[HN Gopher] Microsoft Coffee
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Coffee
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 1191 points
Date : 2021-04-02 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.microsoftcoffee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.microsoftcoffee.org)
| CA0DA wrote:
| invalid ssl cert?
| frabjoused wrote:
| Could that Sony screen really have existed in 1996? It's
| definitely not a CRT. It's also fishy that there is no mention of
| the author anywhere, domain registration intentionally
| unrevealing. The domain was created at 2:00am on the 1st of
| April.
| dboreham wrote:
| The screen is modern, displaying playback of an old taped
| video.
|
| Little suspicious of the 16:9 aspect ratio. News broadcasts
| weren't wide screen until much later. Probably it is being
| displayed cropped?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Wait, MS wasn't working on Java at that time? When did they try
| to release MS Java and were forced to rename it into J++?
|
| I remember getting a box of MS dev tools with J++ included just a
| few years after this. It was already a well settled product.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| In the early days, Microsoft was licensed to develop a JVM for
| Windows. It shipped as part of Internet Explorer, it probably
| ended up on the majority of Windows machines at the time.
|
| Over time, I believe Microsoft started to implement Windows-
| specific functions that _only_ worked on their implementation.
| Eventually Sun sued and I think that's when they lost and had
| to re-name the product.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine
| marcosdumay wrote:
| From the wiki, the lawsuit happened on the following year. I
| really doubt MS has gone from not working with Java, to
| distributing it, to making it non-compliant, to getting sued
| and losing in about an year.
|
| The author was probably misinformed, and that's a very likely
| reason for the overreaction of the PR dept.
| butterfi wrote:
| "But Microsoft had a reputation, deserved or not, as more of an
| imitator than an innovator."
|
| It was deserved.
| xrd wrote:
| When I lived in Japan 25 years ago, two major events happened:
| the Hanshin earthquake and the Sarin gas attacks. It was an
| interesting time to learn Japanese by reading the newspapers. I
| had real, fully contextual practice learning words like
| kidnapping.
|
| But I was still oblivious to what that gas attack meant, and what
| terrorism would mean to people in a few years after 9/11.
|
| After the gas attacks happened, the other exchange students that
| all lived in the new foreigners dormitory (deep in the mountains
| outside of Kanazawa) planned a party. We put up flyers with a
| bear dancing with Asahara Shokou, the blind prophet of the cult.
| He was the Japanese equivalent of Osama bin Laden. The caption
| read "ore mo ikitai kedo naa!" ("Damn, I wish I could go too!")
| We thought it was really funny, since he had been arrested by
| that point.
|
| The school administrators dragged us in, saying that "black
| humor, well..." We immediately took down all the flyers.
|
| Sounds like the Microsoft PR people had the same reaction.
| antixk wrote:
| Did you study at JAIST? Sorry to ask, but when you said "deep
| in the mountains outside of Kanazawa", that's the only
| university that popped up in my mind that was more open to
| foreigners(which I assume you are/were).
| xrd wrote:
| It was Kindai (Kanazawa Daigaku). They moved from the castle
| inside Kanazawa to a new campus outside the city. It might be
| a stretch to say deep in the mountains, it was probably a 20
| minute bus ride from downtown Kanazawa. I haven't been there
| in 25 years and I imagine it has all changed significantly.
| timr wrote:
| I honestly can't imagine that kind of humor being taken any
| other way by Japanese bureaucrats.
|
| After years of direct, negative experience, I still routinely
| step in it with my "American humor", and then feel like an ass
| afterwards. Scarcasm goes over like a lead balloon.
| aksss wrote:
| sarcasm and dark humor. I made a joke to a class of ESL
| students in Tokyo that was something about killing your
| friend (haha) and the humor did not transcend the language or
| cultural barriers at. all.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Not to be confused with their forensic analysis tool, Microsoft
| COFEE.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evi...
| testfrequency wrote:
| This is what came to mind, I thought this post was just a
| misspelling originally
| stakkur wrote:
| Obviously a joke. Microsoft would just buy Starbucks and rebrand
| it as Microsoft CoffeeX 3D.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| BCOD: Blue Coffee Of Death.
|
| I can only imagine the repercussions of this.
| gary_0 wrote:
| The newest version is Microsoft CoffeeX 3D Series 1X .NET.
| aksss wrote:
| Insider preview edition
| cjlovett wrote:
| Fantastic story. I joined Microsoft in 1997 but unfortunately I
| cannot confirm the story, I never heard this story before, but it
| doesn't surprise me, we had a lot of fun back then with all kinds
| of pranks, and Easter eggs, until one day it was all suddenly
| stopped, ship an Easter egg and get fired was what they told us.
| That was a very sad day. I can confirm that Microsoft was doing
| things with Java back then, I worked in an XML parser written in
| Java when I first joined Microsoft.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| "There's the KOMO News footage, which some of us still have on a
| dusty VHS tape. There are a handful of print articles from tech
| magazines at the time. And one of us has the audio recording of
| the radio coverage."
|
| It would be cool if there were some kind of technology that would
| allow them to share those things, like with people who can't
| actually be there in person.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| ... You mean like the video embedded at the top of the page?
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Sorry!
| Geeflow wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe that this actually happened?
| Conveniently, it was published on April 1st. The story itself
| would be a great April Fools' prank. :)
| umvi wrote:
| Someone ought to ask Bill Gates next time he does an AMA on
| reddit
| a2g4rAVy wrote:
| SSL cert is very suspicious. It is by Google Trust Services LLC
| valid starting on Thu, 01 Apr 2021 02:07:46 GMT. Video was
| uploaded to YouTube on April first.
|
| I would go with a fun joke.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I believe GTS certs are Google (employee) only, correct? The
| hostname also goes to 1e100.net. host `dig
| www.microsoftcoffee.org +short | tail -1`
| 51.165.217.172.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer pnatla-aa-
| in-f19.1e100.net.
| gruez wrote:
| >I believe GTS certs are Google (employee) only, correct?
|
| Doesn't seem like it
|
| https://crt.sh/?Identity=%25&iCAID=180754
| judge2020 wrote:
| Ah ok, I thought Letsencrypt was the only available auto-
| issuing CA on Google Cloud but that must have changed
| with GKE. The 1e100 address is probably pointed at a gke
| load balancer then.
| praisewhitey wrote:
| the webpage is hosted on Google Sites
| gruez wrote:
| >SSL cert is very suspicious. It is by Google Trust Services
| LLC
|
| There's nothing suspicious about that CA. If you do a
| search[1] you can see plenty certificates issued for benign
| sites. My guess is that's the CA for google related products?
| eg. GCP, app engine, or google site builder.
|
| [1] https://crt.sh/?Identity=%25&iCAID=180754
| a2g4rAVy wrote:
| Yep! but the dates are suspicious. There is no record of
| this happening anywhere before April 1st.
|
| Youtube, SSL, domain, everything. April first. Also,
| humorously hosted on google.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| What's so suspicious about celebrating the 25th
| anniversary of a prank by publishing it, but preferring
| anonymity because people on the Internet are terrible
| nowadays?
| purple_ferret wrote:
| We know Satya Nadella has a Hacker News team to speak
| positively about Micro$oft and defend it here. The real
| Conspiracy question is if they've been 'activated' to help
| cover up this story by trying to claim it itself is a hoax.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| There's a screenshot of pcweek.com page but unfortunately (or
| very conveniently) the earliest the internet archive goes for
| that domain is May of 1996, missed it by just one month!
|
| The full link in the screenshot is this and it still works!
| http://www.pcweek.com/spencer/spencer.html
|
| update: adding wayback link:
| https://web.archive.org/web/19960512211429/http://www.pcweek...
|
| update 2: From the main link: "There are a handful of print
| articles from tech magazines at the time"
|
| Turns out that the Internet Archive has a ton of computer
| magazines scanned in and there's a lot from 1996 so now I'm
| going down a rabbit hole both searching for any mention of this
| and also nostalgia:
| https://archive.org/details/computermagazines?sort=-date&and...
| WalterBright wrote:
| I thought PCWeek was totally forgotten. I can't find any
| issues from the 1980s, wish I'd kept the ones there was an
| article about myself in :-)
| wnevets wrote:
| That would be a better Aprils joke than the one being claimed
| Steltek wrote:
| I disagree wholeheartedly. I'm pretty tired of fictional
| April Fool's joke. If you've got a good idea for a (harmless)
| prank, DO IT. Don't write up some lame webpage to make people
| think you did it.
| gkop wrote:
| Getting your goat is part of the prank.
