Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia 355
Unpaid Schill writes "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."
Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a policy of let's make as much money as we can!
I mean, come on, this is a corporation, and you're complaining about ethics? Perhaps you're suggesting that they would make more money if they didn't have "unethical" policies like this... but that's not at all clear from your post. It is unclear why, in all situations, a blanket policy of honesty would be expected to maximize profits for corporations. (Let me rephrase that: this is obviously not the case.) Microsoft's goal is not to make you like them; it is to make lots of money. So far, they've been very successful at that. Probably their PR department played at least some small role in that. Don't get me wrong, I despise them too, but let's be clear that they're all doing exactly what they're "supposed" to.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations as they exist today are a mistake. A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design). But the idea that it should be done by a pseudo-person with no sense of morality, whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Its worth noting that it used to be that governments were far more restrictive about the corporate charters they would approve, and far more willing to revoke charters for corporations violating the public interest. The special privileges granted with a corporate charter were viewed more as a privilege granted in the public interest and conditioned on good behavior than as a virtual right the way they are now.
What we have now is not some intrinsic necessity for the corporate structure, a remnant of late 19th Century subservience to big business.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A slightly less rose-tinted view of history suggests that corporate charters were granted when there was an assurance that the ruling prince of the city-state, or his cronies, would get a cut.
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Re:Honesty.... (Score:4, Informative)
Since I was (though I didn't make this clear) referring to earlier US history, I'd say that's more of a view of a different part of history, but sure. And certainly neither the earlier US practice nor the more recent one was or is free from the corrupting influence of cash and the cronyism of the connected.
A more accurate statement, perhaps: (Score:5, Informative)
The function of the corporations in early American society was a matter of heated dispute. As of 1780 there were only 7 chartered business corporations in the United States. That number increased dramatically after the turn of the 19th century once the courts and legislatures recognized the legitimacy of private, for-private corporate entities. Ambivalence about the role of the corporation in early American law resulted from tension between those who insisted that corporations serve the public interest and those who believed that the public interest was inherently served by the chartering of private corporations and the creation of wealth that would presumably result therefrom.
On the one side of the debate were anti-mercantilists, Jeffersonian Republicans and artisans who believed variously that corporations were monopolistic in nature; that they the accumulation of vast quantities of capital in private hands characteristic of the corporate form was inconsistent with the civic virtues of a democratic republic exemplified in the American Revolution and would undermine democratic republicanism; and that corporations could be used to dominate markets, driving down the cost of production and thereby reducing demand for artisinal goods. On the other side were those who believed that corporations were a matter of necessity in order to promote the aggregation and investment of capital. In a society of relatively equal wealth distribution, as in the early years of the republic, capital must be drawn from large numbers of small investor/share-holders rather than from individual financiers or aristocrats as could be done in Europe. The structure of the corporation and its ability to centralize management and control represented the most efficient means of operating investments and therefore of developing the American economy, proponents argued.
While demands that corporate charters be granted only in the public interest, and that liability extend to shareholders were common in the early law of corporations, these rules which seemed rooted in longstanding English mistrust of the anti-social corporate form yielded to the demands of the market and of laissez-faire capitalists. These historical developments represent another unfortunate triumph of utilitarianism over tradition in American law.
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Re:Honesty.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the grandparent denounced corporations while acknowledging the necessity of a corporation-like object by saying: A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design).
It's incredibly short-sighted to say "X sucks and should be banned", when X provides a useful service, and when no alternative is proposed. Say we banned corporations. Because of the necessity of a corporation-like object, it is very likely that such an object would quickly appear, and over time would evolve into something indistinguishable from today's corporation.
It's appropriate that you likened the argument to the argument over intellectual property. Again, IP sucks in many ways, but has useful consequences. If IP laws were repealed, and nothing replaced them, it is likely that content creators would re-create something similar to the IP system using complicated contracts (e.g., you would have to sign a lengthy agreement prior to purchasing an album at a music store).
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To put it simply, if a recording can be viewed, it can be copied. And experience has already shown how the public will put up with a hell of a lot of degradation rather than pay for content.
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Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Informative)
I then asked him whether he thought it was a good idea to have corporations considered "persons" in a court of law ... I then asked him whether he thought it was a good idea to have corporations considered "persons" in a court of law. He said that he'd never thought about it.
