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Microsoft Coffee

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Re: Microsoft Coffee

#261

Post by kthejoker2 »

iso1210 wrote: post #68
Geeflow wrote: 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. :)

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.

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?

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#262

Post by aksss »

sn_master wrote: post #151
Impossible wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#263

Post by WorldMaker »

sn_master wrote: post #151
Impossible wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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 two cancellations and a confusing 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.)

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#264

Post by iso1210 »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #167
iso1210 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 ar…

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

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#265

Post by robbomacrae »

nxc18 wrote: post #203
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #193

> 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 lo…

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)…

"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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#266

Post by brabel »

bonzini wrote: post #101
tim333 wrote: 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.

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).

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#267

Post by kbenson »

sharkweek wrote: post #253
ineedasername wrote: post #133

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!

Or a little later, if you were anything like me, run a little homegrown music piracy operation for your entire high school!

According to my brother, Dreamcast game piracy was where the money was...

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#268

Post by WalterBright »

neom wrote: post #214
brundolf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news footage is pretty convincing

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.

Does the reporter still have the copy?

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#269

Post by robbrown451 »

"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.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#270

Post by mynameisvlad »

robbrown451 wrote: post #269

"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.

... You mean like the video embedded at the top of the page?
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