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Microsoft Caught Rigging ZD Net Poll
Dj writes "Microsoft have been found to be rigging a ZDNet
poll". Apparently they didn't dig on the idea of .NET losing.
Of course as anyone knows, never trust an online poll because this
sort of stuff is obviosly happening all the time. I just wonder how
many comments posted around the net are posted with the same
goals in mind.
Does this REALLY surprise anyone?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
This sounds very typical of M$ to do. They hate the idea of losing any sort of competition. They are cheap fighters and will do ANYTHING to stop themselves from losing.Next thing they will sue Ziff-Davis for mentioning their product, using their software and breathing the same air as them...am I wrong?
"Fight The Power"
This is what their marketing department does all day ...
Figures.
-----
Well, at least it wasn't another leaked email....
Did Microsoft bother to write a script to do it, or did they just give everyone in the office building a salary increase based on how many times they clicked the mouse on the little button that day? :)
I see CowboyNeal getting way fewer votes than I think he should in /. polls.
Many addled Microsoft employees mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan
do this all the time???
& aid=-1
http://slashdot.org/pollBooth.pl?section=&qid=643
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Wow, M$ must be really hurting for cash! They usually just buy a good rating!
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
You could've hired me.
Acually, ZDnet is sure in .NET won, Florida's votes haven't came it yet......
pronoblem
who has been voting for CowboyNeil all these years....
I sig, therefore I was.
Weren't they just stress testing .NET? Isn't ZDNET ZD.NET? Doesn't Microsoft own ZDNET? Doesn't there polls use .NET technology?
... this is particularly annoying because it's exactly this sort of statistic that will be used by middle-management (and/or Microsoft flacks) to justify switching project backbones to .NET
.NET! Guess we should too!"
"Well, look, this says 74% of programmers out there are eager to use
It's not like this is some hobbyist site. It's ZDNet. Some people actually listen to them.
And it's not like you're voting for Coolest Transformer of All Time. They're creating a grossly skewed statistic that could actually be used to figure out where millions of dollars gets invested.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
karma whore.
I mirrored it, "INSIGHTFUL" is me.
I always knew I shouldn't trust those slashdot polls, and the bunch of shifty guys behind the scenes.... No wonder Cowboy Neal always wins.
;-)
We'll I guess I can assume that I am the only one that finds this funny... Companies do this stuff ALL the time.. and just because some over vealous programmer or marketing rat thought to send all his buddies over to vote, doesnt mean that this is further evidence of some kinda pro-monopolistic attitude... its just people who like their products... ...not that i dont think they ARE a monopoly (I think that has been effectively proven) but....
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
The article suggests microsoft employees circulated e-mail's containing a link to vote. That doesn't seem too dubious a practice, since I've seen many e-mails linking to polls and surveys. I do however, have a problem with them writing scripts to automate the responding.
They'll be trolling slashdot and having dead people send letters to their congresscritters.
Best Slashdot Co
I used to read a java forum when MS was deep into the java legal war.
There were a resident troll that all of us suspected to be paid by _somebody_. The only thing this guy did during his day was to introduce noise and FUD in the list.
There where a java advocacy list but this wasn't it. It was java development.
I wonder if the same tactic is or will be used against slashdot.(Off course this time it would have to be a credible troll)
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
So, when the white paper innevitably comes out showing that the majority uses .NET, and hence, that's the reason to buy M$'s products, perhaps ZDNet could post a rebuttal with how Microsoft tampered with the results.
But, it kinda strikes me as amusing that someone tried 228 times to vote: obviously not reading the, "No duplicate votes" message. Must have been one of their head programmers (so quick on their toes!)
But, this really doesn't suprise me. Microsoft has done things like this before. Their TCP/IP stack is borrowed from *BSD, they go out of their way to break Samba compatability, etc, etc.etc.. The bottom line though, if you don't like Microsoft, just don't buy their products. Any of them! Vote with your dollars.
"This poll is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate. The results cannot be assumed to represent the opinions of Internet users in general, nor the public as a whole."
I'd hardly expect people to read a typical poll disclaimer, but you'd expect more people to at least know better than trust in polls put up on any web site. Of course Microsoft must know that way too may people go for the herd mentality.
Really, I'm surprised that they would have to resort to actually voting. I was sure they just called the editor whenever they wanted to.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
The poll is still available here. It carries no warnings or disclaimers that the poll has been massively rigged by Microsoft.
Why?
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
so we are not to trust slashdot polls any longer?are they rigged by cowboyneal?
... most of it spent on poll-scamming bandwidth.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If it's on a website it must be true !
-Linux is SO fast it does an infinite loop in 5 seconds.
It may not be as fraudulent as many ppl think. I'm sure most of those ppl are either learning .NET or developing on it. SO yes they are planning on making applications with .NET.
Is this terribly different from what happens when slashdot has a post announcing some poll about linux? I'm sure we've rigged our share in the past. Not that I think Microsoft is right. I'm just trying to give a little perspective and play devil's advocate for a moment. Feel free to mod me down because you dissagree.
Dozings.com -- Its kinda funny... If you're as crazy as me.
I would imagine that other companies do similar things. What's different about Microsoft doing it? After all, people are "consumers" and not people in the marketplace. Since the marketplace operates to a large degree on statistics, why not try to "manage" those statistics by inciting consumers to affect the statistics?
Now the question of if it is morally correct, is a totally different thing. We all know that Big Business(tm) doesn't have morals and Microsoft(R) is Big Business(tm).
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
i wonder if bill gates and teddy kenedy are old drinking buddies or something, cause the last bit of poll rigging i saw with this kinda stink to it was when jack went to the white house.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
First of all this wasn't some deep dark conspiracy to use a masterfully written web script to rig a poll. Instead, they just sent a chain email to vote for their side. This has happened at Slashdot; here, click here to vote to fire Jon Katz. See?
