions is that they imply that they are the first to come out with ideas. I.E.: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=458883&hi ghlight=microsoft+surface

Within these articles you can dig a little deeper and see how many MS posts they make from their profile history. I.E.: http://ubuntuforums.org/search.php?searchid=228391 45

While I believe that opinion can promote developing better technologies, a slanted opinion with no intrinsic value whatsoever takes a lot away from the overall quality of what that community is trying to do.

Re:Nothing unusual

[jagdish]

Michael Gaizutis
Sounds like one of those fake Radio names. (like Lazlow)

Re:Nothing unusual

[Achromatic1978]

What really annoys me is reading someone's blog and they'll go on and on about something they've just got, some new toy, and then, right at the end, you get the first mention that they were given it by a company to market. And it's often an aside, "By the way, I received this toy and $100 to review this". Perhaps you should have mentioned that upfront, instead of not giving the simplest hint until then.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Anonymous Coward]

People Ready

Re:Nothing unusual

[Red Flayer]

Isn't this what's been happening in most magazines now for years?

To a certain extent, yes. However, the distinction between editorial and advertising content must be made by the magazine in order for it to conform to postal regulations (and sales tax regulations for most states).

Typically, an editorial piece with heavy advertising content is labeled a 'special advertising section' in the magazine -- this is clearly written so as to not confuse the reader.

That said, product reviews fall within the editorial side of things -- and this is where a lot of publishers will choose to favor their heavy advertisers. Paid-for positive reviews, however, are a violation of postal regulations if they are labeled as editorial content in the TOC of a magazine.

The thing to remember is that writers and editors are people, and while objectivity would be nice, in reality most people have pet brands or a hint of fanboyism that will skew their editorial output. It's not always paid for, and good writers and editors will be aware of their personal preferences and work hard to make sure it does not taint their copy.

I'll also comment that this phenomenon is heaviest in the tech industry, where editorial staffs and writers (in my opinion) were not as influenced by the code of ethics that guides good magazine journalism.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Brad Eleven]

One of the biggest issues with blogging is that there is no separation between the person who is writing, and the person who is trying to make money. Most other media outlets have separate departments for those things to create a division between content and advertising.

Excellent point, but I notice that you qualify the distinction with the word "most." Recent experience suggests that this separation can be blurred by the outlet's perceived threat or opportunity to enhance said outlet's bottom line.

It remains to be seen what further erosion of this division will occur if Rupert Murdoch successfully acquires control of the Wall Street Journal.

IMHO, news is entertainment which can sometimes be counted on as reliable information, not the other way around.

Re:Nothing unusual

[PopeRatzo]

I don't know Harry McCracken, but I've heard of his brother Phil.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Greyfox]

Anyone can have sex too, but we still frown on prostitution. As a blogger you can whore yourself out for cash but no one will respect you if they find out. Microsoft may be the world's richest John, but you're still just a ho'.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Meski]

This seems awfully similar to a post I saw on SlashDot a year or so ago. What? this is SlashDot? Oh, sorry. :)

Re:Nothing unusual

[spun]

I know him. He has a boyfriend, you know. You know what his name is? Ben Dover.

Re:Nothing unusual

[Suriken]

To be honest, who actually offers their _actual_ opinions on things?
Sure some of it is good, but a huge amount of bloggers only post to get more hits, to increase ad revenue, or to inflame the rest of the people with their outrageous opinions.
And the funny thing is, people listen anyway, people read anyway, people comment anyway, people post news on slashdot about it anyway. It's just flamebaiting on a larger scale, and then ...to get paid for it as well!?

Awesome slogan

[fbjon]

Good god, it's like a competition on the back of a pack of corn flakes: "Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"

Re:Awesome slogan

[udippel]

Good god, it's like a competition on the back of a pack of corn flakes: "Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"

You mean, a trip to Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California ? Isn't that a tad late ?
Or a trip with Paris ? Isn't that a tad dangerous ?

Oh, I agree, a tad lame this is. Still ...

Re:Awesome slogan

[Anonymous Coward]

People-ready business... Two things come to mind. The first is "prostitution", as I can't think of another business that deals directly in people who are made ready. The second is:

(1) Say "People-ready business"
(2) ...
(3) Profit!!!

Ok, you had to know that was coming...

Re:Awesome slogan

[GauteL]

"Write an essay on how you feel about the word "Crunchy!", and win a trip to Paris!"

It wouldn't fly, most people would have been worried about how many have gone there before them, particularly after the whole jail sentence.

Makes you think...

[oskay]

I wonder how much of this thing goes on that we *don't* hear about.

Re:Makes you think...

[vivaoporto]

In my case, at least, everything of that goes, and I never hear about. The same goes for the rest of mankind, except for the tiny percentage of the population that read these blogs, tiny even if only tech savvy people is considered. Who are those bloggers and why are they considered important to deserve front page on Slashdot?

Another poster put it better a couple of posts above, this is no different from a corn flakes company creating a contest in the lines of "write an essay with the word 'crunchy' and win such and such prize'", and getting 10 years old children to publish their essays. They will do for the prize, even if they hate that particular brand of flakes.

The joke is on whoever blindly believes in anything written by those bloggers, or by any other blogger, or anything written on the Internet, for all that matters. But bloggers, blah, a bunch of self-important people that touts their own (and each other) horns and manage to convince some gullible people that their opinion is any better than the guy next seat on the bus.

Re:Makes you think...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I do wonder what's wrong with it. Obviously people will be tempted by money to do this type of things (and much, much worse).

You should trust a blogger not to do these things, and immediately remove the ones you know that did do it.

The solution is NOT to try and take away the temptation of the money. The solution is to ASK them to reject it, and if possible use your own 2c of reading eyes to prevent them from doing it.

Re:Makes you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, did a group of bloggers kill your family during a picnic, Punisher-style? What the hell. You're obsessively pissed off about a group of people for being self-obsessed? Does the logic of that not hurt your head? Fer fucks sake, if you don't care about bloggers then don't go to a blog (and yes, Slashdot is a blog; it's a blog by Rob Malda and his friends that has a big ass comments section) and then bitch about people talking too much about bloggers. It's like song says man, "Just don't look." If you can't talk about the topic, go visit some other site, don't complain that blogs are full of assholes spouting off baseless opinions. Why? Because you've just become another asshole spouting off a baseless opinion.

Re:Makes you think...

[maxume]

Why do you limit your statement about blindly believing to words that appear on teh internets?

Re:Makes you think...

[st0nes]

I wonder how much BMW paid to have James Bond switch from an Aston Martin to a beemer? Not enough, obviously, since in the new movie he's switched back again.

Re:Makes you think...

[delt0r]

Define People of the media:

a bunch of self-important people that touts their own (and each other) horns and manage to convince some gullible people that their opinion is any better than the guy [on the] next seat on the bus. Thanks.

Re:Makes you think...

[Don_dumb]

That and the fact that the second one they used in the three year Bond film deal was crap and was only in production for 3 years. The Z8 didn't get much of a sales boost by the films so BMW weren't going to bother paying too much for another placement deal. That and the poor results of the last couple of Brosnan editions prompted the producers to go for more 'British' models of Jaguar and now Aston (and a big pile of money from Ford helped the decision of course)
Incidentally I remember watching Casino Royale in the cinema and everyone laughed at the obvious product placement of the Ford badge and other quality products (some watch), so I don't think that the public are clueless to (at least) film product placement.

Re:Makes you think...

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Another poster put it better a couple of posts above, this is no different from a corn flakes company creating a contest in the lines of "write an essay with the word 'crunchy' and win such and such prize'", and getting 10 years old children to publish their essays. They will do for the prize, even if they hate that particular brand of flakes.

That's a horrible analogy. Bloggers claim they want to be taken seriously as legitimate news media. Yet they go and do things like slip paid for advertising in with the rest of their content. Children writing an essay for a contest aren't also writing essays for a profession and then slipping their contest essay in with the rest trying to pass it off as the same.

A better analogy would be that of a car with its hood welded shut... wait no, what I meant to say was that of a radio talk show host who does advertisements on air. This is something that really gets me, you'll hear a guy talk about some topic for a while and then all of a sudden he'll slip into advertising mode to hawk some product. I don't know how they get away with that kind of thing, there's no indication that it's an advertisement before they start talking (usually in magazines any ad looking remotely like an article usually had the word advertisement on it). Though most of the time you can kind of tell when they switch into advertising mode, and by the time they get around to mentioning the product you can tell that it's an ad. What it sounds like with these blogs is that the writers were paid to write stuff that looked like content without any indication that it wasn't their own opinion. And that's taking it much further than the talk show hosts, and it's unethical.

Re:Makes you think...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are those bloggers and why are they considered important to deserve front page on Slashdot?

I don't know who they are, but they used to feed my ego, so I'd most likely vote "plus" in the firehose for most of them..

-mcgrew

Re:Makes you think...

[msaavedra]

Bloggers claim they want to be taken seriously as legitimate news media. Yet they go and do things like slip paid for advertising in with the rest of their content.

The "legitimate news media" do this too. Paul Graham wrote an interesting article on this a while back. Yeah, I agree that its unethical (I really hate those radio ads too, by the way), but it is so pervasive in the media business that you have to take anything you read anywhere with a grain of salt.

The ideal of an impartial, unbiased news media that reports only the cold hard facts does not really exist in the real world, and never has. Everyone has a point of view that will bias their reports. Much of that bias is fairly benign and unintentional, while some is egregiously self-serving or greedy, but it is always there. We should read everything with a critical eye, including the original story, Paul Graham's article that I linked to, and especially my own post :)

Looks like it worked.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Looks like it worked - allready mentioned on slashdot!

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, and how much did YOU get?
I am an AC, for me PRB means... oh, nevermind.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[nEoN nOoDlE]

Yeah, I didn't know about this new "Microsoft" company, but from the sound of it, they're an upstanding people-ready business.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[suv4x4]

Looks like it worked - allready mentioned on slashdot!

Oh yea, it worked. I can totally imagine thousands of Slashdotters storming Microsoft with "damn, get me some of that people-ready business software!".

Truth is Microsoft marketing sucked for nearly 12 years now. They're totally clueless about how to advertise even their good products (such as Office 2007, which is a great piece of software*).

*Microsoft paid me $100 to post this.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Enderandrew]

If the intent was to get PageRank up, and get word of mouth out, then getting an article on Slashdot did work.

Now I've heard the slogan, and no doubt this will increase hits to their site, people linking to them, PageRank, etc.

However I completely disagree that their marketing is horrible.

Marketing is arguably more important than making a quality product. Marketing isn't just the ads you see on TV. It the deals you strike with vendors and the like, and whether ethical or not, their marketing has been EXTREMELY successful.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Opportunist]

With thousands of people sitting there now, like me, pondering hard how to dissect and make fun of the slogan "people ready business".

Re:Looks like it worked.

[aichpvee]

That's not marketing. That's SALES. When they go to [bignameoem] and say "you have to buy a copy of windows for every machine that you sell (thus all but ensuring that you install it on every machine that you sell) or you have to pay retail price" is an unethical SALES tactic. It isn't marketing.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Jugalator]

Sure, but now just wait until it turns into a Googlebomb.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Dadoo]

Agreed. I wonder if it ever occurred to anyone that Microsoft was the inspiration for my sig...

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Enderandrew]

As someone who not only took several years of marketing courses, but who also won a national medal at a DECA competition, I can assure that sales is a subset of marketing.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[gEvil (beta)]

There's something that just doesn't seem quite right about your post. Ah, there it is. Here, lemme fix that for you: *I paid Microsoft $100 to post this. That's better...

Re:Looks like it worked.

[TapeCutter]

My partner happens to hold a Phd in marketing, the way she tells it marketing includes the sales dept.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[TheRaven64]

However I completely disagree that their marketing is horrible They ran a series of ads in the UK for MSN, using 'Home Bound' by Paul Simon. For those not familiar with the song, the lyrics include:

Tonight I'll sing my songs again,
I'll play the game and pretend.
But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony I need someone to comfort me.
Admittedly, this seems like an apt description of MSN ('shades of mediocrity' in particular), but I wouldn't call it good advertising.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[suv4x4]

There's something that just doesn't seem quite right about your post. Ah, there it is. Here, lemme fix that for you: *I paid Microsoft $100 to post this. That's better...

