41–50 of 78 posts
So they are giving away, to educational institutions, a limited amount of a consumable resource which is amenable to lock-in effects (i.e. addictive), and problematic for privacy (i.e. harmful to users). In effect, they are standing outside schools giving away cigarettes.
Jesus Christ...
The criticisms here remind me of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[1]: > The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it.…
>> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a…
Microsoft "charity" however will allways be suspicious because how ridiculosly backhanded they were during their era of monopoly. Whether its justified or not remains to be seen.
The criticisms here remind me of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[1]: > The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it.…
You make some great points, and I'm genuinely torn on how I should feel about the announcement. I'll comment on only one of your points, though: > Microsoft is giving away a billion dollars worth of services, > yet people are criticizing them for it. 1. I don't think people are criticising the act of giving something away. It's the questioning of the motivations behind that. 2. The billion dollars is a retail value -…
If you donate a milion dollars for disaster relief do you think people should care if you are going to deduct it from your taxable revenue or not?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every cloud service would have, indeed. But there is no reason the support has to be "free" access to cloud resources at all. Why not just donate the money and let the nonprofits choose which cloud to use (or whether to use a cloud at all)?
Because if you give 1 billion dollars away, you are 1 billion less wealthy. If you give away 1 billion dollars worth of Azure credits, you are some much smaller percentage of 1 billion less wealthy, and the recipient is still receiving 1 billion in value.
Would you mind explaining how one can create value merely by donating?
The criticisms here remind me of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics[1]: > The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it.…
The correctness of this statement depends on the correctness of the valuation you are quoting. If you interpret the critics correctly, they are saying that the long-term costs might outweigh the short-term benefits of this "donation". If that is the case, the donation's rational valuation wouldn't be a billion dollars, as claimed by Microsoft, but actually negative. If you accordingly rephrase your argument using some negative valuation, so as to mirror the position that you are apparently trying to argue against, you might notice that it's not a sensible argument at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make some great points, and I'm genuinely torn on how I should feel about the announcement. I'll comment on only one of your points, though: > Microsoft is giving away a billion dollars worth of services, > yet people are criticizing them for it. 1. I don't think people are criticising the act of giving something away. It's the questioning of the motivations behind that. 2. The billion dollars is a retail value -…
Doesn't really matter it's like saying that donations are worth less because you can get tax credit for them. If you donate a milion dollars for disaster relief do you think people should care if you are going to deduct it from your taxable revenue or not?
(b) Your analogy isn't actually analogous. If I take a rock from my back yard and attach a price tag of "ten trillion USD" to it, and then donate it to you, would you accept my claim that I donated assets worth ten trillion USD to you? A price that has only been declared by the seller says nothing about the value of the thing the price is attached to. Only a price at which a transaction happened says anything about the value--that is, a price at which someone actually bought what you offered. Now, if they are giving something away for free, that transaction arguably indicates that the value is zero USD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a…
What? I've literally never seen anyone say anything negative about Bill's charity work. Can you cite some sources for that? Microsoft "charity" however will allways be suspicious because how ridiculosly backhanded they were during their era of monopoly. Whether its justified or not remains to be seen.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2457760
"arguably more bad than good being done"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
TheReg link works fine here. You're right about Reg style, though I have no reason to doubt substance of the story. Agreed on range of perception of deeds of any large company. Microsoft has long form on this front (baiting the education market), though they're certainly not the only organisation to have done this. Unlike other student discounts - say for movie tickets, public transport, etc - there's a clear and obv…
>Also, IIRC it's a requirement in the USA that public (and not-NFP) companies must always act to 'increase shareholder value', so the giving away of products or services could be considered a legal exposure. The obvious way to work around this concern is to label it marketing, which brings us back to where we came in. There is no such requirement. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-... http:/…
If one were to stick to IaaS, using only Azure hosted Linux VMs and not get involved in any special Azure PaaS offerings, then any project hosted under this model could easily avoid platform lock in and be transported to another service provider at any time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't really matter it's like saying that donations are worth less because you can get tax credit for them. If you donate a milion dollars for disaster relief do you think people should care if you are going to deduct it from your taxable revenue or not?
(a) It would actually indeed be more accurate to quote the difference in assets the donation is causing for you--anything beyond that is arguably being paid by other tax payers. (b) Your analogy isn't actually analogous. If I take a rock from my back yard and attach a price tag of "ten trillion USD" to it, and then donate it to you, would you accept my claim that I donated assets worth ten trillion USD to you? A pric…
For tax purposes yes I'm not an accountant but MSFT isn't doing this for a tax break and they'll get credit for the actual financial value of their donation based most likely on their operational costs.
>Your analogy isn't actually analogous. If I take a rock from my back yard and attach a price tag of "ten trillion USD" to it, and then donate it to you, would you accept my claim that I donated assets worth ten trillion USD to you?
My analogy was pretty much correct this isn't an sole actor attributing an arbitrary price, Azure pricing is set by the market not by MSFT. You can assign a defined discrete value for each "resource credit" for Azure, AWS, DigitalOcean, any other IAAS/PAAS service provider out there based on it's market price as these are defacto commodity resources.
If you give me a rock which is worth a trillion dollars by your account its really not the same thing unless the market agrees that this rock is worth a trillion dollars either in direct value (e.g. you can sell/buy a rock for that sum) or indirect value (e.g. the amount of resources I would need to spend to find a substitute rock).