I think the real humor in this situation is that they got busted by Exchange passing the subject line in the HTTP header when you click through. Their own anti-privacy measures just bit them in their collective corporate ass. Maybe this will cause them to think twice next time?
Um, how does this help exactly? Maybe you'd like to copy-paste some other things here too, love novels, 1962 grand prix results, your IQ.
That last one should provoke much discussion, I'll be bound.
We need to get this into the mainstream media. The majority of the population does not read ZDNet and even fewer read Slashdot(sorry). But, people, everyday people, need to see what kind of company Microsoft really is.
Does anyone know of a way to get CNN or AP to pick up this story and run with it?
What probably happened is, some MS sales guy stumbled across the poll so he drafted an e-mail entitled "PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET!" This goes along with the take-no-prisoners attitude that has been seen coming from MS execs like that sales guy who wrote the "kill linux" e-mails. So the e-mail makes the rounds, everyone at MS clicks over to the poll and votes for .NET. Nothing major, just shows you why web polls can't be trusted.
I seriously doubt that this was organized by anyone high level at MS.. probably just a salesman who thought it would be a good idea to get everyone to vote in the poll.
> Several of the voters evidently followed a link contained in an email, the subject line of which ran: "PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR
That's frikkin hilarious.
> Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot this time, but future efforts may be a little more subtle.
I've never seen the least sign that anyone at Microsoft is even aware of the concept "subtle", let alone knows how to apply it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No whore me at work no time to set post up properly site probably slashdotted by now. If it really offends you mod it down.
A .NET web service that screws over the on-line poll of their choosing.
I wouldnt be surprised if MS were getting people to attempt to defend MS right here on slashdot.
In the last few months ive been noticing more pro-ms comments here which i think are suspect.
Its impossible to be certain, it might just be that the slashdot demographic is changing.
hahahahahaaaa ... haha ... hahaha
funny guy this Microsoft. Probably drives a car whose registration#'s DUH
Look a monkey!
It worked. I actually hacked into a Microsoft server and set up a script to vote for .Net on zdnet from MS with hopes they would get caught and have an awful story written about them. HAHAHAHAH!!!!!
Maybe, maybe not. If you do a search on google for "poll rig fix", here's the 3rd result.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13255.html
It seems far more likely that an internal e-mail encouraged MS employees to vote for .NET, and they did. They seem quick to point out that some people from the microsoft.com domain tried to use automated voting, and they therefore blame that on the parent corporation. I'd have a much easier life if I could blame all my problems on my employer too.
My questions would be, "Did anyone else outside the microsoft.com domain try to use automated voting for any of the contestants?" or, "Do you have any evidence that the e-mail sent out encouraged ballot stuffing?"
How would a simple email with a link encouraging employees to vote be different than a presidential candidate sending an e-mail out telling everyone register for their party or even go an vote? Sure, there's an obvious bias, but what makes you think that *anyone* is voting that doesn't have a bias?
This all reeks of sensationalism and media-based MS-bashing. Whether you like MS or not, MS-bashing is old-hat.
Meanwhile, apparently it's too much effort to even link to their own story explaining their poll, so that when Microsoft tries to use it as propaganda there's a big 'How this poll was rigged by Microsoft' link...
Microsoft just has to face the fact that they can't be the "leader" (i say that rather lightly) in everything that they want to be. This is like shooting themself in the foot by adding one more thing to be added to their "monopoly." They should just calm down for a while, let the competition grow a little bit, and start again. I'm not a M$ fan or anything, but it seems to me that there are very easy ways for them to get out of the situation they are in
My other sig is an import.
None of this candy assed, slap on the wrist crap that they usually get, but an off the top rope, full on corporate body slam!
Then maybe we'll get to see some real innovation and real consumer value for the first time in lord knows how long. Instead of all the lies, trickery, and burying of technology that we've seen up to now.
Maybe they've been rigging the polls on the number of desktops running Windows? Maybe only a few hundred people world wide actually run Windows. But MS is going out and hitting every website that tracks usage. And they're also taking cues from Scientology. Only 300 CD's of XP were actually pressed. MS employees are going out, buying these copies, then sending them back through the supply chain, only to buy them again, thus inflating the sales numbers!!!
Obviously, anyone who's ever tried to take a poll knows that everyone tries to vote multiple times. Of course, there's no easy way to know whether someone is doing it or not; IP logging only works for those with static IPs, and between dialup and large-environment DHCP God only knows that it's hard to do that.
I don't want to think about it this way, but maybe cookies are the way to go for this sort of thing?
Either that, or we need to stop thinking of Web polls as reliable.
-Sax
"On that train all graphite and glitter, undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris..." -Donald Fagen, IGY
As show recently on the website www.ZDnet.com online polling is often subject to massive fraud and inapropriate uses. Microsoft has again chosen to lead the way in this expanding market with an extention to the Hailstorm initative called "Zeitgiest".
"Hailstorm.Zeitgeist.net will allow content creators new abilities to track online poll submitions and ensure acurate results", says Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. "With this technology available our marketing departments will finaly be able to track down those whiny little.. Oh, wrong one." *FUMBLE* *FUMBLE* "This technology will will allow webmasters to do neat stuff with authentication", continued Gates.
When asked for his input CEO Steve Balmer added "DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS!"
In possibly related news 1337 script kiddy Dr3am!D3m0n on the IRC channel #hax0r5 commented, "Oh cool. That dwarf thing was funny but I guarantee RMS is gonna be on People's 25 Sexiest Celebrities this year."
a number of years back, os/2 users jambed the virtual ballot box of Infoworld's annual product of the year awards. They changed the rules after that incident (and invalidated the results).
You know, once upon a time, I was a big Microsoft fan. I liked how easy it was to do things, and how empowered I felt in running Windows. The other day I noticed (after a Google search) that Microsoft had a Content Management Server that was using .Net.
