Ten Grand is Buried Here - Microsoft Australia | Hacker News Reader

Ten Grand is Buried Here - Microsoft Australia

microsoft.com

22 pointsJem53 comments

Considering that we as web developers have collectively wasted millions of dollars in man-hours dealing with IE's awfulness, $10,000 isn't quite enough.

Oh yeah, and the fact that they used images to render virtually all the text on the page shows that they still don't get it.

Humorously they are clever enough to detect my browser and take a pot shot at Safari, but not clever enough to detect my OS and realize I can't download IE 8.

Finally, the return of web pages that only render correctly in IE! I've been missing that terribly since all web designers started using Firefox a couple years ago.

"boring Safari", "old Firefox" and "Windows Internet Explorer 6". I'm not quite sure if they got that right…

Add "tarnished Chrome"... which is just so wrong that I can't imagine that someone wrote it with a straight face.

At least it got recognised... Opera is just "that browser". I don't know if that's more insulting or not.

Congratulations! You have found $10 Grand buried right here!

Now just click here to pay $4.95 through PayPal to cover mailing charges, and we'll send you the cheque.

Isn't this marketing scheme open to wild scamming?? If nobody knows what the "You've won!" screen will look like, then it opens the door to scammers. You'll just "know" when you've won. "When you find it, it'll be obvious that the $10,000 is yours."

Wow, yeah, they just invented a whole new class of phishing scams.

I wonder if the person who accidentally lands on this page will dismiss the notification as just another 'you are the millionth user' scam... Wasn't there an XKCD comic about that?

When I first landed on the page I completely ignored the text, and I searched for the "Skip Ad" button for about 20 seconds.

http://xkcd.com/570/

that's the one

So... Aren't trolls going to watch for clues on that Twitter feed and then setup fake sites that match the clues that say "You won!" and phish or confuse the poor users?

Or, just as likely, give ads for Firefox, Opera, Chrome, or Safari?

Yep :-)

http://tengrandburiedhere.com/winner.html

The problem with an established player using such methods is it makes them seem desperate. Makes me wonder why the product can't stand on its own.

I'm posting this here because I'd love to see HN's reaction to this competition. (Not because I want any of you to download IE8!)

I think it's an outrageous way of trying to pull in users. Can't attract legitimate IE8 downloaders? Bribe them instead!

It reminds me of a contest my old hometown newspaper used to run each year: a treasure hunt with clues printed daily in the paper. It certainly helped boost readership rates!

Yes, it's a bit odd, but it's a new way to get users to try IE8...

Firefox: Can attract FF downloaders. Ask your obnoxious supportors to obnoxiously push it down everyone's throat. (I am tying this from FF on ubuntu, I love FF.)

This is a legitimate strategy. Just because it is MS, this doesnot become evil.

I didn't use the word evil, you did.

Or, of course, Google Adsense paying site owners $1 per Firefox download. That was going on quite a long time.

"But you'll never find it using old firefox. (So get rid of it, or get lost.)" This is the first time microsoft tells me to get lost. A really weird tone for the otherwise very professional sounding Microsoft.

The whole ad has that tone, but maybe I'm used to wishy-washy American ads. I guess Australia is, after all, the birthplace of HTFU.

As an Aussie I really appreciate your usage of HTFU there!

Anyone not aware of the meaning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIVvjZc9Y (Possibly NSFW, swearing)

No one needed to pay me to use Chrome...

This is an awesome thing. I can't see tech-savvy people switching to IE and keeping it unless they prefer it. All of the less-tech-savvy people out there that catch wind of this will upgrade to IE8 Goodbye IE6!!!

I hope this does catch on :)

this is actually a really good thing for browser competition in general.

most people don't care about the browser they are using, and if microsoft wants to make people more conscious about browsers, more power to them. it will result in people being more careful with their browser selection, essentially developing a taste in a preferred browser.

Ahahahahaha.

Stay classy, Microsoft. Stay classy.

(modifies user agent string and begins hunt)

I think may be you can get away without actually downloading IE8. Use whatever browser you are using and view the source of the page.

How are they going to find out the browser the you use if you change the User-Agent-String?

Anyone up for the challenge without actually using IE8?

It would be really funny if someone using firefox/chrome won the prize.

This is going to be a popular idea but I don't think it will work if MS has their act together. You can profile a browser based on things like plugins. Maybe there is a plugin that only works in IE8 and is used for nothing but real browser identificaation. (I think this is what http://www.the41st.com/default.asp does)

I think as far as we are controlling the client, we can make it look like any browser. As far as I know (my knowledge is very limited in this area, please correct me if wrong) there is no way to be 100% sure that the user is using a particular browser.

You are correct that the end user controls what is ultimately sent to MS (or whomever is probing). However, if they are doing something like plugin enumeration or using a java applet to go a little deeper, you then have to know what the request looks like and what info they are expecting. You then have to intercept that request and send back the expected data It's possible, but a little harder and more time consuming than flipping the user agent.

At least in this stage of the game it's simply based on the sent user-agent. I changed Safari's UA to IE 8 and saw the "you're already using IE 8" page. Furthermore, when I visit in Safari on OS X I am prompted to download the incompatible IE 8. Safe to say they aren't using any sophisticated techniques.

User-Agent: "10; DELETE * FROM users --

Can't people with Australian domains just mess with people and serve up IE8 detected pages that tell users that they are big winners?

How can Microsoft actually inform the users that they have won? Will they deliver malware through ie8's security holes that hack into the users PayPal account and deposit the money?

Is Microsoft trying out the same exact tactics that make spam emails successful? At least it's not MS Nigeria.

Let's start a counter of the number of moms that forward this campaign to their hacker kids.

It's a funny contest, but not much to get worked up over. Unless the contest grabs the attention of CNN, we're talking about a contest in a relatively small market, and at a bargain for Microsoft.

While it would be nice if every IE user switched to Chrome, better folks download IE8 than plod along with IE6.

Still, I wonder why IE8 is "the only browser capable of cracking all the clues"...

> Unless the contest grabs the attention of CNN, we're talking about a contest in a relatively small market

I disagree - it's stuff like this that goes viral. There'll be the people like me who think it's a farce, and then there'll be those who want to try it out, all talking about it.

I'd be willing to bet that it'll be a trending topic on twitter within a couple of days.

Personally I'd even be willing to help it go viral by forwarding the link to my non-techie friends. At least that way we'll be helping erode the IE6 user-base...

Good point.

Are they Australian though? I can't seem to find an equivalent contest in the UK or US.

Edit: scratch that, just saw your comment above saying you're Aussie. :)

Does anyone have a cache of that page? The link appears dead and it sounds really interesting based on the comments :o)

I don't have a cache of the entire page, but I do have one of the image with the contest wording on:

http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/junk/copy-firefox.png

(The original is still available at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/ie8/competition/images/co... too)

Here's a grab of the site http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeresig/3635860872/in/set-72157...

yeah it's dead now. weird.

How odd, it appears to be back up again.

here's the chrome version: http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/9072/chromep.png

Screenshot of page: http://imgur.com/OvQNp.png Referenced twitter feed: http://twitter.com/tengrand_ie8 edit: thing sees to work again

...and there the page was gone (although I did get to view the comedy page). The possibility of getting $10k (american or austrailian?) to tempt people to use the newest deficient browser from microsoft.

This sounds like a challenge for 4chan crowd. I'm sure they will be ecstatic if an FF user wins the contest :)

Someone please get that AU$10,000 and donate it to open source browser projects.

You can break their code if you use an empty user agent string. Very robust.

Firefox 3.5RC1 is old? I think not!

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