I'm not an American lawyer, but I hope this in some way redresses your "Professor's" ... um ... lack of reflection?
The fact that a corporation is a legal person is the very criterium by which a corporation is defined (limited liability is itself the result of such personality). Being a person allows a corporation to own property in it's own right, sue and be sued in its own name etc.
Before the development of the Corporate form (ie. a company with legal personality), the the joint stock company (a kind of giant partnership) was the predominant form of organising shareholders. This was dangerous for shareholders since they were jointly and severally liable (ie. any damage comitted could be recouped from a single shareholder, all of the shareholders, or anything in between). This did not make investing in overly large companies particularly enticing. When it became necessary to raise large sums to fund the massive capital development which we know as the Industrial Revolution, Parliament addressed this impediment by creating the Corporate form, that is to say a company with legal personality, which could deal in its own name, and take the wrap for any wrongdoing on its part.
This history is instructive in two ways. Firstly it demonstrates that our way of life is predicated on the Corporate form. Corporations, though their influence is occasionally (some might say largely) negative, are necessary (well at least if we want to live in the kinds of mercantile culture we inhabit, and enjoy the standard of living this entails). Secondly, there is absolutely nothing natural about corporations (even in the way a partnership might be described as 'natural').
Corporations are creatures of Parliament. They were created for the social benefit they bequeath, and they were granted limited liability, which is in effect a cost imposed upon everyone else in society. In other words it is a quid pro quo. Consequently there can be no objection to the regulation of corporations, as if this constituted intervention into some natural right of individuals to form corporations. Indeed, when the sacrifice made by society, (in terms of limited liability, lower tax rates etc.) is not being returned by corporations, when the mischief the corporation makes is greater than the mischief Parliament sought to cure, then Parliament ought to address the regulation of corporations. Needless to say, such regulation, must not strangle the goose that laid the golden egg.
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Corporations as they exist today are a mistake. A way of gathering investment money needs to exist, in order to fund things that need massive startup costs (for example, processor design). But the idea that it should be done by a pseudo-person with no sense of morality, whos only goal is to amass money and power, and with no accountability for its actions is horribly flawed.
Well first of all, corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, not to anyone else. If a sufficient majority of shares demand that a corporation act ethically, then the corporation will have to operate as such. Most shareholders want maximum returns on their investments, and honestly do not care about ethics. This stems from the fact that corporations and investment are economically motivated decisions. Economics is incapable of accounting for such intangible things, since economic decisio
Re:Honesty.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually this isn't the problem with corporations today. The problem is that employees are not responsible for the companies actions. Instead, corporations are now "people" who are responsible for the actions that the employees take. There's an obvious disconnect there; the "person" responsible is not the person actually doing the crime.
Corporations typically have a hierarchical structure just so that somebody can be held accountable. If a corporation does something illegal then the person behind that decision needs to be tried for it, not the corporation. If the company hires somebody to do something illegal then the person authorizing that is responsible and the people who knew about it are accessories and the people who found out later and did nothing are accessories after the fact.
This is the real problem today. For example, Microsoft gets convicted of criminal restraint of trade and there are absolutely no personal consequences for the people authorizing it and perpetrating it. There are plenty of people in MS who knew of this and would not have allowed it to happen if their own butt was on the line.
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Our society and governments and laws say otherwise. You have to follow the laws,
True, unless the laws cannot be enforced upon you. Law enforcement by its very function requires the ability to exert force of some sort to manipulate an entity to comply with the law when they don't choose to. If you have unbelievable resources, no physical entity to imprison, and the possible fallout of a nega
Re:Honesty.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely. Entities that exist for a sole purpose are inherently "trustworthy" by the pragmatic meaning of "trust"...they are transparently predictable. Predictable is good.
Beyond a certain size, a corporation can no longer be anthropomorphized to an entity capable of emulating human behavior. They have no "soul", no "conscience", nor any sense of "good" and "evil". They are simply successful or unsuccessful, determined by the only metric with any meaning to them...money.
We find corporations to be useful entities, but we cannot expect them to police themselves, because it is simply not in their nature. That we must accept, while also accepting and upholding the task to monitor and contain them. If we shirk that responsibility, that's society's fault, not the corporations'.
If one wants to see what happens when a corporation attempts to police itself, one must examine any large socialist government. They are certainly not the first organization one would call upon if one wished to actually accomplish any useful work.
