4 ms·

Keeping in mind, of course, that it's an opinion, and not a fact. I happen to have the opposite opinion, although I documented it a lot more: https://news.ycom

Keeping in mind, of course, that it's an opinion, and not a fact. I happen to have the opposite opinion, although I documented it a lot more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225290 History does not help with trusting them. So let's wait and see. But I talked about MS PR team before, and I can already see it at work everywhere. Here, the first HN links were not warmly welcomed, so we had another one published, then another one published, until one with a positive top comment for them is here. Also plenty of comments to defend them by using vague positive things like "they did good things recently" or "they like open source". If you go on reddit you'll see the same is happening. The good thing is that it means now they care a lot about what we think of them. They didn't before. So at least, if they haven't changed, they are forced to act like they have.

ethbro 8y ago
MS PR astroturfing HN is one potential cause. Another possibility is that HN members are responding favorably to MS's recent moves. Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake. Like you said, we'll see!
- dorfcakeling 8y ago
  It doesn't have to be astroturfing. Repeatedly exposing HN readers to the same news would be a good way to gradually increase positive opinion until a desirable threshold is reached ("the first positive top comment").
  - ethbro 8y ago
    You'll have to walk me through your logic on that again. How is repeated exposure more likely to increase positive opinion?
    - misterhtmlcss 8y ago
      Read up on psychology and his comment will be totally self evident. This is a completely normal phenomenon.
    - superkuh 8y ago
      It is more likely to be perceived as a common opinion and then people tend to go with what they think the crowd thinks. (PDF) http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Psychology/Inferring%20the%20Popularity%20of%20an%20Opinion%20From%20Its%20Familiarity_%20A%20Repetitive%20Voice%20Can%20Sound%20Like%20a%20Chorus_%20psp-925821.pdf http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Psychology/...
      - ethbro 8y ago
        That would work through repeatedly exposing people to positive or favorable news. Aka astroturfing. Aka what I asked about. Parent comment specified the same news, which makes less sense. If I hear 100x that MS is buying GitHub, that doesn't make me more likely to respond favorably.
    - saint_fiasco 8y ago
      Suppose it isn't more likely, that it is just random. All Microsoft has to do is pick the one article that has a positive opinion at the top and promote that one.
      - ethbro 8y ago
        That's astroturfing. Which is what my original comment was about.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      That's one of the basic premises of advertising!
- sametmax 8y ago
  I had this debate for the last 10 years, and everytime there are persons to say "maybe this time they changed", and everytime use something like "Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake". The problem with a PR machine is that it never get tired of repeating the same story, while we do. And people eventually listen to the PR machine anyway. That's why it works. Not because it's clever, but because of human nature. It works with politician, CEO, singers... But yeah, we'll see.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    I've been watching MS for the last 23 years. So I'm not oblivious to history. ;) And granted that's how PR works, but the problem with carrying distrust to defend against it is that is eventually makes one paranoid. Personally, I aspire to objective reevaluation at the current point in time. In 2018? Microsoft historically did terrible things to open source, Balmer was an asshole about casting it as us vs them, and they still have substantial legacy OS and Office revenue streams to protect. At the same time, their cloud business is rapidly growing, they've realized the only way to compete there is to embrace open source, and that's beginning to permeate the rest of the company. Largely via promoting someone from the dev / server / cloud business as CEO.
- 8u23u0893290u 8y ago
  A couple years ago, when they had that bug in Win10 that broke webcams, folks here were all "Oh the downfall of software quality at MS! They used to be great!" Those of us who had to admin their products pre-Win7 era were all "What?" To the average user at home, perhaps the experience seemed smooth most of the time. But they've been peddling half-assed efforts and relying on a "walled garden" approach to computing since before the iPhone. They failed to notice the "lifestyle" changes taking place in IT until recently, is all. They're still Evil Corp, and want you to dedicate yourself to building out their empire for them.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  I won't ever really forgive MicroSoft until they give us back "Clippy". In a marketing atmosphere dominated by Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Watson.... how can MicroSoft continue to ignore the original and much beloved assistant A.I?
spiderPig 8y ago
You’ll see the same thing with Google. I’ve found quite a few Google shills on here
- sametmax 8y ago
  Well yes, they all have huge com departments with people creating accounts and maintaining it for years to get organic reputations. We stopped trusting TV and starting trusting each other more. So they started disguising as us. It's the natural evolution.
  - spiderPig 8y ago
    Agree, hard to distinguish people from ads these days
  - danmg 8y ago
    There are a lot of 'useful idiots' too---people doing it for free without any direction.
joelcornett 8y ago
> The good thing is that it means now they care a lot about what we think of them. They didn't before. So at least, if they haven't changed, they are forced to act like they have. What’s the difference, really?
- sametmax 8y ago
  One won't stay the same if the wind change directions.
bovermyer 8y ago
It might be more accurate to say it's a hypothesis rather than an opinion. If it would legitimize my claim that Microsoft is different under Nadella, I can write a blog post about it with supporting data.
koffiezet 8y ago
I had a serious dislike of MS under Ballmer, and every single one of your examples in that post was under his reign. But the argument that "they used to be bad, so they still have to be bad" is just silly. Ballmer may have screamed "developers" on stage, but he was the one who lost them - which cost them dearly (mobile, cloud). Shareholders and the board pushed him out for that reason, so the new management had no choice but to sail a completely different course - which they did. It's no accident that their new CEO is the guy that was heading the Azure division, which is effectively selling Linux. But yes - it's still a company that will act in it's own self-interest, as any company will, and right now, that aligns pretty well with playing nice with the opensource community. That could change - in the future, so some caution is always a good idea (but that's the same for Google, Apple, Amazon, ...), but today, I have little issues with MS's attitude today towards opensource. Tomorrow, we'll see. That said - I don't mind them buying github and I like that people are actively looking into alternatives, github is simply too big imho, and too many things just expect git = github, which sucks too.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Did windows 10 stopped shipping ads and spywares ? Or orce update (and sometime locking my PC for 30 minutes then erase my grub for even more fun) ? Did skype turned back great, and P2P again ? Did they revoked their abusive patents ? Did they start to adopt open standard for new products ? Did they quit the Business Software Alliance ?Did they stopped shipping root TLS certificates from dictatures so that they can basically intercept any of my communications ? Their updated terms of services are a treat: https://professional-troublemaker.com/2018/03/25/microsoft-bans-offensive-language-from-skype/ https://professional-troublemaker.com/2018/03/25/microsoft-b... If you disable telemetry in Windows, the OS __still__ calls home: https://social.nah.re/@alex/99699321529592263 https://social.nah.re/@alex/99699321529592263 MS prompting his users to not think too much about what it's doing : https://shelter.moe/@fenarinarsa/99472223904930838 https://shelter.moe/@fenarinarsa/99472223904930838 Bitlocker sends you private key to microsoft (and questions about it, said they were to be trusted, but you could request deletion individually if you wanted): https://www.undernews.fr/libertes-neutralite/windows-10-vs-vie-privee-des-points-problematiques.html https://www.undernews.fr/libertes-neutralite/windows-10-vs-v... I have sane doubts about this new microsoft. We got another new microsoft every year. I have this argument every year. And since I do see they are getting way better at PR, I think that now I just miss worse scandals because they deal with them much better.