How about "Microsoft paid me $200 to pay them $100 and post this". That's the entire truth.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[LaughingCoder]

FWIW, the actual title of the song is "Homeward Bound"

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Blakey Rat]

Two things:

1) Those ads aren't aimed at you, they're aimed at executives who (generally) have a lot more purchasing power than grunts in the server room. Sorry but it's true. Phrases like "people-ready business" are designed to impress executive types, but they haven't nearly perfected the art of meaningless crap like IBM has.

2) Microsoft marketing has sucked for 12 years? Huh? Are you crazy? Microsoft has grown by leaps and bounds in the last 12 years. They're selling at least twice as much software now as then.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[TheRaven64]

That'll teach me to post before drinking coffee...

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Anonymous Coward]

(such as Office 2007, which is a great piece of software*).

It's Crunchy*!

*tm

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Phd in marketing Wow.

Re:Looks like it worked.

[DECS]

well since your sig asked:

It's the same reason radio broadcast stations and restaurants can play music at low cost, but are expected to pay a lot to display or broadcast movies.
It's why department stores play new music in the background, but new movies are played in theaters that require a ticket to get in.
Most music is already commercially available on DRM-free CDs, while no movies are commercially available on non-DRM media discs.

Apple doesn't enforce media DRM, it lives in a preexisting world. It just pushes for open standards and relaxed DRM in order to sell volume.
Microsoft worked to build an impossible to defeat world policed by Palladium and managed under the thumb of Windows Media DRM.

I know you're an anti-apple troll, I just pity your allegiance to an evil empire and your malodorous attempts to twist reality.

So in the context of the article, are you getting paid to disgorge FUD as part of some astroturf campaign, or are you just a freelance apple hater?

Re:Looks like it worked.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I just pity your allegiance to an evil empire...*snip*...are you getting paid to disgorge FUD as part of some astroturf campaign, or are you just a freelance apple hater?

Sad that Apple fanbois believe anyone who says anything against Apple is a MS Shill.

I could ask the same question to you. How much are you paid by Microsoft to make the mac community look stupid?

Yay, blogosphere news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, blog news! The kind where no matter how things are settled, nobody will care.

Wait a minute...

[Macthorpe]

So Microsoft paid bloggers per click to advertise for them?

Where's the scandal here? There's no mention of Microsoft forcing these guys to say that they weren't being paid, and doing something like this is up to the personal ethics of the individual blogger, surely?

Re:Wait a minute...

[Alioth]

The "scandal" (it isn't really) is that bloggers are supposedly posting their own personal thoughts on various issues, unsullied by commercial pressures, unlike the press (for example, it's well known in the computing press, many magazines won't give a bad review to a product that's heavily advertised in said mag).

This is just showing that bloggers really are no different to the traditional press - they are just as easily bought.

Re:Wait a minute...

[BuR4N]

"Where's the scandal here?"

That its posted on this site as news....

Re:Wait a minute...

[interiot]

Surely you realize there's a difference between organizations who pass advertisements off as their own opinion, versus organizations who clearly indicate which content is advertising and which part is editorial. Maintaining a wall between editorial and advertising has long been recognized as a part of journalism ethics, and while that wall is breached from time to time, it's something that's important enough that there can sometimes be legal repercussions to breaching it.

Re:Wait a minute...

[Macthorpe]

Well, yes, which is precisely why I said it's "up to the personal ethics of the individual blogger". I agree that I personally would state explicitly that I was being paid to advertise something (if I kept anything more than a public journal). If somebody doesn't and you don't agree with that, you stop trusting their opinion.

Nobody is forcing you to believe everything you read on the internet, after all :)

Re:Wait a minute...

[chiui]

> Where's the scandal here?
I don't know in US, but here in Italy it must be clearly obvious what is an advertising and what is not. For example if something is promoted during television shows you see a label somewhere on the screen which let you know you are watching some promotional content.
Maybe it's not law there, but for sure it's a scandal.

Re:Wait a minute...

[TheRaven64]

The thing is, bloggers are not journalists. When I blog, or post on Slashdot, I do so with a pseudonym. I can troll, take bribes, or whatever, and the only damage that can be done is to my pseudonym's reputation. Now, that reputation on Slashdot is fairly good, and so I probably wouldn't do much to damage it, although that's more because I enjoy posting here than because of any real repercussions.

When I don my journalist hat, I publish under my real name. If I am found to have taken bribes for my opinion, then both my reputation and the reputation of my publisher suffer. The latter has a knock-on effect for me, since it means they are less likely to commission work from me in the future, which leads to less money for me (probably much less in the long run than I would gain from accepting a bribe). It's a lot easier to start a new blog with a new pseudonym than it is to start a new career in journalism with a new name.

On the other hand, I might just be bitter that no one has tried to bribe me. Manufacturers don't even send me shiny toys to review. Even the Nokia 770 I reviewed I got as an open source developer rather than a journalist.

[1] I really hate that word.

Re:Wait a minute...

[LaughingCoder]

... bloggers are supposedly posting their own personal thoughts on various issues, unsullied by commercial pressures, ...

That is one of the funniest things I've ever read on /. From my perspective, blogging is *all about* getting noticed, which will in turn lead to commercial/financial rewards, whether it be through selling advertising, or as in this case, becoming advertising. Unlike your interpretation I actually take a dimmer view of blogging than I do of "mass media" because we all know mass media is commercially-driven but bloggers are assumed to be "unsullied", making them that much more insidious. Remember, everything we read comes from somebody with an agenda (including this post ;-)

Re:Wait a minute...

[crazyjimmy]

Nobody is forcing you to believe everything you read on the internet, after all :) Nobody is forcing you to believe in anything, ever.

Does that mean suddenly nothing should be true, honest, and forthright? That we should just end our expectations that people will act with honor and decency?

Of course it should get pointed out in public what these bloggers (and M$) are doing. No, they're not going to be killed for doing it, but we should definitely have the knowledge that these kinds of tactics are being used. We should have the right to publicly question their ethics.

--Jimmy

Re:Wait a minute...

[Macthorpe]

Does that mean suddenly nothing should be true, honest, and forthright? That we should just end our expectations that people will act with honor and decency? Good slippery slope argument there, and you'll find I suggested no such thing.

The rest of your post had a more reasonable tone (except the immature M$ usage, nil points for that one) and I can mostly agree with you.

Re:Wait a minute...

[GaryPatterson]

I agree with this - it's not an issue for Microsoft, which is doing what companies do - getting the word out on their products. They're blameless in this.

The problem is purely with the bloggers, who are now tainted by their actions. Everything they write is now suspect - were they paid for it? Is their opinion sold to the highest bidder?

If bloggers want to be respected as journalists, they have to strive for the ideals of journalism. One of those is a code of conduct that clearly seperates editorial from advertising. Sadly, the bloggers in question jumped on a bandwagon, made a bit of money but lost the one thing they had - credibility. Why read their blogs when you don't know if you're reading their opinions or a paid-for opinion.

I'm probably overstating it a bit, and the impact won't be as bad for these guys as I've made out, but they really have put a big question mark over themselves.

In other news...

[Black Parrot]

A whore will fake an orgasm for you, if you pay for it.

Oh, and astroturf isn't real grass.

Re:In other news...

[lendude]

Get your hand off it mods - parent is a troll?: whilst using a slightly colourful metaphor, this comment is on the money.

Re:In other news...

[Macthorpe]

No, it's not. From Wiki:

the term astroturfing pejoratively describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a politician or political grouping, product, service, event, etc. by many diverse and distributed individuals acting of their own volition, when in fact the efforts are centrally coordinated. Microsoft didn't even try and keep this secret. It was fully public and the bloggers had every opportunity to state that they were acting on Microsoft's behalf.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

A whore will fake an orgasm for you, if you pay for it.

A wife or girlfriend will too but studies have shown the whore is cheaper.

Oh, and astroturf isn't real grass.

If your doing her on astroturf she is obviously faking enjoyment, unless she is really into S-N-M.

Re:In other news...

[coinreturn]

Yeah, prostitution is the most people-ready business I know. Others include televangelists and the military.

Re:In other news...

[mopslik]

...and the military

Reminds me of "Join the military. Travel the world. Meet many interesting people. Kill them."

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

HA! my girlfriend fakes 'em for free!

Re:In other news...

[A_Non_Moose]

Yeah, prostitution is the most people-ready business I know.

Reminds me of the story of an engineer that was thinking about switching jobs for more pay and a
local where he was at (South America?) said he was "Prostituting himself".

His reply was dead on:

"We all prostitute ourselves in some way, the trick is knowing when to change pimps".

Particularly important when you have to do Phone/Desktop Sup-whore-t.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

> A whore will fake an orgasm for you, if you pay for it.

Are you really paying for the whore's orgasm or for your own??? ;)

Re:In other news...

[DECS]

Astroturf doesn't have to be secret to remain astroturf.

What part of "deliberately seeking to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a product," centrally coordinated through Federated Media, do you not connect with this campaign?

It almost sounds like the Wiki page was written specifically with this campaign in mind.

Astroturf is planting fake conversations designed to mimic a real grassroots movement. Microsoft has a history of Astroturfing, both in its ad campaigns, its criminal defense campaigns, its political lobbying campaigns, and its technology FUD campaigns against other products. Do you think ZDNet's bloggers spontaneously all decided to rag on the iPhone when they wrote 50 negative articles within a week about a product from Apple that has little to do with their jobs or blogs? Is it a freak coincidence that just a few months ago they were singing the praises of the Zune, a product that found zero real interest in the market at week two?

iPod vs Zune: Microsoft's Slippery Astroturf

Re:In other news...

[Macthorpe]

If you're really associated with Roughly Drafted then I would like to congratulate you on creating a website that actually makes me wince when someone quotes it. I have never seen a website so full of pro-Apple fanboyism and baseless FUD as yours. I don't know whether it's intentional or not, so I'll wait until I give you any further kudos.

In response to your comment, the key words there are "engineer the impression". They did not. They were fully open about the fact that these bloggers were paid to write what they did, and it was the bloggers themselves who failed to notify their readership that they were advertising on Microsoft's behalf.

I guess you're not used to a company asking bloggers to help instead of suing them, huh.

Re:In other news...

[DECS]

If they hadn't engineered an impression that bloggers were talking up Microsoft jingles, then there wouldn't be a story. Sorry to break that to you so succinctly.

What makes you wince about my writing is primarily that I take apart stuff you want to believe. Nobody ever points out anything I say that is actually deceptive. I can make minor errors in word use or spelling, but I don't write false information designed to convey something that isn't true. I also make no effort to hide my opinions, so nobody reading is fooled by some false illusion of virginal objectivity.

I have only ever been castigated for saying things that I quoted from Microsoft executives. It's pretty clear when someone unleashes a torrent of ridicule that includes the phrase "Fanboy" that they themselves are just simple people who can't think.

Offer some real criticism. Calling me names just makes it obvious that you have nothing to stand on.

As for citing TechCrunch--the blogger who we're talking about as a Microsoft sellout--complaining that Apple "sued" bloggers, well if you read the link, you'd find that Apple asked them to take down iPhone graphics the were pasting on Windows devices to make them look less shitty. That's something Apple has to do to preserve its IP, and you can disagree with it, but a take down does not equal "Apple suing bloggers." Apple only sued a number of websites to obtain information from them about industrial espionage within their own company. Presenting that as suing bloggers, as if to get money out of them, is just disingenuous.

I know some of the people who were sued, and I work with them. I also know Apple inside. Your attempts to portray either as some Good and Evil play are laughable. You can continue to publish RDM-hate pieces on Digg, and whine about Apple suits against bloggers that didn't happen, but it doesn't make you any less of a fraud.

Re:In other news...

[Macthorpe]

In all honesty, If I ever need them I'll take lessons in journalistic integrity from someone who isn't a hypocrite. (thanks for reminding me of that, by the way)

Your characterisation of anyone who disagrees with you and your methods as a 'fraud' or 'sellout', then the blatant travesty that is the above happening and you shouting "I don't write false information designed to convey something that isn't true" is just hilarious. As for the rest of your tirade, I find the fact that you accused me of only having namecalling to fall back on, then spending the rest of the post ranting at me for things I have neither said or done to be just plain ironic. "You can continue to publish RDM-hate pieces on Digg"... that's a classic. If I ever give a shit about Digg I'll be sure to email you. I don't share your irrational hatred of that site, but nor do I like it.

