The Continuing War Against Microsoft's "Facts" Campaign 316
davidmwilliams writes "I've been rallying against Microsoft's so-called 'Get the Facts' site for the last fortnight in my blog. Rather than give any legitimate comparison facing off Windows Server vs similarly spec'd Linux options, the Microsoft spin doctors opt for bunkum and hogwash with sensational headlines that don't have any substance underneath. Here's the state of play, including an update on my request to Microsoft PR to do something about the blatant lack of integrity displayed. I also go over the latest case study put up by Microsoft: they promise to show why people are choosing Windows Server 2008 over Linux using the City of Uppsala as an example."
who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
people will choose the software they feel suits their needs best. shockingly it's not always going to be linux.
Also shockingly, if they are continually fed lies without anybody disagreeing, this affects what they feel suits their needs best.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:who cares? LINUX SPINMASTER @ WORK, lol! (Score:4, Informative)
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I thi
Re:who cares? LINUX SPINMASTER @ WORK, lol! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, market share numbers are often fudged by technology companies, especially Microsoft. I recall one particularly silly ppt slide MS reps used to trot out that showed NT marketshare in the mid-'90s, when Novell Netware was the dominant competitor to NT. I worked for a PC distributor at the time, and every so often a MS rep would come in to feed us some kool-aid. The slide in question showed a bar graph with 3 vertical bars. The tallest bar was NT shipments from a particular time frame. The next, slightly shorter bar was Novell Netware 4.x shipments from the same period, and the third bar was Novell Netware 3.x. The Microsoft dog-and-pony expert would point proudly at the graph, explaining that it showed Microsoft's market dominance, despite the fact that the aggregate Novell NW 3.x + 4.x totals were substantially greater than NT.
I can also recall being told by management (same distributor) to ship at least 1 CAL with every order, for free if need be - whether it was ordered or not. Why? To artificially boost numbers of NT seats shipped.
I'm not saying you can't like MS products for whatever reason you see fit. But this isn't high school anymore. Popularity isn't everything.
Trolling the blog-whore (Score:2)
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Re:Trolling the blog-whore (Score:5, Funny)
>> Two wrongs don't make a right... or do they?
No, but three lefts do.
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correction.. (Score:2)
doh...
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:. NOT NOT True == True is true.
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NOT NOT is null. NOT NOT Var is Var. :. NOT NOT True == True is true.
In some particular programming language, perhaps.
More generally, however, the GPP is correct.
In first order predicate calculus, and also in propositional calculi, and at least half a dozen other logical formalisms, a negated negation is an assertion. It's called 'principium tertii exclusi' [wikipedia.org] and is present in most western logics (although, interestingly, not in many classical bhuddist logics).
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
You are right, but the keyword is "feel"..
If I spend a million dollars in publicity where I suggest product X is, not only, superior to product Y, but also that everybody is going for product 'X'.
It would be normal for you to "feel" that product 'X' suits you best, even though it doesn't.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be normal for you to "feel" that product 'X' suits you best, even though it doesn't.
Imagine them making a series of commercials that way.
Lets say... with a young, "hip" and slim actor portraying their product (A) and a older, fat, bespectacled, "corporate drone"-like actor portraying the competition (B).
And then let them play it out so that product A is not just better than B, but B also sucks. Like... you know.. big time.
Pure evil!
it's not deception if it's true :P (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
'feel' might be the wrong word, however it is a good way to confuse 'best' product to market with the best product.
The prouct that wins in a competitive open market is rarely ever the product a human would 'feel' was best. Often they would 'feel' it was an inferior product.
As an example try to think of the best hamburger you ever ate. I know that this is a matter of opinion, but that's the judgment I want you to use. What was the hamburger you 'feel' was the best you ever ate? One that makes your mouth water just thinking about it. You're thinking of how you could plan a road trip right now so you can taste it again.
I know all the vegans reading are calling me an insensitive clod right now, but stay with this...
Was the hamburger you thought of a McDonald's brand plain hamburger? The plain regular McDonald's hamburger is clearly the market leader in hamburgers. It has complete market dominance and is the undisputed all time best seller in the market place. Billions and Billions served.
