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Comment by alrs | Hacker News Reader

1970s-style PR. This mirrors the oil company messaging: "pay no attention to the oil spills and CIA-sponsored coups de etat, we're the swell people that make the petrochemicals in that ziploc baggie in your little girl's lunchbox." "We power the trucks that bring organic vegetables to your dinner table."

Microsoft: For the Children.

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Ziploc baggies? That is PR amatuer hour. You've got to talk about making the plastic that premature baby incubators are made out of.

Remember, it can't just be for kids, it has to be saving kids.

How about the plastics used in pacemakers (cue story about four-year-old Jimmy and his pacemaker)

Wanna see that done masterfully?

http://www.apple.com/ios/videos/#developers

Think for a minute what these helicopter shots cost in these places, and getting the crews and 4k cameras and such out there....

Oooo, that almost makes me angry. For the prosthesis, it's not like the "app" couldn't be replaced by a single switch on the foot. From what I can tell the "app" is literally the most superficial, least important part of the whole system.

Good example.

More like a 90s BASF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NQuMr45xd4, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHPpsb3FzM

We don't make the MBA/OSX/Chrome you use to write this comment - we make the chair you sit on possible.

Remember what it was like back in the 80s before there were chairs?

Those DEC VT100's were awfully hard to sit on.

There is a difference between saying "chairs wouldn't exist without Microsoft" and "Microsoft had a hand in making possible the chair you currently sit in". To be clear, I'm making the second argument - that there is a disproportionate amount of vitriol directed at Microsoft (and even in this thread) given the role that it has played in enabling human advancement.

Microsoft: making chairs cheaper for 30 years. =]

Were chair prices spiraling out of control before DOS was released? Something like 40% of office furniture is made by american prisoners, and I have a feeling they're not using Windows while making it. Paying workers <$0.15 an hour is what is making chairs cheaper.

Your mock argument for oil companies is actually better than the one in the article for microsoft.

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