Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
> Microsoft bribes again?
[...]
> http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_bribes_again
For those who think they can justify bribery with comments like this:
[quote]
There is nothing wrong with corporate gifts. I am a corporate sales
professional and I always provide samples to my potential clients.
[/quote]
I think this comment is the best response:
[quote]
Laptops are not samples ... and bloggers are not potential customers.
A single-load pouch of laundry detergent is a sample and a stay-at-home
mom is a potential customer for that product. You would not send a
two-year supply of laundry detergent to an employee of Consumer Reports
for their personal use in advance of a product test and expect it to be
called anything but what it is... a bribe.
Handing out DVD's with a live demo of Windows 7 would be a sample.
Handing them to people on the street would be giving them to potential
customers. Handing out $2,000 laptops preloaded with working copies of
Windows 7 to software reviewers, bloggers, is a bribe
[/quote]
Moreover, Microsoft is not your average company, they have a track
record of behaving like gangsters, so what may seem harmless coming from
some other source, needs to be scrutinised more carefully when it comes
from Microsoft.
It's odd how so many pro-Microsoft people seem to have such difficulty
with, what should be, relatively simply questions of morality. Then
again, given the moral depravity of the company they support, maybe not.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "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
05:08:16 up 22 days, 15:04, 4 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.05
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