Bribing amateur bloggers with scooters/laptops/mp3 players? No problem

From the website:

Enter the Golden Blog Awards to win great prizes

All you have to do is mention the word ‘office’ and the link ‘www.itsnotcheating.com.au’ in your blog. Winner is judged on creativity of the story.

The blog or video with highest number of supporting comments will have the chance to win this fab music pack.

That’s right: the point of the site is to offer Microsoft Office Ultimate at a 93% discount to Australian College students, and bribe them into pimping Microsoft Office on their blogs. I don’t think that needs comment.

From the site:
It’s not cheating if…

• You do it in another postcode
• You use the thesaurus in word
• You drink light beer
• You’re home before midnight
• You don’t get caught

Contrast that with Bill’s response to Gorbachov’s Plea for mercy for a School teacher at a poor Russian school
According to Microsoft, it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught, but if you do get caught, they’re more than happy to send you to Siberia to rot.

It’s reasonable for Microsoft to try to show a friendly, smiling face to the 18-24 age demographic; it shows they’re paying attention, and understand how powerful bloggers really are. That doesn’t, however, change who they are; just below the surface, they’re still a faceless, soulless corporation, the black hole of modern computing, and no amount of hype or jive is going to change that. They’re desperate, and despite their flailing attempts to maintain dominance with FUD and pure brute force, they’re circling the drain. There’ll be a party at my house on the day they fall in. Be sure to save the date.

Oh, btw:

http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/

I hope I win a scooter.