| wnevets wrote:
| > Don't write up some lame webpage to make people think you
| did it.
|
| But are we sure this is _just_ some lame webpage? If the
| prank is to gaslight the internet into believing the
| Microsoft Coffee prank took place wouldn 't the news
| segment covering the prank also be fake? I have no idea if
| that was the anchor for that TV station in the 90s. That
| would be way more entertaining to me than some press
| release or fake product page.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Kind of related to the last few seconds of the news clip
| - Feb 14 1996 "Zoo Gorilla Gives Birth In Seattle" - I
| imagine visitation for the new baby would come around a
| month and a half after birth.
| https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/feb/14/zoo-
| gorilla-gi...
| iso1210 wrote:
| Had to remove the /1, but good find. That does seem to
| put the right timeframe -- and with confirmation they're
| real presenters too. It's not a matter of finding a c. 25
| year old clip from the news to base a fake on, it would
| be finding one from about March-May 1996 (which itself
| would be amazing to have for no reason), and then replace
| it.
|
| I'm leaning more to "this is real", but it's astounding
| there's no reference to it before yesterday.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Had to remove the /1
|
| Thanks, fixed.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > I'm leaning more to "this is real", but it's astounding
| there's no reference to it before yesterday.
|
| Why? It wasn't nationwide, it was local. They said a few
| hundred boxes on shelves for less than 24hrs.
|
| The only people to know would be people seeing two 60 sec
| local news clips. Info didn't spread the same back then
| as it does now.
|
| Again, not proof that it happened, but also not a shock
| that if it happened there aren't records of it.
| iso1210 wrote:
| I'd expect something like this to have been mentioned in
| the seattle linux user group, and from there into gorups
| like comp.os.linux.advocacy
| space_ghost wrote:
| As someone else pointed out, this isn't just a lame
| webpage. The YT video of the news broadcast, if it was
| faked, would have been much more involved.
| Steltek wrote:
| It's true that going to the trouble of costumes and video
| editing is at least some effort. However yesterday had
| more than its fair share of very low effort Photoshops
| and year after year, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
|
| To the original question, the alleged original prank
| still outweighs any contemporary green screen antics:
| producing multiple physical fake boxes, distributing them
| across town in multiple stores, and getting local news to
| pick up on it. That's a lot of work.
| usrusr wrote:
| The effort/motivation ratio makes far more sense for the
| 1996 prank than for the 2021 one. The 1996 one works out:
| a group of co-workers, at a company with a divisive
| reputation but desperately longing for being considered
| cool, a year after the Windows 95 release campaign made
| shrink-wrapped cardboard boxes the centerpiece of
| attention. And 1996: from Microsoft Word Art to pirated
| copies of Quark Express, losing themselves to print
| preparation screen time was just something people did, in
| the 90ies.
|
| The hypothetical 2021 prank? Why Microsoft? Why Java? Why
| the completely forgotten medium of cardboard boxes?
| brundolf wrote:
| The news footage is pretty convincing
| coding123 wrote:
| I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm.
|
| However as much discussion we've had about the internet
| remembering everything, I can't find anything in Google to
| confirm "Microsoft Coffee" except for this site, discussion
| of it on Reddit 13 hours ago.
| DanBC wrote:
| There's a bunch of real MS promotional merch that doesn't
| show up in search engines.
|
| In the 1990s they released "drag 'n' drops" - a gummy candy
| in the shape of dragons. I can't find any mention of them.
| dpifke wrote:
| To get trademark protection in a particular class (e.g.
| candy belongs to class 30, "staple foods"), you have to
| demonstrate you are using the trademark in commerce.
|
| Stuff like this seems whimsical, but it serves the very
| serious purpose of allowing Microsoft to claim exclusive
| use of their name in that class.
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I can 't find anything in Google to confirm "Microsoft
| Coffee" except for this site, discussion of it on Reddit 13
| hours ago._
|
| Its choice not to display any information older than the
| attention span of a cracked out chipmunk is one of the main
| reasons I stopped using Google.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| you don't do google justice. They are fully capable of
| displaying very outdated information. As an example, i
| recently wanted to look up election results from a
| certain country, a day after. Google decided to show me
| some tired, old news snippets from elections in 2015.
|
| "stale as buns" is my phrase of choice.
| dannyw wrote:
| Try finding something from Google before 2007.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| "google in 1996"? Google likes the buns but not the
| whisky i guess.
|
| (even i'm cringing at the metaphor, but if you think
| about it, it sums up what i'm trying to say. Pretty well)
| brenschluss wrote:
| Real question: do you use any alternatives? I completely
| agree but have had a hard time finding other methods of
| searching information.
| iso1210 wrote:
| > I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm.
|
| Perhaps, however remember the Mandela Effect. I'd expect
| ong time KOMO viewers and staff to recognise the
| presenters, and I'm sure they were the right ones. I
| wouldn't trust their recollection of this story though,
| especially once they had seen the video - after all the
| camera never lies.
|
| Remember news anchors read dozens of these stories a day,
| to recall one specific prank 25 years later isn't likely.
| Unlikely KOMO still have recordings of their output from
| back then.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I still remember the prank from the late 1980s when KING
| ran a story that the Space Needle fell over.
|
| KING ran retractions for days, and did their best to bury
| the footage.
|
| I saw it when KING ran it, and had a good laugh. It was
| an obvious prank (the video looked like a bad cut & paste
| job, and the reporters were local comedians from "Almost
| Live"), but too bad a handful of humorless people ruined
| it.
|
| I ran into Bill Nye some years later and asked him about
| it, and he replied they got into a lot of trouble for it.
| desi_ninja wrote:
| this has more details of what happened on that April's
| fools day https://www.seattlemet.com/arts-and-
| culture/2013/05/an-oral-...
| Someone wrote:
| 1989, I guess. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xeio-CJ0qZ8
| WalterBright wrote:
| I miss Almost Live. When KING would run reruns of it,
| they never did that one. Anyhow, they stopped all AL
| reruns a year or two ago. Sad.
| passivate wrote:
| Google's index isn't as vast as they claim. Their "About
| 5,780,000,000 results" is a gross exaggeration. You can't
| actually view all those results even if you tried.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Most engines are also very aggressive at de-prioritizing
| abandoned sites, so most of the content from 90s
| essentially gone dark - it's indexed but cannot be found
| unless you know exactly what to look for.
| passivate wrote:
| Either way, it is funny that they claim to have millions
| of results, yet you can't go past Page 11.
| nitrogen wrote:
| At least it does go to eleven. Most amps only go to ten.
|
| I hope that if you're being serious about 11 being the
| max, that it was a deliberate reference.
| brundolf wrote:
| Remember that the prank preceded the mainstream web, and MS
| PR clearly went to great lengths to cover it up. I don't
| think the internet was "remembering everything" yet at that
| point
| iso1210 wrote:
| Usenet would have, there would be mentions on a pro or
| anti (mainly anti) microsoft group about it. It was 1996,
| not the stone age
|
| Google has lost a lot of old posts from those days, but
| I'd be surprised if it would have lost all of them.
| dannyw wrote:
| Google's public index is just the short head, maybe even
| less than 5% of the internet by pages. Old stuff is more
| or less all pushed out unless its popular.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Egghead Software, which I visited a lot at the time because
| my parents' office was right around the corner, was at I
| think 4th and University, or somewhere around there. KOMO
| and the other stations are adjacent to downtown so it would
| be easy for them to come snag the box before MS PR
| descended.
|
| Honestly this prank makes more sense to me as a forgotten
| thing than as a modern meta-prank. I would not be surprised
| if Bill or some other prime mover from that era hears about
| it and confirms at some point.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I can't find anything to confirm the actual release
| advertisement of Turbo Pascal, either. There were later
| articles and those about later versions, but I guess Turbo
| Pascal never had a release advertisement. It's not indexed
| by Google.
| Zanni wrote:
| Here you go. Third result for me, searching for "ad for
| turbo pascal in byte magazine" (which is where I first
| remember seeing it): http://tech-insider.org/personal-
| computers/research/acrobat/...
| [deleted]
| atleta wrote:
| I don't know... The footage for some reason is in the form of
| a mobile phone recording of the playback of the actual
| footage. Now you could say that the creator of the page
| didn't have the original video just found it on youtube, but
| it's not the case. They were the one to upload it. (And now I
| see that they also have a photo of the VHS cassette on the
| site.)
|
| Also, the recording itself is in a pretty bad shape, trying
| to sell you that it's a very old VHS tape that has been
| played a _huge_ number of times.