Is it a wise move to allow such massive accumulation of wealth and power in what basicly amounts to a sociopathic organization?
A wolf is not a sociopath; it's just a wolf. The sociopaths are the citizens who do nothing while a wolf behaves as wolves do.
Trust (Score:3, Insightful)
If my exgf is a slut, and every time I get back with her she cheats on me, I know that her behavior is predictable and she has one primary goal. She is predictable, but definitely not trustworthy.
Re:Trust (Score:4, Insightful)
She's completely trustworthy, you have just misplaced your trust. If you trust in her to be faithful, you made the mistake of mis-evaluating her actions. If you trust she is gonna cheat on you, you have accurately nailed the behavior and can develop contingencies for dealing with that behavior.
Trust is just a projection of your expectations in relation to your perceptions.
Re: Honesty.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Somewhere, deep inside the twisted corridors in Redmond, some person must have actually thought of the idea to hire third parties to edit Wikipedia. He must also have presented it to his boss (unless it was some boss who thought of the idea himself), who in turn must have ordered someone to carry out the plan. Shouldn't an obviously unethical plan such as this have been stopped at some point in this chain? Shouldn't that boss figure have some kind of conscience which should have stopped him from doing this? Another problem may be the current inability (real or imagined) of "peons" in a corporation to themselves stop such plans when being ordered to carry them out. Generally, I believe that the lack of personal responsibility for actions being carried out "in the name of a corporation" is the real culprit.
Also, aside from the ethical standpoint, must they not have realized that this would leak out?! I mean, this cannot be considered positive PR, right?
Re: Honesty.... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's an interesting view emerging that it's actually more accurate to view a corporation as a self-aware entity. The reason that corporations routinely engage in behavior that would be considered obscene by a human being is not that there just happen to be a few "bad eggs" in positions of power, but rather that the structure of a corporation encourages and extracts bad behavior from otherwise reasonable human beings.
There are endless examples of this, and an intriguing discussion in Wade Rowland's Greed, Inc.. It's convenient for corporations to blame "bad egg" individual employees, because people can be easily replaced, and ignores the reality that the true root of the problem is systemic.
Re: Honesty.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody that has worked for or with large corporations knows that they have a unique "culture" that is different from one to another. This culture largely survives changes of individuals within it. It is hard to identify where the culture "comes from". There is no single source of it - in some corporations you could replace the CEO and his direct reports and the culture would not change in the short or medium term (or ever cf: government).
One analogy would be the human brain. Many brain cells - individually very simple - governed by few simple imperatives generating very complex behaviour which is hard to pin down to any single brain cell (or even small group of cells).
"Mob rule" is another example of this kind of thing - where behaviour arises that exceeds that which any of its individual elements would necessarily countenance.
Here's a thought...
If evolutionary pressure was enough to select for "morality" and "ethical behaviour" in individuals, could it be that over time, these new entities will eventually evolve these traits as well?
What about Google and Apple? (Score:2)
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But hey... A company l
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you that I've known about ten unbelievable programmers, and five of them would never have said, "I have programmed in over 20 languages." Of the other five, I am absolutely sure two are regularly unemployed and the last three aren't unbelievably famous.
Of course, you're welcome to call me an idiot all you like. I majored in Philosophy, I can take it. AND I work primarily in VBScript, meaning I have developed balls of steel from being kicked in them again and again and again.
As a side note, your resume is impressive, and if you moved you would have no trouble finding more interesting work. Not many do software development in Medford. I can think of three or four companies offhand in downtown Portland that would be completely happy to have you. A few tips on the resume:
"Minor Tech Support for legacy apps I have written," should probably not be on your resume. Don't tell anyone about things you will end up doing in your own free time. Are they supposed to pay you for it?
Life goals make poor career objectives. Pick something you'd like to do (in your and my case, "Work with a small, tight knit team to produce revolutionary technology grown out of the extensive background I have developed with a lifetime of computer work and training," might be appropriate, except I omitted the lifetime of training)
Some of your wording can be compressed. A good resume is MAX 2 pages long, and your HTML one seems to be about four.
I'd suggest dividing your resume differently - put a summary of your skills at the top, then divide it by important project.
Classes are great to have taken, but they don't mean much elsewhere. Link to source code if it's particularly brilliant, in an addendum to your resume called, "More interesting code projects."