The product that the market place chooses as 'best' is rarely what a human would think of as 'best'. Market winners are usually best described as 'adequate'. They get the job done, and usually not much more. However the best to market is also cheaper. a product that functions adequately and costs less usually grows to dominate its market. More expensive products that offer more functionality can usually still carve out their own niche in a market, but they will not dominate.
Sony Beta was a superior product to VHS. It was also more expensive to license. VHS dominated the mass market, but Beta survives in the production studio where the extra cost is justified by the greater demands for sound and image quality.
Ford's Model T was inferior to other cars produced during its day. The other cars were hand made affairs. They were faster more comfortable and more powerful. Many were status symbols. The Stanley brothers would refuse to make a car for you if they 'felt' you were the wrong type of person to be seen in one of their vehicles. Ford however was the first to use complete mass production techniques to build his vehicles. This resulted in drastically reduced prices. His Model T was adequate and cheaper. Mass produced cars grew to dominate their market.
The IBM PC was about the worst PC you could purchase when it was introduced in the Early 1980's. It was under powered, had almost no software that would run on it, and was more expensive than almost anything else on the market (except for the Apple III and the Lisa). They would have been a tremendous flop if it weren't for IBM's existing corporate customers. An Apple II, a Commodore, an Amiga, even the TRS 80 had more software and was cheaper. Their market share was also larger than IBM's. IBM sales were almost exclusively made to corporate customers who used the pc's as terminals for existing mainframe computers. Think about it, a $2400, 640K, green screen dumb terminal. (nice keyboards though). But then came the clones. When the Bios was reversed engineered the market place was flooded with cheaper clones that ran that knockoff of CPM called MS-DOS. The cheaper, but adequate, clones gained dominance in their market. Just like the cheaper but adequate product always does.
A human would rarely choose the market winner based on how they 'feel' about the product. The market winner will need to perform adequately and to be cheaper. More expensive products can easily survive by offering more functionality or quality for their extra price (think gourmet hamburgers, Mercedes cars or Macintosh computers). Bill Gates knows his history and He knows the market place, and that is why he fears Linux. He knows that it is more than adequate and that it is cheaper. He will lose market dominance unless he can raise the cost of Linux (patent and copyright law suits that force license fees on Linux) or redefine what it means to be adequate (get enough corporation's documentation in patent encumbered formats that force a new mea
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Which is a fair point if you assume that anyone with an opinion is automatically a liar by the very fact of their advocacy. I don't think that necessarily follows.
Certainly it doesn't seem to be the case in this instance. I can't see anything that looks to be untrue, or even deliberately misleading the article. Mr. Williams even goes so far as acknowledge that one case, (the Hi China story) actually reflected well on Microsoft. So you can't really paint him as being just as dishonest as the corporation he is challenging.
A deeper point is this: do we really want to live in a world where lies and deception are regarded as the norm, and where all opinions are automatically worthless simply by virtue of their being opinions? I can't see that polluting the world's data flow like that is a good thing, personally. I think we need people who are willing to challenge spin and propaganda wherever they find it. Williams seems to be doing that, and personally, I applaud him for his efforts.
Decision abdicated to Certified Gold Partners (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the article, there was no comparison done. The decision was outsourced to MS resellers who, surprise, peddled more MS wares. Comparison of other technologies never happened.
Oh, that and MS Sweden couldn't be bothered to look up any of the dozens of regional companies that provide support for non-MS systems and packages. That 'no support' argument worked in the early 1990's but not anymore.
e.g. LinPro in Norway (Score:2)
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The "Get the facts" campaign is Microsoft's own advocacy site.
If Linux was actually considered, but wasn't competitive, Microsoft would have been able to show that. They can't, which makes their claims deceptive.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not only that. What stands out the most is what Microsoft has decided to call this: "Get the facts". They are trying to pass it as facts, when they are, at best, opinions. At worst, marketing rethoric. It has the smell of the ministry of truth all around it.
they mention linux to spite solaris (Score:4, Insightful)
Running this sort of stuff in an enterprise requires you to have a cabal of "unix people" around who have an intimate almost religious knowledge of often undocumented unix inner-workings. These people write vast hideous perl scripts that are unmaintainable and largely unholy to mangle your systems into working conditions. This is the linux sysadmin way.
