Slashdot Mirror
MSNBC Accused of Rigging OS Poll
KlausBreuer writes "According to the German news report Heise MSNBC has produced a poll for the most popular operating system.
This time, the poll was rigged rather blatantly: Friday morning, Linux hat 28% (18.500) of the vote, but miraculously dropped to 3% by sunday evening (European time).
It appears that 126.500 votes came in on Sunday - all of them for Windows." Now, not knowing people at MSNBC or anything like that, I would offer the possibly that someone ran a script against it. These things have been known to happen before. Thanks to Donald van de Weyer who pointed out that this originally appeared on LinuxToday.
Ah yes. I remember I saw a similar disclaimer somewhere. It was some obscure site with some punctuation in its name.
Slashdot Poll:
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important- you're insane.
So close, yet so far... ;)
Ugh. This got modded up? While I can appreciate Godwin's Law in circumstances where it is warranted, some people can't seem to recognize a valid analogy even if it sits on their face and wiggles. When someone makes a comparison to Nazis or Hitler to discredit or silence the opposition, then Godwin's Law should certainly apply. However, when some Nazi-related idea or symbol is used simply to illustrate a point rather than to attack the opposition, why should it be declared invalid?
Personally, I think there should be a similar law invoked when people try to declare that the opposition supports child pornography if they don't agree with censorship. I lost count of how many times people tried to play the child pornography card in the discussion of the Freenet story earlier. It amounts to the same thing as playing the Nazi card really.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Kevin Reichard posts a number of links to polls on various ZDNet, MSNBC, CNN websites encouraging readers of linuxtoday to go out and stuff the ballot box.
:(
Then on one of the polls their is a movement by some other group of Windows users to go out and stuff the ballot box in return.
And Linux Today accuses Microsoft of cheating?
I don't get it.
Maybe if it'd been a fair and realistic poll, but the Linuxtoday editors pretty much destroyed that when they decided to encourage stuffing the ballot box.
They sad thing is Kevin Reichard probably doesn't even realize the harm he is doing to the Linux community by encouraging online poll stuffing.
I suspect Kevin used to be a member of Team OS/2.
No-one ever believes these polls. People with vested interests always try to rig them (note that Linux Today asked all its readers to go vote for Linux, which is the sole reason why Linux was ever ahead). Grow up, and move along - there's nothing to see here.
nal 11
Much applause to Hemos for taking a neutral stance and giving MSNBC the benefit of the doubt. I seriously doubt that they would have done something so obvious when one half of the MS/NBC partnership so desperately needs to start reconstructing their image as a company that ISN'T cutthroat and unfair.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Here's the deal:
LinuxToday got wind of an e-mail that went out to WinME beta testers that encouraged them to rig a poll at ZDnet regarding whether people would buy WinME. Soon after, LT found out about another poll. This was the MSNBC favourite OS poll. They encouraged LT readers to go vote in it, noting it wasn't as easily rigged as the ZDnet poll. A couple LT readers figured out the poll could be rigged by deleting a cookie MSNBC placed on a voting machine and checking for on future votes. It's likely the Linux number of 28% came from a flood of LinuxToday readers, a few using the cookie-delete trick, though I'd like to hope most didn't stoop that low. It should be noted that LT itself didn't promote poll-rigging in its own posts. At one point, Linux had more votes than WinNT/2K.
Early Sunday morning is when the apparently faked votes started flooding in. One report from a reader claimed that for a while, all votes were going into NT/2K, then switched to adding votes for every OS but Linux - the percentages for Mac, BeOS, and Win9x/ME didn't significantly change like the NT and Linux counts.
It looks like the whole thing is a popularity pissing contest. LT is still encouraging their readers to vote (fairly) in polls that have appeared in the last few days, and LT released an open letter to MSNBC regarding the sudden, suspicious increase in NT/2K votes.
Of course, if MSNBC were really carefully rigging things, they also would have rigged the other poll on the same page as the OS popularity poll - the one that showed only 8% of voters were going to buy WinME, opposed to 92% saying ixnay:)
-------------
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I wouldn't be surprised if that came from 63,250 corporate IP addresses with signed up with the Microsoft Select plan.
So some online poll on some website is showing fluctuations. Where one option was leading earlier, another one is now. What am I missing? Why in the world is this news?