Link to projects if possible, or make the source code available. This can be done in an Office document of any type you choose. Throw some code samples in text format on your website. Remember to document these samples a whole bunch.
Overall, your resume reads a little like a tech reference book; this is kinda bad.
As a disclaimer, I don't know what kind of companies you're applying to. Generally, you tailor your resume to the position you apply for. They want Java? Write a resume that shows all the things you've done with Java. They want C-based driver work? That's when you say, "I loves me some math." But don't complain when people pad their resume; just live up to yours in your interview.
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Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
At your age, which appears to be around 24, I think most companies would be interested in your previous work experience so far and what you've done in the short space of time since you graduated (assuming you attended university/college).
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Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just stupid.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And murderers are doing what they're "supposed" to, after all, thats why we call them "murderers". Who decided that the profit motive was supposed to be superior to honesty? I think you'll find that fraud is not accepted in standard definitions of "free market" or "Capitalism", so where has the idea that lying for money is permissible come from?
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Oh God, I don't know wh
Look up the words: Social Corporate Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Corrupt corporations corrupt everything they touch and the bigger they are, the more pervasive their effects on society is. To a certain extent, this anything-goes bullshit that one often hears in Slashdot is a clear example of the real pernicious effect that massive corporations are having on our c
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We follow our procedures. The goal is to follow the procedures, not to be honest or to be productive.
Our executives can still write huge checks without even a co-signer.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Informative)
As a matter of fact, yes they are. Corporations (and therefore their various departments), by definitions, only have in mind the interest of their shareholders, therefore if being unethical furthers their interest and a corporation can get away with it, they will be.
I suggest you watch a documentary called The Corporation [amazon.com]: they very clearly demonstrate that the laws governing corporations make then sociopathic by nature.
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The quotes around the work "Correct" in the summary headline is just another Slashdot spin...
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Funny)
Are they *that* ethically challenged?
Or is it that they are *that* desperate to be cool and loved?
How about a policy of honesty
Yes.
That's their job.
That would be the anti-thesis of marketing.
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Being the PR department, their job description probably involves maintaining a positive PR image for the company. A fiasco such as this is them failing at their job. This is "doing their job" in the same way Uwe Boll makes movies.
I honestly can't make a call here. I'd like to assume that all marketers are terrible people lacking ethics, moral restraint, and any worth. However, not knowing any marketers personally I can't claim they are swampy morasses of evil.
This is true, alt
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You did read the link, right?
This isn't some random anonymous goofball being paid to insert text Microsoft gives him; he's an (apparently) recognized figure, not especially MS-friendly, being paid to provide corrections in his area of expertise, with his reputation on the line. I'd trust that more than edits made by the PR people. He certainly made his case a lot more credibly than the Slashdot submitter made his.
I mean, I can still see where there are questions to be raised, but the write-up here is completely dishonest.
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The O'Reilly link timed out on me (twice), so admittedly I took the article/Slashdot post at face value (and prior experience) before responding. Thanks for the clarification and I'll be happy to take my moderation lumps now...
Re:Honesty.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Third parties are usually where corporations finds impartiality, even if the third party receives a cheque from the company on a monthly basis. Most other industries use a third party for impartiality--e.g. auditing in the financial industry, security audits, etc. are essentially asking a third party to review existing data for disrepencies. Why can't Microsoft do the same with their products and/or standards?
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How about following Wikipedia's Conflict of Interest guidelines [wikipedia.org]? Is that too much to ask?
to answer your question (Score:2)
Check the Wikipedia entry for turning lead into gold [wikipedia.org].
Seth
Bit of FUD Himself (Score:5, Informative)
That would be because respondants have had over 4 years to respond to the OASIS specification. Since it's already a standard that has been reviewed by the industry, the ISO committee can choose to adopt it on a fast-track as a way of putting their own stamp of approval on it.
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Re:Bit of FUD Himself (Score:5, Informative)
Answer: 1 Month vs. 1.5 years respectively.
So, Microsoft rams a specification through the ECMA in a quarter of the time as ODF was moved through OASIS, significantly increases the volume of the standard over their original specs, at least one major partner voted against it [heise.de], then gives everyone exactly one month to review it before it becomes an international standard, and somehow that makes the industry a bunch of whiners for complaining about having only one month to review their standard. Right.
