4 posts tagged “microsoft”

Microsoft pimping Ford's ride brings that question to mind. I guess when your Ford is found on road dead, they can blame Microsoft. Hey, it worked when they did it to a tire company.

A few items below is a bit on MS giving away laptops loaded with Vista to bloggers who are big enough, powerful enough, and willing to sell their credibility in exchange for favorable reviews of Vista (an operating system that TOTALLY screws up any computer with preexisting microslut systems on it) so they can get positive reviews.  B.L. Ochman points out, that once again, the three-ring whore master behind this caper is none other than Edelman, the folks who brought you the Wal-Mart flog.  

Well, not about music per se, but blog positively and enough and rank hign up and MS will pay you off for writing good reviews on Vista. As I posted on threadwatch, too bad the lawmakers won't climb all over this one. Of course the REAL question is, were you a blogger and you strongly suspected or knew that Microslut would pay you off for writing a good review and you did so to get the goodies, wouldn't that make you a whore? 

This project which should get underway with computer distribution in mid-2007 has its pros and cons. The concept was to get computers into the hands of children in developing countries to better educate them as a better educated population is supposedly good for the economy (let's not go to the old joke about PhDs in India pumping gas, okay?).  The New York Times writes about both sides of the issue, one says detractors are focusing on the tool rather than the outcomes; the other that because something works here is not necessarily proof that it will work there. Here's a summary of the quotes:

Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher: “It’s as if people spent all of their attention focusing on Columbus’s boat and not on where he was going,” he said in an interview here. “You have to remember that what this is about is education.”

Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and educator who is an adviser to the project, has argued that if young people are given computers and allowed to explore, they will “learn how to learn.” That, Mr. Papert argues, is a more valuable skill than traditional teaching strategies that focus on memorization and testing.

“We believe you have to leverage the kids themselves,” Ms. (Mary Lou)  Jepsen (project engineer) said. “They’re learning machines.”

Larry Cuban, Stanford University, said in an interview. “However, if part of their rationale is that it will revolutionize education in various countries, I don’t think it will happen, and they are naïve and innocent about the reality of formal schooling.”

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is “just taking what we do in the rich world” and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too.

Okay, what do you think?