I stopped using Windows because it cost money and it never broke. Nothing ever needed to be done or gone wrong. It was absolutely no fun. Even the most polished linux distribution is riddled with problems that require your care and attention. It's like a little flying machine made of hopes and dreams, and a wonderful hobby.
I believe many IT folk were once DOS people who felt underappreciated when Windows got to a more working but less tuner-oriented state. Using the worst case scenario of irresponsible desktop windows use as an excuse (the 12 year old girl's windows 98 box), they legitimized the unbelievable amounts of time needed to create their "perfect" linux box, winning a place in their hearts and minds as an inspiring hobby.
Now it's huge, it's corporate, it's competitive. So is Microsoft scrambling to keep this best kept secret quiet?
No. They're focusing on linux because they can. It means they don't have to compare Windows Server as much to Solaris, which performs fantastically in HPC operations. I can think of many examples (which I can't name unfortunately since they're not public) where major banks with servers in Chicago started migrating servers to linux from Solaris and experienced miserable performance and reliability. Linux only competes with Solaris in the front end as far as this is concerned, making it a really easy target for Microsoft. Since people view linux and unix as the same thing, Microsoft can pick off the weakest but most popular unix in the flock and provide an accurate case while goose-stepping around the reliability, security, and performance of Solaris.
By aiming more effort on linux, they can focus on its obvious amateur/scizophrenic implementation design flaws and weaknesses instead of focusing on their more serious technological competition in some commercial unices.
Design by consortium yields sub-par results, so this a battle against people who believe they can run linux servers as a non-commercial operation- that is, not paying for external support. When business folk are aware that there is no "free" option, linux is no longer on the table as a free alternative. Since they have to pay for support no matter what, now they have to consider Windows side by side by technical merit. If the shop prefers Microsoft and the CTO realizes that running linux is not really free, a sale is made. That's all Microsoft needs in some cases.
30 years? Julius Ceasar called (Score:3, Interesting)
Marketing is as old as mankind. I bet Grog was selling stone wheels out of his cave with FUD.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Respectfully, I disagree. It's not marketing's world, it's ours.
If the issue were purely a matter of marketers lying to one another then I might agree with the whole apathy-is-the-best-policy meme. But it's not, and we need to allow people to challenge organized deception without automatically assuming them to be tarred with the same brush.
Obviously there are issues with astroturfers and viral marketers, and it's not always a trivial matter to tell them from the genuine seekers after truth. But if we simply assume duplicity whenever anyone challenges the marketers, then the battle is lost before it begins.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft is demonstrably the best OS in the same way that McDonald's ubiquity makes it demonstrably the best restaurant."
Popularity is a poor metric of quality.
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Informative)
There are reasons for Microsoft's ubiquity. And after spending a week trying to talk a non-Unix co-worker through getting wireless and USB working on his Ubuntu desktop, it's pretty clear to me what those reasons are.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does "best" mean? In the context of the market McDonalds targets, "best" means the optimum combination of low prices, efficient service, and food that looks, smells, and tastes consistently good. But the fact that McDonalds is more popular and more successful than any other fast-food chain does not mean that it actually scores better on any of these metrics: it just means that people think it does. In other words, we're talking about quality of marketing, not quality of product.
And it's not even a great analogy, because the fast food market is very competitive, while the computer operating system market is about as uncompetitive as they come.
People don't choose Microsoft because it's the best. People don't choose Microsoft because it costs less, or because it's more secure, or because it's more reliable, or even because it's easier to use. People choose Microsoft because it's familiar, because everyone else chooses Microsoft, because nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. Most people never even get so far as evaluating alternatives or trying to decide whether or not Microsoft provides the best fit for their needs -- Windows is so ubiquitous that people simply stick with it automatically!Of course there are. The main one is that about 15 years ago Microsoft managed to achieve a situation where there was no serious alternative on the desktop, and then they leveraged the power this gave them brilliantly to entrench themselves firmly enough to become almost impossible to dislodge, however good the would-be competition becomes.