I'm not even going to bother with this any more, my laughter overfloweth.

Re:In other news...

[ShinySteelRobot]

prostitution is the most people-ready business I know

What a great idea for a sig! As a bonus, thousands of searches for "people-ready business" might bring up Slashdot. :)

Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[mwvdlee]

There's a whole profession of people writing text for advertisement.
What IS moraly wrong is presenting it as a personal opinion; that's verbal prostitution. Publishing it on the web would be indecent exposure.

Re:Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[monk.e.boy]

There's a whole profession of people writing text for advertisement. What IS moraly wrong is presenting it as a personal opinion;

Everyone has their price. Say I asked you to put a link on your blog to my site and offered you $1,000,000. You'd do it. Then we start haggling.

Most companies have a price they will pay for good links to their site (non reciprocal and none of that rel="nofollow" shit) a lot of them say $100-$150 for a link.... how much do you think Microsoft is willing to pay for an entire article?

They are the richest company in the world.

I'd sell them my blog and let them carry on using my name. Then I'd retire to Hawaii and go surfing :)

monk.e.boy

Re:Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[spasticfraggle]

What IS moraly wrong is presenting it as a personal opinion; that's lying. Publishing it on the web would be dishonest.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[UbuntuDupe]

"OH YES, oh, YES! this appearance of enjoyment brought to you by you"

Re:Nothing wrong with writing advertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

What IS moraly wrong is presenting it as a personal opinion; that's verbal prostitution.

My twenty dollar girlfriend would be insulted by the characterization that what she does is as bad as astroturfing, you insensitive clod!

MS sits back and watches

[c3ph45]

Could this have been a part of Microsoft's plan. Seems to me that this controversy will help them much more than the original paid-for blogs.

Unfair accusation

[Anonymous Coward]

These ads mentioned are not anything out of the ordinary. They are standard ads with copy by microsoft that happen to use the name of the site in the ad text.

The key point is that the ads contain text written by microsoft and are not product endorsements on the part of the site.

People making these accusations of bribery and selling out are either speaking out in ignorance or deliberately distorting the facts to stir up controversy (I'm looking at you, Nick Denton).

This whole mess is another example of Snape and Hermione die in the final Harry Potter book.

PRB = Public Relations Bullsh*t

[SloWave]

Can't wait for someone to register the domain

Re:PRB = Public Relations Bullsh*t

[TechnoLuddite]

Actually (and tell me this isn't amusing), PRB is Microsoft Knowledge Base's acronym for Problem. Or, to put it in non-spin, "Yes, it's a bug ... but we're not fixing it."

Maybe that's the People-Related Business they're talking about.

Re:PRB = Public Relations Bullsh*t

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as many countries with "Republic" in their name are not republics (e.g. People's Republic of China, Republic of North Korea, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Republic of Haiti...), most corporate monopolies with "People-Ready Business" as their slogan are almost certainly not ready for people, at least the type of people usually found here on earth.

Re:PRB = Public Relations Bullsh*t

[Hal_Porter]

"People ready" business reminds of those Intel graphics chips which can't actually run Aero despite being marketed as "Vista Ready".

http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/2007/04/video-why-in tel-915-graphics-dont-have-a-wddm-driver-for-vista /

People-ready business

[bky1701]

To me, 'People-ready business' represents a new low in catch-phrase marketing. We all know 'can you hear me now', a stoned man saying 'dude we're getting a Dell', 'works out of the box' and the Vegemite song sucked. But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft.

For a while now, Microsoft has been looking for a way to make money. Their business has been dying down not due to competition, but due to sheer lack of anything to sell. So comes Vista. With it's color-coded file explorer, OSX ripoff interface and Vista-only-for-no-real-reason DX10, they were sure they were saved.

This was not the case.

The hotcake Vista was predicted to be turned out more to be a segway, and (while ducking from flying chairs) the marketing department had to come up with a way to sell this new steaming turd. Enter 'people-ready business'.

I am not personally sure what this is intended to mean. Are they attempting to sell a business that is ready for people to use? Doesn't Mcdonalds fall into this category? Or is it an attempt to make people ready for a business? If so, what business? Microsoft?

Has Microsoft finally admitted to being the Borg? Is the next tag line, "lower your shields and prepare to be boarded"?

Who knows. This blogger is unsure.

/Waits patently for check

Re:People-ready business

[kestasjk]

Their business has been dying down not due to competition, but due to sheer lack of anything to sell. Take a look at MSFT stock price, business isn't dying down. They also have Office and Windows, the most profitable software products on the planet; how can you say they have nothing to sell?

Why can I practically hear the Apple "switch" background music chimes when I read Slashdot these days?

Re:People-ready business

[Alioth]

Their business is dying down? Seriously - what are you smoking and can I have some? Microsoft just had its most succesful year in its entire history - highest revenues, highest profits. Vista *is* selling like hotcakes - almost every new PC has it pre-installed (all the negativity about Vista is just a repeat performance of all the negativity about XP five years ago).

You're in denial if you think Microsoft is dying.

Re:People-ready business

[supersnail]

Shouldnt that be :
" signed long long int catchpahrase_rating;"

afterall we would need a very large negative number to rate "money^H^H^H^H^Hpeople ready busines"

Re:People-ready business

[Anonymous Coward]

void main( void ) { printf( "%d %d", sizeof( int ), sizeof( long int ) ); }

computer say: "4 4"

O_o

Re:People-ready business

[Anonymous Coward]

/Waits patently for check

You patented waiting for the check? I am sure there is prior art to that.

Re:People-ready business

[Opportunist]

MS is the corporation equivalent of an oil tanker. Even with the engine off, the momentum keeps them moving for a long, long time. They needn't even sell anything actively to make some money. Computers get sold with their systems preinstalled, that's what's selling Vista.

I know a fair number of system integrators (i.e. hardware vendors that also offer you complete sets). They get some "gentle" pressure into their backs from MS to push Vista instead of XP, and the policy of MS that you may use an older version of Windows with a compatible license of a newer system helps a lot, too. So I can well see people buy Vista (because, well, it doesn't cost more than XP with a new system) and use XP instead.

And so far, the number of people buying Vista to upgrade from XP has been rather small.

So I wouldn't call it selling like "hotcakes". If anything is an indicator, it's the price of ram chips currently.

Re:People-ready business

[setagllib]

Try again on a CPU architecture that isn't from the stone age.

Re:People-ready business

[LarsWestergren]

To me, 'People-ready business' represents a new low in catch-phrase marketing.

It's actually worse: did you know the full slogan is Dynamic IT for the People-Ready Business ? I agree with Computerworld, you can't use that phrase and not sound like an idiot - well, unless you are mocking it I guess.

First "Share the Social" and now this.

Re:People-ready business

[Arancaytar]

Can't be. If there was, Amazon would have tried to patent it already.

Re:People-ready business

[Tim C]

But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft.

If you think "people-ready business" represents a new low in marketing bullshit, you're not paying attention. It's bad, but there's far, far worse out there.

Re:People-ready business

[TheRaven64]

I just took a look at their stock price. At first, I was impressed by how much it had climbed in the last year. Then I zoomed out a bit, and saw it took a huge dive this time last year (any one know why?) and had only just recovered its previous price.

Most of Microsoft's money comes from sales of new PCs. When CPUs hit 1GHz, I think, was the turning point where people[1] stopped upgrading because their systems weren't fast enough. My mother is still using an old machine that I got before Windows XP was released, and sees no reason to upgrade. Apparently Windows 2000 has been EOL'd, so I'll probably switch her over to some flavour of *NIX at some point. The only reason I didn't in the past was that she had a cheap digital camera that wasn't supported on anything other than Windows (it is now). She uses Thunderbird for mail, FireFox for web browsing, and OpenOffice for word processing, so there's nothing tying her to Windows.

For a lot of users like her, a general purpose computer isn't really what they want. Apple do well by selling consumer electronics devices that can do the everything people want from a computer, made out of the same parts as other computers. If Microsoft were really smart, they would have started pushing WinCE with pocket versions of Word and IE to HDTV manufacturers. The two big markets in the next few years will be there and in the pocket, and Microsoft have less than 10% market share in either.

[1] With the exception of video editing pros and hard core gamers.

Re:People-ready business

[TheRaven64]

Quite a few compilers use 32-bits for long ints. The C spec says:

• short int must be at least 16-bits[1]
• long int must be at least 32-bits.
• long long int must be at least 64-bits.
• int should be the natural machine word size.
• A long int should be large enough to contain a pointer[2].

On most architectures, 64-bit code is slower than 32-bit code (it's only faster on x86 because you also get extra registers), and so pointers are 32-bits, meaning that the only requirement on a long int is that it has to be 32-bits or more. Since a lot of code is written assuming that long int is 32-bits, and we have long longs for things that need to be 64-bits, this is a reasonable choice for the compiler. Any code written assuming that a long is more than 32-bits is by definition broken, and (baring alignment requirements of the CPU) it is generally better to make the data take up as little space as possible. Note that earlier versions of the C standard did not include the long long type, and so legacy code might make this assumption, although it should really use int64_t or uint64_t from types.h.

The first C compiler I used had 16-bit ints, so I discovered early on the danger of assuming a fixed size for any of the basic int types. The real nastyness comes from things like trying to pass an off_t (or similar) to something like printf, since it can be a long on some platforms, and a long long on others, so you need an explicit cast, which is very easy to forget.

[1] Actually it defines the range that it must be able to represent for each size, but it boils down to the same thing.
[2] Specifically, a data pointer. Function pointers may be shorter. On some architectures, function pointers are smaller than data pointers, and this is allowed by the C spec.

Re:People-ready business

[4D6963]

requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating"

In most implementations a long int is the same thing as an int, I believe you meant long long int ;-)

Re:People-ready business

[JoeCommodore]

Looked at the link, lots of PHB management speak there.

Seems like part of the underlying theme is 'you can have innovation and still use your old software too' or something to that affect.

So MS sees that what keeps their users MS customers is 'stuff that they are currently running', so I figure they will kludge up something to make the old stuff more accessible (terminal services, virtalization, etc.) then try to wedge in and displace it with shiny mew MS-centric technologies.

If it weren't for the old Windows Apps users probably would look for something else be it Linux, Solaris, Mac, or whatever and MS knows it.

Re:People-ready business

[ChronosWS]

Bloggers are the equivalent to people standing on the sidewalk shouting whatever they want. There is no oversight, no journalistic professionalism (which itself is often absent even in so-called professional news organizations) and no way of really knowing why someone posts what they post.

Anyone who looks to blogs and expects, without researching the source of the blogs, to be told the truth is simply ignorant and deserves what they get, include advertising posing as something else. But what is NOT true is that bloggers can somehow be held to a standard where they aren't allowed to 'prostitute themselves' for money for whatever reason they like. They are just people standing on the street. They can do whatever the hell they like. And if people don't like it, then can wander the streets until they find people shouting things they like.

Re:People-ready business

[setagllib]

Fantastic, but my point is that if he's using AMD64, where 64-bit code really is at least as fast as 32-bit code, then 'long' really is quite large. This document indicates that "int" is 4 bytes and "long" is 8 bytes.

Re:People-ready business

[Aussie]

To me, 'People-ready business' represents a new low in catch-phrase marketing. We all know 'can you hear me now', a stoned man saying 'dude we're getting a Dell', 'works out of the box' and the Vegemite song sucked. But new levels are being reached, requiring of extending the "int catchphrase_rating" to "long int catchphrase_rating". These levels are being reached by the one and only, Microsoft. You utter bastard !

Re:People-ready business

[Anonymous Coward]

GP poster. I was going for the "funny" mod more than the "insightful" one. Also, see my sig. No love for Apple here.

Last I checked...

[jessiej]

I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft, but last I checked they weren't having a problem with their Google page rank, so I do doubt that that was part of their "People-ready business" blog campaign.

Re:Last I checked...