When was the last time anyone actually trusted or paid any attention to an online poll, anyway? If you do, I have a bridge in New York I'd like to sell you.
And the insinuation that MSNBC rigged the poll is preposterous at best. Besides the point that it's hardly worth the effort or risk for them to do it, the far more likely possibilities are that 1) someone with a script skewed the numbers or 2)that the initial spike was because of Linux Today asking its readers to vote on that poll or 3) The initial spike was because someone with a script pumped up the Linux numbers and MSNBC took those votes away or 4) Horror of horrors, more people actually Use NT/2000!!
So is this news worthy of posting on Slashdot because it involves Microsoft or because it involves Linux or because it slings some mud at Microsoft based on some pretend charges, hoping some of it will stick?
Mmmm.. Donuts
This was not the only problem. A Linux/Netscape browser could not even get to the page to vote. If you clicked on "Complete Story" nothing would happen. The only was I was able to vote for Linux was to access it from an IE browser. In other words, the poll prevented non-IE users from participating. This fact is a lot worse than ballot stuffing because the latter could be blamed on users.
A smart engineer uses the best tool for the job. If I want a general-purpose programming workstation, I use Linux. If I'm building a firewall, I use OpenBSD. If I want a gaming box, I use Win9x. If I'm building a mission-critical database server, I'm going to use Solaris or AIX. Each tool has it's place and an appropriate use.
Pointless bickering of the "My OS is better than your disro" or "My Linux distro rocks; your distro sucks" variety wastes everyone's time. It reminds me of pointless high school arguments over cars or bands.
Opinion polls are worthless. Does an engineer base his decision on what OS to use for a project on what Joe Sixpack thinks is "best"? If opinion polls really mattered, professional wrestling would be an Olympic event (and probably our national sport).
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Posted by Hemos on Monday September 18, @1:48PM
from the i-call-it-a-sporkle dept.
CharChar writes "According to MSNBC news, Slashdot has produced a poll for the name of that plastic spoon/fork combination you get at cheesy restaurants. This time, the poll was rigged rather blatantly: Friday morning, 'spork' had 28% (2,213) of the vote, but miraculously dropped to 3% by Sunday evening. It appears that 70,102 votes came in on Sunday - all of them for 'foon'." Now, not knowing people at Slashdot or anything like that, I would offer the possibly that someone ran a script against it. Still, occurances like this make you question the validity of Slashdot poll results, no matter how significant or important the question.
Does /. post server logs anywhere?
/. from. There are a lot of free OS people posting around, but is this a vocal minority these days, or is this still representative of the audience? Come on /., which is the most popular OS amongst your readers?
It would be interesting to see what OS'es people have been visiting
When I visited and voted to see who was on top, NT/2000 came up... I dunno... I think this is just a fluke... I doubt they themselves rigged it. What would their motive be?
I personally think either there are a lot more windows fans out there that read thegeek.org or MSNBC, or something (er... yeah... ummm that's it)... or Perhaps just someone running a script that thought it'd be a good gag.
----
"Errrr......... I've made a mistake" :) but then someone else decides to
;)
- -
D 7E96E;
// Errr, Let's be a bit lazy here ;)
e =Operatingsystemspoll&Q1=";
e pt-Language: en-us\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\nUser-Agent:
e =Operatingsystemspoll&Q1=";
e pt-Language: en-us\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\nUser-Agent:
e =Operatingsystemspoll&Q1=";
e pt-Language: en-us\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\nUser-Agent:
e =Operatingsystemspoll&Q1=";
e pt-Language: en-us\nAccept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\nUser-Agent:
// Should be suitably random enough ;)
b yname(lpServerName);
" );return;}
; return;}
d r_list);
S OCKADDR_IN));
o sesocket(Socket);return;}
s ocket(Socket);return;}
; }
// Write to stdout
It's a shame to see all these people claiming "they rigged the vote" children..
The truth..
Linux starts out with some rigging on a mammoth scale. BeOS responds with organising taking place on a BE sponsored mailing list of all places(BeUserTalk). So I decide to level the playing field
And then when the phantom Mac votee strikes back with an impressive votebot, retaliation was called for unfortunately it got rapidly out of hand at this point..