To take your fast-food analogy in a different and possibly more successful direction, the reason Microsoft dominates the desktop is pretty similar to the reason fast food is more successful than haute cuisine: the vast majority of people don't care about quality, they just want to stay in their comfort zone and stick with what they've always been used to having. Whether Linux + OpenOffice.org is better or worse than Windows is completely irrelevant: most people will reject it purely because it's different.
(The fact that you and your poor friend had trouble getting wireless to work in Ubuntu, on the other hand, is totally meaningless. I can counter that anecdote with another: I and a very IT-literate friend spent the best part of a weekend unsuccessfully trying to get wireless to work in Windows XP. Wow, now we have two opposing stories, and neither of them is a valid argument. [In fact, neither of us can even prove we're not exaggerating!] Can we drop the FUDdy silliness now and get back to rational discussion? Thanks.)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work tech support for an OEM and if you tell someone something (for example Ill take a real world example, Vista is underpolished, buggy, has compatibility problems, networking problems, shaky drivers, as well as hogging resources)
If you tell these uneducated users that this is the case, and that Linux is perfect and works well, what do you think they are going to choose. Microsoft has been doing this to Linux since it arrived, this is why they remain a monopoly.
The customers of Microsoft are not you, you are not even important enough to be considered a Microsoft customer. Microsoft has done an amazing job of convincing non technical business people that their software is the best, and they have succeeded in tricking them very well. The only problem is that more and more people like me are spreading the truth, that Microsoft is not the end all be all, and that you have a choice in what you use. When the computing industry matures a little more, maybe we will have a fair environment where choice is supported.
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The thing is, FUD exists on both sides of this (all three sides if you factor in Apple), and it always has. The problem with die-hard Linux advocates is that they continually insist that the only reason Microsoft is on top is because of marketing.
The thing is, a lot of organizations, as well as individual users, actually do look at the options available to them and actually determine that the Microsoft offering is the best for their needs.
I'll take a real-world example:
Vista is underpolished, buggy, has compatibility problems, networking problems, shaky drivers, as well as hogging resources
I've been hearing that ever since
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the fact that one of the main reasons holding business back from using Linux on the desktop is Exchange, which has absolutely nothing to do with the OS. Or the fact that people don't switch to OpenOffice mainly because of file formats, which have nothing to do with the quality of the software itself.
People don't switch to Linux, not because Windows is better, but because there is some critical piece of their Windows environment that they can't get on Linux (like Photoshop), or because they don't want to change their entire environment just to get the benefits of a better OS. Either way, it is resistance to change, rather than deciding on quality, that keeps people using Windows. If the tables were turned, and Linux, OpenOffice and Firefox currently had 80% market share, and Microsoft was trying to compete with Vista, MS Office and IE, nobody would be switching to them.
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That is the stupidest argument you can make. People use Windows because Microsoft have cornered them. Software they need runs under windows, DRM, hardware, games, etc...
Windows is by far worse than the competition.
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Just because you served a billion people doesn't mean your shit is very good, it just means it is good enough.
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Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nonsense, but I am not sure what kind of nonsense. The modern technological world is full of hardware, software and practices that are not optimal, or are simply stupid. The QWERTY keyboard is one of the most egregious examples: having been designed purely to sell typewriters, or slow typists down, it is an indefensible tragedy that it is the standard. Yet everyone uses it. That use does not excuse or deny it's true awfulness.
Viruses, malware, grayware and a great deal Spam owe their entire existence to the miserable and fatally flawed security model of Microsoft's Windows. This cannot be meaningfully denied. Said ailments make the average PC users daily computer experience a nightmare of inconvenience and paranoia. Yet the vast majority are forced to use it. And that has nothing to do with the quality of the product. It has to do with the monopolistic strong arm tactics that prevented meaningful competition in the PC OS space.