[TempeTerra]

I disagree. Microsoft has been losing pagerank in their traditional stronghold areas. It's not a crisis yet, but I can see why they'd want to do some preventative maintenance on their Google reputation. For example, this traditional Microsoft meme doesn't return a microsoft.com page in the first half dozen pages of results any more, although there are still a lot of people talking about Microsoft. It seems like they're becoming less relevant in some of their traditional areas of strength.

Re:Last I checked...

[DannyO152]

And who else was using p-rb, so who else would have come up in anyone's searches? No, I think their advertising/marketing people checked on how the campaign was going: was it "You Deserve a Break Today" good or "Knock on any Norge" bad. No doubt they discovered that the target demographic graded the slogan as meaningless. They may have also discovered a rising trend of people who wondered who actually takes a pay check for conceiving, pitching, and approving such grand puffery and who's dumb enough to actually hire them.

This, as they say on Madison Avenue, was an opportunity. Obviously, a little street cred was called for and increased billings would be an excellent side effect. Hum. Hum. Think. Think. Aha, let's pay bloggers to use the phrase and inject it full of yummy, vitamin-packed significant meaninginess. Briiliant! Let's knock off early and go to the corner people-ready bar.

So if someone asked you to casually use "soylent green is not people," as you discussed world affairs and what your cat did yesterday, would you take the money because, blogging is a money-ready business, it doesn't matter any way (see silk purse out of sow's ear), 10000 x nothing is still nothing and $50 will get one 1/12 of the way to looking at an iPhone, or, it's a subsidy for performance art pieces which remind viewers of the banality of cynicism? Didn't Burger King pay rap artists for product placement? Yo, yo, my wallet is Microsoft-ready, Jack.

Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[clickety6]

Surely the Slashdot crowd has some ideas of their own as to what "people-ready business" might mean?

Business ready to fleece the people?

If we're talking Vista, maybe it means business with some people-sized holes where the customers should havebeen inserted?

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[c3ph45]

Well I'm guessing it means that Microsoft isn't a Robotic-Overlord-Ready Business.

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[feepness]

Surely the Slashdot crowd has some ideas of their own as to what "people-ready business" might mean?

Business ready to fleece the people?
Is this another opportunity to mention vivoleum?

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the Slashdot crowd has some ideas of their own as to what "people-ready business" might mean?

VISTA PREMIUM IS PEOPLE! It's made from PEOPLE!

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[jeevesbond]

Actually I'm being blatantly paid-off to tout this shit (literally): The Wipe-Ready Business. Is your business wipe-ready?

Unfortunately I can't claim the credit for this masterpeice. :)

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

We know that business means money, and Soylent Green is people, so when I think Vista, I think:

Soylent Green is ready money.

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[xixax]

Why it means that if there are enough links to people ready business they will get a better page rank in Google than all the other links to it.

Xix.

Re:Surely the Salshdot crowd has some ideas

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

It's an anagram of "Puerile Bypassed Ones".

Whether this is MS or the bloggers I couldn't say...

(yes, of course I cheated)
http://wordsmith.org/anagram

In other news

[fferreres]

Sources report Slashdot was popularized a new term "Money-ready bloggers", a term coined to discredit unetical bloggers who choose topics based on money bounties.

Re:In other news

[Yvanhoe]

Do I get karma points to spread this slogan ?

Re:In other news

[Opportunist]

Probably negative ones, yes.

Re:In other news

[TheRaven64]

But Karma-Ready Posters(TM) are the core of Slashdot!

(Why does Slashcode still turn a trademark symbol into (TM)? Doesn't it support unicode now?)

I'm Secretary of State,

[Baldrson]

brought to you by Carl's Jr.

People-driven business means:

[smurfsurf]

A people-driven business leverages collective synergy with a quality-driven approach that focuses on delivering key objectives. It is quite obvious, actually.

(The BS bingo blurb is courtesy of the DailyWTF)

Re:People-driven business means:

[Dusty00]

You said that already: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilb ert-20070611.html

What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

What would happen if all Slashdotters started linking People-ready bussiness to Linux' Wikipedia page?

Re:What if...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the googlers who can't spell will be sent to the Wikipedia page

Support by trashing?

[pecosdave]

So, these A listers say the slogan when tearing it apart. I'm sure this still benefits Microsoft to some degree, at least where Google ranking is concerned.

People Ready???

[advocate_one]

you mean it wasn't before??? or are they trying to say anything that's not Microsoft isn't

Bloggers != Journalists

[supersnail]

Next time some blogger makes a fuss about not being treated like "real" journalists just point them to the Cringley/McKraken articles.

They will be treated like journalists when they can demonstratte some ethical and professional resposibility.

Not that all journalists are perfect but they do lose thier jobs when they get caught red handed.

Anyway all the best blogs are deeply personal, opinionated, and, do not pretend to be journalism.

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[JasonKiddy]

Unless they work for Fox... or.... or...

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[marcosdumay]

Where do you get to read those journalists that don't sell stories for Microsof? Really, I can't find them.

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[Selfbain]

Since when does Fox hire journalists.

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[JasonKiddy]

Sorry. You are correct. What was I thinking?

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[tom_evil]

They will be treated like journalists when they can demonstratte some ethical and professional resposibility.

Actually, Microsoft *is* treating them like journalists!

Just an example of envelope or ATM journalism that you mostly still see in the Phillipines.

Slightly dated by US standards, sure, where you get hired as press secretary for good coverage, but hey, I mean they're only bloggers.

Re:Bloggers != Journalists

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"Next time some blogger makes a fuss about not being treated like "real" journalists just point them to the Cringley/McKraken articles."

What for? As an example of what is NOT a "jourlanlist"? (I refer to Cringley). It's not like Cringley is a "journalist" either. His "article" read like it was written by a nine-year old.

A List ?

[niceone]

So that's what Paris was screaming about as they dragged he off to jail!

Been done.

[jcuervo]

At least they're not doing it themselves... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipatoni

They manage it on slashdot as well...

[Idaho]

Look at this article, posted yesterday, for example. Especially the last sentence:

I was shocked that Apple was even on the list as I believed all those Mac commercials!

This part has "PR shill" written all over it. No tech would write this.

The slashdot editors might want to pay a little more attention to the stories they accept. I'll admit that this one is hardly the worst, but it's less visible than normal, which makes the story almost believable (instead of the guerilla marketing campaign it in fact is)

Re:They manage it on slashdot as well...

[Anonymous Coward]

This part has "PR shill" written all over it. No tech would write this. Yes, nobody submitting to Slashdot would ever write a sarcastic comment implying that Apple users are sheep. Never. Because nobody on Slashdot has strong opinions about Apple.

Dude, you're barking up the wrong tree. The article in question was written by a guy that works at Microsoft, in which Vista came out on top. I'm not saying he's biased, but your theory that an Apple shill submitted the story is a little weak, all things considered.

Collective noun

[Threni]

> passel of A List Bloggers

I thought the collective noun was "a crock of bloggers".

Re:Collective noun

[Arancaytar]

Not "a tube"? Oh wait, that was for internets. A tube of internets.

Must be "a sphere of bloggers".

Re:Collective noun

[Threni]

> "a sphere of bloggers"

Doesn't really convey the self-congratulatory navel-gazing pointlessness of your average blog, though.

Re:Collective noun

[tehcyder]

Is "passel" a commonly used word in the US? I'm from the UK and had to google it, as I initially assumed it was some bizarre typo for "parcel".

PRB

[richie2000]

I'd be happy to clarify what "people-ready business" means to me.

Re:PRB

[jimicus]

I really don't understand the business part of that. People, sure. You probably could fit a small person up the goatse mans' backside, provided they didn't mind it being slightly claustrophobic.

Re:PRB

[TempeTerra]

I agree wholeheartedly! It's great to see that Microsoft business tools don't need the user to bend over backwards any more. Pretty much the opposite, in fact...

People Ready Business = DRM shop

[syousef]

Try Pretty Ridiculous Business.

Ready to restrict people with hideous DRM and milk them for every cent they'll spend. Ready to take on slogans from the people at large because their own ad execs can no longer stomach the BS long enough to produce a slogan.

MS Warden Confirmation

[Anonymous Coward]

Business ready to fleece the people?

Pete Boden wants people at Microsoft to think like criminals.*

Pete Boden = Microsoft Senior Security Director

*hidden out of context quote disclaimer.

Corporate Bullshit Generator

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't have surprised me if they used the Corporate Bullshit Generator to come up with this crazy slogan!

parent is not a troll...mods wake up

[advocate_one]

the parent comment is right on the money...

Re:parent is not a troll...mods wake up

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Whew... Just had an orgasm, now please transfer the money to my paypal account.

Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[iHasaFlavour]

There is a distinct tendancy to view people on the internet as being the sum of their online work.

This is a big mistake. People, ordinary people, have bills to pay. Real life costs money, and if someone offers you money to do something which, lets face it in this case, is a pretty trivial and short term thing, what's the big deal?

Oh wait, its microsoft, therefore it must be bad. Oh how very sheeplike.

How many celebrities have done adverts for crap and been paid well for it, lots. It's a common event, nothing to be ashamed of, people have to live, and life costs money. And don't tell me that if someone said 'here, have lots of money and all you have to do is write some blog entries', you'd say no. Not if the money were good. I wouldn't.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[bateleur]

Real life costs money, and if someone offers you money to do something which, lets face it in this case, is a pretty trivial and short term thing, what's the big deal?

Have you actually read what these bloggers wrote?

Like you say, there are bills to pay. So there's no problem if Microsoft want to pay these people as writers to write pieces for them on a particular topic. The problem starts when those pieces end up as content in a place which is normally home to opinion. The value of opinion pieces all lies in their honesty. If you think you're reading opinion when you're really reading an advert, you're being misled. And that's bad.

Most of the time when celebrities do ads for money there's no conflict with their actual profession. In fact since they're often actors it's just another script to them.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[aichpvee]

And there's a little sentence at the bottom that says something about them being compensated for their time or being a paid spokesperson or something.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[iHasaFlavour]

AHA, Now I see the true color of Slashdot. Dare to say microsoft isn't evil and get moderated troll.

Hmm, guess this 'open forum' isn't as open as I thought. Moving on...

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

And just wait to see what kind of censorship waits if you dare to spread the truth that France does not exist, or that the moon landing never took place!

(Captcha: nonsense. How appropriate.)

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Craig Maloney]

This is a big mistake. People, ordinary people, have bills to pay. Real life costs money, and if someone offers you money to do something which, lets face it in this case, is a pretty trivial and short term thing, what's the big deal?

Oh wait, its microsoft, therefore it must be bad. Oh how very sheeplike.

The big deal is not that of the masses vs. Microsoft, as you so eloquently put it, but of this hippie-B*S* idea that if you blog, you best be putting your own thoughts down on that text-area widget. That's been one of the tacit rules of blogging, and to say that your thoughts were bought is the blogging equivalent of saying you'll name your first-born kid after some product for money. Whether you agree that this is an acceptable practice or not is entirely up to you, but understand there is a lot of people out there who view the blog as some sacred confessional that shall not be besmirched with bought-and-sold thoughts. That is the real problem with Microsoft, or any companies ad campain.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Ash Vince]

I am an ordinary person, I also have bills to pay.

But I do not go to work for some bunch of scum sucking pigs just because I could earn more money than I currently do. Instead I work for a company that I find agreeable.

I know alot of people who try and pass on the responsiblity for what they do at work to management, and I tell them what a load of crap that is too. If you don't like what you do then find a better job, even if it does involve a pay cut. Otherwise you are complicit in whatever misdeeds you might be asked to perform at work.

And don't tell me that if someone said 'here, have lots of money and all you have to do is write some blog entries', you'd say no. Not if the money were good. I wouldn't. Then you have no morals, but why do you find it so hard to believe that some of us do have a moral code which we value as such an important part of who we are that no amount of money would justify tearing it up and putting it in the bin.

And before you talk about how I have never been desperate enough, guess again. To get my current job involved me relocating a long way at considerable inconvenience to take a cut in salary.

I think I am probably in the minority in this otherwise the world would be a better place, but I am very unlikely to change in this regard. The only thing I can think of that might change my outlook would be watching my kids starve, but seeing as I have spent years in the past doing dead end jobs, I know I could return to this and still earn a not too dissimilar wage.

Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but.. Actually, I think the opposite is true. Since I have never been wealthy, I have never been in situation where I got used to having alot of money to spend. Once you get used to having a large amount of money at you disposal (or your wife does) it is much harder to go back to being closer to the breadline.

This also makes it easier when looking for work as my salary demands are lower. This does not mean I am bad at my job or that I value my work less. It simply means that I get other satisfaction from my job apart from just getting a monthly wage. I think it actually means I take far more pride in the code I produce. This argument should not really come as any surprise to people who use Linux as this is built and maintained on similar, non-monetary values.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Dragonslicer]

...there is a lot of people out there who view the blog as some sacred confessional that shall not be besmirched with bought-and-sold thoughts. Yeah, and they're often called "bloggers". They're the ones that want all of the authority of legitimate journalists without any of the responsibility.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[DogDude]

Have you actually read what these bloggers wrote?

Who cares? They're bloggers. If you want news, go to a journalist. If you want stream-of-consciousness from some random person, go to a blogger. Smart people do not get credible information from blogs.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[__aapspi39]

"come and see the violence inherent in the [open-source] system...help, help, i'm being repressed..."

nice try

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Achromatic1978]

and / or "the naive". The whole idea of "this new consciousness" is laughable. Hint: the only difference between most of them and LiveJournal is owing their own domain name. LJ never had this much credibility - I don't see what a $6 domain name from GoDaddy automatically imparts.

Re:Ethics are easy if your wealthy, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray! I agree, applaude and confirm the same stance.
Thank you for revealing yourself as an ethical human!
Now, run away and hide, quick, before they burn you at the stake!

Michael Arrington got confused.

[jez9999]

TechCrunch wasn't much fun in the very early days. We were mostly talking to ourselves because readers were scarce. But as the site grew and more readers came along, things got exciting. The discussion in the comments to each blog post was as or more compelling than the actual news we were reporting.

It looks like Michael Arrington got confused. He's written his MS assignment about Slashdot instead of his site!

Surely I'm not the first to think this...

[Shipwack]

Soylent Green is 'People-ready business'!

Easy Way To Counteract That

[geordie_loz]

Might I suggest that we all blog the term People Ready Business, and link it to www.ubuntu.com or our www.apple.com our our favourite decent provider of software, and someone who deserves the publicity. A bit like all the tags for VISTA on amazon marking it as DRM Filled, Buggy, Bad Vista etc..

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[fbjon]

Moreover, what does it mean? It seems it has to do with the latest versions of Windows and Office, but what exactly? The Microsoft site tells me that "People are your most important asset. With the right software, they'll push your business forward" (*) or somesuch. Ya sure, all the examples and marketing fluff sound great, but there has to be something concrete somewhere, right? Otherwise, why spend money marketing it, unless the whole thing is a branding campaign for manager types.

(*) $100 dollars have been transferred to your Swiss bank account. Also, it's "drive" not "push".

- Microsoft

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[halll7]

I like the sentiment, but it has the down-side of associating those decent providers of software with the meaningless corporate-speak. I say steer-clear and leave microsoft and their bloggers to make an ass of themselves.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that;
Might I suggest that we all blog the term People Ready Business, and link it to www.ubuntu.com or our www.apple.com our our favourite decent provider of software, and someone who deserves the publicity. A bit like all the tags for VISTA on amazon marking it as DRM Filled, Buggy, Bad Vista etc..

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[Anonymous Coward]

Done

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[SnowZero]

Ya sure, all the examples and marketing fluff sound great, but there has to be something concrete somewhere, right? You must be new here.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[indifferent children]

People are your most important asset.

Actually, it turns out that money is our most important asset. People are ninth. Carbon paper is eighth.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[cmacb]

In addition, to better characterize the type of people Microsoft prefers to do business with it might make sense to link the phrase "Dumb-Fuck Ready to the target site. At least to me that characterizes the people who haven't at least started seriously considering alternative to a continued relationship with the company.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[patmfitz]

Google changed their algorithm to prevent this type of "googlebombing": http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombi ng-failure.html

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[fatphil]

"Moreover, what does it mean?"

Often there are clues embedded in the letters:

People-ready business =
Purposely sees debian.
Reply "espouses debian".
Peruse a dope's bylines.
Depresses you, plebian.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[UbuntuDupe]

No, you can't say that Apple or Ubuntu facilitate a "People Ready Business" because obviously Microsoft owns the term "People Ready Business", just like you can't say that the source for a program is open unless it meets OSI's definition of "open source".

Right, Bruce?

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[jollyreaper]

Actually, it turns out that money is our most important asset. People are ninth. Carbon paper is eighth. And you can get carbon from people. Talk about human resources!

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[KevReedUK]

Great Dilbert reference...

now where's the car analogy...? It must be here somewhere!?!

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[CastrTroy]

People are your most important asset, that's why it's probably better to spend an extra $5000 and get a good employee than to spend that $5000 on software that you think will help turn a bad employee into a good one. All the software in the world can't help you if you don't have good employees.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[Anonymous Coward]

Moreover, what does it mean? It seems it has to do with the latest versions of Windows and Office, but what exactly?

Do not question Balmarr. Balmarr ready for people. FEED BALMARR!

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[badc0ffee]

From the header... "PRB microsite". When I see "PRB" I think PRoBlem. Maybe this is just a subtle way to get back to PROBLEM/BUG from ISSUE newspeak.

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[dmsuperman]

People Ready Business
45-5F-E1-04-22-CA-29-C4-93-3F-95-05-2B-79-2A-B2 !!!
I will not be silenced!!!

Re:Easy Way To Counteract That

[DECS]

Does owning People Ready Business mean that Microsoft has given up the rights of calling employees stupid dinosaurs that need to buy a new version of Office in order to survive?

If so, maybe I can use that ad campaign idea myself. Hey executives: Buy my crap, or you are a stupid dinosaur! What an effective campaign. Interesting to see Microsoft do a 180 in terms of flattery.

Slashdot

[Safiire Arrowny]

Seeing as how Slashdot is Taco's blog, and it has a multitude of advertisements with Microsoft slogans all over it, I fail to see a huge difference.

Taco is putting MS slogans and advertising material all over his site for money, the only thing different is that I wouldn't consider it astroturfing, while I do think blogging about "What MS bullshit means to me personally", is.

Reverse Slashdot effect

[Enderandrew]

This is what I challenge everyone. Let's make some copy (text) about what 'people-ready business' means to us, and by that I mean slam Microsoft rightfully so for putting small companies out of business, etc.

Then post an exact copy of that text on every blog, forum and community we can find. Link to it everywhere. Have that be the #1 hit in every search engine. When people search for Microsoft and "People-Ready Business" let them find exactly Microsoft represents.

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[RichardDeVries]

Who is going to search for Microsoft and "People-Ready Business"?

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[Enderandrew]

Isn't that the point of this blogging campaign though? If Microsoft is trying to get a variety of positive posts via blogging, then let it backfire. Let's blog on what the slogan means to us.

More and more people seem to invest a huge interest into blogs. They accept it as sincere opinion. We dismiss an ad because it is paid for and biased. When we see blogs that are paid for, we assume the opinions are sincere, when really they are deceptively biased.

I'm not sure the average user will Google for "People-Ready Business" but I'm sure Microsoft is, to see how quickly it is skyrocketing in PageRank.

I would absolutely love for the Microsoft PR firms and execs to Google for "People-Ready Business" and instead be inundated with our sincere opinions with how Microsoft fails to actually cater to the people who are forced to use their products.

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[RuBLed]

So what would the text be? This idea could get me entertained for the rest of the weekdays. Currently the M$ site holds the #1 in Google rankings.

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[Enderandrew]

I put in a bunch of URLs in the text I threw together, so Slashdot won't let me post here. Too many junk characters.

So I made a journal entry.

http://slashdot.org/~Enderandrew/journal/175391

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[Enderandrew]

Here is the text without links, which it should let me post:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Recently Microsoft unveiled their new slogan, "People-ready business". They have asked bloggers to write about what exactly this means to them. As someone who has grown up on Microsoft technologies, not only in the home, but in the workplace as well, I feel that I am very qualified to write about what this means to me.

Not everyone is a computer genius, and ever for those with strong technical skills, information technology is ever changing. It is near impossible to keep up, and thusly it is vital to design technologies that are intuitive to the end user. Time shouldn't be wasted on fighting with the technology. The tools should be designed in a way so that users can easily take advantage of them. They should also feature-rich and powerful so that advanced users can maximize productivity. Microsoft's crown jewel in this regard is likely their Office Suite. Not many people may recall, but at one time Microsoft was the underdog in Word Processing and Office software. It had to wrestle control of the market away from such giants as WordPerfect and dBase IV. Microsoft Office has become the de facto standard for how most people work and communicate.

However, being "People-ready" means the tool isn't as important as the people who use them. Our documents and databases, our emails and calendars, it is the data that we create that is so vital to us. In that regard, there has been growing concern over Microsoft's proprietary document standards. When creating a document in one version of Office, can you be assured that a user with another version of Office can open it? How sure are you that you'll be able to open your data 5 years from now, or 10? How useful is the tool, if we end losing access to everything we create with it? Shouldn't our content belong to us? Being "People-ready" means empowering the people to fully control their documents. In that regard, I recommend everyone to look into alternatives like OpenOffice and KOffice, which both utilize the Open Document Format.

Being "People-ready" also means being flexible and far-reaching. When working and communicating with others in a global environment, having open standards allows for people around the globe to connect together, even across different platforms and technologies. Again, technology should be a tool that allows us to collaborate, not intrinsically divides us. End-users don't care about hardware levels, or version-numbers. They just want to be able to connect with other people. If Microsoft were truly dedicated to being "People-ready" their products would focus more on open-standards. Their web-browser would be standards-compliant, so that people can more easily develop web-sites and know that everyone will be able to see and use them the same way. Microsoft would utilize open-standards for applications like Outlook, so they could handle contacts and appointments with anyone regardless of platform. They would open up their instant messaging network, and instead build on an open platform like Jabber so that we can simply to one address for messaging, and bring everyone together under one service and one protocol for the entire world rather than a collection of diverse networks again that divide us.

A while back Microsoft ran a campaign about believing in the people who use their products. The campaign suggested that Microsoft wanted to encourage us to innovate and be successful, when in truth, no major company has done more to stifle the growth and development of other companies. Honest competition is fine in a capitalistic society, but repeatedly Microsoft has been accused, and often been found guilty of anti-trust practices. They have bought out companies, strong-armed vendors into locking out the competition, breaking the law, and operating with hostile intent to destroy other businesses. "People-ready business" is not threating to "fucking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill Google".

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[RichardDeVries]

If you want Microsoft's site to have a low pagerank, wouldn't it be better to collectively ignore their slogans. By the way, slogans like these should be ignored, regardless of the company that uses them. My point was that many businesses seem to focus on getting to the top of a search results page. This, in itself, is a very good idea. But many forget the import fact that it's only useful if the term you want to be identified with, has a connection with your potential client. Nobody thinks "I want to buy a product that has something to do with People-Ready Business. Let's Google!"

Re:Reverse Slashdot effect

[Enderandrew]

Microsoft will just pay more bloggers to get their PageRank up. More impressive is when people can alter search results by cross-posting something so many times. A famous trick was so many people specifically referred to Microsoft as "Who is more evil than Satan himself" and the phrase was so specific, that pretty soon search engines took that specific response, and pointed directly to microsoft.com

People-ready business

[suv4x4]

Things I have learned about making my business people-ready:

- Running around naked is not good.
- Shades are very important.
- I can not kill or lethally wound people for no good reason.
- If a human will not believe, peel off hand.
- I can't say "negative" and "affirmative". I gotta say "no problemo" or "hasta la vista" or "chill out". Or randomly permutated combinations.

The Terminator

low

[DavoMan]

Microsoft paying people to say they like its stuff? A new low, even for Bill.

Re:low

[Utopia]

Nobody was paid to say that they like Microsoft stuff or dislike it.
They were paid to say what being People-ready means to them.

--
I know people don't ready the article. Some people don't even ready the summary and some people read the title and assume something else!

Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[ttnb]

What Microsoft did was an obvious and blatant violation of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code. The bloggers should have publicly criticized these Microsoft tactics instead of going along with them.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[ben there...]

