Earlier quoted context omitted.
The news footage is pretty convincing
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.
Microsoft Coffee
101–110 of 394 posts
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#102It’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'd think the company would be concerned of these pranks defaming the company if enough employees did them.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they faked that footage and even went as far faking the messed up VHS tracking, I will be very very impressed.
The VHS tracking is what makes me suspicious (and of course the date, the lack of any mention of it at all) If you've waited for 25 years to announce something, you're going to get video captured correctly. > There’s the KOMO News footage, which some of us still have on a dusty VHS tape Does anyone from Seatle recognise the two KOMO reporters? If the footage is a deep fake over real footage from that time, I'm very v…
>If you've waited for 25 years to announce something, you're going to get video captured correctly.
maybe the tape degraded?
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#104> Things were different back in 1996. … Microsoft had a reputation, deserved or not, as more of an imitator than an innovator. Perhaps not too different, apparently.
Does it? I hardly see any news about Microsoft in 'tech' press anymore.
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.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#105It’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 the issue is that the joke made Microsoft look bad (like they copied another company's product). Google has a big April Fool's collection, but you can imagine their PR department probably would not let anyone's joke reference that the product would be sunset in 18 months.
Agreed, but I think your Google idea would be pretty funny.
Google sunset - from now on each product will have a countdown clock on its webpage to its death which is either when the clock hits zero or the lead dev makes promo, whatever comes first.
Another easy target would be the release of the 16th chat application that’s even shittier somehow.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#106If 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…
> If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best. If that's the best case scenario, what's the worst? Firing squad?
Expelled.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they faked that footage and even went as far faking the messed up VHS tracking, I will be very very impressed.
The VHS tracking is what makes me suspicious (and of course the date, the lack of any mention of it at all) If you've waited for 25 years to announce something, you're going to get video captured correctly. > There’s the KOMO News footage, which some of us still have on a dusty VHS tape Does anyone from Seatle recognise the two KOMO reporters? If the footage is a deep fake over real footage from that time, I'm very v…
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.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#108Is 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. :)
The news footage is pretty convincing
It ought to be possible to find another clip of the same anchors in the 90s, which would settle the issue. I spent a few minutes on Youtube and found a lot of KOMO news clips from 1995 but none with those anchors. I still think it's authentic because it would be so hard to fake. If anyone really cared they could probably get someone at the TV station, which still exists (https://komonews.com/), to confirm that the clip is real.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The news footage is pretty convincing
I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm. However as much discussion we've had about the internet remembering everything, I can't find anything in Google to confirm "Microsoft Coffee" except for this site, discussion of it on Reddit 13 hours ago.
> I'm assuming Seattlites would be able to confirm.
Perhaps, however remember the Mandela Effect. I'd expect ong time KOMO viewers and staff to recognise the presenters, and I'm sure they were the right ones. I wouldn't trust their recollection of this story though, especially once they had seen the video - after all the camera never lies.
Remember news anchors read dozens of these stories a day, to recall one specific prank 25 years later isn't likely. Unlikely KOMO still have recordings of their output from back then.
Re: Microsoft Coffee
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The news footage is pretty convincing
It's quite flickery. I don't remember TV/video being that bad in 96.
Presumably it was the tape that degraded over the decades (perhaps stuffed in a box, moved from house to house, thought of as junk until they had the idea to post it on the internet)