Scroogled Keep Calm Mug | Hacker News Reader

Scroogled Keep Calm Mug

microsoftstore.com

31 pointsents28 comments

Is there a large contingent of bitter MS employees on HN? Does it really need to be explained how the whole scroogled campaign is kind of ridiculous and hypocritical?

>Is there a large contingent of bitter MS employees on HN?

Huh what? What leads you to that conclusion? I'm totally lost here.

I think the implicit question was meant to be "Who is up-voting this post on HN, bitter MS employees?"

When I saw the comment, the story had 6 points i.e 5 upvotes.

Even making the huge assumption and leap that it was all MS employees and no one else voted on it who thought it was interesting news, I don't know if 5 counts as a "large contingent".

To be clear, I am not in favor of this campaign and I did not upvote the story.

I up-voted the story not because I like the message or because I'm for it but because I want it to be seen. I'm against any kind of "attack" advertising and I'd like to see it discussed, not ignored.

Normally I would think it would be considered a very bad sign when a company is so terrible at convincing you of their own greatness that their only recourse is to attack the competition.

Normally, but not surprising, given the source, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt#Mic...

> "If an open source software solution breaks, who's gonna fix it?"

Oh my god that is gold.

It's a whole category of products with shirts, hats, posters and more:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Scroogle...

(via http://marketingland.com/microsoft-web-store-now-selling-scr...)

How incredibly childish.

Keep calm and...wait until we properly encrypt our services - Microsoft

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/encrypt-web-report-who...

Keep Calm and Focus On Things Other Than The Quality Of Our Own Products.

Xbox: Keep calm while we read your biometrics and detect what emotions you're feeling and use that information to do who knows what!

http://mashable.com/2013/11/18/xbox-one-facts/

"The Xbox team has stressed that the motion-capturing camera Kinect, which is bundled with every Xbox One, is a much more sophisticated device than its predecessor. The camera can see a lot more of what is happening in the room; it can sense the number of people, see their skeletons, monitor heartbeats and even recognize faces."

At least Google can't see my skeleton...

Unless the thing fires x-rays, I'm pretty sure they meant "it uses the data to extrapolate a skeleton".

Keep Calm and Regurgitate Once-Popular Memes

Please, can this finally be the nail in the coffin of the "Keep Calm and <x>" meme?

"Keep calm and kill this meme"

I think that meme was all nailed up and buried a long time ago.

Unfortunately "a long time ago" seems to be Microsoft's primary domain.

"steal your data" seems boldly libelous.

Google employees might end up buying these. Last time MSFT did the campaign with the slimy Google Docs salesman guy with a tie with Google logo colors, Google employees got the ties made and started wearing them internally.

The best way to deal with this kind of tasteless campaigning is with humor not anger. My guess is whoever runs these campaigns is separate from the product and engineering people, and Microsoft needs to realize it is doing more damage to its brand than Google.

Its kind of not surprising that Microsoft's anti-Google strategy looks like a needlessly desperate negative political campaign since it started when Microsoft brought on Mark Penn[1], whose go-hard-negative strategy was so successful for Democratic then-front-runner Hillary Clinton in 2008, to lead its messaging efforts.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn

They're not stealing my data. I gladly give it to them.

As an HTC-Android phone user, I'd buy a mug titled "<MS logo> keep calm while we steal your money". Not if MS is selling it, though.

Every time I see this "Scroogled" campaign I think about Microsoft and Google in an elevator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlOSdRMSG_k

Am I the only one who can no longer intuitively differentiate between these geometrically styled logos in four flat primary colors and so was initially confused by this mug?

I think it's the hypocrisy that irks me the most about this.

I remember a short while back a Microsoft employee was asking on HN 'why the hate?' Well, THIS (Oh, and the patents thing).

The whole patent extortion against Android and Linux is incredible. I'd very surprised the tactics they're using are not actually considered real extortion. Signing an NDA before showing you the patents they're threatening you with?

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