| tsumnia wrote:
| I'm open to accepting it as authentic, even with those
| reasons. VHS to Digital Converters are some a common
| household item, and when I bought one for old family
| videos, they still can act up. The distortion can come from
| age and improper storage, not just overuse. Secondly, some
| of our old family photos from before digital cameras were
| made digital simply through scanning 4 of them together.
|
| My point being, this could be one of those instances where
| a prank happened before April Fools became a corporate
| marketing tool. It wasn't hidden away out of fear, but just
| sort of "because" that was how the internet worked back
| then. Not everything was digitized and made available for
| eternity then.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Yeah - I feel as if the task of building a fake news desk,
| hiring two (very convincing) actors to pose as anchors,
| filming it, and chopping it up in Premiere to give it the VHS
| look is way more effort than someone would put into a prank
| like this.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > the VHS look
|
| the rolling part of the tape is a little too much imo and a
| lot of programs have filters that add the grainy nature so
| it's not impossible. that and seeing as you can hire random
| celebs for 100 bucks nowadays to shout out at your friend
| it's not unimaginable that they faked this. it's probably
| true but also... who knows
| WalterBright wrote:
| You'd also have to duplicate 90's hairstyles and clothing,
| which isn't that easy.
| neonate wrote:
| It ought to be possible to find another clip of the same
| anchors in the 90s, which would settle the issue. I spent a
| few minutes on Youtube and found a lot of KOMO news clips
| from 1995 but none with those anchors. I still think it's
| authentic because it would be so hard to fake. If anyone
| really cared they could probably get someone at the TV
| station, which still exists (https://komonews.com/), to
| confirm that the clip is real.
| iso1210 wrote:
| whatthesmack confirmed the man was Keith Eldridge
|
| It's unlikely that 'someone at the station' could confirm
| that clip was real, getting archive footage from that time
| would be difficult. I worked on various shows in the 00s,
| there's no way I'd remember any packages we broadcast, and
| there's no easy access to archives before 2008. We've been
| digitising decades of cut news packages in foreign bureaus
| for years, but I don't believe actual as-broadcast stuff on
| tape has been systematically kept, and we didn't have it
| digitised - at least long term - until about 10 years
| later.
| [deleted]
| Exmoor wrote:
| Lifelong Seattle resident here. Yea, that's Keith
| Eldridge and everything there looks perfectly accurate to
| 1996 KOMO. Here's a 5yr old video of Keith for age
| comparison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXIc5SQxG3o
| exhilaration wrote:
| If they faked that footage and even went as far faking the
| messed up VHS tracking, I will be very very impressed.
| iso1210 wrote:
| The VHS tracking is what makes me suspicious (and of course
| the date, the lack of any mention of it at all)
|
| If you've waited for 25 years to announce something, you're
| going to get video captured correctly.
|
| > There's the KOMO News footage, which some of us still
| have on a dusty VHS tape
|
| Does anyone from Seatle recognise the two KOMO reporters?
|
| If the footage is a deep fake over real footage from that
| time, I'm very very impressed. I suspect that the audio is
| fake, sort of matches up with the real recording, and the
| box is digitally replaced.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I dunno, I don't think I would care about getting a
| perfect capture of a VHS tape from a silly project 25
| years ago. The VHS artifacts add character to the memory.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > If you've waited for 25 years to announce something,
| you're going to get video captured correctly.
|
| The video maight have been digitized years ago not
| yesterday.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > If you've waited for 25 years to announce something,
| you're going to get video captured correctly.
|
| I mean this assumes said perfect video exists. I don't
| think most people would go to extreme lengths to preserve
| a video tape of a prank they performed 25 years ago.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >If you've waited for 25 years to announce something,
| you're going to get video captured correctly.
|
| maybe the tape degraded?
| kenjackson wrote:
| What's also suspicious is there is a lot you can find
| online about the 1994 Vatican City hoax that they allude
| to, but nothing about Microsoft Coffee.
|
| I think a really good prank using deep fake tech.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| Former Seattleite... those are (were?) legit KOMO news
| anchors. I believe the person on the left's name is Keith
| Eldridge. I don't remember the name of the person on the
| right, but I do recognize them.
| floren wrote:
| Good call, this definitely looks like the same guy:
| https://komonews.com/station/people/keith-eldridge
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Has anyone contacted him and made him an offer on that
| box of Microsoft Coffee? He was right, it would be worth
| a lot now!
| withinrafael wrote:
| I reached out to him and KOMO on Twitter, no harm in
| trying. Would be handy to find these reported references
| in tech magazines and radio programs.
| glenneroo wrote:
| The real question should be, who is the news anchor woman
| that he gave it to at the end? Did she end up taking it
| home?
| cavanasm wrote:
| https://weatherchannel.fandom.com/wiki/KOMO-
| TV#Previous_Pers...
|
| From here, I looked up pictures of anchors who worked in
| that time period, and I see Eric Slocum (now deceased)
| and Margo Myers who did evening news together in that
| time frame, and look quite similar to the people in the
| video.
|
| EDIT: someone else identified Keith Eldridge, who
| definitely looks like a match for the video.
|
| https://komonews.com/station/people/keith-eldridge
| [deleted]
| neom wrote:
| I just called KOMO. They confirmed they covered it, the
| footage is real, and it happened. In fact, the archives tech
| I talked to remembered it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Does the reporter still have the copy?
| neom wrote:
| I didn't ask. I just explained I was following up on some
| footage of a news report by them that I suspected might
| be computer generated, and I wanted to verify the
| legitimacy of the video and event.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| But can you believe them on April 1st?
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| Dude, it's (at least) April 2nd all around the globe
| right now...
| atleta wrote:
| Well, you can't believe them even if it's not. People
| tend to remember things that never happened.
|
| Other than that, GP may have just been teasing. I mean
| what's the probability that you call them and they still
| have the same people there after 25 years? You call them
| and one of those rare guys (who's still there after 25
| years) answers the phone. Or whoever answers the phone is
| willing to take the time to find someone who has been
| there since then. Seems unlikely.
| neom wrote:
| I wasn't teasing, I actually called them. I was curious
| if it was a deepfake ML video so I wanted to find out. I
| got passed around quite a bit till I spoke with a guy in
| news room archives who had been there "a long time and
| would know", that's why I specifically got passed to him
| I believe.
| atleta wrote:
| Cool! Thanks for the additional details.
| codetrotter wrote:
| I as well thought you were just joking but that's great!
| tim333 wrote:
| It's quite flickery. I don't remember TV/video being that bad
| in 96.
| bonzini wrote:
| Analog covered up how bad it was. IIRC VHS resolution was
| 320x240.
| brabel wrote:
| Maybe, but as I remember it, VHS looked much better than
| analog TV from the same time. I remember being marveled
| by how clear it looked in comparison (mostly because it
| did not have as much noise as analog TV did even with a
| good antenna).
| iso1210 wrote:
| Analog didn't have an "XxY" resolution. VHS was about
| 3MHz of luma resolution and 400Khz of chroma, which was
| 240 lines - but that was interlaced, so your actual
| vertical resolution was 480 lines per interlaced frame
| (30 per second at US rates) -- but your Y (luma) signal
| would change far more often than your Pb and Pr signals
| (which gave the color by recording how far off the Y
| signal Blue and Red were)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You have lines and also an aspect ratio, which is 4:3.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| NTSC has a nominal resolution of 720x480i (240 lines per
| field, 60 fields per second). VHS on its best days could
| get about half the horizontal resolution for luma, and
| even less for color, but often ended up a bit worse, so
| 320x480i is probably a good approximation for the
| resolution (ignoring the fact that color is even lower
| resolution).
|
| [edit]
|
| On a slightly different note, the HiFi audio track
| (supported for playback by pretty much all VCRs by the
| late 80s; not sure if/when HiFi recording became normal)
| of VHS was undoubtably the highest quality consumer
| analog audio product to get wide usage, with an SNR and
| dynamic range slightly better than the very best cassette
| decks.
| brundolf wrote:
| Presumably it was the tape that degraded over the decades
| (perhaps stuffed in a box, moved from house to house,
| thought of as junk until they had the idea to post it on
| the internet)
| [deleted]
| tim333 wrote:
| I recall bad video as more like this - lines on the pic
| https://youtu.be/BIVEitYSEQ8?t=312
|
| The vertical hold going as in the featured article was
| more of a 60s/70s thing in my memory.
| geenew wrote:
| The video is flicker-y, but the audio is perfect.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'm sure there's an AfterEffects plugin that does that! ;)
| kpierce wrote:
| Have meta jokes gone too far?