Microsoft is better than Linux (Score:2, Funny)
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For or Against? (Score:2)
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Re:For or Against? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Everything must be in neutral POV for it to be acceptable, however sometimes an objective POV is better.
I would like to see a wikipedia branch which offered different perspectives upon an article.
It would be good to see the Microsoft POV on themselves and how the public perceives them.
It would be good to know the facts about Manchester United football club, but since I support them I also don't mind reading about extra detail, where the best pubs are, bitching about the oppos
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That's not really Wikipedia's job. Wikipedia is a starting point in researching a topic. To develop a complete view of the subject, you should visit other sites that make more objective points about the topic. Wikipedia usually links to many of these as citations for its various sections.
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It does not throw it away.
Currently there is a whole goldmine of good information buried inside the wikipedia history files.
It has been edited out of view because somebody did not agree with the content.
Why not just moderate these phrases instead of hiding them?
Sure, theres lots of drivel and spammy vandalism, but that might actually be of interest to someone.
We write a hell of a lot into our keyboards, we are infinite monkeys at our keyboards and
Depends who's paying (Score:2)
NPOV (Score:3, Insightful)
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No one said anything about "opinions". As a poster below has said, "corrections are corrections". If all that's happening is that errors are being corrected, that's a good thing. If it should be the case that the corrections all happen to be on one side of an argument, then, well, no one said truth is neutral.
Now, having said that, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if there were some astroturfing, but the article presents nothing to suggest it. Your comment seems to express concern not so much about correcti
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Any firm that's not trying to use Wikipedia directly, or through grassroots shills, to manipulate its image is wasting an easy opportunity.
Dear Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
No wonder there's a problem ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It doesn't matter. What they're doing is underhanded and shady. It doesn't matter how "unbiased" you think the person is, the facts remain:
This is, in irc terms, ban evading. It doesn't matter if the guy who banned you was a jerk, you're still ban evading. If they actually cared about "corrections," they'd submit a public correction request to the
Insightful my eye. (Score:5, Informative)
Howso? From TFA:
"I think I'll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see."
Wow -- that sounds shady AND underhanded. No wait -- not even close. He admits he's been hired, AND he is only going to correct errors. Wow. Sounds EVIL.
>>1. There is public information Microsoft doesn't like.
No, this is public MIS-information that Microsoft doesn't like on a PUBLIC forum. They have every right to correct those errors, but they've gone one step further and hired a third party to examine the validity of the articles and correct any errors he finds.
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Has Microsoft actually been banned from editing these articles? Even if you consider it to be Microsoft editing its own autobiography, I think it would be acceptable [wikipedia.org] to remove blatant errors -- if "MS wants to enable death squads with their UUIDs" were in the article, I doubt anyone would object to Microsoft removing it.
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If Microsoft is hiring these editors to place facts onto the entries and not opinions, then there's nothing wrong with that. Corrections are good if they're valid.
If what they're placing is half-true but disputable, then truths from both sides should be placed in the entry and tagged as being under dispute.
If outright lies, then hopefully they can keep reverting the page to older revisions.
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If, for some reason, these Wikipedia entries are spreading lies that cast them in an unfavorable light, or are being used to convey the opinions of the hordes of "M$ SUX" fanboys that permeate the internet, then they're perfectly justified in correcting them to be accurate.
In fact, I'd say that its desirable for MS to present their side of the issue on Wikipedia, so long as they present facts and sour
Removing FUD. (Score:2, Interesting)
There is A LOT of Anti-MS behavior and FUD out there. Therefore, MS is contracting PR agents to "fix" this publically available (and incorrect(?)) (mis-)information.
I don't see a problem provided they don't alter the FACTS.
Same ol, same ol Microsoft. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the tip of the iceberg as it is rare, Halloween Documents not withstanding, to know the real extent of Microsoft's ongoing disinformation campaign.
Were public opinion to turn around and evaluate many of the existing technologies on their own merits, without being told by the media that they are too dumb to use something like Suse 10.2, Mandriva or Ubuntu, it would hit Microsoft very hard, provided, of course, that there was an OEM there with enough balls to offer preloaded computers with another OS.