How bizarre that there is a "Word of Mouth Marketing Association." Isn't the whole idea of word of mouth advertising that it is not contrived by a marketing group? Reminds me of the Ministry of Truth.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[jollyreaper]

How bizarre that there is a "Word of Mouth Marketing Association." Isn't the whole idea of word of mouth advertising that it is not contrived by a marketing group? Reminds me of the Ministry of Truth. I had a bit of a dystopian idea in a story I wrote. This is one of those futures where there's only so much work to go around, only a fraction of the population has real jobs with disposable income while the rest of society is pretty much on the dole. Because the value of human labor is so cheap, people can now be paid to perform worthless and debasing activities just to earn a little extra over their dole income. Hell, you can already see that today with people paid to stand around outside holding signs for businesses.

Anyway, you know those commercials were two people meet in a checkout line, one of them coughs and the other starts up on this spiel praising the virtues of product x? Imagine that not being a commercial anymore. Millions of independent contractors work as "product evangelists", working hard to track down the people with jobs and create situations where they might provide a personal witness of how wonderful the product is. It's a mixture of stagecraft and spycraft, dressing like and passing for a jobber, speaking the gospel without coming across like just another evangelist.

Sick, scary future, right? Well, that's already happening in trendy hotspots. Marketing scumfucks pay beautiful people to be seen talking about and enjoying new products to start a buzz.

The CIA has robot assassin drones (i.e. Predator), PRAVDA proves more accurate than the New York Times, we've got slug-hunting robots that power themselves by digesting animal flesh, you do more time for copyright violation than murder, Russian spies are getting offed with radioactive poisons, we've got thought-controlled robotic limbs, voice recognition computers, several variations on the original Metaverse concept, the environment is on the verge of collapse, the US is discredited and reviled as a world power, the White House was overtly stolen by thugs who openly laugh at the law, corporations are gathering more power than ever... as much cyberpunk as I read as a kid, I never actually expected to be living in a cyberpunk future. I wanna be a street samurai.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[CrayDrygu]

"...the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics code [womma.org]"

Wait.. womma? That sounds like an off-balance washing machine.

wommawommawommawommawommawomma...

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[UbuntuDupe]

I bet there's also a Coalition for the Prediction of Surprises.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[rtb61]

Actually in reality what those bloggers did was publicly make fools out of themselves. What M$ did was launch an add campaign that ended up making them look worse and has tainted a new slogan out of existence.

The slashdot article and your comment, plus all the other similar comments basically means that M$ threw their money away for less than no benefit and those bloggers who took that money hasve just publicly and foolishly sold of a slice of their integrity.

The Internet is a great tool for marketing and an even more powerful tool for antimarketing.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the stuff you're talking about is old news, from before cyberpunk was invented. The White House has housed plenty of crooks - Nixon etc. The USA was never particularly popular or trusted outside its own borders and its tiny handful of allies. In America and abroad journalism has usually been owned by the rich and used for their own purposes. Corporations today are nothing compared to e.g. the British East India Company.

The robots are pretty cool though, even though they are mostly remote-controlled rather than autonomous.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[jollyreaper]

Well, the change in perception also comes from how I was exposed to the information. I read cyberpunk novels before I got into history. Some of this stuff is cyclical, i.e. the rise and fall of tyrannical governments, while technological advances can create problems we've never seen in the past or amplify the return of known problems. It's like, we know humans are greedy bastards. We know that humans have been killing other humans for their possessions for thousands of years. But only with the development of organ transplant technology have we seen the rise of illegal organ harvesting in China. It's a old problem, humans being greedy fucks, projected into a twisted new horror. Hell, kings and leaders have ordered the deaths of their enemies for just as long but being able to do it with the press of a button and kill with a Predator drone makes it all the more surreal.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

"Word of Mouth Marketing Association"? Never heard of them.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[Jeremy_Bee]

What I find really scary about this is that it happened a (relatively) long time ago and not one blogger *did* actually "out" MS on this and turn them in.

To me this speaks to the effectiveness of the thick "dossiers" that Microsoft is known to keep on all media and tech industry people. We already knew that these secret files were extensive, now we know that they are so accurate in pigeonholing the ethics and standards of various bloggers and journalists, that they could literally pick out the ones who would act unethically and not make a peep about it.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[DECS]

Well now you do. They rely on word of mouth to get their agenda talked around.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

there's only so much work to go around, only a fraction of the population has real jobs with disposable income while the rest of society is pretty much on the dole

Is this global or local? If it's local to the USA or the OECD generally, it could be because of automation and offshoring to poorer countries, in which case the reason for high unemployment is that the returns from the dole outweigh the returns from the outsourced jobs, were wages priced competitively. That leaves only fundamentally geographically-local jobs (service things like police, nursing; transportation workers (deliveries); on-site install and repair workers) with any security, and since many of these require unexceptional workers, general unemployment puts downward pressure on wages for these workers.

If it's global, it would have to be because of automation or other innovation that eliminates the fundamental need for all but the most fundamentally local workers, "idea" and other "wetware" workers who can work from almost arbitrary locations. Those jobs would be secure only to the extent that they, too, would not be made obsolete by the advance of technology (your robot police, for example, Futurama's Writer-Bots, or synthetic performers). Such a fundamental elimination of the need for human labour would almost certianly require little scarcity of energy, food and the like, and this suggests that there is little to be gained from marketing brands.

Even an artificial scarcity introduced through a patent-like system is awkward in such an economy -- your replicated or robot made toy is scarce artificially, but what is there of value (i.e., also scarce) to trade for it? Today, the scarce item traded for toys is (when considering working people) human labour. If human labour is of no value, or is not scarce, then what does one do to "save up" for these toys being marketed about?

product evangelists

These are only useful when the product is scarce enough that it can provide some profit, and profit is only useful when it can be used to acquire other scarce items. In any stable large economy which can support a reasonable standard of living for a non-working majority, it is hard to imagine what would be considered scarce.

You should start there. :-)

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps most of them are money-grubbing whores who will willingly do pretty much anything for a fistful of cash as long as it isn't straight-out Evil (with a capital letter). So Microsoft doesn't have to look very hard: just throw darts at a board of the big-name a-listers like John Battelle and friends, and they'll probably hit whores that will lie for a buck or two.

Re:Integrity demands crying foul immediately

[jollyreaper]

Is this global or local? If it's local to the USA or the OECD generally, it could be because of automation and offshoring to poorer countries, in which case the reason for high unemployment is that the returns from the dole outweigh the returns from the outsourced jobs, were wages priced competitively. That leaves only fundamentally geographically-local jobs (service things like police, nursing; transportation workers (deliveries); on-site install and repair workers) with any security, and since many of these require unexceptional workers, general unemployment puts downward pressure on wages for these workers.

For starters, let me just say that the storyline is a mix of serious, satire, and parody and the plot points can reflect that range of intent. As for your question, global, but particularly hard-pressed in the US. The US came out on the losing side of WWIII. Missile defense systems and shoddy ICBM's meant that only a fraction of the warheads hit their targets, not enough to destroy civilization but enough to change life as we know it. WWIII grew out of military adventurism in South America started by a president elected to be a puppet but who turned out to be both charismatic, unmanagable, and insane. A military junta deposed this president after WWIII and has been ruling ever since. The US is considered a rogue nation and pariah state and is cut off from international trade. The surviving population is grouped together into mega-cities called primes, based around the most intact urban infrastructure to survive the war. The descendants of today's rapid prototyping machines are used to create the manufactured goods used by everyone and recycling is efficient enough to keep the rare materials in circulation within the economy. Because it's no longer cheaper to just ship in more raw materials from overseas, more effort has been placed on making due with what we have.

You are correct in that most of the remaining jobs are menial and service-related. The state of the economy is following the scifi trope that only a percentage of people are needed to keep the wheels of society greased and turning, the rest are just sort of there and hanging out.

Such a fundamental elimination of the need for human labour would almost certianly require little scarcity of energy, food and the like, and this suggests that there is little to be gained from marketing brands.

I'm looking at this more from the perspective that people enter the workforce to transform their time and labor into money. A sound economy would allow workers to maximize the return on their labor. In a mismanaged economy, workers have a low rate of return. In a criminally mismanaged economy, the workers production can be high but the profits of those labors are inequitably consumed by the owner class. In this economy, there's little of value for the workers to produce, either drudge jobs or just sitting on the dole. It's a deadend sea of worthless, unfulfilling service jobs.

These are only useful when the product is scarce enough that it can provide some profit, and profit is only useful when it can be used to acquire other scarce items. In any stable large economy which can support a reasonable standard of living for a non-working majority, it is hard to imagine what would be considered scarce.

Fusion power is cheap and plentiful. The rarest materials driving the world economy at this point are bio-synthetics. The idea here is that we are talking about organic materials as revolutionary to our way of thinking today as plastics, carbon fiber, etc would appear to someone from the 19th century. The bio-synthetics are harvested from genetically modified plants that serve as self-powered chemical factories. (there's some scifi handwaving involved here. If I had the science to back this up, I'd be in business already. I'm just trying to keep the details self-consistent for believability's sake.) Environmental law says that bio-synthetic crops should be grown in special greenhouses with b

Once again....

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is 3 days late with a story. Stunning.... zzzz......

Sorry, I need money for trip to Europe

[should_be_linear]

People ready business, People ready business, People ready business, People ready business. There we go, $15.30

It means crap to me

[Wiseman1024]

To me, "people-ready business" means your standard enterprise advertisement crap, whose success seems to be measured in the number of times the word "business" is mentioned.

Re:It means crap to me

[Goffee71]

Since people are never ready for business, it all seems a bit of a waste of time. Employee-ready business on the other hand... once the life and soul has been kicked out of them, that should just about do it. Just for reference, will sell on my blog for Skittles... yum Skittles... (This blog in no way associated with Masterfoods or Mars inc)

Well, I'm astonished.

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody who posted something uncomplimentary about blogs and bloggers on Slashdot, yet not only did they not get modded Off-topic, Troll or Flamebait, but actually made it to +4 Insightful!

Even more surprising considering the things they said were mostly true and factual, which is usually cause for bitter Slashdot bloggers with mod points to send such posts off into negative integer oblivion.

Oh and it's true: not even your Moms read your blogs. They just say they do. Sorry.

Re:Well, I'm astonished.

[oliverthered]

Whatever you do don't post something that mentions religion, you usually get to +5 but end up in the red by the end of the day once all the religious weirdos have had their way with their mod points.

Yes, I expect this to get modded down to oblivion even though as the parent states the post is mostly factual.

Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[SgtChaireBourne]

We're seeing too much of that on Slashdot these days, not just the astroturfers posting their messages, but endless bombardment of MS-oriented slashvertisements in place of real articles. Sometimes it's several content-free articles per day apparently posted just to keep MS in the headlines. How about easing up on that and getting back to technology?

None of the negative coverage is getting through, such as a 30% return rate for the Palladium testbed, so that suggests that Slashdot is a participant (willing or unwilling) in spreading that movement's marketing churn.

A moratorium on MS churn, whether slashvertisements or otherwise, even one day a week or one week a month would do wonders to improve Slashdot. Let's leave political parties like MS on the sideline and re-focus on technology.

Prior art!

[Opportunist]

To me, it sounds like MS is getting ready to milk its customers in ways unprecedented. And not only its customers, but the people. I thought that's the state's prerogative?

I'd sue.

Cue in "soviet russia"

[Opportunist]

And of course, in Soviet Russia it would be "business ready people". Umm... wait a minute, that sounds more like the "in the free world" part of the joke... But that would mean that the original buzzphrase is for the "in Soviet Russia" part...

Oh my God! MS is turning communist!

Everything

[Groo Wanderer]

"What's wrong with that?"

Well everything. They should have disclosed it for starters. If you see a banner, you know it is an ad, same with those noxious google and other links, there is no question that it comes from a paid source.

The bloggers are guilty of greed and ethical lapses to the point that they should be shut down. There is no excuse for doing this, period.

MS is even more guilty for paying them to do this, knowing that it was unethical to do, it is even more unethical to support. I would go on a rant about MS and unethical behavior, but that is old hat by now.