| iso1210 wrote:
| I'd expect to see something in usenet archives, or at least
| some mention of it somewhere before this year, even if it's to
| someone complaining about the lack of evidence of it happening.
| Couldn't find anything.
|
| The fact I've spent some time actually looking this up though
| makes this the best prank of the last few years. The video
| especially is a masterpiece of fakery.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is related or not, seems in the same
| spirit but not directly related to the prank ...
| https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.ms-
| windows.advocacy/c/7J...
|
| Like, maybe this inspired the prank somehow?
| [deleted]
| juotlrjrb wrote:
| Good point, an article on a news site should be required.
|
| Simulacrum, simulacra, ...
| [deleted]
| throwanem wrote:
| I can't find any mention of it on contemporary Usenet via
| Google Groups search, and you'd think someone would have
| mentioned it in comp.os.linux.advocacy if nowhere else...
| daveleebbc wrote:
| This line gives it added credibility, imo: "In the end, it was
| all a huge overreaction by PR."
| [deleted]
| shmerl wrote:
| I like this one: https://www.theonion.com/microsoft-patents-ones-
| zeroes-18195...
| mathattack wrote:
| The talking head in the video was right - it's probably a
| collector's item.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Now it just needs an NFT!
| rchaud wrote:
| Not without some tweaking. A physical product you can see and
| touch will be too abstract for the majority of the NFT
| adopters.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I don't see any Microsoft Coffee boxes for sale on eBay.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It belongs in a museum!
| politician wrote:
| I'd buy the NFT.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _Things were different back in 1996. ... Microsoft had a
| reputation, deserved or not, as more of an imitator than an
| innovator._
|
| Perhaps not too different, apparently.
| msla wrote:
| These days, Microsoft seems more like IBM: They have a good
| business supporting stuff they've already done, and have, if
| anything, a negative incentive to rock the boat by doing
| anything new. It's the white dwarf phase of a company: Their
| innovative "hydrogen fusion" gone, they coast for some
| indeterminate amount of time on their own internal heat.
| sn_master wrote:
| Does it? I hardly see any news about Microsoft in 'tech' press
| anymore.
| Impossible wrote:
| Earlier this week, Microsoft announced a big military
| contract for Hololens. Before that, they announced a Discord
| acquisition, before that finalized Bethesda acquisition, etc.
| You're right that it might be my bias (I work in games, game
| engine and XR, not web), but all of those were reported by
| tech media like The Verge and mainstream publications tech
| reporting, not gaming or niche VR sites.
| sn_master wrote:
| Yup, I especially like the HoloLens and the Pentagon
| contracts. Those are things that Google would have easily
| taken with Google Lens (which they are already selling to
| the industrial applications) and GCP, but can't due to the
| internal political pressure groups from employees
| preventing them from doing government contracts.
| aksss wrote:
| Some days - not saying it's true, but if it was - the
| idea of the rabid social dissent and conflict we see in
| the US being the product of Chinese/Russian cultural
| campaigns seems like pure genius. Disallowing the US
| military to leverage Google IP in the field? Check. Many
| other convenient benefits to those countries by egging on
| disunity.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| You don't hear as much about them, but Microsoft has very
| similar pressure groups that have been involved in
| complaints about Azure and GitHub usage by the military
| and ICE. A lot of very similar stories are in HN if you
| search.
|
| It may not be that Google's pressure groups are more
| successful, but that the government actually has more
| interests in Microsoft's products and support agreements.
|
| (HoloLens is on v2 and is expected to have long term
| support. Google Glass has been cancelled twice, and you
| claim it is rebranded now, but my search just now turns
| up Google Lens as just a phone app with no hardware
| initiative. Even if there is a hardware initiative with
| that brand name, that's still cancellations and a brand
| name change too many for most government contracts to
| trust. There are similar complaints about GCP versus
| Azure out there, though I'll leave that as an exercise
| for the reader.)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| These days if a company isn't growing faster than the
| population its garbage. It isn't enough to have a consistent
| value proposition that some X% of the population will spend
| on. This isn't a sustainable viewpoint so we pop the bubble
| periodically and start again. MS' os is better than it ever
| was, but its competitors more than caught up. They still
| define the data formats of business to some extent with
| office. And their IDE group is the best for the languages
| they support. Perhaps with the exception of clion. But that
| is kind of a stable boring story.
| hedora wrote:
| Their stock has doubled in the last two years.
|
| Also, VS Code went from zero to > 50% market share, and
| Azure, Teams, etc are growing fast. GitHub is adding MS
| ecosystem integrations at a rapid pace.
|
| I don't think that adds up to a very bearish story.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| You're right it doesn't. My point was only that our
| industry is overly hype driven and "gets the job done
| reliably" doesnt land you headlines or search order and
| that hurts investment too.
| sn_master wrote:
| > its competitors more than caught up
|
| Not in the PC market that's for sure. I tried Mac and Linux
| few times for work and I always found Windows to be far
| better, at least as a desktop/laptop OS.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| It depends so much on which native tools you use. Which
| is good and bad. Good that all three OS are good enough
| not to be the deciding issue, and bad that we haven't
| really solved portable native software well.
| sn_master wrote:
| I find the PC hardware to be better too. Even dirt cheap
| PC laptops have touch screens with high quality pens
| included and are very easy to upgrade their RAM to 32/64
| GB from Amazon.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I'll give you that for sure. Any specific model you
| recommend?
| sn_master wrote:
| I have the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro, wonderful machine, and
| the included pen experience was great, specially with the
| flipped tablet mode. It's a bit outdated now but there
| should be a new model.
| rchaud wrote:
| Really? All the Windows laptops with good quality screens
| are priced similarly to their base model Mac equivalents.
| There are certainly no shortage of sub-$500 laptops, but
| they're priced that way for a reason. Poor battery life,
| low-resolution screen, HDD instead of SSD, etc.
| sn_master wrote:
| > sub-$500 laptops..Poor battery life, low-resolution
| screen, HDD instead of SSD, etc.
|
| Things have changed since 2005.
|
| This is a Walmart one for 360$, and Costco has similar
| ones. You can get even better specs and price if you're
| willing to roll the dice with Alibaba/Aliexpress vendors.
|
| 14" FHD (1080p), AMD Ryzen 3 with Radeon Vega 3 Graphics,
| THX Spatial Audio, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, HDMI, Front 720P
| HD IR Camera.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=0hMdQAjy43A
| ineedasername wrote:
| This is why computers used to have that cup holder that would
| slide out and give you a place to put it.
|
| When you weren't using it you could even put a music CD in it and
| it would play music right through your computer speakers!
| SippinLean wrote:
| I actually had a cup holder for a drive bay that was _intended_
| as one, it even had a cigarette lighter!
|
| https://sep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-39083765508394/thermaltake-x-ra...
| aabhay wrote:
| I was so hoping that the cup holder would be heated, but alas
| not. Such a missed opportunity!
| spicybright wrote:
| Do they still sell these?
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| https://youtu.be/_ErL39wqO-c
|
| An in-depth review of this unit
| aksss wrote:
| One of the very few things that make me lament not being a
| smoker.
| nayuki wrote:
| You can use the lighter socket to plug in a car-USB
| charger, inverter, or other wacky gadgets
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Every smoking accessory is awesome, the smoking in itself,
| not so much.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I can recall being called into the CEO's office one day, close
| the door he says. I'm thinking uh-oh nothing good can come
| after that statement. He proceeds to tell me that he put a CD
| into the floppy drive and could I please remove it. I was sworn
| to confidentiality, never happened.
| temp8964 wrote:
| I want to check the validity of your story, but unfortunately
| I can't find a CD, or a floppy drive.
| scandox wrote:
| I guess it could fit in 5.25"?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. Showing my age here.
| IanCal wrote:
| Or one of those little CDs, business card size for
| example.
