Hacker News Reader

Comment by oceanghost | Hacker News Reader

This isn't Overstocks first rodeo.

Back when Microsoft was literally paying people to use Bing, bing had a promotion such that certain items were eligible for a 20% discount, which was paid via a rebate check from Microsoft.

One day, I ordered some item then canceled it, and a couple months later I got an email informing me I had been credited for the purchase via MS, and my rebate account had, $10 or something. It took me about... 30 seconds to realize the implications of this.

I ordered as many plasma TVs as I could, one at a time, and then canceled them. I got about $900 of rebate checks before someone got suspicious. They canceled my account because I was buying too many TVs. They never did figure out what was going on.

Was it ethical and moral? No. But I hate MS and they've stolen thousands from me over the years. It felt great to get one over on them.

Edit: I've hated MS since I saved all summer to buy MS-DOS 5 and it was complete crap.

View on HN

> But I hate MS and they've stolen thousands from me over the years.

I thought it was a cool story and a neat hack. I passed no ethical judgement. Until you went off the deep end with that fantasy-land justification.

MS didn't steal from you. You exchanged money for a product that, even if it was "complete crap", was the product that you desired more than others available in the market at the time of purchase.

It's not difficult to come up with a justification that passes a sniff test of conforming with reality: "I felt no ethical hesitation about this. MS shipped poor code for years. Most of the time the failures of that code most impacted their customers, I just found a case where it impacted them."

I was very plain about spoken about being a complete bastard and motivated by hate. I don't know how I could be any clearer about not being a good person in this instance.

Fortunately, I don't give a damn what strangers on the internet think about me :)

My only regret is not stealing more money from them.

I very much agree with your ethical justification.

I used to struggle with this too, but then I realized just how much corporations steal from America.

It wasn’t always like this of course, both consumers/citizens and companies can go back to treating the other not-like-shit, but companies can go first.

This all hit me one day when I realized that, even if I dedicated my life to crime and greed, I would never be able to steal/defraud as much as many companies have in several business hours.

That being said I want to make it clear I pay my taxes in full and take only the standard deduction.

Exactly. Thank you.

I don't have morals. I simply reflect them. You treat me ethically, I will treat you ethically.

MS stole from me, I steal from them. There's no moral high ground here. Just reality.

Denying the concept of morality is merely a transparent excuse for not feeling bad about behavior you know to be immoral.

You were doing better in your previous comment when you admitted you were being a bad person and simply didn't care.

Acting morally in all cases is denial of the true nature of the universe.

I destroy what is bad, and nurture what is good.

I don't think you deserve to get downvoted for this. You're speaking very honestly about your own motivations.

Thank you kindly.

I am a person who is very, VERY concerned about ethics. I spent weeks agonizing about if I should cash the checks.

I concluded, MS had treated me unfairly, but legally. I treated them unfairly, but legally.

No one is downvoting you because you're a jerk. They're downvoting you for making ridiculous statements like this one:

"But I hate MS and they've stolen thousands from me over the years."

I didn't down vote you. Sorry if I gave that impression. I don't downvote people who meaningfully contribute to the conversation.

I was just responding to the excuse.

S'all good :) I mistook your tone and if mine was off please accept my appologies.

This has all been very interesting.

Not only that, but the people who "stole" from him are so separated in time, space, and purpose from the people who operate the Bing rewards program that there's no way you could reasonably hold them responsible -- even if you accept that he was robbed.

Live by the corporate personhood, die by the corporate personhood. It wasn't personal, just business.

Georgia resident shoots postal carrier, claiming revenge against Union government for battlefield death of great-great-great-grandfather

Technically you're right Microsoft didn't steal anything, they just did Business. Which often feels to the common man like theft when Business is done as well as Microsoft did it in their heyday. On the other hand technically Oceanghost didn't steal anything either. He just customered a little better than Microsoft was counting on. Seems like fair play to me and I'm not sure how using the word theft is fantasy-land justification. It's not theft in the strictest legal sense, but it's a very common usage of theft.

>technically Oceanghost didn't steal anything either. He just customered a little better than Microsoft was counting on.

That's like saying if a business left their door unlocked everything's free.

