[vox] M1cr0SoFt are l33T hax0rZ

[William Kendrick <nbs@sMAPSonic.net>]

In case you missed it on slashdot:

  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2102244,00.html


To sum it up, MS was trying to rig the votes in a "Java vs. .NET" poll
on a ZDNet site.  ZDNet noticed, because the people from Microsoft doing it
are so stupid, they don't even understand web technologies.  *boggle!*

Some examples:

  * The poll stuffing occured rapidly, and halfway through the voting period.

    You need to do it slowly, throughout the entire voting period, for it
    to not be noticable.  DUH!


  * A very high percentage of voters came from within the microsoft.com
    domain.

    *twitch* *twitch*


  * While multiple vote casting is not allowed, many people (from within
    the microsoft.com domain) attempted it.

    As Ed Wood would've said:  "They'll NEVER notice it!"
    One person attempted to cast the same vote over 200 times!


  * An e-mail was spread within Microsoft with the subject
    "PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET!"

    How does ZDNet know?  Why, thanks to Microsoft's own Exchange, of course!
    It happily stuck the message subject line and username in the
    HTTP "Referer" headers when it went to request the voting page.

    Oops!



I'm not sure this is nearly as bad as when Microsoft had dead people
lobbying for them in support of the antitrust case*, but what's funny
here is the complete lack of /technical/ clue.


-bill!

* http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2093751,00.html
_______________________________________________
vox mailing list
vox@lists.lugod.org
http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox