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Microsoft Coffee

microsoftcoffee.org

121–130 of 394 posts

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#121
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good call, this definitely looks like the same guy: https://komonews.com/station/people/keith-eldridge

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!

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#122
post #116

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,…

Disappointing that your manager, who you liked and described as fun and effective, wanted to fire you for it.

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#123
post #34

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. :)

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#124

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#125
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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#127
post #9

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! A…

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#128
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#129
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite flickery. I don't remember TV/video being that bad in 96.

Analog covered up how bad it was. IIRC VHS resolution was 320x240.

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)

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#130
post #70
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a better Aprils joke than the one being claimed

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.

Getting your goat is part of the prank.
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