back to article Microsoft hires hippy to lecture resellers on being nice to the world

The third day's keynote at the Worldwide Partners Conference is always a tough act. The night before is generally a time to party, and no one in the IT community parties harder than resellers. So 9am is not a good time for them to show Microsoft some love. There were more than a few shaking hands and pale faces in the audience …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Lecture resellers?!

    Now, I probably fall completely outside the category considering that I'm a very small player.

    Having said that, my first reaction to this article was: "I'd be more impressed if Microsoft would start being nicer to its resellers!. I know; this link is about their TechNet squeeze; but you'd be surprised how much TechNet has managed to help me help my customers in the last 1.5 years.

    Honestly; if such a "hippie" would step up at my doorstep I'd be offended and would make very sure that they'd realize this as well.

    Again; will never happen and would make no difference at all, I know. The idea still made me feel good ;-)

  2. Captain Nonsensical
    Meh

    I must admit...

    Myself and a few others fell asleep by that point... 2 parties, many crates of Molson and a dirty dog on the way back to hotel will do that to you.

    They did try to wake us up with Thievery Corporation admittedly, which probably brought back visions of the previous nights clubbing. However, it still doesn't explain the Mounties hat I found at the bottom of my bed this morning.

    1. Don Jefe
      Joke

      Re: I must admit...

      What praytell is a 'dirty dog'? Is it a hooker? There were quite a few of them buzzing around. Its a hooker isn't it? Is it something you do to a hooker? I must know!

      Really, WTF is a 'dirty dog'?

  3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    WTF?

    Chopra!

    They really have lost it.

    Obligatory link

    1. beep54

      Re: Chopra!

      Well, if you haven't seen this, you should.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGwgMeO5cF4

      Appropriately titled: "Steve Ballmer goes nuts"

      Why is a failed football coach running this company?

  5. solidsoup
    Megaphone

    Good News Everyone!

    As Deepak Chopra taught us, Quantum Mechanics means that anything can happen at any time for no reason!

    1. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Good News Everyone!

      Too bad all Deepak Chopra knows about Quantum mechanics is the buzz word.

  6. Peter Murphy
    WTF?

    "We must go ... into an unbounded awareness... which has no limits in space and time..."

    So Deepak Chopra is implying that P=NP, isn't he?

    He's not saying it. He's probably never heard of that conjecture. But if time is one of those limitations we can overcome by willpower, then the implication is that the lengthy time for solving NP-hard problems - like cracking 1024-bit RSA keys - can be reduced to seconds by really, really wanting to. Maybe it helps if you also click your heels together three times and wish on a star.

    I think he's full of it, myself.

  7. Don Jefe
    Alien

    Hailing Frequencies Open

    Will someone beam this toolbox away? Christ. I'm a MS devotee, no doubt, but they went waaaay out with this guy. The feckin bracelet was so far over the top & so far away from ANY kind of useful message I just couldn't handle it. I was one of several shaky handed folks to leave just a bit early. The whole jabber session was so out there it was almost surreal.

  8. Winkypop Silver badge
    WTF?

    Deepak Chopra?

    He has as much credibility as a homeopathic neutron bomb.

    1. David Pollard

      Wow. A homeopathic neutron bomb.

      Could you use one of these to deflect an asteroid which is heading for Earth?

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: Wow. A homeopathic neutron bomb.

        Why not? It works by giving the asteroid a very, very small nudge towards the earth.

    2. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Deepak Chopra?

      I disagree. Deepak Chopra is less substantive.

    3. skeptical i
      Mushroom

      Not to be confused with the self-aware nihilist bomb a la _Dark Star_

      Let there be light.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsucks is expert and legendary...

    ...at violation of law for profit. They know how to illegally manipulate the judicial system as well as exploit consumers.

  10. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Goddammit! We have not built universal turing machines to then segue into "unbounded awareness"!

    "An animal has no critical faculty; he has no control over the function of his brain and no power to question its content. To an animal, whatever strikes his awareness is an absolute that corresponds to reality—or rather, it is a distinction he is incapable of making: reality, to him, is whatever he senses or feels. And this is the Witch Doctor’s epistemological ideal, the mode of consciousness he strives to induce in himself. To the Witch Doctor, emotions are tools of cognition, and wishes take precedence over facts. He seeks to escape the risks of a quest for knowledge by obliterating the distinction between consciousness and reality, between the perceiver and the perceived, hoping that an automatic certainty and an infallible knowledge of

    the universe will be granted to him by the blind, unfocused stare of his eyes turned inward, contemplating the sensations, the feelings, the urgings, the muggy associational twistings projected by the rudderless mechanism of his undirected consciousness. Whatever his mechanism produces is an absolute not to be questioned; and whenever it clashes with reality, it is reality that he ignores.