What it comes down to in the end is that MS destroyed several bloggers in a cynical attempt to subvert the journalistic process, but I am not so sure any of the blogs could be considered journalism. Those involved knew full well what they were doing, and can't hide behind any weasel words or excuses. It is greed over ethics, pure and simple.

The people who took that money can never be trusted again, they should pack up and go home. MS isn't trusted at all, and while it is wishful thinking, I hope they will pack up and go home as well for inflicting MeII on us.

As a writer myself, I would hope my boss would fire me if I ever even brought this kind of bribery up, much less did it. I am pretty sure he would which is why I work where I do (The Inquirer FWIW).

            -Charlie

Re:How is it different from what Google does?

[FST777]

Whoa there. This is not a case of "M$ is ebul!!!11one", but a case of proper journalism in blogging. When respected blogger take money to blog (positively) about something, things go wrong. It's kinda the same as reading a payed-for review in a magazine: it's bound to sound positive.

Now, placing ads on your site is something completely different. It's clearly not part of the bloggers opinion, nor is it hard to distinguish it from the real news you're reading. In this case, the line is not blurred, it's simply gone.

ethics?

[tomstdenis]

There is a code of ethics to "blogging?" This is news to me. Last I checked a [web]log was nothing more than an overgrown .plan file in terse, difficult to read, poorly laid out style. What people should stop doing is considering blogs a source of authoritative info. Just like how wikipedia isn't authoritative, neither are random websites/blogs.

That said, wtf does PRB mean anyways? people ready, as opposed to?

Tom

Re:ethics?

[Aladrin]

It's the same code of ethics for living life in general. People make a bigger deal of it when you break that unwritten code en-masse. For some reason, the same people that think it's okay to do unethical things in on a small scale are violently opposed to those who do it on a grand scale.

As far as PRB, I can only guess it's Microsoft's attempt to rework the term 'user friendly' and aim it at business. The very confusion about meaning seems to be getting them more press than they could buy, too. It's either amazingly lucky, or a really good marketing strategy. (I tend to think it's the former.)

Re:ethics?

[tomstdenis]

how is it unethical to be paid to write a private blog? That'd be like saying writing fiction [a lie] is unethical.

Re:ethics?

[Aladrin]

Well that's the thing, isn't it? 'Common ethics' aren't written anywhere, and differ person to person. Many people feel that endorsing a product for money, without that fact being known, is unethical. Others think it's perfectly okay, and Caveat Emptor. Nobody has standardized 'common ethics' and yet most everyone thinks they know what they are, much like 'common sense.'

Personally, I feel it's slimey, but think I'd see it pretty quickly, and distruct their 'opinions' (that's what a blog is) from then on. But then, I don't generally read random blogs anyhow.

Re:ethics?

[tomstdenis]

blogs are not meant to be authoritative, so lying in them isn't immoral. It's only lazy journalists who turn to blogs to get their latest scoops.

So some people are paid shills of MSFT. advertising is hardly a new tactic. And what? You think all the ads you see on the web/tv are 100% honest? ...

Re:ethics?

[Aladrin]

You obviously feel that lying is not 'immoral' or 'unethical.' Most people don't feel that way, even though they (yes, me too) still do it. Lying on a blog is not moral or ethical than lying to any random stranger.

Re:ethics?

[tomstdenis]

Written on a blog it's an opinion or fiction.

I'd consider the illogical untrue stories in the Bible no more immoral than some ranting on a blog. If it's not meant to be read as authoritative, then why would it be immoral to have lies in it?

I think the leap of logic you're missing is that people shouldn't be relying on blogs and other websites like them for sources of independently verified authoritative facts.

Tom

Nothing is new under the sun

[nxsty]

Please wake me up when someone creates a google-bomb with the phrase "People-ready business".

Do you want flesh with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soylent Green was a "People-Ready Business"

How about "People Gready-Business"?

[andyh]

It might confuse search rankings and introduce a new spin on the phrase, thereby making the original phrase tainted?

AndyH

Re:How about "People Gready-Business"?

[andyh]

I meant, "People Greedy-Business" - tsk! Time for a lie down...

You Lose Free Speech Protections

[Anonymous Coward]

- the 'commentary' is now commercial advertising....

Not to point out. . . . .

[bogidu]

the obvious . . . . but WHO are these people and WHY do they matter??? I mean has blogging reached the point where there are blog celebs? and if it has, oh wow, another Hollywood, just what the world needs.

numklpkgulfutumch

[nickgrieve]

Cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes,

Hang on...

Corn...flakes!

lameness filter

Re:numklpkgulfutumch

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations Sonny, you've won a new Ford Tippex!
[/obscure-comedy-reference]

Incidentally, I always assumed it was spelt "Numcul-ptl-f'tumpsh" - phonetically, at least. Ah, Slashdot, where one can argue all day over the spelling of a made-up word..!

What happens if you reverse it?

[geoff lane]

It's always insightful to reverse a slogan and see what it means. Non-people ready business? People not ready business. People ready non-business?

So the slogan is just a restatement of the normal situation. It's spin.

Re:What happens if you reverse it?

[potpie]

Well that's only if you negate it. If you reverse it, you get Microsoft's real slogan: Business Ready People.

Why?

[Frankie70]

Why would someone google for the phrase "People Ready Business"?

Re:Why?

[nxsty]

I don't know, but it will probably have the side effect that googling for "people" and/or "business" will bring up microsoft.

Re:Why?

[marcosdumay]

Keyword oriented marketing...

People, we have a new paradigm!

Finally ready for people!

[Livius]

After all that "unready business" we've had to put up with for the last 10 000 years of human civilization...

People-ready business on Ubuntu linux!

[brxndxn]

People-ready business on Ubuntu linux! means a lot to me. People-ready business on Ubuntu linux! is what I say to everyone. People-ready business on Ubuntu linux! is my slogan. People-ready business on Ubuntu linux! is the way I live my life. People-ready business on Ubuntu linux! rocks the house.

I could've made this way funnier.

Huge penis failure

[Anonymous Coward]

In your pants!

As much as I don't like it ...

[openldev]

Do you think Microsoft is the first company to pay for placements. Companies pay other forms of media for favorable reviews and the such. Now that blogging is becoming an ever more important aspect of amateur media, why shouldn't they get some of the perks too? (I'm not saying that I would do this myself, but we shouldn't crucify those that want to take a little bit of Microsoft's money. If they don't do it, someone else will!)

Wow Microsoft Speak a flash from the past.

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't really seen a gorilla of "Technical Company" send out it's minions a PR Campaign like this since the late '80 when IBM was launching its Mainframe Business Approach to the PC Market.

Just another =Weaselword=

[Circlotron]

Q.E.D. --> http://www.weaselwords.com.au/index3.htm

Big F'n hairy deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising is advertising, they pay celebreties to promote products that they may never have spent a dime on to use.
Where is all the complaining about that?

It's a damned lie, that's what

[CarpetShark]

What's wrong with that? Well, just that they're pretending to be genuinely interested in the possibilities of something, but instead are making money. It's called a lie.

Re:Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[stony3k]

I think the problem is that people can now use the Firehose to influence which stories we see. And since most people don't check the firehose too often, it can be (and maybe is being) influenced by the MS and Apple fans. That to me partly explains why we have been seeing too many of these stories lately. More interesting (and obscure) stories just don't pass muster.

No, I'm New Here

[New Here]

No, I'm New Here

I, for one,

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new slashdot editors^W^W apple^W iPhone-microsoft funded overlords!

If a "Microsoft" section appears, just like the "Apple" one (or the soon to show "iPhone" section if this keeps going that way), we'll know.

/. contributing

[Taimat]

And now.... Slashdot is helping Microsoft get the phrase "people ready business" out there, by posting a story about it, and using the phrase "people ready business" in the article... and, no doubt, numerous people will put "people ready business" into their replies to the article about "people ready business", thus, adding the number of times "people ready business" is on a single page...

I for one, will not help contribute to this meaningless mentioning of the phrase "people ready business" in slashdot, which is helping microsoft get it's phrase "people ready business" higher up in google's rankings, and into people's heads...

That's all I have to say about that....

ps..... "people ready business"

Big f-ing deal

[Blakey Rat]

News Flash: Bloggers accept money to promote products and brands.

Another news flash: So do radio DJs, actors, video game companies, advice columnists and virtually everybody else who has a large number of readers/listeners. Hell, there's been some product placement in newspaper comics lately.

What PRB means to me....

[Lxy]

Whenever I hear the term "People-Ready Business", I suddenly remember that My Linux is Ready.

Freudian slip?

[Mathness]

This might be a freudian slip from the PR deparment about Vista. It makes it look like an inequation; people - ready != buisness

Prior art

[0123456789]

I think the Registers take on this is quite amusing. It references this older Register article, which contains prior art. I wonder if they patented it?

OMG Shocker

[ClubPetey]

Wait you mean a blogger's comments aren't what they really think? SAY IT ISN'T SO!

Some people are pissed at MS, some are pissed at the bloggers, but I cannot understand why this is surprising to anyone. Blogging is just another advertising vehicle. For some reason people out there think blogs are unbiased sources of The Truth(tm). Blogs are carefully (or sometimes not-so-carefully) crafted marketing vehicles designed to sell you something without it looking like they are selling you something. Keep that in mind.

Actually, come to think of it, EVERY communication can be considered someone selling you something. Sometimes it's a product, other times it's an concept.

"Brought to you by Carl's Jr."

[BitwizeGHC]

"I'm the Secretary of State... brought to you by Carl's Jr."

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"'Cause they pay me every time I do! It's a really great way to make money. If you're so smart why don't you know that?"

Re:Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a damned good point! Slashdot is on the verge of becoming irrelevant.

And, as someone else mentioned in response to your post, the solution is NOT Firehose. I like this comment from Stewtopia about Firehose:
Somehow, I don't think that this will get new users on Slashdot, but allowing users to vote on stories certainly will make editorial decisions a little easier.

In the end, allowing the users/viewers of a site to suggest, pick and then rate the stories that get posted without any objective editorial oversite just allows assholes like Microsoft to game the system.

Editors, get off your dead asses and do the job you are paid for!

Re:Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[glesga_kiss]

We're seeing too much of that on Slashdot these days, not just the astroturfers posting their messages, but endless bombardment of MS-oriented slashvertisements in place of real articles.

I'd say there was far more Apple astroturfing. However, that just might be the editors pandering to a userbase that is historically pro-Apple products rather than a concerted campaign. I have my doubts though, there has been an iPhone article on the front page for months now, tying along nicely with Apples huge campaign on the phone.

Wow, what a conflict of interest

[jollyreaper]

I want to karma whore AND I have to give Microsoft some love for this nice laptop. Wow, can you imagine a beowulf cluster of people-ready businesses? In soviet russia, people are business-ready! natalie portman, naked, petrified and people-ready in a bowl of hot business. I'm people-ready, you insensitive clod!

Ugh. The most effective way to disrupt Microsoft's astroturfing attempts is to subject them to merciless ridicule, turn the entire program into a punchline. Developers developers developers developers.

A List Bloggers

[tralfamador]

It makes me feel good that the term "A List Bloggers" makes me laugh and this list of people (Michael Arrington, Om Malik, Fred Wilson, Richard MacManus) made me say "who?"

Fuck you "blogosphere"

Nonsense.

[Frosty Piss]

But most magazines have the legal requirement to either mark that its an advertisement

Nonsense. No such "legal requirement" exists. It's an ethical requirement. Short of things like libel and sedition, you can print / say what you want, your motivations or who is paying you is not legally relevant.

Product placement, yo

[jihadist]

Hollywood has done this for years. Radio stations accept favors to play new tracks. Candidates accept lobbying money. And now, bloggers get paid to churn out more pulp about some pulpy, ambiguous slogan (Might as well be "Peristalsis-ready business").

This is capitalism. If you don't like it, be up front and start talking alternatives. I think most of the thinking population is on the line about this one, so maybe some good will come of it. In my view, hacking, OSS, etc. are all anti-capitalist endeavors, whether recognized by their participants as such or not.

Re:Product placement, yo

[DECS]

No actually that is fascism.

When you turn the media and its journalists into pawns of commerce, the Fourth Estate becomes a joke. We need an honest media to inform us so we as individuals can make correct decisions.

