Microsoft Laptop Recipient Auctioning Laptop 363
Salvance writes "While most bloggers who received the controversial Vista powered Acer from Microsoft are keeping them, Laughing Squid has decided to auction off his free laptop from Microsoft and donate all proceeds to the The Electronic Frontier Foundation. (EFF) He saw this as a great opportunity to support a worthy cause, and some other bloggers are following suit. What's funny is that Microsoft is now backpedaling and telling bloggers to send back the laptops. Do they even have a legal right to do so?"
This article needs to be changed. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Informative)
I hate MS as much as anyone, but there's no need to make stuff up.
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, forget it. In Soviet Russia, something or other.
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Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, other or something
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Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Funny)
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Interesting? Come on mods, this one is funny.
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Vi, obviously. Emacs is the tool of the devil.
THE DEVIL, I TELL YOU!
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:4, Funny)
These are not the zealots you are looking for.
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every community has its fanatics. It just comes with the territory when dealing with people. Whether it's a religious, political, social or technological faction; there are foaming-at-the-mouth busybodies with agendas and megaphones and there are reasonable rational participants. In most cases, the fanatics are only a tiny minority. They're just a lot louder.
Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Interesting)
- Because we're better than they are.
- Because we don't need to lie to win this fight
- Because lying devalues our credibility, and the truth is our best weapon.
- Because telling the truth and writing better software seems to be working
-
Because Microsoft has better liars than we have, and can pay for more mouths to shout the lies. To fight them on their own terms would be suicidal.
But mainly, because we're better than they are. And that should be reason enough.Re:This article needs to be changed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analysis is faulty (Score:4, Insightful)
If your goal is to spread truth (e.g. if the main reason you oppose X is that it is based on / spread by lies) you may find yourself faced with just the sort of decision you describe. But you have mischaracterized the alternatives. Your actual options are:
Remember, winning the battle is a means to an end. If you do something to "win" the battle that prevents you from obtaining your ultimate goal, it does your cause more harm than good.
--MarkusQ
Lie and deceit harms yourself (Score:4, Interesting)
You have then already lost. Whatever you think you can win that is not based on truth, will not prevail and will always be there in the back haunting you. Any pleasure you get out of it will come with a hook, back to the shady past.
Truth will set people free. Basically, the only evil, or rather the ignorance, in this world is when people believe the means justifies the ends. Nobody kills or steals just out of spite, or if they do, they have some serious hurt they are not able to cope with. Such self-destructive behaviour should be pitied and helped, not condemned or judged. Jesus allegedly said: For you shall yourself be judged - or put another way: When you judge others, you will judge yourself just as harsh - it's just that time makes the illusion of it not already happening.
Just happily playing God`s advocate. =)
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This is not a zero sum game. It's not a win or lose thing. By participating in open source we create more points so that we can all win.
Yes, Microsoft is trying to crush open source. No, I don't think they have a hope in hell. No, I don't think we can sit around and do nothing to resist them. No, I don't think we have to lie. I think our best hope lies in pointing out the obvious contradictions and lies they're making. Y
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Balances out? How about instead of the world coming down to their side or your side, it comes down to what's true and what isn't true?? And if so, how is putting out even more false information balancing anything out?
And if that isn't working... quite frankly, if you're the underdog, participating in fa
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The notion that (mis)leading others gets you ahead worked fine when religion ran the land. With the advent of science, however, things have begun to change (bearing in mind that lying to get ahead is all but encoded into the human genome and has been the way to get things done for thousands of years). Now, you can lie all you want, and you might get ahead doing it, but it catches up with you.
For example politicians have been trying
Global warming shows danger of exaggerating (Score:3, Insightful)
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huh (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's packaging, distrobution, key management, etc. involved as well. Cost of the media is likely the cheapest part.
(not that I disagree with the point you were trying to make, but I'm tired of that particular argument (that it's only the cost of the media).
-nB
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft wasn't so bent on keeping everything proprietary, there really would only be the cost of the media. Look, for instance, at organizations like Debian -- you don't see them paying for "key management," now do you?
Re:huh (Score:5, Funny)
Thus raising the bar for most incomprehensible and absurd "car = software" analogy.
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Thus raising the bar for most incomprehensible and absurd "car = software" analogy.
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you simply mean stealing the physical disc, which the key doesn't really do much to prevent.
Copyright infringement != theft.
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It's possible to steal a car (and it happens quite often). It's impossible to steal Windows (and has never happened, ever).
