Assume we're evil. Saves time.
posted by Jeff Moriarty on January 24, 2007
OMG! Microsoft tried to pay someone to update Wikipedia! n00bz! LOLOLOL!!!!1
Yeah, whatever. First came the horrible, tragic story of Microsoft’s supposed faux pas in trying to pay someone to edit Wikipedia, then the apparent Microsoftian Offender (a.k.a. Doug) shed some light on the other side of the tale.
More interesting to me than the pay-for-edit issue is why people just assume Bigger = Eviller.
Maybe that isn’t entirely fair. I wouldn’t argue that some of the Presumed Evil Club, like Microsoft and Intel, have made some bad decisions at times in the past, or that the sheer size of these companies is enough to make people rightfully wary. The problem is that with trauma like this, more often than not it is just some honest person trying to do their job and getting either misinterpreted or having things blown out of all context and proportion.
Back in 2000 Intel drew some bad press for supposedly forcing some Apple macs to be covered up at an event at Harvard. It sounded all evil and maniacal the way it was reported, but I work with the “Intel rep” involved and it was a miscommunication gone awry, nothing more. It made good fodder for the Intel haters, ruffled a lot of feathers, and made things really tough for a bunch of well intentioned folks who got caught in the middle. If Doug’s take is honest, then he may have wandered into a grey-zone but it doesn’t look like he tried to strong-arm anyone. Yet what impact will all this have on him, his life, and his job?
The point is this: call us out when we do something genuinely bad, cause honestly damaging problems, or name another product as silly as Viiv… but give the smaller things the benefit of the doubt. Our company may be huge, but we’re still just hard working peeps trying to earn our paycheck.
Let he who is without SNAFU cast the first blog.
Comments (6) (closed)
tagged: evil, Intel, Microsoft, wikipedia
Comments
Jan 25 | Nathan Zeldes said:
Well said, Jeff.
Thought I’d point out, though, that it isn’t that “people just assume Bigger = Eviller.” It’s that SOME people do so assume, and some don’t. With Billions of people out there, no matter what the issue, there will always be some on either side of it. You can be sure that if you invented a fix that solves both world hunger and global warming, and can be produced for pennies, there would still be someone somewhere who would denounce you vehemently.
And given our wonderful ‘net, he would be heard around the world too :-(
Jan 25 | Jeff Moriarty said:
Nathan… sweeping generalities are essential to blogs and forums operating in the manner we have all come to know and love!
Next thing you’ll be trying to tell me only SOME Intel employees are evil, and not all of us.
Jan 30 | Ken said:
Hmmm… Interesting. I’ve hated (“hate” is too strong a word, but this particular blog post is reaching for extremes; no reason to deny the trend) Intel for a good 20 years, now. Back in the Amiga/Atari/Mac days, the Motorola 68000/68020 was clearly superior to the 8088/80286. (Odd that the 68010 and 80186 were both also-rans. Obviously a conspiracy.) I mean, my kingdom for a flat memory map! And being tied to MS DOS sure didn’t help matters. And the perennial lawsuits with AMD didn’t, either. But all that was pretty much over, say, by 1992. So why do I still have bad vibes about Intel? I guess sheer inertia. I may have to re-think some of my feelings about Intel. After all, they’ve really done a lot to start pushing the technology instead of the monopoly. And they’ve been pretty good toward Linux, to boot. Congratulations: while I may still be somewhat skeptical of Intel, I will now officially take them off my “enemies” list.
Jan 30 | Jeff Moriarty said:
Ken, I know exactly how you feel. I started out on Commodore and Apple machines, and watched a lot of what I felt were superior things fall by the wayside. But what I’ve learned since working here is that it is that it is usually the result of a lot of odd pressures rather than any malice.
I’m glad to hear you don’t completely despise us anymore. Keep reading the blogs here and we’ll see if we can get on your Christmas Card list by the end of the year!
Feb 05 | DL Byron said:
What’s interesting to me is that this sort of thing happens about once a year, there’s a blow up on it, then it goes away and comes back another year. Anyone remember the fake “switched to PC articles” that Microsoft had written?
Mar 04 | Luciano said:
A well posted and well thought out blog and indeed correct in that we should take the small stories about the big guns with a certain amount of salt. But I am afraid regardless of this it is Intel’s business practices over the last 15 years that make me strongly dislike the company. I have nothing against Intel’s CPU`s, core 2 has been a wonderful success.
But the company itself has exhibited the morality of a New Jersey governor over the years, using money to maintain market share instead of actually competing and allowing fair competition from rival company’s.
As it stands today, there are only two major X86 CPU distributors left in the desktop and server markets, and one of them is ten times the size of the other. Not content with its lot, Goliath, A.K.A. Intel has launched a massive price war, to us outsiders it simply looks spiteful and childish and damaging to suppliers like myself. On top of everything else it’s not exactly getting Intel anywhere as the competitions market share is still increasing and that’s worth far more in the long run.