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| And if you used it, it would pour coffee right through your
| computer speakers! Magik!
| sharkweek wrote:
| Or a little later, if you were anything like me, run a little
| homegrown music piracy operation for your entire high school!
| kbenson wrote:
| According to my brother, Dreamcast game piracy was where the
| money was...
| kodt wrote:
| Dreamcast was easy to pirate. But I think there were only a
| couple kids in my entire High School that even had one.
|
| Later when they were cheap to buy used I think the piracy
| scene really picked up.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Someone very much like you caused one of my first run-ins
| with the law! One day when I was in high school, the police
| asked me to come down to the police station for a chat. The
| police chief asked me if I was the one who "copyrighted them
| there CDs".
|
| (For the record, I wasn't. I wasn't going to be doing much
| for-profit piracy on a dial-up connection.)
| Elora wrote:
| We still use the foot pedals to this day..
| aksss wrote:
| That's awesome, good work.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Oh wow... you have just given me some sense of comfort after
| feeling like a moron for over two decades.
|
| When I was growing up, my dad had visited Seattle and came back
| from the trip with a box of Microsoft Coffee. He claimed to have
| gotten it from a store called Egg-Head's Software or Egghead
| Computing or something like that. (EDIT: Upon reading the full
| article it seems to have been Egghead Software.)
|
| I took it to my computer club and was laughed out of the room for
| it being fake. I believe he still has it somewhere, in storage...
|
| Needless to say, I have some friends to email given that I've
| been the victim of "my uncle works at Nintendo" style teasing
| about this for years.
| pricci wrote:
| My dad too! From EGHead in Seattle.
|
| One morning we were going to brew it but it was whole grain and
| we didn't have a grinder.
|
| My dad was a fool for believing a random cashier's word that it
| was instant coffee!
| MaximumYComb wrote:
| Everything in your story lines up with that article. It's
| probably worth a fair bit now if he can find it.
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| The amount of entitlement in the tech industry is astounding.
|
| This person is complaining about how Microsoft didn't enjoy this
| prank, which involved hours of planning (during working hours I
| assumed), cost actual $$$ (through printing these boxes), pissed
| off the Company's suppliers (by delivering fake products), and in
| which the entire point was poke fun at the Company as being a
| mediocre copy-cat?
|
| Jeez, people really need to develop a sense of humor!
|
| /s
| perardi wrote:
| Historical evidence that we've done all the good April Fools'
| pranks, and we can just stop doing them now.
|
| Please.
|
| Please, I beg of you, PR teams, let us be free of corporate April
| Fools' pranks. Make the world a better place.
| matsemann wrote:
| I think companies can do fun stuff. But probably only if PR is
| _not_ involved. I 've seen lots of clever ideas (not just
| pranks) from the bottom by the people knowing the product being
| axed by risk-averse higher ups.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think what makes this a satisfactory prank is that PR didn't
| vet it. When the company officially signs off on a joke, you
| know it's been watered down.
| rasengan wrote:
| If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at
| best.
|
| That said, this is a hilarious story and reminds me of the things
| people used to do in the early days of the internet in terms of
| trolling and such. Unfortunately, after groups like the GN*A and
| others successfully trolled the world several times, nation
| states figured it out and started trolling to actually control
| the narrative of the internet!
|
| And here we are today.
| city41 wrote:
| They might have gotten fired in 96 too. They certainly seemed
| afraid of that based on things in the story not to mention
| waiting 25 years to tell it.
| bagpuss wrote:
| what a strange way to obfuscate that GNAA acronym!
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Associ*tion
| paxys wrote:
| You would also have been in prison in 1996 had you tried it at
| a larger and more "strict" company than Microsoft.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired
| at best.
|
| If that's the best case scenario, what's the worst? Firing
| squad?
| ma2rten wrote:
| This is a good example of how human language is ambiguous.
| You should read it as in the worst case in prison and in the
| best case fired.
| gkop wrote:
| No, we have tone and punctuation to disambiguate the two
| interpretations here. Parent commenter interpreted
| correctly. If the grandparent's intention was otherwise,
| they should have used a comma.
| caslon wrote:
| They _didn 't_ interpret it correctly, and there's no
| rule stating a comma is necessary that's universal in
| every style-guide.
| gkop wrote:
| They interpreted incorrectly per English grammar. We
| don't know whether they interpreted correctly or
| incorrectly per the utterer's intention, as the utterer
| has not clarified their intention.
|
| This isn't a question of style, but one of grammar.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's not that simple. Commas are lawless.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Precisely.
| iso1210 wrote:
| It's a good example of how ambiguity can arise when
| humans use (or don't use) punctuation and other features
| of a language that's been evolving for centuries, to
| communicate across an instantaneous worldwide medium with
| little effort
| gkop wrote:
| Well said.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Hah! That interpretation didn't even occur to me, but yes
| that makes more sense.
| photoangell wrote:
| Expelled.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| terminated!
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| True that. The reason for this is simple. Stock price.
| Investors would wine around, price could move.
|
| It is all about money today: serious business.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I think it's deeper - and more insidious - than that. People
| with no sense of humor, or even awareness of their lack of
| sense of humor, have clawed their way into positions of real
| power. They used to just run the parent-teacher council and
| try to get TV shows cancelled, but now they've moved on to
| control nearly every aspect of our lives. And their power is
| growing.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Turns out Germany played the long con and has successfully
| taken over the world.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Do you think this is any different than any time throughout
| history? There have always been and always will be people
| without senses of humor in all walks of life.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I don't know about the rest of history, but this is the
| first point in my lifetime where they've been in control
| of so many aspects of day-to-day life.
| Arainach wrote:
| This is pure nonsense. Look at any portrayal of large
| operations (satirical or biographical) in recorded
| history. The leadership of GM, Ford, IBM, the military,
| and any huge organization have always been portrayed as
| humorless.
| rideontime wrote:
| > I don't know about the rest of history
|
| Well, there you go.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Implementing CoCs...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Having a sense of humour is dangerous when you need the
| approval of others because most sense of humour differ from
| the ones others have.
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Maybe these people do have a sense of humour but your jokes
| just aren't as funny as you think they are?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Fine, then don't laugh. Even mock me. Tell me not to quit
| my day job. I don't think somebody should lose their
| job/be banished from society because of a bad joke.
| ben509 wrote:
| Yeah, someone with a sense of humor sees a bad/lame joke
| as something to riff on.
|
| That's how dad jokes became a thing.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| Prison? That seems over the top.
| addicted wrote:
| This would be a massive SEC violation at minimum.
|
| A prison sentence would not be surprising at all.
|
| The only reason they likely didn't get it in 1995 even is
| that MS PR (the one this person derides as PR flacks)
| apparently successfully convinced the world that this wasn't
| done by MS insiders.
| nokcha wrote:
| If it was objectively clear that it was just a joke, it
| would probably qualify as protected speech under the First
| Amendment and thus be immune to SEC penalties.
| elliekelly wrote:
| No, it wouldn't be a "massive SEC violation" and yes, a
| prison sentence would be _very_ surprising. The SEC can't
| send someone to prison. They're a _civil_ enforcement
| agency.
| addicted wrote:
| Well, no agency in the US can "send" someone to prison,
| outside the judicial system.
|
| But the SEC can certainly start investigations and then
| take someone to court in conjunction with DAs the country
| over, and a possible result can be imprisonment.
| juotlrjrb wrote:
| How can a regular non-executive employee be guilty of a SEC
| violation, for something like this?
|
| If I'm a Tesla employee and I make a fake image about a
| future Tesla airplane, is that a SEC violation?
| xwdv wrote:
| You are attempting to manipulate the stock price, likely
| for personal gain.
| hedora wrote:
| It is difficult to prove intent, especially if the press
| release is absurd, released on April 1st, and you're
| attempting to prove it wasn't intended as a prank.
|
| Having said that, I'm holding a bag of SO stock because I
| thought they really were going to start monetizing by
| charging for copy-paste. /s
| addicted wrote:
| Why do you think the SEC has to prove intent, or even
| that it being a prank, even if you prove that, protects
| you?
| juotlrjrb wrote:
| > When it comes to being charged with fraud,
| demonstrating that the defendant lacked the intent to
| commit a crime (i.e. that he or she acted in good faith)
| is a key defense because, in order to convict the
| defendant, the prosecutor needs to prove that he or she
| had fraudulent intent.
|
| https://www.baezlawfirm.com/two-recent-cases-highlight-
| impor...
|
| > U.S. Supreme Court Rules That Securities Fraud Suits
| Must Be Dismissed Unless Plaintiffs Plead Fact
| Establishing a "Cogent and Compelling Inference" of
| Fraudulent Intent
|
| https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2007/07/us-supreme-
| cour...
| addicted wrote:
| The SEC does more than just fraud, which is what those
| links speak to.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2014-spch033114mjw
|
| "We, for example, often bring cases based on negligence,
| while most criminal statutes require intent or at least
| willful blindness. Some of our statutes are also strict
| liability, which do not require intent, recklessness, or
| negligence."
| juotlrjrb wrote:
| And if you look at those strict liability violations,
| it's stuff like filing required forms and reports by
| financial officers, not what we were talking about.
| addicted wrote:
| From the article.
|
| " We were busy arranging a graphic design of the box,
| putting easter egg jokes in the tech specs on the side,
| leveraging corporate partnerships, and prepping to make a
| run of several hundred boxes through one of Microsoft's
| production printing systems. This was not only kind of
| expensive, but a commitment, a step that would in effect
| put an official stamp from Microsoft on the plan."
|
| I suspect that this is the reason the "PR flacks" didn't
| just dismiss this as a joke gone wrong, but went beyond
| to insist (lie) that it was done by outsiders.
| addicted wrote:
| Non executives can very much be guilty of SEC violations.
|
| If you make a fake image of a Tesla airplane, create
| branding for that fake Tesla image, and post it all over
| the official Tesla PR accounts, without immediately or at
| least in the fine print, explaining this is an Apr 1
| joke, Tesla, and likely you, would be legally liable.
| addicted wrote:
| All those downvoting this really need to read their
| company's employment manual.
|
| An employee's actions represents their employer's
| actions. Not being an executive does not make your
| company any less liable and/or make you as an employee
| less liable for your actions as an employee (there is no
| question whether the actions discussed in this situation
| were considered to be in a personal capacity, since the
| author clearly states they leveraged Microsoft
| partnerships as well as Microsoft resources to pull this
| off).
