Comment forget the M$ part; focus on the poll part (Score 1) 768
The part of this story that impresses me is not the ballot stuffing. That's been happening for as long as there have been polls.
The interesting part, from an "evolution of the Internet" perspective is how well the pollsters were able to characterize the ballot stuffing and point a finger squarely at M$ employees. Not only was the polling system sophisticated enough to prevent the obvious old-school ballot stuffing methods; ZD captured and stored enough data (and actually LOOKED at it when the poll results went wonky) to determine conclusively that ballot stuffing had occurred, as well as the source.
It may raise some privacy issues about MS Exchange etc, as others have noted, but I think it's a pretty good example of responsible reporting, and creative use of the Internet's more sophisticated polling potential. (remember those old TV polls? "Call in now to vote! dial this number to vote 'yes' and this number to vote 'no' !!")
The interesting part, from an "evolution of the Internet" perspective is how well the pollsters were able to characterize the ballot stuffing and point a finger squarely at M$ employees. Not only was the polling system sophisticated enough to prevent the obvious old-school ballot stuffing methods; ZD captured and stored enough data (and actually LOOKED at it when the poll results went wonky) to determine conclusively that ballot stuffing had occurred, as well as the source.
It may raise some privacy issues about MS Exchange etc, as others have noted, but I think it's a pretty good example of responsible reporting, and creative use of the Internet's more sophisticated polling potential. (remember those old TV polls? "Call in now to vote! dial this number to vote 'yes' and this number to vote 'no' !!")
