Verily I say unto thee, that Johan Lindquist spake thusly:
> So anyway, it was like, 03:42 CET Dec 03 2008, you know? Oh, and,
> yeah, Homer was all like, "Dude,
>> Claiming that a vendor "recommends" a product, when in fact they've
>> been bribed to fake that recommendation, is misleading advertising.
>
> All those TV celebs who promote products (in return for money) will
> need to be appraised of this then, I take it, so they won't be sued
> along with MS when the revolution comes.
An avert on TV (or elsewhere) is very obviously an advert, and
regardless of who is promoting what product, it is equally obvious they
are only /working/, not giving a personal and impartial recommendation.
OTOH when one sees "[Vendor] recommends Vista" next to a PC on a Website
or in a store, it is /not/ obvious, to those other than cynics like me,
that this "recommendation" is actually paid advertising, and should be
viewed with scepticism (or IOW understood that it is basically false).
Indeed I would go as far as to suggest that the word "recommend" (in
this context) should be banned by advertising standards authorities,
since this word implies an impartial statement of preference, and in
such cases it clearly is not. "Buy Vista!" is one thing, but "I
recommend Vista" is quite another, and if the latter statement is
motivated only by money then it is clearly a lie, and as such - false
and misleading advertising, particularly when it isn't even clear that
this "recommendation" is an advert at all.
Example:
[quote]
Why? Because, according to the Morning Herald, both the Beijing Olympics
committee and Lenovo, a major backer of the games, had deliberately
chosen to run XP operating system on the games' PC because they didn't
trust Vista. Turns out they shouldn't have trusted XP either, but they
should have known that.
Best of all, Lenovo chairman, Yang Yuanqing, said Lenovo had chosen not
to use Vista because, "If it's not stable, it could have some problems."
So, next time you go to an online PC sales Web site and you see that
line about "We recommend Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium," just
remember: They're lying.
[quote]
http://blogs.computerworld.com/the_b..._of_death_ever
So the chairman of Lenovo believes Vista is "not stable, it could have
some problems," and yet:
[quote]
Lenovo recommends Windows Vista® Business for Business Computing.
Lenovo recommends Windows Vista® Home Premium for Personal Computing.
[/quote]
http://shop.lenovo.co.uk/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=LENYA0611O
This is not a recommendation; it's an advertisement, but it is not
clearly labelled as such, and is presented in such a way as to mislead
customers into thinking that Lenovo sincerely believes Vista is actually
the best choice for the displayed hardware. Lenovo's own chairman
disagrees, and yet his opinion is notably absent from that product
description.
This is entirely different to Chuck Norris saying "Buy Vista!", and
giving the thumbs-up whilst bearing a cheesy grin. This is a hardware
OEM selling a PC, then falsely stating that they genuinely believe Vista
is the best OS for that hardware. This is a lie; it's misleading; and
AFAICT it's illegal.
>> How many people do you suppose are motivated to buy a Vista PC
>> instead of an XP one, or Windows (in general) instead of Linux or
>> Mac, because a vendor (who also sells Linux and/or Mac products)
>> claims to "recommend" whatever the Vole bribes them to?
>
> You keep using that word, "bribe". I do not think it means what you
> think it means.
A bribe is a (usually financial) inducement to do something against
one's wishes; beliefs or principles. Lenovo obviously do /not/ (in
reality) recommend Vista, and yet they claim that they do, only because
they have been paid to do so. That is clearly and unambiguously a bribe.
>> Those people have been misled.
>
> Sure, advertising is almost always misleading.
It's because it is not clearly presented as advertising that it's
misleading; the fact that the promoter is also blatantly lying (not just
exaggerating - as is usual in advertising, but actually lying) merely
compounds the issue.
"[Vendor] recommends Windows [x]" needs to be clearly labelled as a paid
advertisement, or removed by advertising standards authorities.
>> But a more important point is that this is the first time this
>> underhand practice has been exposed as deception with hard
>> evidence. Up to now it's just been speculation ... now there's
>> proof.
>
> Seems to me you're overstating the whole scoop alittle.
I think it's you who's understating it.
For a start, this is one of the core "initiatives" central to Microsoft
maintaining their monopoly, exposing their bizniz® for the racketeering
operation that it is.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| "At the time, I thought C was the most elegant language and Java
| the most practical one. That point of view lasted for maybe two
| weeks after initial exposure to Lisp." ~ Constantine Vetoshev
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
19:00:39 up 28 days, 2:43, 5 users, load average: 0.18, 0.09, 0.02
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