So Microsoft fights and will fight to the death for mind-share. This is the single most important thing that drives Microsoft. Once computers,operating systems and office suites are demystified, a process which could be greatly helped by open standards such as ODF,and people are no longer afraid to lose their valuable data in a transition to a different product, Microsoft either innovates in real valuable and tangible terms or begins to have to tap its reserves, which huge as they are, would "only" carry them for another fifteen years at their current size.
I'd say business as usual... (Score:4, Interesting)
The trouble with this though is its akin to paying one of the guys at websters to change a dictionary entry for you. People don't expect those to have any signifigant bias.
Apple gets its truth squad for free (Score:5, Insightful)
My evil brain... (Score:5, Funny)
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Get real. I know a firm out of Bangalore, India, that will do it for USD$4.49 a month.
Schwab
quick question, does this make them lobbyists? (Score:2)
I'm impressed by Microsoft (kind of off-topic) (Score:5, Interesting)
If you have ever worked in a moderately sized organization, you will know how difficult it is to get anything slightly unusual through the bureaucracy. Yet a clearly outside-the-box proposal like this apparently got through. Presumably, it is even encouraged. That would never have happened in any of the organizations I worked in, except maybe for the small 3 employee upstart.
It's not unusual (Score:2)
FUD is FUD (Score:2)
no matter who is doing it. Microsoft has a long history of using FUD to advance it goals and maintain its position. No one, except MS flacks, argues that. But if it is wrong for MS to do so, and get (rightfully) slammed for it, then it is wrong to use FUD against MS to advance a competitor!
I wouldn't be surprised if there were contradictions or issues in the OOXML specifications. Any specification that runs 6000 pages is likely to have them! However, the real issues are whether they're addressable,
Does this mean I can expect .... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh how the good ol'days can return....
Still waiting for my first big check from years ago...
I think companies should contribute (Score:2)
For example, awhile back I was in the market for planar ribbon loudspeakers. I wanted to see what the difference between kapton and mylar/polyester was. DuPont could have easily expanded the article, rather than have potential customers track down bits and pieces of information through Google.
Even if they were rather excessive in their praise for the product, it would at least give a starting point
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That seems different from what was at issue here, a paid agent of an involved party rewriting material related to the involved party on that party's behalf and to make it more favorable (even if, supposedly, only by correcting "errors") to that party: that seems to fall squarely i
did you read the article? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can't get a good opinion... (Score:2)
Would you take the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, being paid to do something you would gladly do for free, if you had the time?
Microsoft does this with bloggers (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to "pay" them off to write something favorable for them - giving incentives such as notebooks, advertising dollars, free software, etc...
They do this to promote Vista, Zune, and the XBox. Their goal is to try to create a fanboy circle of consultants, gamers, and audiophiles, which will automatically do this for them. But the initial seed is through the media.
I'm one of Wikipedia's big MS article writers (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia articles are edited by people from Microsoft on a regular basis. Most of the time it's simple stuff, like fixing spelling mistakes, updating links, and putting some newly published information in about future releases. (This [wikipedia.org] is one example of an MS employee edit to the Office Open XML article. Pretty harmless.) It's quite rare that someone at Microsoft adds in unabashed "pro-Microsoft" stuff, and when they do, I or other interested editors remove it entirely or tone it down. But, I have yet to see any kind of co-ordinated efforts to astroturf Microsoft Wikipedia articles... if anything, it's just individuals who are proud of their work and want to write about it... you can tell, it doesn't have that shiny PR veneer on it. I've had to remind a few Microsoft employees to stay within the encyclopedia's neutrality and verifiability policies, but it never turns out to be a problem; almost everyone who's new to editing Wikipedia needs to learn that.
Frankly, I see far more crap by juvenile pro-Apple zealots, like redirecting the Windows Vista article to Mac OS X [wikipedia.org] and other such time-wasting noise. That's a reflection of the kind of uphill battle Wikipedia has to fight against vandalism.
Shit, after 7,000+ edits to Microsoft-related articles, maybe Microsoft should be offering to pay me to keep Wikipedia clean of anti-Microsoft crap, since I assuredly work harder at it than some dude with an O'Reilley blog. I wouldn't take their money for it though... or if I did, I'd make a public display of donating it all to the Wikimedia Foundation. They need the money more than I do.