Over the past several years I've become very negative towards Microsoft, since my Windows constantly crashed, and they were clearly trying to shut out others.
About a week ago I thought to myself, well maybe there's just too my anti-Microsoft hype. Perhaps some of these e-mails being forwarded to The Register are just hoaxes.
But now today, ZDNet reveals Microsoft trying to disrupt things and act like a big bad monopoly. Now, ZDNet has kissed Microsoft's butt so often it isn't fun, and David Coursey who's now running Anchordesk is such a pro-Microsoft weenies I get sick. But there it is, on a ZDNet site (albeit the UK site, but still).
Guess the hype just ain't hype.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Rigging a poll is what happens when CowboyNeal wins. :)
I'd better stop using /. polls for my government research!
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
There's no reason to think that any of the people who voted in that poll are actually planning to deploy any kind of Web infrastructure, ever. Most of those who voted are probably 13 year olds who think that "Java is cool", so they voted for it.
Even if the poll results were completely "fair" before MS started stuffing ballots, who's to say that the cross-section of people that responded was at all appropriate. Real polling companies spend a lot of effort trying to get statistically-valid results, which is why they charge money for the service.
I know that if any product I work on shows up in a popularity poll (again), I'll vote early and often, and encourage others to do the same.
-Mark
That's why M$ software is full of bugs, and that's why they will fall in the next 10 years...
They spend most time with stupid things, instead of working on software QUALITY (if such thing is possible in the closed-source world)
I personally rig every slashdot poll to be the rusult I desire.
Hmmmm...maybe someone from the "Linux Rulez" crowd has hacked it, made it look like MS was voting for themselves when really they weren't, revealed it, and MS is really innocent but looks like the big evil giant when really they have done no wrong because the d00d hacked the site......yeah, that's what happened!!!!
:)
Plans within plans within plans!!!!
".Net vote rigging illustrates importance of Web services"l if they think MS's tactics are anything new... the company has been doing the same shit for at least 10-15 years, if not more...
Oh, I thought "Net Rigging Illustrates Dishonesty of Microsoft" or something like that, or perhaps the fact they they have a hard time imagining competing in a market where they don't have domination or some massive advantage.
"The inevitable conclusion is that these are some of the first salvos in what will be a bitter PR struggle. Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot this time, but future efforts may be a little more subtle."
Um, yeah, Microsoft just started their first PR war and they might start using sneaky tactics soon! Um, anyone can go read http://www.mackido.com/History/Where_is_stack.htm
Well, I guess this dishnoesty probably wasn't official. More like just some sucky group of MS employees, I guess...
Juln
I imagine most all if not all online polls are rigged. How easy is it to post a link to a fan site or just a couple guys turn off their cookies/use proxies?
I still cant get to the article... sorry for the karma.. :)
back in the days when the web was new and exciting the UK "Start in Their Eyes" show included a section where viewers could vote online for the showcase final winner
a quick investigation revealed users could register multiple votes with a bit of cookie manipulation.
One script later and we had a winner (the geekiest of the contestants was chosen)
Was funny when the presenter, Matthew Kelly, said "and with a phenominal response on our website"
oh how we laughed.
hopefully it taught the techs at the show something
.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
This is a hoax. Microsoft Exchange doesn't send referer information on click thru links within emails. I just tested it out. Either this was a clever hoax or you guys are just that gullible.
Take your pick - I perfer the later.
J
BR>
"Mod me down Please"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Second, Microsoft uses proxying for Internet-related stuff, which could make the multi-vote issue appear to be worse than it actually is, as many separate users would come from a single IP.
Third, yes, it seems someone ran a script from within the microsoft.com domain. That could've been anyone in the company with a PC. My bet is on "random stupid employee". If it were an actual conspiracy, I doubt they would've done it from something within the microsoft.com domain.
In short, it's the same bullshit that happens with every web poll. While it doesn't reflect well on the company, it almost certainly is the evil marketing conspiracy that everyone makes it out to be.
Rather, this is about a company creating an illusion of popularity, in order to sell a technology and a philosophy that customers are hesitent to buy. People are keen to keep up with the Jonses, but nobody wants to be caught with a dead fish. Microsoft knows this. The only way
THAT is the purpose of the ballot rigging. And this may actually be a further Monopoly violation. They are leveraging a monopoly in one area to create a monopoly in another. This is in violation of the Sherman Act, which Microsoft has been convicted of violating.
Should this "incident" be taken to the courts, as evidence of further legal violations, by the dissenting States, I could very well imagine the judge being extremely unhappy with Microsoft. Breaking the law that you're already on trial for breaking generally doesn't win many friends.
The leaked letters, alleging that Microsoft is trying to spy out Linux installations, and pressure companies into replacing them, during technical support calls, may also prove a bitter poison to Microsoft, come March.
This is not the mark of a company in fear. This is the mark of a company that has had its fear glands surgically removed, and is hell-bent on enslaving all minds and all technology to its will.
In short, Microsoft's recent attitudes are perfectly timed, given the recent LoTR movie release. Forget the Borg, Bill Gates is either Sauron or Morgoth.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I imagine. After all, ZDnet is SUPPOSED to do this kind of thing for them.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
"A Bush administration will favor Innovation over Litigation"
Gosh, and look what happened...
Juln
That does it. My day is made. I am now ROTFLMAO
Disclaimer: I'm not a Microsoft fan, but every now and then I pretend to be reasonable.
The headline seems a bit misleading. Was any evidence presented that Microsoft the company, and not a handful of Microsoft employees, deliberately chose to rig the poll? It seems more likely that some developer in the web services group with a little too much team spirit saw the poll and sent a mail to other developers asking them to vote. Big deal. Then some jerk hacked up a form submission script to tilt the poll results in Microsoft's favor. Pretty sad, but again, big deal. As the editor said, you can't trust an online poll to represent anything approaching reality. (At least that's what I tell myself every time I view CNN quick poll results)
i base all our global corporate buying decisions and software policys on a zdnet web poll
Isn't rigging a poll like this against FTA and FCC law?
DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF
Web polls are often rigged, and are entirely unscientific and meaningless anyway. Consumer opinions are often fake. (Hell, legitimate reviews in major media are often heavily influenced too.) The bottom line is... word-of-mouth is your most trustworthy tool.
Makes you wonder how many Anonymous Coward readers orginate with in the Microsoft domain.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM????
God Moving Over the Face of Waters
How is this flamebait??????
It seems like a reasonable post, to me.
It's terribly short sighted of tech companies to resort to this type of tactic, because it makes everyone in the industry look bad. Gloating over M$ getting bashed for this kind of behavior doesn't do much for improving public perception of technology companies. A lot of people I know already have a negative view of Information Technology and think it's eletist.
Here's to hoping companies learn to behave more ethically, but I'm not holding my breathe.
Definitely not. In fact they have done much worse stuff, at the executive level.
if they didn't use automated voting to have ppl vote over and over then it would have been fair because they are real people using .net(even if only cause they made it, and the ones who didn't have to)
No CowboyNeal option.
Here's another question -- how many of these web polls are posted with the primary goal of getting posted in one or more advocacy forums and generating hits, which is why a lot of sites and mailing lists have a flat policy against announcing them? I mean, that's what web polls are for, right? So Mac / Java / BSD / Amiga / what have you fans can compete to see who can more thoroughly stuff the ballot box. Don't tell me you guys actually take those results seriously?
I thought using the word "rigging" in this context ("Ohmigod! Microsoft is destroying the integrity of a ZDNet click-poll!") was as outlandish as it was going to get, but then already there's the guy pulling out the bold tag to wonder why the MS board is going to jail over this. Clearly, this is a job for that Craig guy who spent months pestering everyone on Gnotices and dot.kde.org to spam the poll on his site...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This story is almost as bad as what I found today. It goes to show a company will do anything to sell, sell, sell.
I was mirroring DeCSS sites, and I kept coming across the 2600 character Emmanuel Goldstein's name. I know it's a handle, but I knew that one of the characters in hackers is named Emmanuel Goldstein [cereal killer right?].
So I decided to look it up. And the first link in google, was of course the movie's website. I thought they could set this straight.
Now the funny thing... it didn't. The reason it matched "Emmanuel Goldstein +hackers +movie" is because they have quote from him on the front page! To make it worse a link to 2600 is there too!
This is dirty... can't they sue themselves [please] for linking to a site that posted the famous 7 line implementation?
Look for yourself... no joke.
http://www.mgmua.com/hackers/
Get your Unix fortune now!
when I need them.
Best Slashdot Co
Slasdot is free. Slashdotings and poll rigging are not paid for here. You are free to think as you will and not have to worry about your boss monitoring your vote. So this is no more a rig than the local newspaper reporting something unfavorable about a candidite in an election. You are free to care about Gary Hart's "Monkey Business", and not care about Bill Clinton's filegate, monicagate, dopegate, murdergate, chickengate, gategate gate gate.
Oh yeah, another thing. The opinions posted here are not always those of Slashdot, VAWhatever, the FSF, Bill Gates, or my grandmother's. Mostly they are our opinions because WE WRITE THEM. Oh, I forgot I was writing an opinion.
I'd rather play the devil than his pimp.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
according to the poll numbers only 1057 people voted for .NET (1415 Votes Total), It wouldnt take much to get those kind of numbers, especially shooting out a company wide email.
Where I work there are 1100+ people in my office and most just click links in email for the heck of it (can you say outlook virus?)...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
He has to be, he's getting way too many votes
http://www.kubuntu.org/
This only goes to show how amazing a product .NET is! Can't argue with those statistics.
John Q Public
research@microsoft.com
If slashdot links to such polls, the result would rigged too... in a slightly other way, but :-)
;)
Here is a nice URL to start: a ZDnet Linux Poll: http://polls.zdnet.co.uk/zdnuk/?p=26&m=1
have fun
domi.
Maybe Algore should have hired Microsoft to run his campaign :)
I also heard that Microsoft will manage Argentina's next election!
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
"Do you plan to use Linux on a PC in 2002?"
Let's all rig it quick!
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
This certainly isn't the worst story that has been posted by Taco et al, but it's still bad. The fact that it can stimulate a lot of discussion doesn't make it any more intelligent.
So, I think top level stories should be subject to moderation. Then, everyone would have an (approximate) idea of which stories really are the best.
Hey, it works for posts! (at least IMHO)
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
CNET posted a review and Versus battle of Mac OSX and Windows XP and Apple's OSX won. The next day, somehow CNET was contacted by Microsoft and the article was pulled and changed later in the day to say that it was a tie. Hmm! figures.
Not to sound pro-Microsoft (or pro-Linux, pro-*BSD, etc), but who really cares? it's just another web popularity poll with no scientific basis or anything. So someone at Microsoft saw the poll and sent around an email telling everyone to vote for .NET, and to pass the message along. This isn't any different than if Linux users did the same thing, pass an email around and tell people to vote Linux. The poll basically means NOTHING. The same thing happened at the college I went to, there was some online battle of the Mascots or something and I'd get emails from the IS dept secretary telling us to vote for Bucky Badger. Same exact thing.
As for the automated multiple vote scripts...well, can't blame them for trying.
I think one of the primary reasons people use polls is as a "weapon of the underdog". If you're rooting for use of the most visable/highly-advertised and touted product, you have no need for a poll.
.Net, or any of their other products.
People like to arm themselves with statistics when they're trying to defend an alternate choice. Right now, Linux is one of those alternate choices.