>It's not theft in the strictest legal sense

It's fraud.

The law doesn't think you're so clever, make no mistake, this scheme is illegal. I posted another comment where a woman was convicted of wire fraud for doing essentially exactly the same thing.

The intent to defraud matters as well as the scale (which goes hand in hand with intent).

"I hate MS and they've stolen thousands from me over the years"

I can honestly say my relationship has been anything but mutually beneficial with MS too... and I owe them a bit of gratitude for that.

When I was a teenager in the 90's I wanted to learn programming, so I downloaded Visual Studio 6. I learned C++, and MFC. I gave them no money, but I still got my first marketable skill. Later I would go on to download SQL Server. I gave them no money, but in return, I learned SQL. Got pretty good at it.

When my career progressed, my relationship with Microsoft started to become more mutually beneficial. Employers have purchased MSDN subscriptions on my behalf (the really expensive one!) I've pushed for SQL Server over alternatives. The better I knew the unique features of their products, the more it became my preference. I wrote .NET code for years, and have been responsible for my employers purchasing probably tens of thousands of dollars worth of licenses... for products that worked very well.

Today I mostly work with open source software stacks, but I spent 10 years working with Microsoft, and I do owe them a bit of gratitude. They've improved my life for sure.

Apologies for asking but how does a company like MS steal thousands from you? Enterprise SW?

Perhaps before your time, MS was a monopoly and you literally couldn't buy a computer without paying them, whether it ran windows or not. They sold crap at premium prices. They forced computer companies to pay a DOS/Windows license for each machine MADE, not if it ran their OS.

The used dirty tricks to sink their competitors, stole ideas, products, etc. They were the original bastards of the tech industry.

I have hated them since I was a kid...in the 80s.

This Simpsons scene summarizes things nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE

https://www.wired.com/2008/06/gates-monopoly/

It's still pretty difficult to find a laptop without Windows. I had paid about a thousand dollars of OEM licenses that I didn't want and never used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows

The part where you "literally couldn't buy a computer without paying them" is simply not true. I bought a lot of computers and computer parts at the time, and probably the only time I "had" to pay for an MS license was when buying a laptop. (But I got that one used, at a much cheaper price, on eBay, so...)

You are vastly exaggerating.

Exaggerating, but not vastly - it really did used to be quite difficult to buy a computer that didn't have Windows pre-installed.

I have bought about 10+ machines which has windows pre-installed, but I immediately wiped to install Linux. At 50$/OEM license, thats about 500$ I have lost. Not sure I would classify that as stealing, but some people do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows#...

I accidentally left a (mostly) empty application service running on Azure for about 7 months on their Pay-As-You-Go plan. I racked up over $500 in charges that I didn't know about, and I felt robbed. In reality, I'm just kinda dumb.

Wasn't there a way to contact them and ask for a rebate or something? They can be understanding of that kind of stuff.

Time spent re-installing Windows?

At least with linux, you got some command line skills (back in the day).

There's an old saying that applies here:

"Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered."

At least you didn't go to jail like a women who bilked QVC for over $400,000 in merchandise obtained an identical way: https://consumerist.com/2007/10/31/woman-exploited-bug-on-qv...

> I saved all summer to buy MS-DOS 5 and it was complete crap.

Wut? The release that improved (vastly) upon 3.31 (the most common previous release as MSDOS4 was... just all over the place) and the one that added MS DOS Editor and QBasic??

It was so much better.

The same thing is possible with Acorns and Zappos. I alerted them about the issue via their bug bounty program and their response was basically "meh, you can only earn a max of $40 a month"

Whats going on at Acorns? I literally know people down there. My gig before last was a block from them.

I put my email in my profile, I am not attempting to disparage acorns by any means, I was just unimpressed by their response.

Thanks. Its really not important though it was really just idle curiosity. My interactions with all their people have been very pleasant.

You may want to delete this post or at least make sure it doesn't trace back to your real-world identity. You've just publicly admitted to interstate fraud...If the statute of limitations hasn't run you could be prosecuted for it.

Also, based on your comments MS has stolen nothing from you. MS may not have been the best OS back in the day but it was better than what was generally available at the time to consumers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com