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Red-Faced Microsoft Pulls Controversial Ad (woman in ad who switched from Macintosh was MS PR woman)
KMBC ^

Posted on 10/14/2002 7:47:55 PM PDT by chance33_98


Red-Faced Microsoft Pulls Controversial Ad 
Spot Featured PR Agency Employee

POSTED: 9:28 p.m. EDT October 14, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Red-faced Microsoft executives have pulled an ad that purports to show a free-lance writer who switched to Windows from rival Macintosh.

There were questions about whether the woman actually existed.

It turns out she works at a public relations company hired by Microsoft. The Associated Press tracked her down by examining personal data hidden within documents that Microsoft published with its ad.

She says, "It was me. I made the switch."

Microsoft's ad was apparently a response to a national campaign by Apple that features names, photographs and testimonials from people who began using Macintosh technology because they were frustrated with Windows.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Technical
KEYWORDS: fraud; lies; macintosh; macuserlist; microsoft; microsoftfraud; osx; windows; winxp
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To: Lunatic Fringe
Vacuum tubes? Are we regressing?

My understanding is that the vacuum tube is only in the audio portion of the motherboard. Its for an amplifier section that supposedly produces a "warmer" sound.

41 posted on 10/15/2002 12:29:35 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: Bonaparte
And all that time they save can be devoted to endlessly arguing the merits of PC vs Mac. How dreary.

That's "...arguing the merits of Mac vs PC..."

42 posted on 10/15/2002 12:34:00 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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To: Swordmaker
LOL! Like I said, dreary. Oh, did I forget to say tiresome as well?
43 posted on 10/15/2002 12:52:43 AM PDT by Bonaparte
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To: KneelBeforeZod; afz400
The URL for Spider is:
http://www.fsm.nl/ward/

I highly recommend in addition to this using a third party browser like mozilla ( http://www.mozilla.org ) or netscape as they can be configured quite easily to block out most irritating ads and don't store 95% of invasive cookies and spyware by default (the other 5% can be removed with regular use of AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ )). Mozilla also does not store URL's in a secret file like explorer does.

I only use internet explorer to download microsoft updates, and that's only because microsoft makes its website on purpose display poorly on other browsers.

Oh, and I switched from mac to windows because I wanted to build my own and I like computer games (so sue me). But when I am out of school I am absolutely going to get one of those spiffy Titanium laptops for anything that is important or business related...my mother just got one and it is incredible.
44 posted on 10/15/2002 4:18:25 AM PDT by Lizard_King
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To: Lunatic Fringe
I just had an opportunity to switch. I didn't take it. Setting up a wireless network in my home was going to be a lot more expensive on the Mac route as was everything else. PC is not perfect, but it gets the job done, and with Windows 2000, it's stable too.

I am not a Microsoft fanatic. I prefer using Linux on servers, for example. At the end of setting up my new wireless network, the only company I'm really enthusiastic about is Netgear.

Regards, Ivan

45 posted on 10/15/2002 4:22:59 AM PDT by MadIvan
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To: chance33_98
The head ditto really likes OSX.
46 posted on 10/15/2002 4:26:01 AM PDT by RWG
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To: chance33_98
MicroSoft already rules(some say ruined) the world so why would they bother to respond to a piddly 6% user base Apple ad? And I've never met a Mac user who switched because they wanted to, only because they had to.
47 posted on 10/15/2002 4:42:39 AM PDT by Musket
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To: Cicero
The clintonoid press, still out to get Bill Gates because he didn't kick in enough to clinton's re-election campaign.

It's bad enought that they rip off Apple's designs, it's even worse that they are trying to rip off their ads now. Reminds me of Of Mice and Men.

48 posted on 10/15/2002 10:02:55 AM PDT by dheretic
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GO LINUX!!

49 posted on 10/15/2002 10:48:14 AM PDT by KneelBeforeZod
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To: dheretic
Reminds me of Of Mice and Men

Bill Gates is going to get a Mac and pet him and hold him and call him George?"

50 posted on 10/15/2002 10:50:06 AM PDT by KneelBeforeZod
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To: Jon Geb
The problem is that theres about .000001% of the software availble to them compared to a PC.

Like what? You have all the MS apps that matter (and some very nice ones from MS that aren't even available on a PC). All the usual business apps. All the graphics/multimedia software. Better audio software. All the UNIX tools and development environments plus all the NextStep stuff. What, precisely, is missing?

51 posted on 10/15/2002 10:58:00 AM PDT by tortoise
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To: Utopia
The latest rev of the Operating System - Jaguar has been a failure (at least from a Developer's point of view).

You'll have to explain this; the old Mac APIs were a turd. I'm not sure how they could be failure beyond the fact that they are so new that many developers aren't comfortable with the Cocoa framework. The framework itself is elegant, and the underlying Unix architecture is practically the definition of elegant from a developer's standpoint. I develop for a lot of different platforms, and MacOS X Jaguar is actually very nice if you use the native APIs and POSIX libs (instead of the API bridges like Carbon, which are a bit gross).

