Thanks! I figured it should be satire since it was meant for a laugh, rather than being a serious discussion, and the satire tag says (satire, parody, and other humor), though I agree it might imply that the material is fake. Wasn't sure which way to split it.
This reminds me of another Microsoft tale, though one that may be apocryphal and certainly muddled in my own memory by the passing decades:
For a long time, the company stance at Microsoft was that adware and spyware were merely user error and readily handled by any competent professional. As the story goes, Steve Ballmer had a niece whose computer got infected with a nasty piece of pop up ads and he assured her that he could get it taken care of swiftly without reformatting the drive and starting over.
The machine was passed up the ranks of technical staff at Microsoft, but no one could actually remove all the spyware that had accumulated. As the niece kept asking for her machine back, Ballmer was finally told that backing up important files to external media and wiping the drive was the only path forward. This admission of defeat was what finally lead to Ballmer approving resources for creating Windows Defender.
In this, the Year of Our Lord 2026, my kid wanted to set up a Minecraft Realm.
I have Family Safety enabled. He can’t set up a Realm because of some setting there. It tells me to go to Family Safety and update his settings.
I literally could not enable online play for my 11yo’s Minecraft account by following any instructions or using any app. I finally had to find the URL to take me where I needed to go in some Reddit post. On the site, by the way, everyone is identified by gamer tag and there is no obvious mapping to email or name. I don’t know my 11yo’s randomly-assigned gamer tag and it doesn’t show up anywhere obvious.
It also apparently takes 24 hours to update?? And it’s also unclear what permissions need to be enabled for Minecraft, just “check your settings in your Microsoft account.”
Spoilers: it’s not your Microsoft Account. It’s your Xbox account. But it’s the Xbox account setting under “Windows 10”…never mind that (a) this is Windows 11 and (b) Windows 10 is EOL.
Oh! And they don’t take American Express to buy the necessary package for Minecraft, but they don’t say they don’t take Amex. Instead you get “oops! An unknown error occurred!” until I finally used a Visa.
technomancy | 5 hours ago
I don't think this is satire as the current tagging implies; it seems to be a real email thread uncovered during legal discovery: https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/gates-sends-angry-e-mail-sounds-just-like-a-customer/
[OP] nrposner | 3 hours ago
Thanks! I figured it should be satire since it was meant for a laugh, rather than being a serious discussion, and the satire tag says (satire, parody, and other humor), though I agree it might imply that the material is fake. Wasn't sure which way to split it.
rprospero | 3 hours ago
This reminds me of another Microsoft tale, though one that may be apocryphal and certainly muddled in my own memory by the passing decades:
For a long time, the company stance at Microsoft was that adware and spyware were merely user error and readily handled by any competent professional. As the story goes, Steve Ballmer had a niece whose computer got infected with a nasty piece of pop up ads and he assured her that he could get it taken care of swiftly without reformatting the drive and starting over.
The machine was passed up the ranks of technical staff at Microsoft, but no one could actually remove all the spyware that had accumulated. As the niece kept asking for her machine back, Ballmer was finally told that backing up important files to external media and wiping the drive was the only path forward. This admission of defeat was what finally lead to Ballmer approving resources for creating Windows Defender.
lorddimwit | 2 hours ago
In this, the Year of Our Lord 2026, my kid wanted to set up a Minecraft Realm.
I have Family Safety enabled. He can’t set up a Realm because of some setting there. It tells me to go to Family Safety and update his settings.
I literally could not enable online play for my 11yo’s Minecraft account by following any instructions or using any app. I finally had to find the URL to take me where I needed to go in some Reddit post. On the site, by the way, everyone is identified by gamer tag and there is no obvious mapping to email or name. I don’t know my 11yo’s randomly-assigned gamer tag and it doesn’t show up anywhere obvious.
It also apparently takes 24 hours to update?? And it’s also unclear what permissions need to be enabled for Minecraft, just “check your settings in your Microsoft account.”
Spoilers: it’s not your Microsoft Account. It’s your Xbox account. But it’s the Xbox account setting under “Windows 10”…never mind that (a) this is Windows 11 and (b) Windows 10 is EOL.
Oh! And they don’t take American Express to buy the necessary package for Minecraft, but they don’t say they don’t take Amex. Instead you get “oops! An unknown error occurred!” until I finally used a Visa.
kwas | 43 minutes ago
23 years later this is using any software in my field feels like. Abberant stiched horrors simulacring thougthful design.