ethbro 8y ago

MS PR astroturfing HN is one potential cause. Another possibility is that HN members are responding favorably to MS's recent moves. Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake. Like you said, we'll see!

dorfcakeling 8y ago
It doesn't have to be astroturfing. Repeatedly exposing HN readers to the same news would be a good way to gradually increase positive opinion until a desirable threshold is reached ("the first positive top comment").
- ethbro 8y ago
  You'll have to walk me through your logic on that again. How is repeated exposure more likely to increase positive opinion?
  - misterhtmlcss 8y ago
    Read up on psychology and his comment will be totally self evident. This is a completely normal phenomenon.
  - superkuh 8y ago
    It is more likely to be perceived as a common opinion and then people tend to go with what they think the crowd thinks. (PDF) http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Psychology/Inferring%20the%20Popularity%20of%20an%20Opinion%20From%20Its%20Familiarity_%20A%20Repetitive%20Voice%20Can%20Sound%20Like%20a%20Chorus_%20psp-925821.pdf http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Psychology/...
    - ethbro 8y ago
      That would work through repeatedly exposing people to positive or favorable news. Aka astroturfing. Aka what I asked about. Parent comment specified the same news, which makes less sense. If I hear 100x that MS is buying GitHub, that doesn't make me more likely to respond favorably.
  - saint_fiasco 8y ago
    Suppose it isn't more likely, that it is just random. All Microsoft has to do is pick the one article that has a positive opinion at the top and promote that one.
    - ethbro 8y ago
      That's astroturfing. Which is what my original comment was about.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    That's one of the basic premises of advertising!
sametmax 8y ago
I had this debate for the last 10 years, and everytime there are persons to say "maybe this time they changed", and everytime use something like "Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake". The problem with a PR machine is that it never get tired of repeating the same story, while we do. And people eventually listen to the PR machine anyway. That's why it works. Not because it's clever, but because of human nature. It works with politician, CEO, singers... But yeah, we'll see.
- ethbro 8y ago
  I've been watching MS for the last 23 years. So I'm not oblivious to history. ;) And granted that's how PR works, but the problem with carrying distrust to defend against it is that is eventually makes one paranoid. Personally, I aspire to objective reevaluation at the current point in time. In 2018? Microsoft historically did terrible things to open source, Balmer was an asshole about casting it as us vs them, and they still have substantial legacy OS and Office revenue streams to protect. At the same time, their cloud business is rapidly growing, they've realized the only way to compete there is to embrace open source, and that's beginning to permeate the rest of the company. Largely via promoting someone from the dev / server / cloud business as CEO.
8u23u0893290u 8y ago
A couple years ago, when they had that bug in Win10 that broke webcams, folks here were all "Oh the downfall of software quality at MS! They used to be great!" Those of us who had to admin their products pre-Win7 era were all "What?" To the average user at home, perhaps the experience seemed smooth most of the time. But they've been peddling half-assed efforts and relying on a "walled garden" approach to computing since before the iPhone. They failed to notice the "lifestyle" changes taking place in IT until recently, is all. They're still Evil Corp, and want you to dedicate yourself to building out their empire for them.
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
I won't ever really forgive MicroSoft until they give us back "Clippy". In a marketing atmosphere dominated by Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Watson.... how can MicroSoft continue to ignore the original and much beloved assistant A.I?