Therefore, you can expect the Linux community to get vocal about going to site X or Y and casting a vote in favor of the OS. Microsoft, on the other hand, would really only do this to ensure that opposing views are silenced. They don't need a ZDNet poll to convince people to use
You saw nothing. This thread does not exist. Go back to playing Solitaire. Sincerely, Microsoft Public Relations
Yeah, but I just can't envision Mr. Bill sitting around plotting to rig a ZDnet UK poll. Probably it's some semi-spontaneous rah-rah from somewhere within the ranks.
I'd say that it smells of a case of ZDnet trying to make news of themselves by publishing the obvious.... except that they're coming right out and detailing the flaws in their polling. A more honest headline would have been, "Our Polling System Sucks."
Defending MS is the "old hat". The new
hat is Red, buddy: "RED HAT"!
MS rigged this poll because MS knows from past experience that winzombies are risk-avoiders who will pick whatever the majority chooses.
MS knows that corporate IT drones will pay thousands per year per user in app dev/helpdesk support as long as they feel that everyone else is doing the same, regardless of the quality of the tools. This is the single largest impedimient to the adoption of alternate platforms within company environments.
***
True story: my Mac G4 just turned two years old. Never had an antivirus with OS9. Don't need one with OSX (yet). Never lost a single file. Downloaded several gigs of stuff during this time period and spent way too much time online.
I really does, and not just online. I worked for a company that did websites for radio stations. We were reading results from a poll as part of an on-air contest where people could call in or use the web to vote for their favorite band. After a snafu with the data, we contacted the station to apologize for losing about a quarter of the results of the first few hours of the contest. We were expecting to be (quite rightly) reamed for it even though the contest had the rest of the week to run its course.
As it turned out, they didn't mind at all. They had already decided who the top two choices would be and only cared which of the two came out on top. In short, Limp Bizkit was popular, but not THAT popular.
I won't name names, but perhaps folks who listen to popular radio in the Chicago area (and other major venues) should keep this in mind the next time your radio station claims to give you what *YOU* want.
It's not just online...
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
you illeterate loser.
- .NET
- JAVA
- Both
- Neither
Well, that makes perfect sense. I guess Perl, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, etc., don't count as web services. Since the poll didn't have a decent list of things to choose from, it was retarded from the get-go. It's like having a poll like the following: "Which car are you going to buy when you replace your current one? The Honda Civic or a Nissan Altima?"Microsoft would NEVER be involved in such a scheme. All of you have way too much time on your hands. (It is obvious that we are not paying ZDNet enough money.)
I'd say it must not have been a planned move on the part of MS simply because as of when I post this comment, the pro-MS astroturf is not being posted on slashdot. It must just be some random employee stuffing the box. On most MS stories there are plenty posts on MS's side, here there are only pot-shots, a few notes about how bad online polls are and some genuinely concerned opinions.
Bill: Damnit, blocked again.
Steve: Bill, if it didn't work the other 226 times you tried to reclick, what makes you think it will work the 227th?
There is a very high incidence of people attempting to cast multiple votes, even though the poll script blocked out most attempts at multiple voting. The one that wins the prize made 228 attempts to vote. This person was from within the microsoft.com domain.
The only reason we are reading about it on Slashdot is because Microsoft did it this time.
I can't tell you how many times I have visited web sites that promote this kind of behavior. Whether it be MacOS, Linux, Java, Quake, Unreal, or some other fan/portal site. It is not at all uncommon to see a note that tells its visitors, go here to vote for us, our platform, our programming language, favorite game, etc.
The only reason Slashdot finds it newsworthy is that Microsoft is the "culprit" this time. Big deal. This stuff happens all the time. Don't ever trust an online poll.
Take care,
Brian
--
Need Web Hosting? Search for your host on WebHostingSearch.net
--
Not that I give a crap about karma or numbers. No idea what my IQ is. But since you asked: Been tested all the psychologist would say is above average. Never bothered to find out.
There will soon be a poll on the Microsoft web site where 90% will indicate that Microsoft did nothing wrong and the allegation is completely unfounded.
that M$ owned ZDNet, doesn't that make this report a little biased...oh wait...nevermind
-- I am baseball in Minnesota.
This recent Microsoft event really doesn't surprise me, but then again is it really a big deal? No, it isn't.
I don't think Microsoft really cares about this. With the market share they have, this is just a small pesky fly that can be easily crushed, wiped up and tossed out.
It doesn't affect them at all. It only services to create a news drift.
Hey I am not supporting Microsoft, but I am trying to be logical about the whole thing.
Also, it may be PU press for Microsoft, but it gets their name in the headlines. Their name stays fresh.
^shrugs^
Truth like surgery, may hurt, but it cures. - Han Suyin, Chinese Physician and Writer
so don't read it then
No, I don't believe that the profit motive is an excuse for rigging a poll. But I'm surprised that someone hasn't tried to make this argument yet.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Okay, more flamebait ... Are there Microsoft
astoturfers voting up "pro-msft" posts and
voting down "anti-msft" posts? I think the
answer is yes.
Microsoft got caught ages ago with its hand in the cookie jar doing exactly that with the Barkto indcident.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Of course, the "powers that be" probably won't care that Microsoft cheated on this (or any other) poll. All they know is to bet on a winner -- Microsoft -- even if that winner is a lying, cheating scum-bag. After all, winning is all that matters in the U.S. today, isn't it?
Damn, I'm getting cynical in my old age. ;)
All about me
Marketing person, "I am shocked, simply shocked, that there is poll manipulation going on!" then leaning over to speak into his desk drawer, "We could do that, BUT IT WOULD BE WRONG."
Look, I think this is stupid and lame, of course. Not too different from posting a link to a poll asking about a linux port to linuxgames.com... But still not cool.
But have we forgotten about MS fabricating letters to congress? Using -dead- people as the names, so at least there would be a real name there? Forget stupid zdnet polls... MS has engaged in true astroturfing with the intent to sway government in their favor (above and beyond the usual political contributions/manipulation of the illuminati to put GWB in charge). There is no comparison between these two events, other than if MS will send false letters to congress it is 0 surprise to see them hacking an online poll.