"It's only a gameshow,
It's only a gameshow"
m00
--
For future reference and for "how" here's the source to the Windows votebot.. Link with wsock32.lib and you can roger any vote you want
"You live by the sword, you die by the sword"
-----------------------------------------------
Not fantastic but it was cobbled together in a few minutes..
inline unsigned int RDTSC () {
int a;
_asm _emit 0fh
_asm _emit 031h
_asm mov a,eax;
return a;}
#include
#include
#include
#include
void GetHTTP(LPCSTR lpServerName,LPCSTR lpFileName);
#define PRINTERROR(s) fprintf(stderr,"\n%: %d\n",s,WSAGetLastError())
void main(int argc, char **argv)
{
WORD wVersionRequested = MAKEWORD(1,1);
WSADATA wsaData;
int nRet;
if(argc!=2){fprintf(stderr,"\nSyntax: GetHTTP ServerName\n");return;}
nRet=WSAStartup(wVersionRequested,&wsaData);
if(nRet){fprintf(stderr,"\nWSAStartup(): %d\n",nRet);WSACleanup();return;}
if(wsaData.wVersion!=wVersionRequested)
{fprintf(stderr,"\nWinSock version not supported\n");WSACleanup();return;}
_setmode(_fileno(stdout),_O_BINARY);
long g1=0xD1497877,g2=0x8BC411D4,g3=0xACC70080,g4=0x5F
char *fcmds[4][3];
fcmds[0][0]="/modules/livevote/vote.asp?t=2&LVnam
fcmds[0][1]="1& HTTP/1.0\nAccept: */*\nReferer:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/459053.asp?cp1=1\nAcc
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)\nHost: www.msnbc.com\nCookie: MC1=GUID=";
fcmds[0][2]="; P1=0\nConnection: close\n";
fcmds[1][0]="/modules/livevote/vote.asp?t=2&LVnam
fcmds[1][1]="2& HTTP/1.0\nAccept: */*\nReferer:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/459053.asp?cp1=1\nAcc
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)\nHost: www.msnbc.com\nCookie: MC1=GUID=";
fcmds[1][2]="; P1=0\nConnection: close\n";
fcmds[2][0]="/modules/livevote/vote.asp?t=2&LVnam
fcmds[2][1]="3& HTTP/1.0\nAccept: */*\nReferer:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/459053.asp?cp1=1\nAcc
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)\nHost: www.msnbc.com\nCookie: MC1=GUID=";
fcmds[2][2]="; P1=0\nConnection: close\n";
fcmds[3][0]="/modules/livevote/vote.asp?t=2&LVnam
fcmds[3][1]="5& HTTP/1.0\nAccept: */*\nReferer:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/459053.asp?cp1=1\nAcc
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)\nHost: www.msnbc.com\nCookie: MC1=GUID=";
fcmds[3][2]="; P1=0\nConnection: close\n";
srand((unsigned)RDTSC());
g1+=rand();g2+=rand();g3+=rand();g4+=rand();
int votingorder[5]={0,1,1,2,3};
int which=0;int maxwhich=5;
for (int i=0;i=maxwhich)which=0;
}
WSACleanup();
}
void GetHTTP(LPCSTR lpServerName, LPCSTR lpFileName)
{
IN_ADDR iaHost;
LPHOSTENT lpHostEntry;
iaHost.s_addr=inet_addr(lpServerName);
if(iaHost.s_addr==INADDR_NONE)lpHostEntry=gethost
else lpHostEntry=gethostbyaddr((const char *)&iaHost,sizeof(struct in_addr),AF_INET);
if(lpHostEntry==NULL){PRINTERROR("gethostbyname()
SOCKET Socket;
Socket=socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM,IPPROTO_TCP);
if(Socket==INVALID_SOCKET){PRINTERROR("socket()")
LPSERVENT lpServEnt;
SOCKADDR_IN saServer;
lpServEnt=getservbyname("http","tcp");
if(lpServEnt==NULL)saServer.sin_port=htons(80);
else saServer.sin_port=lpServEnt->s_port;
saServer.sin_family=AF_INET;
saServer.sin_addr=*((LPIN_ADDR)*lpHostEntry->h_ad
int nRet=connect(Socket,(LPSOCKADDR)&saServer,sizeof(
if(nRet==SOCKET_ERROR){PRINTERROR("connect()");cl
char szBuffer[1024];
sprintf(szBuffer, "GET %s\n", lpFileName);
printf("%s\n",szBuffer);
nRet=send(Socket,szBuffer,strlen(szBuffer),0);
if(nRet==SOCKET_ERROR){PRINTERROR("send()");close
while(1)
{
nRet=recv(Socket,szBuffer,sizeof(szBuffer),0);
if(nRet==SOCKET_ERROR){PRINTERROR("recv()");break
fprintf(stderr,"\nrecv() returned %d bytes",nRet);
if(nRet==0)break;
// fwrite(szBuffer, nRet, 1, stdout);
}
closesocket(Socket);
}
Another way to (ab)use polls is to phrase the questions in a manipulative way. There, you don't care what the results are, you're using the 'scientific neutrality' of being a polltaker to lure people into believing what you say.