spiderPig 8y ago

You’ll see the same thing with Google. I’ve found quite a few Google shills on here

sametmax 8y ago
Well yes, they all have huge com departments with people creating accounts and maintaining it for years to get organic reputations. We stopped trusting TV and starting trusting each other more. So they started disguising as us. It's the natural evolution.
- spiderPig 8y ago
  Agree, hard to distinguish people from ads these days
- danmg 8y ago
  There are a lot of 'useful idiots' too---people doing it for free without any direction.

joelcornett 8y ago

> The good thing is that it means now they care a lot about what we think of them. They didn't before. So at least, if they haven't changed, they are forced to act like they have. What’s the difference, really?

sametmax 8y ago
One won't stay the same if the wind change directions.

bovermyer 8y ago

It might be more accurate to say it's a hypothesis rather than an opinion. If it would legitimize my claim that Microsoft is different under Nadella, I can write a blog post about it with supporting data.

koffiezet 8y ago

I had a serious dislike of MS under Ballmer, and every single one of your examples in that post was under his reign. But the argument that "they used to be bad, so they still have to be bad" is just silly. Ballmer may have screamed "developers" on stage, but he was the one who lost them - which cost them dearly (mobile, cloud). Shareholders and the board pushed him out for that reason, so the new management had no choice but to sail a completely different course - which they did. It's no accident that their new CEO is the guy that was heading the Azure division, which is effectively selling Linux. But yes - it's still a company that will act in it's own self-interest, as any company will, and right now, that aligns pretty well with playing nice with the opensource community. That could change - in the future, so some caution is always a good idea (but that's the same for Google, Apple, Amazon, ...), but today, I have little issues with MS's attitude today towards opensource. Tomorrow, we'll see. That said - I don't mind them buying github and I like that people are actively looking into alternatives, github is simply too big imho, and too many things just expect git = github, which sucks too.

sametmax 8y ago
Did windows 10 stopped shipping ads and spywares ? Or orce update (and sometime locking my PC for 30 minutes then erase my grub for even more fun) ? Did skype turned back great, and P2P again ? Did they revoked their abusive patents ? Did they start to adopt open standard for new products ? Did they quit the Business Software Alliance ?Did they stopped shipping root TLS certificates from dictatures so that they can basically intercept any of my communications ? Their updated terms of services are a treat: https://professional-troublemaker.com/2018/03/25/microsoft-bans-offensive-language-from-skype/ https://professional-troublemaker.com/2018/03/25/microsoft-b... If you disable telemetry in Windows, the OS __still__ calls home: https://social.nah.re/@alex/99699321529592263 https://social.nah.re/@alex/99699321529592263 MS prompting his users to not think too much about what it's doing : https://shelter.moe/@fenarinarsa/99472223904930838 https://shelter.moe/@fenarinarsa/99472223904930838 Bitlocker sends you private key to microsoft (and questions about it, said they were to be trusted, but you could request deletion individually if you wanted): https://www.undernews.fr/libertes-neutralite/windows-10-vs-vie-privee-des-points-problematiques.html https://www.undernews.fr/libertes-neutralite/windows-10-vs-v... I have sane doubts about this new microsoft. We got another new microsoft every year. I have this argument every year. And since I do see they are getting way better at PR, I think that now I just miss worse scandals because they deal with them much better.