The enemies of Democracy are
Enough said
If anyone wanted to slashdot a ZDNet 'Will you install Linux on a computer in 2002' poll... the address is http://polls.zdnet.co.uk/zdnuk/?p=26&m=1.
Every year Java World or Java Developers Journal (I always forget which one does it) allows people to vote online for the year's best Java Products. Apple's WebObjects is always a candidate in the Application Server category.. all of the Mac web sites post stories about the poll and encourage their readers to go and vote for Webobjects. LOL, one year it one, not on its technical merits but because hoards of Mac fanatics went and voted. I think that the journal fixed the problem last year by making you register before you voted.. that might have discouraged a lot of the casual voters from participating.
But at least they are *incompetent* bastards....
I think everyone is missing the obvious reason for this blatant ballot-stuffing episode. By catching Microsoft red-handed, and blowing the whistle, ZDNet, which has seemed to be another one of Redmond's lapdogs in the past proves itself to be objective and fair in it's reporting. This gives them an air of credibility so when they revert to their gushing praise of Microsoft, people will believe. No doubt the minions of dark (read MS) spent many hours devising this ever-so-subtle plan, but thanks to the astuteness of the general Slashdot population, no doubt their efforts will fail!
Power to the Penguin!
Everyone should know by now that Microsoft will pull any and everything they can. I believe the Hollowen Documents prove that.
The extent that MS goes is probably yet to be realized by even those at MS who are participating in some of it.
Slashdot could actually start a game called "Tag the MS cronies" that comment here for the purpose of trying to sway OSS, GPL and the like, thoughts towards the "pro-MS" mindset.
Starscream was the coolest.
"Me Grimlock mentally retarded"
The problem here is the actual humans behind those clicks. If they had any ethics, they would have condemned their company's action rather than blindly complying with the mail.
Of course, that may be a career limiting move, but if that's the case, why are you working there in the first place?
It's so very sad to see this (although not surprising mind you) because .Net is actually good technology and should be able to stand on it's own.
Now, I'm the guy that cheats just to beat my two-year-old in Tic-Tac-Toe, I'm about as competitive as it gets, so I suppose on the one hand I can understand where M$ gets it from.
But as someone who is generally an M$ enthusiast (I say enthusiast because I like much of their product line, but I won't go so far as to say "supporter" because I LOATH their business practices), this is sad. I could ALMOST live with it if they had an obviously inferior product, like the early days of IE vs. Netscape when IE was about as robust as Notepad and as crash-proof as an airliner with El-Qaeda operative onboard.
But now, when they actually have a GOOD product (or rather will when it's finally released)... no need for this, just compete on the merits of your work because this time around I suspect you'll do pretty damned good!
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
(NT)
"It's Dot Com!"
That's the typical MS MO. They did it the several times when they got caught faking grassroots movements. They did it with the intimidating error you got when running the Windows 3.1 beta with DRDOS. They did it when they got caught commiting perjury in court. And they did it when their evil army of flying monkeys got caught disrupting Linux kernel development efforts. Ok, so I made that last one up.
And the thing that blows my mind is that people keep believing them!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I hate M$ as much as the next guy, but the article said they attempted to rig the voting. It also said ZDNet's script blocked a lot of the multiple voting attempts. I'd be curious to see what percentage of the votes that were actually counted came from M$ employees.
For some reason I don't seemed to surprised by MS cheating on somthing. But it makes me wonder, how many other this has MS cheated out on?? I'm not saying MS is a cheater (well, sort of), but I'm still waiting for the day when Lunix/Unix systems take over!
Also, most of us have nothing to gain by voting. Microsoft employees are bound to get large bonuses if .NET does well. On the other hand, if Linux suddenly took off and replaced Windows on every computer, I have not really gained anything more than I had before. The reverse is true as well, if Linux suddenly dropped off the Earth, I would have lost only a very little. Microsoft employees have their jobs to worry about if .NET dies.
Imagine what Windows would be like if M$ spent as much money on QA as they did on marketing!
I've long suspected Cowboy Neal of rigging the slashdot polls.
I Heart Sorting Networks
To all those who don't remember the previous OS Wars, this is a reminder. Microsoft has done this before:
/ jd 981120.htm
http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/dvorak_print
Look for the same treatment towards Linux and any other non-Microsoft product.
The goal of a poll is to get a random sampling since they can't possibly interview every developer. Assuming that readers visit the site in the same proportion that they develop in, this is done pretty well. What MS did was shift that proportion and thus mess up the poll. But, since ZDnet claimed that double voters were blocked, everyone still got one vote. And since many of the people at MS will be using .NET, they really didn't cheat or lie. They just lowered the credibility of the poll. That's the same thing as hearing of a poll and visiting the site just to vote and show your support. That, too could be considered tainting the poll since it messes up the random distribution of site visitors. In short: Online polls mean nothing.
Today is the closing of a parenthesis opened before this sig, before this story, before this existence that is me (as if
Hey newbie moderator, 'redundant' is for restating information in the original message post, not for dinging a bunch of users who happen to have the same idea at about the same time.
I really hate to admit it, but really, this probably isnt truly poll fixing.
.net, both, or neither.
.net framework), the microsoft site (again, heavily implementing .net), msn, msn messenger, outlook, or other apps (yep, .net) ... then really, they're answering truthfully. ZDNet doesnt say "employees of the given companies should not vote" or "developers associated with the projects should refrain from voting", so I dont see any real problem here...
The question asked: which will you be implementing in the coming year, java ,
Now, if you worked for microsoft, especially doing anything with the next os (which obviously supports the new
But that's just my opinion. I'll probably end up at -1 troll or -1 flamebait.
Video for Online Dating Profiles
I wonder how many MS employees are posting here on a regular basis, trying to sway thinking and opinion of anyone that visits.
