Indeed the guy most certainly didn't know shit. On the other hand, rude or not, Lina turned out to be right and the MS-guy turned out to be ignorant of the type of company he was working for, as well as defending.
Additionally these so-called "paranoid" questions didn't came out of thin air either. 10-15 years ago I also was very distrusting of Microsoft and what they were doing (there was a lot of anti-trust going on ...). But somehow they starting doing a few things right, wrote some good software and OS in the mean time and they "regained my trust" to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing, and perceive it as something childish.
Well, that I am no longer going to do, lest I have to eat my words. That "trust" is completely gone, and I feel kind of foolish for believing it existed in the first place, "trust" is a kind of thing that happens between two persons, not between a person and a gigantic corporation. The latter is too volatile, there can be no build up or breakage, it's every moment again different, dependent on who is in charge and which individual personalities are involved in a decision. Rationally, one instant snapshot cannot make or break the trust of the next one.
I do feel kind of foolish. I'm typing this on Win7, planning to install Linux for a while now, but I had some crazy wild ideas for a dual-boot scenario in mind that I never got around to and everything just worked so there was no hurry.
Before next week I'll be back on Linux, maybe even sooner.
> to the point I'd speak out against senseless M$-bashing
Senseless bashing - including intentional miss-$pellings and holding one company (Microsoft) to different standards to others (Facebook, Google, Apple) is still childish.
However, not all bashing is senseless - Microsoft has a lot of explaining to do. Sure, so do Facebook, Google and Apple but that doesn't let MS off the hook. It makes the case for installing a Linux instead a lot stronger.
His job was to represent Microsoft, which involves answering questions (to the best of his ability given the access to information that he has). As long as the questions were not worded or spoken in an unnecessarily pointed/aggressive manner I really can't see any reason to call the question asker rude. "It confuses me to find you here, could you please explain so I can fill in the blanks in my knowledge about your company" seems a perfectly valid question to ask of a company representative, and raising a security concern for said rep to respond to is valid too.
You can't expect a show rep to know about anything like prism though - that information would have been "classified" and available only to those well above his pay grade.
If companies can later claim that their employees statements weren't properly informed what is to stop companies making any claims they want via their lower level employees.
The company and those with the information can still be culpable but the salesperson on the frontline isn't to blame unless they have a clue. What they say is still said by the company and the company should still be liable for harm caused by any of the untruths told on their behalf because the company does know even if the individual does not.