That point of my comment is that key management for Windows is designed as a unauthorized use mitigation system much in the same way that a vehicle's keys and car alarm is designed as an unauthorized use mitigation system. I'm ignoring the distinction between copyright infringement and theft here because the point I was really trying to make (and obviously failed) is that even without key management the cost of producing software on media is *not* just the cost of the media. In the same way, the cost of
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That point of my comment is that key management for Windows is designed as a unauthorized use mitigation system much in the same way that a vehicle's keys and car alarm is designed as an unauthorized use mitigation system.
WTF is "unauthorized use" of a car, and how is it different from stealing? You are trying to conflate theft with copyright infringement.
You're right that the key management issues do weigh into the cost, but that's not what your car analogy was in response to. It was in response to, "If Microsoft wasn't so bent on keeping everything proprietary, there really would only be the cost of the media."
No one is denying that MS's predilection for excessive authentication adds to the cost of Windows.
Re:huh (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.
If I was going to buy a car, it would be in my best interest to have a good lock on the car. If I was going to buy an operating system, it would not be in my best interest to have loads of artificial restrictions in the operating system.
No disagreement from me there. Now read the second half of what I wrote.
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You must mean 'car copiers'. Of course, I have yet to see a car alarm system prevent unauthorized copying of a car.
But you can bet that if the gas station had not only a car washer but also a car copier we'd see the car industry yelling about how car copying was going to kill the industry and how cars would have to be protected from copying, and find a whole host of reasons why cars had to cost $20K+ even tho the car copier could churn out copies the whole day long for a couple of bucks worth o
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
The COST of cars is the price of the materials that go into it, plus the cost of the labour required to make and of the resources required to move it to where it is to be sold. There's also a single one-off fixed cost to begin with that relates to the factory the car is built in, plus the cost of designing the car, plus some other small sundries. Those one-off costs become less and less important, the more cars you sell.
The price is the cost plus the profit.
Now with a copy of some piece of software, the price of the materials, the labour required to make it, and the resources required to move it is either the cost of the box and the media it comes on (i.e. very cheap) or the price of letting the internet distribute it (i.e. more or less free). There's still a one-off fixed cost, which is the cost of writing it in the first place, but that becomes less and less important as time goes on, just like the cars. Besides, it's eminently possible to get those fixed costs taken care of for more or less nothing too. Linux does it. GNU does it. (Free|Open|Net)BSD does it. You get the picture. The reason that they're generally free (as in beer) and Windows isn't is precisely because they've relaxed the need to cover the fixed costs (and, of course, curbed Linus' immense lust for profit and power) by using copyright law to proprietarise software.
Price again, is cost + profit. In this case, with the proprietary locks on, the profit margin is immense, because the marginal cost of what Microsoft sells is next to nothing, and that is why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.
Your particular analogy is broken because a) you confuse cost with price and b) ten cars costs roughly ten times as much to make (given the initial investment in making a car factory) as one car, whereas ten copies of windows costs roughly the same to make as one copy of windows (barring the fixed costs, again). The price of both cars and software is cost + profit; however with software, the cost is next to 0, and the profit only exists because of the existence of the proprietary 'locks'.
Hope this helps.
Re:huh (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's not true... think of the loss of potential revenue. Those people would have paid $300 or so per copy, which is money out of M$'s pocket... food off of their plate... money that rightfully belongs to them. Just like when you pirate a movie - regardless of whether you would have seen it legally or not - that's money that the MPAA immediately feel the loss of, when they can't afford to send their kids to college anymore.
("dvd/cd/whatever it is stored on" - it's a DVD. It has to be, since all Vista DVDs have both 32 and 64-bit versions on them, as well as all the functionality of 'Vista Ultimate', which you need to pay more for to 'unlock'. So you see, the additional 'Ultimate' functionality is already on the DVD, but if you don't pay extra for it, you are taking money off of Microsoft's plate... food out of their pocket... um... or something)
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I doubt many of these people will pay $300 for a copy of Vista. Some of them, for instance, seem to be mac users who would never do it. Others will choose not to upgrade until they buy a new machine, so will get an OEM copy, for which MS will likely only see ~$100. Others still will skip vista and not upgrade until the next version is released, which is unlikely to take as long as vista did.
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Even if you limited the whole thing to Vista, there's patch download costs and everything else. For MS, the whole patch thing could easily cost 6 figures ++++, and that's just on the first day of release, not including human costs. It's a huge c
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:huh (Score:5, Insightful)
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From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/cap able.mspx [microsoft.com]
"To get an even better Windows Vista experience, including the Windows Aero user experience, ask for a Windows Vista Capable PC that is designated Premium Ready, or choose a PC that meets or exceeds the Premium Ready requirements"
This would suggest that, to get the Aero User Experience(TM), one needs a Premium Ready PC. You might ask "What's a Premium-ready PC?" Wel
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And risk that it would not install and run correctly on most of those thousands of computers? That would be a marketing nightmare. Vista is already how many years late?
It's much better to have their own monkeys install and test the installation on the laptops (prescreened to be hardware compatible) to ensure it will work the best it can.
Re:huh (Score:4, Informative)
And risk that it would not install and run correctly on most of those thousands of computers? That would be a marketing nightmare. Vista is already how many years late?
Actually Microsoft did exactly this. They gave away 20,000 copies of Vista [powertogether.com] (and Office as well), to anyone willing to watch some developer videos. I got one, and while I don't have a blog, I do make recommendations to businesses. The point is that Microsoft IS willing to take the chance that Vista doesn't work properly, at least with a large portion of non-bloggers.
Though I do think you're right. They gave away the laptops to the top "influencers" exactly to make sure that Vista ran properly on it.
Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:4, Informative)
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Not really, in the US at least. If someone mails you an unsolicited item you are under no obligation to pay for it or return it; no matter what the sender suggests or requests.
Most review items either require a signed agreement - when they
Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Informative)
Smart-ass. [usps.com]
Re:Can they ask for them back? Yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
In the US, Canada, UK, and many other countries; if somebody sends an INDIVIDUAL an item that was unsolicited, the receiver may considered it to be a gift. The laws differ by country if a BUSINESS receives something that was unsolicited.
On a forum, a guy who sells collectibles on ebay had a big problem because he mixed up two boxes that he sent to buyers; one contained a $300 item and the other a $20 item. The seller talked to a lawyer who essentially told the seller that he was shit out of luck. The seller had the lawyer type up a (useless) letter demanding that the $300 item be returned and sent it to the buyer.
The buyers reported to ebay/paypal that they hadn't received their items. The buyer who received the demand letter then mailed a cheap toy to the seller. A week later the buyer sent the seller a letter containing the same wording as the letter that the seller had sent, demanding that the seller return the cheap toy. Needless to say, the seller's postings became quite livid at this point.
In the end the seller was out the $300 item and shipping costs, and both paypal transfers were canceled. One buyer received a $300 item as an unsolicited gift and the other buyer returned the $20 item to the seller (seller paid the shipping). I don't know what happened to the cheap toy.
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This is what happened to me recently. In my case, however, it was the correspondent bank who made the mistake: they accidentally processed the payment twice and voila! I have an extra $1k at my account. Then my bank called me and told that the correspondent wants his money back.
The funny part is that when I came to local dept. of my bank they told me that they simply cannot 'cancel' a wire. There is simply no business proce
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The company I work for got a nice IBM server like this, because someone sent it to us by mistake.
The law was introduced because companies would send out expensive goods (such as sets of encyclopedias) and then demand that people either pay for them, or send them back immediately.
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In the ENTIRE United States, if MS sent the item by the POSTAL SERVICE without contacting them first, it's considered unsolicited merchandise. And they can keep it.
http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/merch.h tm [usps.com]
Not
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But must they be returned? Probably not. In must places, unsolicited gifts cannot have strings attached. If someone sends you something in the mail, it is yours, even regardless of what is included in it. This is to prevent people from sending out "valuable" product unsolicited and then demanding payment. This means that if someone in the shipping room makes an error and send out actual valuable product to the wrong person, typically that wrong person is under no obligation to return it.
Check out the letter that Joel [on Software] Spolsky got [joelonsoftware.com]. Here are the key quotes:
So right away we know its purpose is as a review PC and that it's being offered, conditional upon acceptance by the blogger.
Additionally, this lays out a gentleman's agree
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He's auctioning the notebook and donating to the EFF is clearly a statement of protest against MS.
As for breaking the agreement, he's essentially giving away the notebook.
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If a blogger wants to write a savage review of Vista, that's awesome. I hate Microsoft, and enjoy seeing them fail.
If a blogger wants to donate his own money to the EFF, that's also awesome. The EFF rocks, and deserves our support.
If a blogger wants to sell something which he accepted on the condition that he would "return, give away, or keep", that's dishonest.
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Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it.
OK, I decided to keep it. Now it's mine. End of contract. 5 minutes later, I decide to sell it on Ebay. Big deal.
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So now PC's come with licenses too?
Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it.
OK, I decided to keep it. Now it's mine. End of contract. 5 minutes later, I decide to sell it on Ebay. Big deal.