It's one thing to say online polls are rigged.
It's another to have proof.
It's one thing to catch a big business (in a fair market) with their hand in the cookie jar.
It's another when it's Mircrosoft with their hand in the cookie jar.
Do you like Japanese imports?
Slashdot has been found to be rigging a government study. Apparently after posting this article tens of thousands of messages came in opposing the Microsoft position. Over 800 messages were found to come from the same email address, and 6000 of the messages simply said "Microsoft Sucks, First Coment!" Slashdot should be reprimanded for this concerted effort to subvert the government's processes.
Will you use Linux in 2002?
Okay?
please mod the above post to "-1, did not praise linux, transmeta, java, or open source software".
try to keep your posts on topic, and anti-microsoft.
We gotta bust out da l337 hax0r sk1lls and vote for Perl. ;)
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
On the poll archive page, there is this message at the top:
.Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here.
Poll Results
On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
From the article:
.NET.
.NET?)
Although votes cast after 21 December are suspect, this latest episode illustrates the importance of Web services -- at least to suppliers, anyway.
That sounds a lot like a horoscope or fortune cookie to me.
The best horoscope, or other predictive statements which are phrased very vaguely in order to "come true," that I've heard so far came from the UC San Diego's student-run paper The Koala which stated (paraphrased):
You will meet someone today. You will either like them or dislike them.
Wow.
Now look back at the article's statement. Seems like a +5, Insightful statement right? Read it again. Of course the web products are important to those who are selling them! It would be rediculous to think the opposite, especially when that company is Microsoft and it's well known the OS division is basically betting the farm on
(By the way, will Sun say they're the "dot" in
This is typical Microsoft. Some organized big evil company might have orchestrated something at the highest level, used a variety of IP addresses from around the world, etc. But Microsoft doesn't have a clue--they don't rig this as part of some master plan, they just engage in some lousy mass mailing. It's like all the other areas where Microsoft wins through poor practices (bad quality control, incorrect claims of innovation, announcing and releasing before a product is ready, poor standards compliance, etc.). And while some people know the truth, the ZDNet figures are probably already being quoted in boardrooms around the world (yes, it's stupid, but that doesn't stop management from doing it). Let's hope this one will backfire for them and people will trust Microsoft-friendly statistics and reports less in the future.
Nobody trust that ms.net will be 80% of the market in any future!
.net just because if was an "hot and new" thing comming from redmond. Now they've realized that this is just what they where doing with Java since nearly 5years, then they dont' care anymore of ms.net !
:(
Just look at latest announcement of enteprise product massive migration to Java and J2EE technologies....
People may have first look at
Who knows if ms.net will survive in 1 year ?
Who may have trust me if one year before i told them that ASP, COM, DNA, MTS, will be either deprecated or dead technologies in 2002 ?
ms.net is only a late reaction to the java leadership in enterprise developpement
Instead of wondering how bad microsoft is, why not create software that _allows_ people to build reliable voting systems that prevents this or adjusts accordingly and publishes misuses regularly.
It shouldnt be too difficult to build a system that detects such misuses of voting systems. This way we could better provide accurate and reliable data on such issues. Making sure linux people have ways to get reliable data on issues like this is essential.
We wouldnt want public to "learn" that 80% of people are switching from linux to windows in near future. Polls like this can make large amount of people think so, even if it is not true.
I can see it now:
PHB: We have to use Java for our next project.
Dilbert: Why?
PHB: According to this ZDNet poll, 99% of IT Professionals say it's the best choice.
Dilbert: Ummm... 1,234,243,324,234 votes for Java vs. 98,234,242,123 for .Net. Doesn't that tell you something?
PHB: Don't bother me with the technical details, just get to work. We have a client in London with a trillion customers who need it by next Tuesday.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not to mention anybody who has the consciousness level of a gold fish would notice that the opensource movement regularily uses /. to "rig" polls.
On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked .Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here.
dumbass
if you are into karma whorin at least post that thing decently, not that mess you made there.
duh
I can just imagine a programmer sitting in his chair, stroking his chin after reading the "Please vote for us at ZDNet" poll and thinking "Yes, yes..... I can prove myself to Bill Gates with this."
Then again, I'm sure most major corporations, seeing their name up at a poll on a major site, will give a heads up to their employees to visit the URL. I mean, obviously companies like Apple, Sun, and HP do it. Someone must be voting for HP-UNIX on those sites. ;)
Is sending out this much information an Exchange-specific thing?
Hmm. When i go to the poll link listed i get this:
.Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here."
"On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked
The last line of the article:
Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot this time, but future efforts may be a little more subtle.
Definitely. This was just a probe to see what the reaction would be. This will probably blow over and nobody (at least not a large number) of people will care, and so Microsoft will continue to do things like this in their usual amoral fashion.
Think about it, is this illegal? No. Do millions of people really care about the results of a ZDNet poll? Not really. Will anyone change their preference based on this data? Nope. So why did they put such an effort into it? They did this to "test the defenses," as people say.
Of course we could all be wrong and this could be some pimple faced haxor trying to make MS look bad...
~ now you know
So, am I to assume you are being paid to read slashdot? Lucky dog! I mean, what obligation were you under to read Slashdot? It's interesting that you would consider that a minor difference.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agree with you... up to the point that each person should vote once. But I guess the guy who submitted 228 votes for MS will be implementing 228 different web services next year?
- fader
Lets add "MS Stooge" to the options for Moderators.
/. is clearly from an MS employee or puppet, we can clearly label them.
.coms and the un-employment, MS must be putting hundreds of people to work with the sole purpose of rigging online polls! No wonder they can't lower their prices!