example:
Results: 100% hadn't heard that report, but 100% have now. Not that they know who reported it, or where...
Note, I totally and unfairly single out Ponds, which to my knowledge has never done a poll at all, let alone a 'push poll'. I pick ponds out because of that Ponds Institute they always talk about on TV-- kinda like the Halls of Medicine, or the Center for Bubbliciousness Studies (last my invention). But the point is that you can use a trick like a scientific survey to manipulate people without them ever hearing the results. And since these are usually targetted calls, your competitors never hear about the rumors you start until it is way too late.
The program did indeed run under Windows.
The program was structured like this:
1) autorun vote program
2) vote
3) reboot
Microsoft identified a bug in Windows 98 that caused the step #3 to execute slowly. You will find that the new operating system from Redmond, called "Windows Me Harder", fixes that bug causing step #3 to take much less time than before. Indeed, the ballot stuffing was much enhanced when run on the new operating system.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...who said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Too many people base too much of their opinion on statistics. As is obvious in this case, one side or another can flood the ballot, either by legitimately sending a large number of individuals to the poll or by having a few people run a script. As another poster mentioned, if "What's the best OS" was run on Slashdot, I doubt any Windows systems would top 5% of the vote. Numbers in this case are simply meaningless.
After one of the concerts I went to last spring in Huntsville, AL, I was notified about a poll that a Huntsville news station was running. The wording was something like the following:
This past weekend (band's name) played at (venue name). Approximately a dozen fans were arrested for drug charges... Should (band's name) be invited back?
That wording still isn't very accurate (I can't remember it verbatim), but the way the poll was worded made it clear which way they felt readers should vote. What would have happened if it had been worded like this?
This past weekend, (band's name) came to town, bringing thousands of loyal followers. The majority of the fans were well behaved, and spent thousands of dollars with local area merchants. Should (band's name) be invited back?
I think it's pretty obvious. But the poll really pissed me off because I could just picture the report on the 5:00 news about how 96% of poll takers don't think the band should be invited back because of the wording of the question.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
You know this sounds kind of odd to me, because even though they are called *MS*NBC, they haven't been that bad with journalism. I remember seeing links on slashdot to articles on MSNBC about linux and so on, and they seem to have had some editorial independance in the past about what they write on relating to the tech field.
I'd also like to point out that 28% for linux sounds high to me, even if that is the figure that I'd like to believe. It's equally likely that some fool ran a script to pump linux's numbers up, and that windows wasn't the only "cheater" in that poll.
But what it really comes down to is the disclaimer I think I've seen on some net polling sites, which is something along the lines of "These numbers are very unscientific, and if you use them for anything important, you're insane".
All that said, who cares about some nonsense popularity contest? Linux doesn't need to be ELECTED prom king in order to kick ass.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
"Trust no statistic which you did not falsify."
Check out the original English version from LinuxToday.
How many votes will you cast in this poll?
The sample is non-random in several ways.
1) Only online people are included--less than 4% of the world is online. Probably moot in this particular example, though.
2) Only people who read the site see the poll. Imagine if they put a poll about "best skin color" at the end of "Mein Kampf"--do you think "black" would win?
3) Only those people who care enough to answer respond, even if they see the poll. A real poll goes out and asks people (on the street, on the phone, whatever) and requires an answer be marked down (even if it is "no response"). If an online poll marked a "no response" category for every webhit that didn't vote we'd see an alarming amount of apathy...
4) It is always possible to stuff the box--setting a cookie is useless since it can be deleted. Recording IP address is mostly useless since it doesn't work very well for dialup--not to mention privacy and spoofing issues.
In short, never pay any attention from an online poll. Magazine polls have most of the same problems, ignore them as well.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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