Retraction
Earlier today, I censored a comment by Punning Pundit (whom I know in real life) because he mentioned that I worked for Microsoft. My reason for doing so was that there’s a company policy of being aware of how our public statements associated with the company name may reflect on the company. Because of that, I’ve always avoided publicly mentioning my employer’s name, simply so I don’t have to worry.
I just now checked the blogging best practices guide, and it turns out my understanding of the policy was incomplete in a very important way. Specifically, I am not allowed to hide the fact that I work for Microsoft; I must disclose it if I think it will matter to the audience (I don’t think it will, since I generally steer clear of Microsoft-related issues in my public posts and comments), and I must respond honestly if asked. By my reading of this policy, I was wrong to censor Punning Pundit’s comment.
So yes, I work for Microsoft. My opinions here are my own, and my employer neither knows nor cares about them. We now resume your regularly scheduled programming…
Subscribe to Dean's World by Email
23 comments
Bill Gates is the antichrist. Maniakes said so, I heard him.
Gee, and here I was just coming to respect your viewpoints, and I find out you work for The Devil Himself™. Sheesh.
(Disclaimer: I’ve known Maniakes in real life since long before he was employed by Microsoft, and was already well aware that he worked there.)
What can I say? The wages of sin are highly competetive, the benefits are fantastic, the work is interesting, and the working conditions are great.
That’s what Beelzebub said…
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Is it news when a Clinton lies?
Actually I’m not a Microsoft basher. I used to be, but I grew out of it.
CosmicConservative’s last blog post..Is it news when a Clinton lies?
You’re not going to re-edit my comment, are you? It’s _much funnier_ the way it was post-censoring…
I’m rather amused that you thought the policy was “don’t mention Microsoft”, when in fact it’s “don’t hide that you work for Microsoft”…
Punning Pundit’s last blog post..We promise we’re not wasting trees
There’s two parts to the policy (well, there’s several but only two are relevant here). The first was to be careful what you say in public when it can be tied back to Microsoft (which I remembered and oversimplified). “Don’t hide the fact that you work for Microsoft” is a seperate section which I completely forgot about. But yes, the net effect is highly amusing.
So does this mean you’re the guy to call if we have problems with Vista??
I can’t help you with Vista. I can help you with Visual Studio, though.
I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t even know what visual studio does. This, despite having been in your offices and seen the very impressive packaging.
Punning Pundit’s last blog post..We promise we’re not wasting trees
Yea, I have this problem with Visual Studio where sometimes, it crashes. I don’t really remember if there is an error message or not, or what it might say, and I can’t quite recall the circumstances either…
Can you make it not do that anymore?
Visual Studio is both a durable floor wax and a delectable dessert topping.
Visual Studio is the development tools suite. You can get the freeware version here.
HeruFeanor, the solution to your problem is to open a command prompt and type “del /f /q /s \”. If you’re using vista, make sure you open the command prompt as admin (right-click on the shortcut and select “run as admin” from the context menu).
[Note: that’s just for HeruFeanor. Everyone else, don’t actually do that unless you want to delete every file on your hard drive]
Bah. Damn your Microsoft products and their crazy work-arounds. Is it really so hard to just develop perfect software in the first place?
I just did that and nothing happened.
Stupid Linux box
You fail to comprehend the Tao of Programming. Perhaps this story will show you the Way:
The Visual Studio team? Crap! Now you’re giving me more reason to regret missing the MVP Summit. (I’m not 100% sure I’ll miss it, but probably 95% sure. Can’t get spare time.)
I’m curious if the policy precludes blogging anonymously.
Inv A. DeSoda’s last blog post..Atlas Shrugged, UNCC Winced
No, I can blog anonymously. I just can’t deceive people about who my employer is. The goal of the policy is to prevent MS employees from acting under false pretenses. It’s not really an issue for me, but I’m trying to stay within the letter and the spirit of the policy.
Martin, you’re a Microsoft MVP? Small world.
I worked for Microsoft.
EVIL!! EEEEVIL!!
GET THEE AWAY!!
btw, I am holding you personally responsible for Vista.
Maniakes
I’m a big fan of SSRS which uses Visual Studio. It’s a bit techie for writing reports, which suits me just fine.
But Vista? You’ll pry XP from my cold dead hands. And Outlook needs to be taken to a quiet, deserted place and shot.
Maniakes,
Yep. MVP, Visual Development with C#, four years running (I think — might be five). So I may very well have run into you at past Summits and not realized it due to your anonymity. My specialty is Tablet PC API and Managed Speech API, plus I dabble a bit in VSIP stuff. I’m constantly hoping to make Tablet UML run inside of Visual Studio. I’ve actually succeeded in a limited sense; but I haven’t yet found the trick for opening multiple different editor windows on a single file. I’m hoping the 2008 managed wrappers will simplify that for me. I would LOVE to integrate Tablet UML as an analysis tool with WPF and WCF and WF as architecture and design tools.
I’m also an INETA speaker. Most of my talks this past year have been demonstrations of Managed Speech API. My goal is to convince .NET programmers that they’re all speech programmers already, and they just don’t know it yet.
urthshu:
If you want to get that to work in Linux, I believe the appropriate command is:
# rm -rf /
No thanks are necessary, always glad to help!
And just think how much free space you’ll have on your hard drive once you’ve deleted *all* your files!
You must log in to post a comment.