There is this idea that the modern capitalist ideal allows only the best products to survive and inferior products must change or disappear. This idea is mostly fiction. There are products that survive and thrive in the marketplace because they are good products, but they only serve to highlight the background noise of garbage products that owe their existence to the imbalance of the marketplace due to billions of cash bribes. Many of the these bribes are known as marketing.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
For your benefit and others who similarly haven't read the article or missed its point entirely, the case study cited in the article involves the city of Upssala that has two networks, one a 150-server Windows network, and the second a 100-server Windows network with some Linux and Netware thrown in. Virus outbreaks and a need for increased control were cited as motivating factors for a change.
If there's a "suit one's needs" aspect to any of this, it certainly isn't in the article.
job security (Score:4, Insightful)
Now THAT's "suiting ones needs"
Re:who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to hijack your post, I didn't RTFA but this ticked me off.
They strongly imply that you don't have to support commercial software yourself. As an aside: the fact that companies can go around making these sorts of claims and not get sued into oblivion for blatantly lying to the public (or hell, thrown in jail) says some pretty bad things about the state of our societies, IMHO.
Unless you need someone to babysit you while you do basic tasks with the software, any reasonably competent tech is going to be able to install and use the software, regardless of whether it uses arcane text files or pretty tick boxes to configure it. If you have problems, you search the 'net for it -- chances are good someone else (or a lot of someones) have already encountered and solved the problem. The only times we've ever resorted to paid support from the vendor is when we have a really unusual problem we can't diagnose or fix ourselves; and guess what? The people providing the support are themselves simply reasonably competent (if you're lucky) techs who end up being just as stumped as you.
This means that for servers and infrastructure, paid support is a fucking joke. This bodes poorly for the Open Source companies that want to make money from providing support, but that's just how it is. Maybe it'll work out different when there's actually competition: in theory, since everyone can see the internals there's nothing stopping anyone else from becoming an expert at the software, and anyone can find and fix problems in the code. So possibly for popular software there'd be enough competition to provide paid support that they'd have to be competent and actually fix things, instead of fobbing off the customer until they give up. Maybe the current state of paid support is simply a symptom of monopoly inefficiency.
But I'm not certain about that. At its essence, paid support rewards good marketing of bad software. If the software does what you say it does, does it well, and is straightforward to set up, then there's not going to be any market for support.
<rant>
We use Sharepoint 2007 at work for our websites, and the licensing ain't cheap. Over $50,000 for each internet-facing server, another $20k for SQL 2005, and a bit of change for Windows licenses to run the servers and AD (plus additional licensing for the authoring environment). But that money's just a drop in the bucket compared to the money spent on developers to customize it and training of staff.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft knows this, and that's why they're not afraid to release a half-finished product whose key features (like content deployment) don't actually work. So we spend even more money on their Premier Support service, who proceed to waste my time over the course of several months collecting gigabytes of trace files, doing repetitive "tests" and sending them the error logs (which are, of course, incomplete; seems that part's a bit broken too) and then stalling me for a while until they come up with some other pointless exercise to waste some more of my time.
I'm positive they do this deliberately, because they know that eventually I'll get fed up with getting nowhere and resign myself to working around the defects. As I have, of course. But it's ridiculous that companies can charge you for the software, and then charge you again for (no) help with its problems, and then act like you're getting fantastic value for money.
If I'm getting free support from mailing lists or forums or what have you, then I'm happy to go through all the debugging shit -- installing minimal clean environments to see if the problem is reproducible there, etcetera. It annoys me having to spend my time doing this if I'm paying for support from someone else, though. Isn't that what they're being paid to do?!
</rant>
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm complaining about a lot of directed debugging that leads to nothing but more stalling. Even basic things like handling of times was broken when it was released so timer jobs wouldn't fire; even if content deployment actually worked reliably for us, that's a pretty significant problem. I'll also throw "completely useless error messages" into my list of complaints, while I'm ranting.
Microsoft chose to sell us -- to aggressively sell us -- their complicated product, at a pretty high price compared to other content management systems, with the promise that it does all these wonderful things that'll save us time and money and enhance our workflows, and so on. For that kind of price, I'd expect things to just fucking work, and if we do have problems then I'd expect a decent level of support to be provided, not bought as an extra.
