-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
____/ Ramon F Herrera on Tuesday 09 September 2008 18:44 : \____
>
> I am not sure which one would be the best term to define this latest
> Microsoft move: chutzpah, audacity, moxie, gall, balls or cojones?
>
> Perhaps "hipocresy" is best?
>
>
http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/news/2008/08/29/news.walker.082908.cnnmoney
> http://tinyurl.com/57b82w
>
> -RFH
Microsoft uses proxies like AstroTurfers to do the accusations (same with
Microsoft's current attacks on Apple):
Corn Farmers Against Google?
,----[ Quote ]
| Only if they're planting in AstroTurf
|
| [...]
|
| How do you know the organization, and the op-ed, weren't created by LawMedia
| Group at the behest of some well-funded clients? If they did their jobs
| right, you don't know.
|
| Some of them have left digital fingerprints here and there, though, says
| Declan McCullagh, in a blockbuster of a report exposing the intellectual
| whoredom offered for various important issues. Shortly after Microsoft hired
| LawMedia, for example, legislators, national agencies, and news outlets
| received pointed complaints from coalitions of farmers, rural voters, and
| geeky Latinos about how Google's advertising deal with Yahoo would wreck
| everything.
|
| [...]
|
| Don't call them a PR firm or a lobbying firm though, Law Media – which has a
| ton of lawyers working for them too—is a "public affairs firm" specializing
| in producing "remarkable coalitions" for anything one might need a coalition
| for.
`----
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/08/14/corn-farmers-against-google
Shades of "Letters from the Dead":
More Microsoft astroturfing?
,----[ Quote ]
| TCS’s articles have also complemented work being done by DCI. During 2000,
| Microsoft contracted with DCI to perform various services, among them
| generating “grassroots” letters opposing a breakup of Microsoft and
| launching Americans for Technology Leadership, an anti-breakup group funded
| in part by Microsoft and run out of DCI’s office. Meanwhile, down the hall,
| Tech Central Station went on the offensive, inaugurating an “anti-trust”
| section that over the coming months would publish little except defenses of
| Microsoft and attacks on the software maker’s corporate and governmental
| antagonists, with occasional detours into the subject of lawsuit reform.
| (Microsoft smartly plugged some of the articles on its own Web site.)
|
| (More on the fake letters here; another bit of Microsoft astroturf here.)
|
| With TCS pushing Microsoft’s agenda in one area, what do they publish about
| Open Source software, another strategic concern for Microsoft? To find out, I
| collected all the articles published in TCS on Open Source software and
| listed them in the table below.
`----
http://timlambert.org/2003/11/tcs/
Microsoft lobbying campaign backfires; even dead people write in support of
firm
,----[ Quote ]
| Letters purportedly written by at least two dead people landed on the desk of
| Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff earlier this year, imploring him to go
| easy on Microsoft for its conduct as a monopoly.
|
| The pleas, along with more than 100 others from Utah residents, are part of a
| carefully orchestrated nationwide campaign by the software giant that may be
| backfiring. Microsoft sought to create the impression of a surging
| grass-roots movement, aimed largely at the attorneys general of some of the
| 18 states that have joined the Justice Department in suing Microsoft.
|
| The Microsoft campaign goes to great lengths to create an impression that the
| letters are spontaneous expressions from ordinary people. Letters sent in the
| last month are on personalized stationery using different wording, color and
| typefaces, details that distinguish Microsoft's efforts from lobbying tactics
| that go on in politics every day.
`----
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20010823&slug=microlob23
- --
~~ Best of wishes
Steve Ballmer is even monkier than his moniker suggests
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
19:05:01 up 13:00, 1 user, load average: 0.65, 0.70, 0.71
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
iEYEARECAAYFAkjGypsACgkQU4xAY3RXLo7qHQCfVgdFPya/IaL0/FrHDuHRPkRf
ay8Ani6TPblrA8NHo1KmRkkRsC9lEnoi
=wnbu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
|