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Prison is where most Microsoft software was packaged back
| then: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-
| prisone...
| kortilla wrote:
| "Most Microsoft software" is not what that article says. It
| just says one of Microsoft's contractors used them.
| gumby wrote:
| Nice, I had forgotten that!
| cube00 wrote:
| I feel for the poor staff in those retail stores trying to work
| out what this product was that wasn't scanning while you've got a
| customer at your register getting more annoyed by the second.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| People who do pranks like this don't care how it negatively
| impacts on other people.
|
| Also think about all the additional work the PR people were
| forced to do to clean up.
| caslon wrote:
| Ah yes. Jokes. Such a great evil. You'd think the whole world
| is owned by the 1990s Microsoft, or Oracle: boring, lifeless
| and monotonous. Probably beige, too.
|
| I can assure you, this wasn't within the top-ten of most
| annoying things that a retail worker would have to deal with
| in a day; it's minor and harmless, and the people who really
| cause trouble for retail workers wouldn't be in a position to
| buy every Microsoft product on a whim, either.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Why add to anyone's workload at all to suit your own
| amusement?
| caslon wrote:
| It _doesn 't_ actually add to a retail worker's workload;
| retail workers (in the United States, anyway) are paid by
| the hour, and at any given moment will be forced to do
| _something_. Filling it with a laugh is a step _up._
|
| Your problem is/should be with capitalism, not with a
| joke.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Whether or not one is being paid, it sucks to have no
| idea how to fix the problem for an annoyed customer. It's
| just not a pleasant experience.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yes, those poor, poor Waggener Edstrom PR people. It's about
| time someone like you took a stand for them - they surely
| can't fend for themselves.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Creating a mess and leaving it to other people to clean it
| up. It's littering. Even if someone is paid to clean up
| your litter, you shouldn't litter in the first place.
| function_seven wrote:
| I think the disagreement here is that this is litter in
| the first place.
|
| My take is that PR overreacted. _They_ thought it was a
| mess, and _they_ thought they needed to do Serious Damage
| Control or whatever. But they were wrong.
|
| This was a well done hoax. A more competent PR team would
| have leaned into it and showcased how Microsoft isn't
| just a cold corporate monolith. That it has a humorous
| side, or is more "human", or whatever.
|
| I hope shenanigans never dies.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; not sure how to work around that. They could have put a
| common, inexpensive SKU on it. Perhaps for a pencil or
| something known to be at stock at the retailers, and also
| likely to have loose inventory controls. (So, they end up with
| 10 extra pencils when they do inventory at the end of the
| month; not exactly a disaster for anyone involved.)
| laurent92 wrote:
| Yes, maybe the sku of a coffee cup, with a coffe cup inside,
| just to be able to be legally off the hook in an awesome way.
| cnt-dracula wrote:
| It's sad that a company can't accept negative PR and show them
| that they do indeed support their employee's actions. I think it
| has more to do with how all organizations want to feel
| professional instead of nerdy and fun.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm not sure what employee actions they're supposed to support.
|
| MS didn't get a chance to 'support' this, these guys did the
| thing on their own.
|
| If I'm MS I'm not sure I want to do a lot to "support" them
| after the fact as I really don't need groups of other employees
| stocking the shelves with fake products...
|
| Any prank that looks like it has someone else's name on it, or
| approval... but isn't approved is just always going to have a
| risk associated with it.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| "we didn't do this, but we suspect it was an employee. Either
| way, it's pretty funny."
| musingsole wrote:
| When you're employed by a corporation, to what degree are you
| an individual and to what degree are you an extension of that
| corporation?
|
| Microsoft isn't a person or individual. For MS to support
| something...really means some hundreds of individuals inside
| MS support a thing and have coordinated to communicate that
| support to the other hundreds and BOOM, MS now supports a
| thing (or doesn't).
|
| All of this is about permissions, ownership, and labeling.
| I'm inclined to think the corporate world has it all wrong.
|
| MS supported this by virtue of MS employees doing it. MS was
| also schizophrenic about it and smited its left-hand for not
| properly filing a request in triplicate with the brain.
| duxup wrote:
| >MS supported this by virtue of MS employees doing it.
|
| Would that apply to say crimes?
|
| Should corporate then get to tell people what else they
| can't do since being an employee includes '<company name>
| support'?
|
| I think you're inadvertently wandering into some really
| wonky territory.
| musingsole wrote:
| > I think you're inadvertently wandering into some really
| wonky territory.
|
| Undoubtedly :P
|
| As for crimes, I think the US legal system supports my
| view more than the one that clearly separates these
| employees from the MS entity. MS may fire the employees
| as a result of their actions, but up to a point, MS is
| fully liable for their actions as representatives of the
| company long before the employees are liable as
| individuals.
| breischl wrote:
| But just because you're an employee doesn't mean you have
| unlimited authority. Getting the janitor to sign a
| billion dollar contract doesn't mean that Microsoft has
| agreed to it. The new-hire intern can't go on the news
| and make binding promises about corporate strategy.
|
| It sounds like these employees used the printing presses
| in unauthorized ways, put unauthorized products on the
| shelves, and probably even used trademarks and whatnot
| without authorization. The properly-authorized managers
| of the company would be within their rights to disavow
| them, or maaaaaybe even prosecute for misusing resources.
|
| I realize I've massively over-analyzed this, and MS
| would've been huge assholes to prosecute over this. But I
| think they legally would've been able to.
| musingsole wrote:
| >used the printing presses in unauthorized ways
|
| Who gets to authorize what? <- That's largely my point in
| all this. We can joke about Bill Gates' specific view on
| the incident. And we know its relevant because (at least
| at the time) he was a majority shareholder. So we know
| his opinion would've been closely correlated with the
| entity Microsoft's opinion. But MS isn't Bill Gates and
| his opinion would have just been one among many.
|
| Presumably there's a document somewhere that can trace
| itself back to the first charter establishing 100%
| ownership of a corporate entity as held by one or a few
| who then (following the rules set in that charter and
| subsequent ones) built an organization known as Microsoft
| with many rules and stipulations to distribute and
| represent that ownership (all the while giving away
| pieces of it left and right).
|
| The question of who is and isn't Microsoft strikes me as
| a Ship of Theseus problem. As for the answer to that
| problem: we have society's answer in its legal precedents
| even if they're ever moving and then we have another
| nuanced interpretation for every human on the planet who
| bothers to think about it.
| passivate wrote:
| I think its more about how a company defines itself. I could
| totally see Musk encouraging an employee to troll the NYT or
| some other outlet on April 1st.
| miguelmota wrote:
| I'd think the company would be concerned of these pranks
| defaming the company if enough employees did them.
| II2II wrote:
| April fools pranks should leave the recipient laughing at
| themselves for their own foolishness, otherwise it is just a
| mean spirited prank at the expense of someone else. Pranking a
| major organisation is just too hard: there are too many
| different people with different personalities involved.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I think the issue is that the joke made Microsoft look bad
| (like they copied another company's product). Google has a big
| April Fool's collection, but you can imagine their PR
| department probably would not let anyone's joke reference that
| the product would be sunset in 18 months.
| fossuser wrote:
| Agreed, but I think your Google idea would be pretty funny.
|
| Google sunset - from now on each product will have a
| countdown clock on its webpage to its death which is either
| when the clock hits zero or the lead dev makes promo,
| whatever comes first.