So having bought the support as an extra, you're damned right I'm complaining about having to spend even more of my time debugging their software for them. For what we paid for it, I should be able to just set up a test farm with the same configuration and custom code as our production environment, give them RDP access, and let them debug the shit out of it. (Actually it would probably be better if we told them how we'd configured it, then they set up their own farm and tested our code in it.)
Commercial software houses are always spouting the "you get what you pay for" line. It's nice and pithy, but it means nothing if they don't deliver on it. And my experience with most vendors says they don't.
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A ready-made Microsoft campaign right there.
idiot (Score:2)
(In the drugged sleepwalking nightmare world of falsitude that is the FUD ghetto MS tries to create,)
People will choose the software that suits Microsoft's needs best. Unshockingly this is NEVER Linux.
90% discount for threatening to use open source (Score:4, Interesting)
Thread hijacked for comic relief (Score:5, Funny)
Right, I'm hijacking this troll to get eyeballs. Let's all post anecdotes about our funny/stupid bosses.
So we have this website, and a few Sundays ago the database that drives it fell over. It was around 1.30am. Around 11.30pm just before going to bed I decided to check my work email, just in case there was anything I needed to know for Monday. Turns out I needed to know our website was down all day. Of course, I have Nagios monitoring this, but since it was a weekend I didn't check my work email and never knew.
We happened to have a meeting the next day, so I mentioned that the site had been down for nearly 24 hours. Naturally nobody knew, because it was on a Sunday. So I said I wanted to get a GSM modem so I could receive SMS notification if important things went South, and after assuring the boss it'd only be a few hundred dollars he said okay.
Later a colleague (who was going to actually get quotes and buy it) told me he'd been asked to defer it. We had security auditors coming in soon, and the boss wanted to get their okay, because he thought it was a security risk. Bit strange I thought, but fair enough; we're hooking a wireless modem up to a server on our internal network, I can see how that can be perceived as a risk. Easy enough to explain how it wouldn't be possible to access the server using it.
But no, that wasn't the risk. The risk was we were using Nagios. It's open source!, he says. Doesn't that mean it's less secure?
Wow. Just wow. I'm disappointed I heard this 2nd hand, otherwise I would've been in there with a "1998 called; they want their FUD back". He might not have understood, but it would've amused me a great deal. And that's what matters, after all.
So it just goes to show there are still people buying the Microsoft-styled spin hook, line and sinker. I sure hope he doesn't discover the Brocade SAN switch we use runs Linux. Or our ESX servers. He might have a heart attack or something. Maybe it's okay if there's some proprietary code on it, though?
Bonus anecdote: my colleague also wanted to get pricing on sides for the racks in our server room, in order to improve airflow (they're completely open at the moment). The same boss said we don't need them, because hot air won't be coming out the back of the servers. It appears our boss feels that if cold air goes in the front, then cold air ought to come out the back. Sadly my colleague was too awed by this to press further, so we'll probably never know the full thought process behind this.
Re:Thread hijacked for comic relief (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Microsoft bashing is outdated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft bashing is outdated (Score:5, Insightful)
If we bash there lies then the two should cancel out, unfortunately
1) they're bigger than us
2) this article is preaching to the MS bashing choir, if you want to cancel out their fud you have to buy the same adspots they do, fight them were they fight. If anybody on
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Oh, did I just quote the entire article? Surprising how little substance remains after cutting out the polemic.
Re:Microsoft bashing is outdated (Score:4, Interesting)
> How about just having a third party review that compares products
That is difficult to achieve when, for example, Microsoft and Oracle EULAs prohibit releasing the results of benchmarking.
In Microsoft's case, this prohibition originated with SQL Server and now encompasses any product which uses the .Net frameworks including, apparently, WMP 11.
Fortunately I don't have any such concerns with the software I use, OpenBSD. Does that make me a shill?
Re:Microsoft bashing is outdated (Score:5, Informative)
Follow-up.
SQL Server remains off-limits for benchmarking. From the EULA for SS2005 Std / Ent:
5. BENCHMARK TESTING. You must obtain Microsoft's prior written approval to disclose to a third party the results of any benchmark test of the software.
However the company has now changed its restrictions for .Net benchmarking. One can release results according to certain ( sane ) requirements on the condition that Microsoft can reciprocally benchmark your software:
Benchmark Testing, Microsoft .NET Framework [microsoft.com]
Still glad I don't use proprietary software.
