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Microsoft Coffee

microsoftcoffee.org

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Re: Microsoft Coffee

#191

Post by gkop »

caslon wrote: post #169
gkop wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we have tone and punctuation to disambiguate the two interpretations here. Parent commenter interpreted correctly. If the grandparent’s intention was otherwise, they should have used a comma.

They didn't interpret it correctly, and there's no rule stating a comma is necessary that's universal in every style-guide.

They interpreted incorrectly per English grammar. We don’t know whether they interpreted correctly or incorrectly per the utterer’s intention, as the utterer has not clarified their intention.

This isn’t a question of style, but one of grammar.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#192

Post by gkop »

iso1210 wrote: post #141
gkop wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we have tone and punctuation to disambiguate the two interpretations here. Parent commenter interpreted correctly. If the grandparent’s intention was otherwise, they should have used a comma.

It's a good example of how ambiguity can arise when humans use (or don't use) punctuation and other features of a language that's been evolving for centuries, to communicate across an instantaneous worldwide medium with little effort

Well said.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#193

Post by AceJohnny2 »

> 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 look stupid rather than clever - especially as a catch-up to Sun Microsystems. We learned he was repeatedly calling the prank “in poor judgement” in meeting and internal memos.

I'm kind of flabbergasted that the authors, Microsoft employees it seems, were surprised that their prank wasn't perceived well, and lay the blame squarely on "PR flacks."

(Or maybe I'm 25 years younger in a corporate environment that has thoroughly taken control of this kind of thing.)

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#194

Post by chrisseaton »

caslon wrote: post #179
chrisseaton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who do pranks like this don’t care how it negatively impacts on other people. Also think about all the additional work the PR people were forced to do to clean up.

Ah yes. Jokes. Such a great evil. You'd think the whole world is owned by the 1990s Microsoft, or Oracle: boring, lifeless and monotonous. Probably beige, too. I can assure you, this wasn't within the top-ten of most annoying things that a retail worker would have to deal with in a day; it's minor and harmless, and the people who really cause trouble for retail workers wouldn't be in a position to buy every Microsoft…

Why add to anyone’s workload at all to suit your own amusement?

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#195

Post by orbital-decay »

passivate wrote: post #139
coding123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google's index isn't as vast as they claim. Their "About 5,780,000,000 results" is a gross exaggeration. You can't actually view all those results even if you tried.

Most engines are also very aggressive at de-prioritizing abandoned sites, so most of the content from 90s essentially gone dark - it's indexed but cannot be found unless you know exactly what to look for.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#198

Post by xrd »

antixk wrote: post #188
xrd wrote: post #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…

Did you study at JAIST? Sorry to ask, but when you said "deep in the mountains outside of Kanazawa", that's the only university that popped up in my mind that was more open to foreigners(which I assume you are/were).

It was Kindai (Kanazawa Daigaku). They moved from the castle inside Kanazawa to a new campus outside the city. It might be a stretch to say deep in the mountains, it was probably a 20 minute bus ride from downtown Kanazawa. I haven't been there in 25 years and I imagine it has all changed significantly.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#199

Post by musingsole »

breischl wrote: post #183
musingsole wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you're inadvertently wandering into some really wonky territory. Undoubtedly :P As for crimes, I think the US legal system supports my view more than the one that clearly separates these employees from the MS entity. MS may fire the employees as a result of their actions, but up to a point, MS is fully liable for their actions as representatives of the company long before the employees are liable as individ…

But just because you're an employee doesn't mean you have unlimited authority. Getting the janitor to sign a billion dollar contract doesn't mean that Microsoft has agreed to it. The new-hire intern can't go on the news and make binding promises about corporate strategy. It sounds like these employees used the printing presses in unauthorized ways, put unauthorized products on the shelves, and probably even used trad…

>used the printing presses in unauthorized ways

Who gets to authorize what? Presumably there's a document somewhere that can trace itself back to the first charter establishing 100% ownership of a corporate entity as held by one or a few who then (following the rules set in that charter and subsequent ones) built an organization known as Microsoft with many rules and stipulations to distribute and represent that ownership (all the while giving away pieces of it left and right).

The question of who is and isn't Microsoft strikes me as a Ship of Theseus problem. As for the answer to that problem: we have society's answer in its legal precedents even if they're ever moving and then we have another nuanced interpretation for every human on the planet who bothers to think about it.

Re: Microsoft Coffee

#200

Post by frabjoused »

Could that Sony screen really have existed in 1996? It's definitely not a CRT. It's also fishy that there is no mention of the author anywhere, domain registration intentionally unrevealing. The domain was created at 2:00am on the 1st of April.
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