|
| Another easy target would be the release of the 16th chat
| application that's even shittier somehow.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Another easy target would be the release of the 16th chat
| application that's even shittier somehow.
|
| Now presenting: Google Hangups(tm)
| dalbasal wrote:
| Here's the problem as I see it...
|
| Tolerating or even enjoying "make fun of yourself" humour
| feels important to me. How much sting you can take says
| something, and you need to build up a tolerance. If "
| _jokes about the boss_ " are always of the bootlicking
| variety, those are the only acceptable jokes and decent
| people will just avoid humour.
|
| It's a scale though. An ill advised joke can have scary
| consequences in China.. Poo. At the same time, crass WW2
| jokes don't always go down well in Germany... and
| liberalism or democracy don't change this.
|
| Anyway... MSFT, Amazon & such are heading towards East
| India Company market caps. At this scale (and at small
| scale too), I think a thick skin is essential to an open
| culture.
|
| The concept of "corporate culture" is both bullshit and
| profound at the same time. OOH, it' the drab topic of
| dilbert land. OTOH, corporate culture is >51% of total
| culture. It matters whether or not corporate culture is
| open.
| cbozeman wrote:
| The joke made Microsoft look bad because Microsoft was bad
| then, and in the years before, and in the years behind.
|
| Microsoft basically from Gates' reign was a lot of, "Copy the
| shit that we see others do."
|
| Ballmer at least had the audacity to attempt something
| original like the Xbox. Steve gets a horrendously bad rap,
| but if you look at Microsoft's products from the start of his
| time as president (1998) to CEO (2000) and until he was
| replaced by Satya Nadella, Ballmer was _trying_ to provoke
| his people into something new.
|
| Nowadays, Microsoft is actually an innovator making some
| really impressive products (the entire Surface line, Azure,
| etc.).
|
| Gates is boring, bland, and a "genius" at realizing the
| _future_ potential of technologies (Xerox 's GUI, The
| Internet, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), but he absolutely
| sucks at producing something that will appeal to a consumer.
| I've said before that if you could combine Gates'
| understanding of future tech with Steve Jobs' ability to
| understand design and consumer desire, you'd have an
| unstoppable entrepreneur. The only other person out there who
| I think even comes close is Elon Musk.
| cube00 wrote:
| It's hard for any company to support the actions of their
| employees once they go lone wolf and depart from the approvals
| and procedures the company has put in place. Even Bill wasn't
| happy with this and more importantly when it comes to April
| Fool's jokes, he wasn't laughing.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Just shows that he has no sense of humour. Humour isn't
| usually funny if it isn't pointing at legitimate criticism -
| in this case, it was making fun of Microsoft. Inability to
| laugh at yourself just makes you stuck up.
| xvf22 wrote:
| > The PR flacks, on their own, tried to clean up and bury the
| whole thing, out of fear that BillG might get really angry
| about it. (He never did. Nor did Legal. In the end, it was
| all a huge overreaction by PR.)
|
| Not sure where you got "Even Bill wasn't happy with this"
| cube00 wrote:
| I got it from...
|
| > BillG said, in effect, that the prank was not in good
| taste, and that it made Microsoft look stupid rather than
| clever - especially as a catch-up to Sun Microsystems. We
| learned he was repeatedly calling the prank "in poor
| judgement" in meeting and internal memos.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| xeromal wrote:
| This sounds like a such an awesome experience for the people who
| pulled it off.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| what would i not give to live in a world like this..
|
| the suits come in and ruin everything eh?
| o_p wrote:
| So that was the internal name before C#
| aksss wrote:
| Haha, and so it shall be again.
| from wrote:
| The other Microsoft coffee:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evide...
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Microsoft's real Java knock offs:
|
| Visual J++ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B
|
| Visual J# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J_Sharp
| rednerrus wrote:
| My first ever CS class was in J++.
| qntty wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only one expecting an article about this
| abanayev wrote:
| what? (.cd)
| psalminen wrote:
| Oh how I miss that site every day. I remember that request
| well
| dcrn wrote:
| It was only a mirage.
| [deleted]
| jahlove wrote:
| See also "Dumb Starbucks":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0TRpGP8yH4
| Theodores wrote:
| April Fools Day used to be edgy and daring, as per the article.
| Secrecy and vast clandestine effort was needed.
|
| But now it is too easy and there isn't the same cost. Personally
| I have decided not to bother with social media on April Fools Day
| because you know time is going to be wasted by sub par corporate
| efforts.
| Diederich wrote:
| On Friday, 1-April-2005, I executed an Aprils fool joke inside of
| WalMart Stores, Inc., Information Systems Division that ended up
| going somewhat wrong.
|
| The director of our area, Network Engineering, was widely liked,
| and I'd worked for him, first directly when he was a manager,
| since 1997. Pretty chill guy, great sense of humor, effective
| leader. I particularly liked him because he gave my team, Network
| Management, all kinds of 'air cover' from the rest of the
| division, which allowed us to do our work in very non-standard
| but extremely efficient ways.
|
| He happened to be on a business trip to WalMart.com headquarters
| in California.
|
| So I used telnet to connect to the SMTP port of our main
| Microsoft exchange servers and issued the necessary commands:
| HELO, RCPT TO, MAIL FROM, DATA, etc, and forged an e-mail that
| looked like it came from him and was sent to the whole of Network
| Engineering, probably close to 100 people at that time.
|
| The e-mail basically said that effective immediately, he was
| retiring. That it had been great working with everyone, etc etc.
| I took care to write the e-mail using the same phrases, words,
| formats that he normally used.
|
| And it worked! Everyone believed he had sent the e-mail. My own
| manager, who reported to the him, was heard joking around with
| some other managers, saying that the director was clearly playing
| an Aprils fools joke on his department, and that they were going
| to get him back by taking the e-mail to HIS manager, a Vice
| President, asking for clarification.
|
| My director was in transit or something and didn't see the e-mail
| he supposedly sent.
|
| Some members of his very first team, the telcom support desk,
| knew him from way back and were horrified. They had his person
| cell phone number, and called him directly to ask him why he was
| doing this!
|
| He was quite confused, and called his managers to ask what the
| hell was going on.
|
| Once my manager found out that the director has NOT sent the
| e-mail, his amusement turned into anger. The director wasn't
| amused, because of the disturbance it caused, but he wasn't super
| upset.
|
| So around noon, there was an emergency department wide all hands
| called, and my manager, very angry (but he controlled his
| emotions well) told everyone what happened, and said that the
| security team was involved, and that whoever did it should come
| forward.
|
| So after the meeting, I went to his office and said I did it,
| that I didn't think it would cause any harm, etc.
|
| So next week, I pressed him: what are the consequences going to
| be? He was vague, and still quite angry about it. Not abusive, or
| even passive aggressive, but I could tell.
|
| When the director came back, I apologized to him, and he was
| fairly neutral, which I took as a pretty bad sign.
|
| So this waiting game ended up going on for months. On intervals,
| I kept asking my manager what was going to happen, because at
| that same time, I'd just bought a nice property and house and
| moved in. Losing my job right then would have been a very bad
| deal.
|
| In the end, nothing happened at all. Over a year later, I found
| out through some people I knew that my manager had spent _months_
| trying to get permission from HR to fire me. They refused...over
| and over again. And in the end, I didn 't even get an unofficial
| reprimand.
|
| But it was pretty damn stressful!
| 300bps wrote:
| Nice but wow... I've done the telnet to a mail server on TCP
| port 25 trick over a hundred times. Only once did I take it
| almost as far as you. When our company was bought I sent an
| email from HR to my buddy saying that certain employees would
| be given the option of taking severance. My buddy asked all of
| his coworkers if they got that email, they said they hadn't. He
| then replied to the HR guy who told him he was the victim of a
| practical joke.
| Diederich wrote:
| Hah, that's a good one, well done. (:
| deathgripsfan wrote:
| It's pretty inspiring to know that, even though I'm not that
| smart, I must be Microsoft material.
| nwsm wrote:
| Disappointing that your manager, who you liked and described as
| fun and effective, wanted to fire you for it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I read it as the director is the fun one. He didn't specify
| about the manager, but it speaks well of the director that
| the manager couldn't get him fired, assuming the director had
| some sway over HR.
| Diederich wrote:
| Right. I don't know how that played out exactly.
|
| For the most part, that particular manager was fairly ok. I
| actually worked with him as a technical peer before he went
| into management, and he was super smart and effective. His
| personality was generally positive, and he was always
| pleasant to talk to.