Re:Microsoft bashing is outdated (Score:5, Interesting)
5. BENCHMARK TESTING. You must obtain Microsoft's prior written approval to disclose to a third party the results of any benchmark test of the software.
How is this legal?
I'm not just thowing a car analogy out there, but its the first thing that I thought of. Cars when they say they have XXX horsepower, these claims are within government guidelines on how to measure horsepower.
The same is true for gas milage.
Benchmarks are part of the decision making process, and they are useful within and between different products (eg, SQL Server 1998 vs SQL server 2001 vs Oracle 15).
Yes, I know that benchmarks are not the end all be all, but they are a fairly standardized unit of measure that is used in many industries.
I also just hate EULAs, especially ones that don't even stay the same within a single product.
Hey you forgot to start your post with: (Score:3, Insightful)
"I'm no fan of Microsoft, but [MS bashing is outdated]."
Sorry, it's not outdated. They are a criminal bunch of liars and thieves who need to be shut down for the sake of civilisation.
Once that has been concluded: Bashing Microshit will be done only as a quiant ceremonial gesture when the winning side wishes to celebrate past victories in the great war to save technology from pure sick greed!
In a couple of generations nobody will remember who Microsoft was, or if they do, only for what it truly is: an em
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Why? Maybe because it contains facts.
Similarly, when proponents of homeopathy/psychic powers/etc put out a study/meta-analysis and skeptics come in basically with their minds already made up, do the facts that they bring up to prove their point somehow become less
Swedish public sector (Score:5, Interesting)
The bosses because they all they know how to use is MS Office and they demand Outlook integration so they can book meetings and keep tabs on employees. Sysadmins because they are often self-taught (from magazines such as Datormagazin [datormagazin.se] and they feel threatened whenever someone suggests using something other than Windows.
Sadly many Swedish universites are in the process of switching to AD.
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People who actually read it should have a more nuanced view than the "Microsoft-philes".
Pot? Kettle? Black? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not defending Microsoft, but decrying them using the same tactics you are admonishing them for using probably won't win you any followers that weren't on your side to begin with.
Re:Pot? Kettle? Black? (Score:5, Funny)
In India and many other countries (Score:5, Insightful)
One has to go in for support from Microsoft partners and such, but the MCSEs who work there have little clue as to real problems faced by end users.
It thus makes a lot of sense to invest in Linux-based Open Source solutions because IT users have no use buying just Servers and Licenses - the benefit comes from the applications built on top of the servers.
At a hospital I consult with, for instance; we are replacing the entire in-house VB and
I think the "Get The Facts" page from Microsoft should be modified for each country and each industry - a general scenario makes no sense.
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It is impossible to get support from Microsoft for a company based in India; even if one is willing to pay money. Microsoft sells Server licenses and Volume licenses and Corporate licenses; but nowhere do they sell Support for server, desktop or home software - atleast in India.
Of course they don't, imagine how expensive it would be to do so! If they provided support in India, where the hell would they outsource to? You can't provide support in the same country as your offices with tech support- a fundamental requirement is that nobody can understand anyone.
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Currently in India, most companies prefer to develop on Java and Oracle on Linux, or PHP on Linux - the LAMP stack.
Re:In India and many other countries (Score:5, Informative)
Even in rare instances of virus attacks etc, the firewall vendors provide the support and do the cleanup, not Microsoft. And this is the case despite Corporate Volume Licensing.
oh the irony! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:oh the irony! (Score:5, Funny)
http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/609/image2jl5.png [imageshack.us]
or
http://i27.tinypic.com/34xf094.png [tinypic.com]
Shocked, I am shocked! (Score:5, Funny)
I am honestly shocked! I commend you on your campaign and congratulate you on your inevitable victory. Microsoft can do nothing but shamefacedly admit their blatant bias here and comply with your demands.
Re:Shocked, I am shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
How will I know which male performance enhancing products and Nigerian generals to trust?