If Microsoft wants to pay someone to write more into the OOXML articles, that's fine, I don't care -- but there's no damned way they're getting material inappropriate for Wikipedia past me & the other regulars. You can be sure of that.
hi, I'm the guy you're bashing today (Score:5, Informative)
The premise of this thread is a lie. Nobody ever contacted Rick and asked him to "make edits and corrections favorable to" Microsoft. Also, nobody from Microsoft PR contacted him. I am the person who contacted Rick, and I am a technical evangelist specializing in the Open XML file formats. And here is what I asked Rick to do:
"Wikipedia has an entry on Open XML that has a lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections ... Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today."
... feel free to state your own opinion."
"Feel free to say anything at all on your blog about the process, about our communication with you on matters related to Open XML, or anything else. We don't need to "approve" anything you have to say, our goal is simply to get more informed voices into the debate
I understand and accept that longwinded discussions of lies and their theoretical ramifications is a fascinating hobby for some, but since it's 100% my own personal actions that you're talking about, I just want to be very clear: the premise of this thread is a lie. Wikipedia's definition of "Microsoft (sic) Office Open XML" is not fact-based, and I think it would be a good thing if there were more participation by persons like Rick who are knowledgeable and interested in the actual facts of file formats, and less participation (or at least less influence) by those with specific agendas based on specific corporate interests.
Call Microsoft evil if you must, but in this case it's Doug Mahugh you're talking about. PR didn't know I contacted Rick. Hell, my own manager didn't know, although it seems likely he knows by now. You're talking about my actions alone, so I think my opinion is relevant. And in my opinion, the premise of this thread is a lie.
- Doug
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Point is, you should
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The Wikipedia page is already much better, so I think that's a results-oriented way to look at it. It will be interesting to see whether others agree with your analysis.
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If Microsoft were smart, they'd set things up so that a friendly Wikipedia edit would extend your Windows license for a few days.
As for the rest of us, we may have to write worms to infect Windows computers if we are to orchestrate massive distributed Wikipedia editing campaigns.
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You mean it runs out???
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I said if they were smart.
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It's much better, much more subtle, and much smarter than that.
Colbert basically encouraged every jackass in the universe to run over to Wikipedia and replace the page on elephants with "ELUPHUNTS R AWWQSOMEzors!!!!!1!!one!1". This is very easy to detect and stop.
Microsoft is encouraging people who are eloquent and well-spoken, and possibly already respected contributors to Wikipedia, to subtly modify entries to cast it in a
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What if it is the truth? I have found lots of whacked out stuff in wikipedia. The posts that Microsoft wanted corrected seem to be less than useful. Why this ban on interested parties anyway. What exactly is an uninterested party and why would they post to the Wikipedia to start with? If you are posting to the Wikipedia you have some interest in the subject and a view point. I thought that the Wikipedia was supposed to be self regula
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They wouldn't be "well-respected" for their journalism if it ever got out that they were being paid by MS.
Anyhow, "Bill Gates has no penis" is blatant vandalism and abuse, and as such isn't likely to prove a problem for MS. Not unless it really *is* plausible that Bill Gates has no penis; and if that were true, the bes
Re:This is crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you a retard or a shill? Seriously. What kind of naive fool would you have to be to think that the PR department of a major corporation really wants "non-partial" editing of its wiki entries? That they are going to *pay* for? And this corporation in particular, which has a well-known history of controlling press and PR about itself very tightly. I'm not surprised they're hiring someone, but don't insult anyones intelligence by suggesting that they'd be just as happy to hire someone to write negative entries. They're attempting to correct what they see as negative spin.
Well, nothing that he wrote in his article is "just plain wrong". Even his very first statement - the standard *does* define those sections, it does *not* provide implementation details, and while they are "optional", it's nitpicking at best to claim that they aren't a weakness in the standard and the inability for third parties to implement them is a problem.
The article in its current state doesn't say anything about "implementing the entire 6000 pages or MS will sue" and I don't feel like digging through the history in an attempt to find where he might have seen it. It's worth noting that the MS covenant only applies to conforming implementations, and there may have more been made of that fact in older versions of the article.
His final "inaccuracy" isn't anything of the sort, it's an accurate statement that he feels is unfair. He actually spends more time talking about this one than about any of the previous "inaccuracies", which might give you some insight into how he might edit the article. His stated reason for believing it to be unfair is factually inaccurate, too, which again indicates exactly how well researched and unbiased his opinions are likely to be.