Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Gags Own Employees to Put Customers' Life at Risk

NDA for DoA

This story is truly disgusting, so although it does not involve Novell, it won't escape without a comment. It happens to show what a vicious and irresponsible company Microsoft has become (or has always been).



Here is the gist of it:

Microsoft fires quality assurance whistle-blower



[...]

Robert Delaware talked to Venturebeat on the Xbox 360 defects and might face litigation, presumably for violating a non-disclosure agreement.


So, Microsoft has just 'pulled another Charles Pancerzewski' -- an employee who blew the whistle on Microsoft fraud and then sued the company, having been sacked for being truthful. Microsoft paid him millions of dollars to disappear along with the evidence which had already convinced a judge to go ahead.

This latest news is also covered in:



To use Russian reversal humour, in Halo, user kills Xbox360. In Microsoft, XBox360 kills user (and sometimes babies). This issue would not be quite so severe if it were not for claims of death due to burning XBoxes. Here are some reports from last week:



It's becoming pretty obvious why Microsoft needed to gag its own employees. With billions of dollars already lost in the XBox business, Microsoft shows no signs of recovery. Recently in the news:



That last reference says it all. XBox 360 is dead. The problem is that Microsoft permits innocent human beings to die with it. Money comes before safety, honesty, and people's lives. This type of deliberate negligence changes the answer to the question: "has Microsoft ever caused the death of people?"

Gates: No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.

FOCUS: Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0".

Gates: No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?

FOCUS: Yeah, I did..."

--Bill Gates, FOCUS Magazine, 1995

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