    Since the clash is constant, the Witch Doctor’s solution is to believe that what he perceives is another, “higher” reality—where his wishes are omnipotent, where contradictions are possible and A is non-A, where his assertions, which are false on earth, become true and acquire the status of a “superior” truth which he perceives by means of a special faculty denied to other, “inferior,” beings. The only validation of his consciousness he can obtain on earth is the belief and the obedience of others, when they accept his “truth” as superior to their own perception of reality. While Attila extorts their obedience by means of a club, the Witch Doctor obtains it by means of a much more powerful weapon: he pre-empts the field of morality."

    1. beep54
      Headmaster

      Re: Goddammit! We have not built universal turing machines to then segue into "unbounded awareness"!

      Dear God, please tell me that is not a real quote of anything pretending to be sense. Now, mind you, I actually had a course at the Univ. of TX in the early '70s called, "Vampirism in Eastern Europe". Turned out to be not only highly entertaining (and and easy A), but fairly loaded with useful info. The professor got into this because he was an anthropologist trying to find out how old world ideas had transferred to the New World. He was interviewing farmsteads in Canada about their beliefs and came to one where the farmer was very reluctant to let him onto the property. This was unusual, especially since it was noon time, which would almost always cause an invite to dine. Upon questioning, the farmer admitted that his reluctance was that they feared gramma had become a vampire. I can't recall whether or not he ever got fed, but it made him very curious about vampire legends. Turns out that they are both universal (see Chinese vampires and others) and very, very specific as to how one deals with them. In Eastern Europe alone, all you have to do is walk to a different place to get a different explanation. I always liked the one where you had to have the 7th son of a 7th son look through the sleeve of a coat to find them.

      Sorry, I ramble on. But the point, if there is any here, is that you can have mumbo-jumbo or you can find possible real world explanations for things. There are certain real world explanations for why vampires might exist, emphasis on might. Most known societies have a version. And it is a myth. Yes, some (idiots) drink blood (can't be good for them) and some bath in blood (again, well, think of Countess Bathory walled up for life).

      I think my point is, is that Deepak is a bit of a, what....?? C'mon, you Brits have a good name for various types of idiocy.

  11. Richard Wharram
    FAIL

    Somebody should be fired.

    Seriously? Deepak Chopra?

    They might as well have flushed his fee down the bog and hope the poo fairies accept the offering and grant wealth and happiness to all.

  12. Marky hearts
    Thumb Up

    Pray tell

    @Destroy all monsters

    Pray tell, whence this fine quote came? I spent 3 years studying anthropology being drawn to the same conclusion, but in all the books I read never saw it so well put.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Pray tell

      It's from Alissa Sinowjewna Rosenbaum's (aka. "Ayn Rand") "FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL". She goes at everything with a steam hammer and a rivet gun (as she is wont to do) and despises Kant and Zen Buddhism but there is some good stuff in there.

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Pray tell

        "To the Witch Doctor, emotions are tools of cognition, and wishes take precedence over facts. He seeks to escape the risks of a quest for knowledge by obliterating the distinction between consciousness and reality, between the perceiver and the perceived, hoping that an automatic certainty and an infallible knowledge of

        the universe will be granted to him by the blind, unfocused stare of his eyes turned inward, contemplating the sensations, the feelings, the urgings, the muggy associational twistings projected by the rudderless mechanism of his undirected consciousness."

        And how beautifully that describes every Ayn Rand devotee in existence.

  13. h4rm0ny

    Deepak: There are fundamentalists in Science.

    Richard Dawkins: There are no fundamentalists in Science.

    I don't know anything about Deepak Chopra other than that video and article I just read, but sadly Richard Dawkins is wrong in the above. They are there and can be as dogmatic as anyone.

    1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      If you think that fundamentalism is possible in science, you don't understand science.

  14. mhenriday
    Holmes

    I don't at all mean to be unkind to Ian,

    but isn't taking on «hippies» Lewis Page's job ? Of course, for Lewis, a hippie is a «scientist» (note the scare quotes) who disagrees with Lewis' own Olympian pretensions to the last word on «climate science» - or perhaps just an unfortunate individual whose national academy of science, through no fault of his or her own, happens to be long to the IAP (InterAcademy Panel - which happens to incude among its over 100 member organisations such «hippy» (my scare quotes) outfits as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Science), so perhaps Dr Chopra, who definitely is *not* a scientist - with or without scare quotes, but who definitely is a successful businessman («entrepreneur» is, I believe, the term du jour) really wouldn't qualify as a true Lewis-Pagian hippy....

    In any event, I have to agree with other posters here - employing Deepak Chopra to hold a keynote at the MS Worldwide Partners Conference seems typical for Microsoft's current leadership. I never thought I'd find myself feeling sorry for Microsoft, but with people like Steven Anthony Ballmer at the helm....

    Henri

  15. Brian Smithson

    hippy != hippie != Deepak

    Hippy is an adjective to be used when someone has large hips.

    Deepak isn't a hippie (nor is he particularly hippy).

    Other than that, WTF was MS thinking?

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