A valid point. However, to me it's like someone giving me their grandfather's antique watch and saying "I'm giving this to you, but only if you agree that you'll wear it." I accept and then I wear it for a day [fulfilling my obligation] and put it up on eBay the next day. Just doesn't seem right.
unconcious bias (Score:4, Informative)
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I don't know about that... using the gift to help the opposition sounds like pretty good evidence of resisting bias to me! In fact, I wish more people would do the same -- imagine how much better the world would be if, for example, politicians took bribes from Big Oil and then donated them to alternative energy research instead of letting them influence them.
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Just having enough influential bloggers get used to using Vista and writing about it may well help to increase its popularity by word of mouth (assuming it's not actually dramatically worse than XP). This is the "first hit is free" or "cinema preview" effect.
Letting bloggers who are likely to try Vista use a super-fast PC to give them the best possible user experience is also likely to cut down on negative comments.
At this stage, when Vist
Hey (Score:2, Troll)
cough
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Auction link (Score:5, Informative)
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Slashdotters heads explode (Score:3, Funny)
Yawn (Score:3, Interesting)
Yawn is all I can say.
Okay, not the EFF, but how about
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Blogger control (Score:5, Funny)
The real news here is how snobbish, foppish and whiny that blogger is. Is this what the blogosphere is like?? Is it really ruled by Mac-obsessed almost-hipsters with unwise facial hair and diagonal black-and-white photos of themselves? Do they really whinge on about how they're too clever to use Vista and how their webcasting startup will change the face of the Internet (sidebar on the right)?
Is this it, after 10 years of evolution?? Nathan Barley writ small, throwing a hissy fit because the wording of the letter on a review item was vague? THAT is a blogger important enough to merit unsolicited review junk??
Yeesh.
Re:Blogger control (Score:5, Funny)
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MS suggested the reviewers either return the laptop or give it away to someone else to give the impression that any reviews were a little less influenced and this guy sooks? Gee. Just give the laptop to a charity who could make use of it or a free-software project or something.
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Maybe. But what's wrong with being Mac-obsessed? (Being almost-hip follows automagically.)
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Is it really ruled by Mac-obsessed almost-hipsters with unwise facial hair and diagonal black-and-white photos of themselves?
Welcome to the blogosphere, kahei. Welcome to the blogosphere.
This article is misleading. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think your bias is getting in the way (Score:3, Insightful)
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He actually *is* giving the laptop away. He's giving it (the monetary value) to the EFF. He's not profiting from it directly at all.
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Only problem is, see, if you give me something - then it's mine. I can do whatever the hell I want with it. Or is Microsoft implying that they don't really OWN the laptops, but rather have licensed them?
INNACURATE (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong approach... (Score:2)
No good deed goes unpunished.. (Score:2)
Well (Score:3, Interesting)
once the sound waves get out.
When I read a review
there always be doubt.
Were the words to critique?
Were the words to describe?
Is that glowing review
the result of a bribe?
They sent Ultimate insults
with Ferrari toupees
When they should have
just let the chips
fall where they may.
my laptop was sent without return instructions (Score:5, Informative)
There seems to be quite a bit of misinformation here regarding my "agreement" with Microsoft (there wasn't any) regarding what I can do with the laptop. I've updated my blog post with the following:
As I mentioned in my original post on the laptop [laughingsquid.com], the only communication I received about this was an email from Edelman. The email stated that Microsoft was sending me a "present" with "no strings attached" (those were the exact words used in the email). They did not include any instructions at all regarding what to do with the laptop. Also, I did not receive the same email as the other bloggers, including the follow-up email that was sent by Microsoft to Marshall Kirkpatrick asking him to return or give away the laptop. I have asked Edelman for an explanation regarding this inconstancy, but have not yet received one. So just to be clear, I was never sent any kind of instructions on what to do with the laptop and I did not sign anything, including an NDA.
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It actually was a very decent machine. It was pretty fast. The price tags are a little enormous though, especially considering the speakers were such crap you'd hear static on even low volume settings.
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In other words, it pays to piss corps off.
Wait a minute... I've been doing that for years! Steve? Where's my laptop?
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If you piss Steve off really well, you get the chair.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
...but isn't a blogger a journalist? (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's main blurb gave three options: return, give away or "hold onto for as long as you like". Sell was not an option.
This is really interesting in a legal, pedantic way.
Consumer law should may support the claim that "hold onto for as long as you like" = "you own it". Certainly, no court case that I'm aware of has ever supported the "not for resale" clause attached to practically every video and piece of software on the shop shelf.
But does consumer law apply here? Bloggers have been touting them