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does anybody read that garbage? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think nobody is going to dig through that mess to help them make a decision. The only people who are going to bother with that are Microsoft fanboys trying to justify their OS with "data".
lol (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole thing is a FUD campaign. It's purpose is to be blatant, to lack any integrity, and to cause as much uncertainty and doubt as possible. Yes, that includes doubt about the integrity of MS. Any doubt is good doubt, as long as it stops people from switching to Linux.
Exactly! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't fully understand how this is not illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't fully understand how this is not illega (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember Linux comes in many flavors Microsoft get to pick and choose.
Caveat Emptor: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't fully understand how this is not illega (Score:3, Insightful)
hmm (Score:2)
Really getting tired of slashdot being an ego deflation device for some people.
I've been rallying against Microsoft's so-called 'Get the Facts' site for the last fortnight in my blog.
Translation: I am a gigantic douche. Why in the hell would you grace what is essentialy marketing with so much attention and why can't you just say "two weeks" for the love of ...
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Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Ah. Marketing - my specialist subject (Score:3)
Tyler Durden: "Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
bunkum and hogwash?! (Score:4, Funny)
I say pish-posh to that!
/Mike
The sub made a blatant plug for his own blog (Score:2)
2 - Get slashdotted.
3 - Profit!
If you buy Windows, you don't know... (Score:5, Interesting)
So I asked on Usenet, got the right answer, and everything was working fine the next week when someone more senior from Microsoft called VERY apologetically and saying they'd reset our calls. For all I know they're still waiting for me to make 'em... because since then I've gone for the free "you don't know what you're going to get" support FIRST and it's always come through.
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Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares really... (Score:4, Insightful)
A is stroking million dollar licensing checks each year Company B is running Linux. Company
B is placing that million dollars into sales, marketing, equipment etc to put a hurting on company A's market share. I guess company B hopes you continue running windows.
Linux advocacy has its lies too (Score:4, Insightful)
If we're going to get into, yet again, a tired debate about Windows vs Linux, let's challenge some basic "truths" about Windows circulated in the Linux community. A lot of these basic "truths" are circulated about older versions of Windows...
1. Windows is unreliable. Not true. Any more, Windows Server is very reliable. IT departments in a number of my clients run Windows Server 2003 and can keep it up for years, if they want. I think it has been about five years since any Windows server I have seen has ever crashed.
2. Windows isn't multiuser friendly. Not true. I know one guy who started an ISP, threw up a bunch of Windows servers and gave all of his customers unfettered access to their own SQL Server databases. I thought he was crazy. But, now he's a millionaire and his business is well regarded. In the enterprise scale, I've got multiple people connecting to Windows databases via RDP, and honestly, this setup makes VNC look like crap. Windows terminal services works so extraordinarily well that outsourced development teams in India are using RDP to run Visual Studio on US hosted boxes.
3. SQL Server sucks. Not True. I think that was a pretty accurate claim up till around 7.0, but starting around SQL Server 2000, you could make a pretty good case for SQL Server 2000 for a lot of medium sized businesses and medium sized datasets. I've seen SQL Server instances running with terabytes of real row data (not just tons of images) and it holds up like a champ. Law firms, power companies, people that have big data, are using SQL Server and it works for them pretty well.
4. IIS Sucks. Not true. I'm not a real big fan of ASP.NET, but, its working pretty well for a lot of people and keeps me employed. It has its hiccups, but, for the most part, if you build an application in ASP.NET and know -something-, the IIS/SQL Server/Windows Server stack is actually going to be there for your more than it will let you down.
Of course, that's not to say Microsoft is perfect. They aren't. Internet Explorer STILL sucks, Word sucks (but MS Office still blows Open Office out of the water), the help in Visual Studio is just terrible any more, and there's a lot to not like about how Visual Studio manages projects and solutions. But, going around and saying that "everything Microsoft makes sucks", isn't true, and honestly, it never has been. For a lot of customers, a lot of the time, they have actually succeeded because they offer a better product.
they are changing their business methods (Score:3, Insightful)
Made me laugh when the guy said he'd contacted Microsoft's PR company about these. As if they care. What they care about is if the deception is working. IMO
LoB
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Seriously, I don't think he's looking for a date from you.
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