Capitalism is an economic system for making the best use of capitol through competitive and open markets unfettered by government control and direction. Capitalism isn't a form of government. We don't select candidates by voting with our dollars. We don't pass laws based on how much money can be raised to pass a law.

The massive level of corruption money brings to the table have led some to believe that capitalism means that money should equal political power and freedom from obeying the law. Haha, no.

That is actually a problem in society, not a desirable outcome. We are a society of people, not cogs in a set of corporate gears. The world has already experimented with fascism, and the results were, as history books will inform, not something we should be ready to try again.

The fact that we--in the USA--have a fascist-friendly media, the beginnings of a fascist-friendly state religion in place, and an aspiring fascist executive in place, all working to goad us into an expanded war, should provide anyone who has ever read about the 1930s with some serious issues to think about. Remember that back then, a mixture of war and entertainment were similarly used to blind people from reality.

In that context Microsoft's evil pales in comparison, but that doesn't make it not part of the problem. It was big business that got behind the fascists back then and funded them, and because they controlled the media, they could shape public opinion. That's why we can't say "oh well, things are as they are," and enjoy it, because doing so makes us part of the problem.

My post.

[trolltalk.com]

Click here to get to their "post your own story" page. http://peopleready.federatedmedia.net/prpost

"I knew my business was people-ready the day I dumped all Microsoft products and switched to linux. No more worries about people complaining about viruses in emails or attachments, no more rebooting."

The response page:

" Thanks!

Thanks for posting! We'll give your post a quick once-over and get it up on the site shortly. "

Somehow, I'm skeptical.

I thought it was pretty self-explanatory

[nanosquid]

Wasn't the old Microsoft slogan "Your potential, our gain."? I thought that was pretty self-explanatory.

Wow, now business can be done between people?!

[stuntpope]

Here's a chance for RedHat or other Linux company to come out with "business-ready computing" (or computers).

They paid off slashdot too

[andy_from_nc]

Prior to this slashdot there might have been like 12 bloggers who would have come up on "people ready business" however the biggest bang for the buck was when MS got slashdot to post it! Now people-ready business is the bomb baby. Google will love it!

One pityfull AC.

[TapeCutter]

Frankly I was looking for a much bigger response to my confession such dark secrets....

For God's sake, most software IS people-ready!

[Serpentegena]

I've never heard of software designed for the use of cats or whales, although I'm sure it would mk an awesome article to read.

Now I see your problem

[ClosedSource]

You think bloggers are journalists.

If you want a hard life ...

[twitter]

People who blog for a living can't afford to sell their reputation. Working with M$ is kind of like driving the car while someone robs a bank.

Re:If you want a hard life ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another ad hominem to add to the list, eh Twit?

I can believe that.

[twitter]

*Microsoft paid me $100 to post this.

You do act like a M$ PR drone, but I doubt your effort earn you more than $5/hour. Talk is cheap.

Wait, what?

[StarReaver]

"People-ready Business"? What happened to "Developers developers developers"?

Re:Slashdot, too. Let's take a day off...

[Jeremy_Bee]

I agree. I have only recently started moderating and I while I have dutifully meta-moderated etc., the firehose leaves me confused.

Twice now I have gone in there and tried to make sense of it or contribute, but it's no fun, and it's somehow both confusing and dull at the same time. I am not sure exactly *what* is wrong with the process or the interface, I just know it's an uncomfortable, irritating experience to try to do it. Possibly it's to do with the stories not having been categorised before you see them.

Slashdot needs a better system for picking articles IMO.

My idea of a 'people-ready business'

[jrothwell97]

http://crashedpips.wordpress.com/2007/06/28/microo ft-pays-bloggers-to-advertise/

THE PEOPLE READY BUSINESS AND WHAT IT MEANS TO ME

by J Rothwell

In my experience, a people-ready business is a business that's finally seen sense and thrown away its computers, and is now using a pen and paper. Alternatively it could be a business using Linux. Or Macs. Either way, it's something other than Windows. So there. Bill, I take cheque, cash, and all major credit cards.

Astroturfing for fun and profit

[Scrameustache]

One of the biggest issues with blogging is that there is no separation between the person who is writing, and the person who is trying to make money. Most other media outlets have separate departments for those things to create a division between content and advertising. In a job search, I found an offer for a professional website participant.
They were looking for people with established identities in popular forum websites to use that identity to post on behalf on their clients, making it seem like a spontaneous post from an unaffiliated third party.

It's like trolling, but for money.

Re:Astroturfing for fun and profit

[SatanicPuppy]

Just one more type of astroturfing. Not sure how much it matters really; paid schills are usually pretty obvious.

If you know someone well enough to recognize their posts out of the crowd, then it's a little obvious when they start posting contrary stuff. And if you're in a forum like Slashdot, you can check a posting history to see if a certain user is a bit too likely to throw in a pro-MS reference in their posting.

So either you're somewhere like Digg, where schilling wouldn't even be noticed against the background spam, or you're somewhere like here where the community would be likely to "out" the schill, and that would do nothing but damage the reputation of the company.

Re:Astroturfing for fun and profit

[Scrameustache]

somewhere like here where the community would be likely to "out" the schill, and that would do nothing but damage the reputation of the company. Not if they have a coordinated group of schills with mod points.
A few to astroturf, a few others to mod them up, and mod down their detractors. It would work perfectly with as little as 4 users.

Re:Astroturfing for fun and profit

[SatanicPuppy]

That's where metamod comes in...If your posts are reasonable and yet get "trolled" or "flamebaited" then metamodders will generally catch it, and people whose mods get reversed a lot are less likely to get mod points.

I wonder if they check for serial abuse of the "Overrated" mod...Got a couple of guys who like to go through and "Overrated" my stuff a few days after the article is off the front page. Not sure what the hell is up with that, other than that they're clearly sensitive to metamod issues.

Either way, I'd be surprised if they could keep down the detractors; I always mod up people who cry schill with evidence, and you tend to get hordes of "Mod parent up!" posts if people agree with you and you're getting seriously downmodded...Slashdot isn't usually a good environment for censorship.

Re:Astroturfing for fun and profit

[Scrameustache]

That's where metamod comes in...If your posts are reasonable and yet get "trolled" or "flamebaited" then metamodders will generally catch it Sure, after the fact. The publicity boost will have been accomplished by then.

Re:Astroturfing for fun and profit

[SatanicPuppy]

Sure, but it screws your chances for more mod points, which makes it a tactic that won't work very often at all, and is still likely to backfire. I mean, the non-fan boys are as rabid as the fan boys around here. I got downmodded a couple of days ago for suggesting that Sony wasn't out to screw someone.

I often wish you could see how many people modded your post all together...It's be interesting with a controversial post to know. I guess they hide it to keep the info about how many points are given out on the dl.

It is pronounced...

[Black Art]

"Peep-Hole Ready Business".

How else are they going to keep an eye on you?

But it's not like...

[Traegorn]

But it's not like these comments are showing up in the blog's themselves. They are appearing on a SEPARATE site.

It's a paid commercial endorsement. On a site clearly separate. No one should be mad at the bloggers - they should just demand that Microsoft make it clearer that the site is publicity/advertising for a product.

They're asking for a Google bomb...

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we make sure that people know that a People-Ready business means you take it up the rear via a nice Google bomb. Or a People-Ready business means you astroturf. Or whatever.

And feel free to substitute the actual link. I think that .cx is dead, I forgot what the new one is, and I have no intention of googling this from work...

The word is Payola.

[monkeyboythom]

From ye olde wikipedia:

Payola, in the American music industry, is the illegal corruption practice of payment or other inducement by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on music radio, in which the song is presented as being part of the normal day's broadcast. Under US law, 47 U.S.C. 317, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime, and that play of the song should not be counted as a "regular airplay."

Yeah, yeah, it talks only about radio. But it is the definition for payola. So do we have the same law for other media channels?

And now we have Microsoft paying for blog space. So, you say? Well I don't think it would be such a problem until you stop and think of how other bloggers have consistently maintained to the world that their blog and the material contained in it is protected by free speech, and in many sites, also to fall under consideration as journalism.

I'm sorry, you cannot have both. Either you're a schill for a company and identify yourself as such, or you refuse payments. Is there a law to prefent or that or protect the consumer [reader] of tainted blogs? We won't know until a case comes to trial.

Rhymes with. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

The funny part is that Microsoft's team of PR engineers were paid generously to come up with a slogan which was not just effective in extending the MS empire of BS, but which was also somewhat tamper-proof. --One which works to defy attempts by those aware of MS BS to twist its wording into a farce.

After much tweeking, the best I was able to come up with was,

"Vista Sucks"

Hm. Even sort of rhymes with 'business' if you say it the right way.

-FL

Can you say "Microsoft shill"?

[Master of Transhuman]

I knew you could.

Can you say "moron "?

Anybody who would put their name to a typically stupid Microsoft phrase like "Where do you want to go today?" (to hell, if you use any Microsoft product!) or "people-ready business" (businesses run by chimpanzees, which certainly fits Microsoft!) is not only a shill but a moron.

Is this really a problem for Slashdotters?

[Doctor High]

Although strong journalistic ethics is always a good thing, does this issue really affect slashdotters? I mean, who here actually reads Windows-centric blogs anyway?

People-ready????

[blankaBrew]

M$ software isn't even computer-ready?

Mod Parent Up.

[FrameRotBlues]

I agree with everything you just wrote, and that never happens to me here. I wish I had points to mod you up.

Heh.

[Mateo_LeFou]

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

I hope you shills are "new-@#$^hole ready"
From ______ on June 28th, 2007 at 2:18 pm"

Everything and nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, Charlie at The Inquirer. A bastion of editorial excellence. Where no rumor is too uncorroborated, nor opinion too frothing-at-the-mouth mad, not to publish.

Yes, let those bloggers be chastised by you. I can just see them cowering in humiliation. (Or is it convulsing in laughter?)

Everyone, please make this note from Dictionary.com
Definition of Blogger from Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, preview edition (v 0.9.7)
Definition: a person who keeps a Web log (blog) or publish an online diary

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Journalist:
1. a person who practices the occupation or profession of journalism.
2. a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events.

So, a blogger is not, by definition, a journalist.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Expectations of ethical behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the scandal here?

Heh...the scandal is the lack of scandal for people like you. Not having a higher ethical expectation from professionals is the scandal.

People, by not being critical of unethical practices, condone the lack of ethics and personal/professional honor, not just for bloggers/journalists, but people.

A "reputable" blogger is getting payola to present company PR as his own opinion? *shrug*

A "reputable" journalist printed classified info leaked for partisan purposes? *shrug*

A "reputable" spokesman for the White House provides egregious contradictions to his own statements from 3 months ago. *shrug*

A "reputable" AG is caught out in numerous lies to the Senate. *shrug*

Yes, like Brutus, they are all honorable and reputable men. So where's the scandal here??? *shrug*

***sigh***

Re:Expectations of ethical behavior

[Macthorpe]

I think you and I approach this from different standpoints.

Bloggers are not journalists. They are not spokesmon. They are not attorney generals. They are guys who own websites and start with zero credibility. They work to earn that, and if they destroy it, then it's their prerogative. Their words do nothing to change the face of the world.

Re:Expectations of ethical behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

True. They are "mere" bloggers. That, however, does not excuse them from from displaying honesty and integrity.

(AG they may not be, but a few of these people do have the power to make or break companies wrt Valley VCs etc.)

But it is our lowered expectations that I have a problem with. Will there be a price to pay for the displayed lack of ethics?

Most likely not. Their "opinions" will continue to be linked by lazy trade-rag journalists (it wouldn't surprise me to see the occasional link from /. even). And the click-through & payola will continue to pour in.

I see it as a systemic problem. Ethics and personal honor be dammed.

And we are not disgusted by it. We tolerate it at many levels - from the "lowly" bloggers to the highest office of the land.

Cheers and out!

two can play the google bomb game

[victorvodka]

Those of us who have blogs but have not been paid are urged to create hyperlinks around the term "People Ready Business" with a href of http://goatse.cz/.

It's people-ready! *anguished cry*

[Anonymous Coward]

Soylent Green is people-ready!

FULL DISCLOSURE
Charlton Heston and the NRA paid me $100 to write this