52 posted on 10/15/2002 11:03:11 AM PDT by tortoise
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To: KneelBeforeZod
Revenge of the Nerds cast??? ha ha
53 posted on 10/15/2002 11:03:15 AM PDT by LivefromVegas
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To: skull stomper
I love the tube sound which is why I bought a Marshall.

From what I've found it's an old design like the 6dj8 which I am way too lazy to find in my old data books. And yes, like you, I learned tubes years ago and used to make money modifying guitar amps.

The replacement cost is $12.95 to $60.00. Of course the high quality audio ones are at the high end of the price scale. Usually, first stage tubes generally last longer than say an output driver. I haven't had to replace a first stage tube since I bought my amp in 1988.

I do wonder if the tube is shielded since it would seem to be in a electrically noisy environment.
54 posted on 10/15/2002 11:14:56 AM PDT by Lx
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To: tortoise
You'll have to explain this;

There have been many issues - perhaps the biggest is the fact that the Apple tools no longer work consistently across different platforms. I have to keep separate versions of source for different OS versions. It shouldn't be that way. Jaguar also broke graphics manipluation (NSImage, and NSBitmapRepresentation) big time. Spent months chasing down bugs when the Apple release Notes for Jaguar concede that there was a change and ("This shouldn't affect anyone!") Ha! They are getting way too sloppy.

They have major security holes that the OS system will not install on many systems listed by Apple as being supported, the graphics drawing is extrmemly inconsistent across Apple hardware; simple code compiled under the new tools behaves differently on different hardware; compiler optimizations are completely broken; the 10.2 server is 25% stable as in previous verions; the mail app in 10.2 won't reliably download my mail. None of these problems existed on 10.1.5. On top of that Apple Developer Support doesn't havea clue - their responses to bug reports indicate that they don't even read them and its clear they've never tested this OS on over half the machines they say support it.

Its the worst release of OS X since the second public beta. I've been working with it since before public beta.

55 posted on 10/15/2002 11:41:00 AM PDT by Utopia
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Comment #56 Removed by Moderator

To: KneelBeforeZod
Bill Gates is going to get a Mac and pet him and hold him and call him George?"

No I was thinking Microsoft is a lot like Lenny. It's bigger and stronger than Apple (George), but it really wants to be everything that Apple (George) is so it imitates them. The only difference is that the ending of Microsoft's dominance by Apple, Linux, etc won't be quite so dramatic as Of Mice and Men's.

57 posted on 10/15/2002 1:20:41 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: Utopia
They have major security holes that the OS system will not install on many systems listed by Apple as being supported, the graphics drawing is extrmemly inconsistent across Apple hardware; simple code compiled under the new tools behaves differently on different hardware; compiler optimizations are completely broken; the 10.2 server is 25% stable as in previous verions; the mail app in 10.2 won't reliably download my mail. None of these problems existed on 10.1.5.

Disclaimer: I'm running OSX 10.2.1 on a PowerMac G3 350 with 512mb of RAM and 40GB 7200 RPM hdd.

All security updates work fine for me

Graphics drawing IS CONSISTANT across the platform. It is your box that has the problem, not the platform as a whole. I have worked for an apple reseller before and the demo units worked just fine. My PowerMac and PowerBook (both G3 models) work just fine. My neighbor's G4 iMac works just fine. My friends' Power(Mac || Book) G4s work just fine. $hit, if it works on my old hardware then it isn't a problem that exist in the wild for most users!!!!

Funny, all of the code I've tried works just fine. Most of the mac users I know are running some UNIX software on their boxes without a problem. I run Python 2.2 and the CVS code just fine along with stuff like NCFTP, SSH and Apache just fine. Same with a few of my friends.

Can't speak for the compiler optimizations because I only have a light knowledge of GCC. Most of my Makefiles are pretty basic.

OSX Server: no comment as I have no experience with it

Mail client. It grabs my IMAP mail from my university mail account without a problem.

 

No offense, but you sound a lot like an art major I know who installed OS 9 and OSX on the same HFS+ partition then tried to "remove OSX" by dropping all of its system files into the trash. And she called me up crying the night before a MAJOR project was due the next day. Oh and she hadn't printed out her drawing before she decided to rip her OS a new one.

58 posted on 10/15/2002 1:31:11 PM PDT by dheretic
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To: afz400
"Microsoft Word stores your name, your computer name and the location where the file is stored on your hard drive in every Word document created in Word. To look at this hidden info:
File open:
Files of type
Recover text from any file
They also keep interesting web info in the index.dat file in the cookies directory that can only be deleted by exiting to DOS. "


Please complete the procedure so I can duplicate. I changed recover text from any file and then.... What file do I select? I selected a word document and all I got is the regular doc. Please complete.
59 posted on 10/15/2002 1:33:17 PM PDT by KansasConservative1
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To: chance33_98
The whole history of the Windows OS has been one lie after another to consumers. So what would you expect but more deception from Microsoft. Totally despicable.

60 posted on 10/15/2002 4:51:17 PM PDT by big'ol_freeper
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