|
| But...he had a strong disciplinary streak to him. On the
| team he managed before my own, he got several people fired
| for making substantial, impacting but otherwise
| understandable technical errors. Those guys did goof up,
| and cause real problems, but the errors they made were
| within very technical, confusing and difficult processes.
| Specifically, related to the store relocation/renumbering
| flow, one where my team spent a quite a bit of time trying
| to smooth out and automate during and after.
| [deleted]
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _unlike other pranks our prank didn't just say 'Microsoft is
| successful but nerdy'. Instead, it fed the idea that Microsoft
| kind of sucked as a company in some way; a lazy copycat._
|
| > [...] _Usually Microsoft was happy to take credit for clever
| pranks from employees, because it showed we played hard besides
| working hard._
|
| > [...] _BillG said, in effect, that the prank was not in good
| taste, and that it made Microsoft look stupid rather than clever
| - especially as a catch-up to Sun Microsystems. We learned he was
| repeatedly calling the prank "in poor judgement" in meeting and
| internal memos._
|
| I'm kind of flabbergasted that the authors, Microsoft employees
| it seems, were surprised that their prank wasn't perceived well,
| and lay the blame squarely on "PR flacks."
|
| (Or maybe I'm 25 years younger in a corporate environment that
| has thoroughly taken control of this kind of thing.)
| ellyagg wrote:
| It used to be that we were not all indistinguishable cogs in
| machines designed to be as inoffensive as possible.
| nxc18 wrote:
| I think people sometimes don't perceive things the same way and
| that can lead to misunderstandings. I have sympathy, I've been
| in the position of having some edgy marketing/pr go the wrong
| way for a software launch.
|
| Totally random example that I had _no involvement_ in:
| launching a tree survey app on the 20th of April that had
| insufficient moderation tools. I'll let your imagination around
| this (totally hypothetical) scenario run wild.
|
| Personally, I think the prank would have been fine if they
| filled the boxes with actual coffee beans.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| "Personally, I think the prank would have been fine if they
| filled the boxes with actual coffee beans." Thats exactly
| what I was expecting from the title and the mentions of it
| being "costly". I would have found it quite funny to be
| picking up a box of coffee from Microsoft and it would work
| on a number of levels. If it was just an empty box with
| absolutely no product, coffee or software or otherwise, then
| thats just kinda lame... I agree with Bill on this one.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > (Or maybe I'm 25 years younger in a corporate environment
| that has thoroughly taken control of this kind of thing.)
|
| You're 25 years younger in a corporate environment that has
| thoroughly taken control of this kind of thing.
|
| > BillG said, in effect, that the prank was not in good taste,
| and that it made Microsoft look stupid rather than clever -
| especially as a catch-up to Sun Microsystems.
|
| He was pissed because, while a "joke", it was an valid and
| accurate criticism as well. Sun was miles ahead of Microsoft
| and many other companies, in several different ways. Microsoft
| dominated because Gates was a ruthless son of a bitch who
| repeatedly broke laws that were poorly enforced back then.
|
| I had a whole tirade typed out, but I realized that HN is full
| of true believers in the "New Bill Gates". I'm not. He's trying
| to buy a legacy so he can overwrite the shit one he had when he
| was at the helm of Microsoft. Sadly, it'll work because people
| have short memories.
| [deleted]
| zrkrlc wrote:
| I think if you're responsible for eradicating polio, you can
| be as shitty as you like.
| idlewords wrote:
| Yeah, but he's also microchipping everyone through the
| vaccines. So it's a wash.
| scrollaway wrote:
| People aren't allowed to change? Improve?
|
| What shitty things did you do 25 years ago you're willing to
| let me judge current you on?
| rizpanjwani wrote:
| People can and do change and improve, but the point is that
| it's quite a luxury when you make billions breaking laws
| and then use those billions to create a perception that you
| are now somehow this wholesome person.
| jozvolskyef wrote:
| Microsoft was sued by Sun in 1997. The pranksters may not have
| realized they are publicly taunting their future opponent, but
| Gates probably saw it that way.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Well... msft was already pretty big, but they hadn't been for
| very long. It might have been ok 3-4 years prior. Maybe like
| Tesla now, at least for elon. I doubt "PR flacks" had much sway
| at the company, if you go back to its formative years. Also,
| this seems to have been related to some sore points at that
| particular time.
|
| Also, the world was more naive before "re:all" emails from hr.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Boeing coffee had a mil spec for it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Standar...
|
| I learned to love bad coffee from drinking it. Starbucks ruined
| everything. I wish McDonald's would bring back their battery acid
| coffee.
| williesleg wrote:
| I'm triggered. Shut that shit down.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I added it to wayback machine and archive.is
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210402174720/https://www.micro...
|
| https://archive.is/KX6gg
| amor33 wrote:
| Hola
| usaphp wrote:
| I can't really understand, what exactly is so funny about this
| "prank"?
| JoshTko wrote:
| Volkswagen would have benefited from reading this article> Bill
| Gate's comment that the prank makes Microsoft look stupid applies
| pretty well to the Voltswagen stunt.
| exegete wrote:
| But now we're taking about Volkswagen and electric vehicles.
| April Fool's ad campaigns don't have to be funny to be
| effective.
| mssundaram wrote:
| Your comment made me realize that English speakers often render
| Volks in Volkswagen as Volts
| aksss wrote:
| Never heard that rendering in my life, fwiw.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| I'm seriously confused by the backlash to the Voltswagen stunt.
| The first thing I thought when I read the headline was that
| this was obviously an early April fool's day joke.
|
| Perhaps people are just upset that they didn't get it and are
| blaming Volkswagen to avoid admitting that they were a bit too
| gullible around April 1st.
| ma2rten wrote:
| It's because it was not released on April fools.
| JoshTko wrote:
| VW's main mistake is that their joke was something some
| people actually really liked. It burns a ton of goodwill.
| Many of their supporters may have even defended the idea. Now
| VW effectively told their supporters that VW thinks they are
| idiots.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Their mistake was probably to hit "Send" by mistake 1 day
| too early in their PR machine.
| supergirl wrote:
| I doubt it was a mistake. 1. some timezones were probably
| already on April 1, 2. better get it out first so it
| doesn't get lost in the other hundreds of lame corporate
| April 1 pranks.
|
| I don't see how people could believe it's real though. VW
| is such a big company. how can people think they would
| rename to such a silly name.
| gnulinux wrote:
| It was 30 in US, 31st in the rest.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Checked when it came out and it was definitely still the
| 31st across the world; it was the 30th in my timezone!
| aksss wrote:
| > VW thinks they are idiots
|
| They hardly have a monopoly on that opinion. Just lemon
| juice on the wound though, I suppose. Getting mad and
| indignant about it qualifies as "continuing to dig",
| violating the first rule of what one should do upon finding
| themselves in an undesirable hole.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I can't help but miss that delicious unassuming 90s design
| language.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Well, Microsoft released an actual knock-off of Java in Sept
| 1996, J++. Either this website pranks that, or this recollection
| shows exactly why Microsoft wanted to quiet stories of this - _4
| months prior to the release of their new product!_
| canada_dry wrote:
| Reminded me of this well executed prank at McDonalds:
|
| https://mashable.com/article/mcdonalds-fake-poster-prank/
| atdrummond wrote:
| These two have a great YouTube/TikTok channel where they
| continue to produce these kinds of posters.
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _Today, I 'm coming clean._
|
| No, he's not. There is no author name in the story.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Microsoft PR probably got upset because back then they used
| prison labor to wrap software boxes:
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisone...
| rchaud wrote:
| For all the "You couldn't do this in 2021 without...."
| commenters, have a gander at what Deliveroo did in France for
| April 1. 'Prank' confirmation orders for 450 EUR worth of
| delivery sent to thousands of customers.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56617049
| junon wrote:
| How absolutely touched do you have to be to think this is a
| good prank for a company whose business model is processing
| orders for people who are tight on cash in the middle of a
| pandemic?
|
| Good christ.
| mabbo wrote:
| "Confuse, don't abuse" is the mantra of a good prank. If the
| victim isn't laughing later, then it wasn't in good taste.
| cja wrote:
| I want a job where I can spend days of valuable time on
| unauthorised, unproductive projects just because I want some fun,
| and not get punished for it.
| V99 wrote:
| Microsoft at that time was very much a stereotypical work
| hard/play hard/sleep in your office/repeat type of place (in at
| least many departments).
|
| Extra hours aren't that hard to find here or there if you're
| never leaving.
| habeebtc wrote:
| Still is, really.
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