This way when a post on
(Just kidding)
I have to admit, with all of the failed
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Hey everybody on the "slashdog" BBS, jsut wanted everybody to know, MICRSOOFT IS TEH BEST operating program for computers. Lunxi stinks and you can't get good games like Xbox for it. I know because I've used LUnix a very long time, since 1989 at least. But no more. Also GLP license is for terrorists.
NET. rules!
John if you're reading this where is taht check? I posted like 100 of these alreaedy.
At least the audience at ZDNet is likely to be aware that such things happen.
What bothers me is when CNN puts up a poll like "Now that we've squashed the Taliban, should we go after Saddam Hussein?"
For one thing, their audience is less likely to be familiar with statistical methods, and for another, I'm sure I've heard them report the results of "an online survey" as news, which gives it far more weight than it deserves.
Amazing, Linux is apparently going to jump from ~1% marketshare to a stunning 80%+ during 2002! Geez these web polls are magical tea leaves pronouncing the future!
That's all well and good - providing the m$ employees happily voting are planning "to deliver some applications by Web services by the end of 2002"?
I mean, are *they* actually going to be doing the creation and delivery of these services, or just microsoft the company? or the department? or whatever.
If not, then it's surely reasonable to say that these votes are bogus and misleading.
AC
No, you're a whore.
Not a very smart one, either, Did you really think ZDNet would get slashdotted?
Again I say: whore
Yes - there are just no limits to how far the opensource movement will go to make CowboyNeal win..
If this was GM trying to win the public over about the safety of truck tires, would the public just roll over?
No, but a Ford Explorer might roll over...
Microsoft did this with their XBox. They rigged polls, tainted votes that compared PS2 to XBox. They even hired people to float to PlayStation 2 message boards everywhere and generally troll.
Yes, it is.
.net (assuming those that voted were actual developers and not just office drones cajoled into voting) does not in and of itself constitute poll fixing, however, submitting multiple votes, sounds like poll fixing to me, which is noted in the article, if you had read it. It sounds like they didn't get very far with the multiple submissions, but they still tried.
Employees of Microsoft voting that they'll use
The basic problem here is that the poll's respondents are self-selecting, which as any good statistics student -- or anyone with a modicum of common sense -- will tell you, immediately renders the results dubious at best.
Several people on this thread have observed that if the story had made /. in time, the slashbots could have voted it back the other way, "evening things up". Unfortunately, all that happens then is that the poll's response is 45% MS, 45% /. and 10% real respondents, whose opinion is lost in the noise. In other words, the poll result now looks like it's close but isn't actually representative at all. If anything, that might be more misleading; at least the MS rig is obvious.
Such is the price you pay for self-selection. It only takes one group to get together with a common purpose, and your result will go their way. This is why the consultants choose a random sample of a few thousand from their target audience -- and then ask them questions carefully phrased to bias the responses in favour of the desired outcome, but we'll gloss over that bit... :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The headline should have read: Microsoft Proves ZDNet Polls Meaningless, ZDNet Worthless As Information Resource.
Instead, they're spinning it so it sounds like their poll revealed something interesting and newsworthy, namely that web services are such a Big Deal that Microsoft is willing to rig polls to increase their market share. I call bullshit; the utter worthlessness of their polls was revealed, and strong doubt should be cast on the validity of any information that comes out of a publisher that doesn't immediately dismiss such poll results and either seriously alter or cease altogether their polling activity. ZDNet isn't doing this; they're sidestepping instead, and trying to save face by masquerading this as intrepid reporting that provides some new insight.
My bet is that if the sudden reversal wasn't so blatantly obvious to the readers, we would never have heard a peep from ZDNet.
Here is another great poll:
http://www.newsnipple.com/poll.html
Was this article useful to you
1/9/2002:
Very 40%
Somewhat 50%
No 10%
2/9/2002:
Very -20%
Somewhat -10%
No 100%
Hey stop picking on Microsoft and buy lots of their products 130%
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Which of these next generation consoles do you hope to be spending the most time with in 2002?
http://polls.zdnet.co.uk/zdnuk/?p=24&d=O
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
MS tactics sort of remind me of the "Church" of Scientology ....
9 .h tml
http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg0152
:-)
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
...Bernard Shifman to pull this off.
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
Just read ZDNet for a while. Read a few of the feedback postings to any article involving Microsoft.
.NET, the Microsoft shills respond in force, seeminly attempting to dominate the discussion. At times it seems like the Microsoft shills have had advance warning of the article, coming in with the first response and then flooding the forum with Microsoft inanities.
The Microsoft "astro-turfers" are so obvious and pathetic here that it is painful to read their postings. Watch, for example, a character who calls himself John Carroll! His articles are articulate but read like a stuck record, i.e., completely predictable.
I am especially amused to watch how the Microserfs seem to choose the articles to which to respond. When the subject is Microsoft Security(sic), or any equally difficult subject, the trolls are almost silent, as if Microsoft's failings here are so obvious that it would make things even worse to respond.
However, when the subject is some new piece of Microsoft vapourware, such as
It goes without saying that whenever there is an on-line poll on any subject involving Microsoft, one should discount the fact that untold numbers of Microserfs will have voted an unknown number of times each.
I love .NET
It's better than Cats
I'm going to use it, again and again
When employees from inside Microsoft vote on a Web poll it's dirty business.
I can't see the difference. Don't let your biases show through.
As if Slashdot never tries to rig one of these "polls" -- pointing one out and urging people to vote in a particular way.
Anyway, the real story is that Microsoft's software leaks information out of corporations that may be damaging to the reputations of its users, and then even Microsoft itself can't control this. Businesses often get burned by this in Word, where earlier deleted text is still in the file.
From the Article:
when people click there from a Microsoft Exchange email message, Exchange helpfully gives us the subject line and username.
Nicely done, Microsoft.
and i attempt cast multiple votes on slashdot, consistently, not because it works, but because i get bored and have nothing better to do than hit refresh to see what new comments have shown up on the page ....
it's possible the 228 votes were one person hitting reload to see the current status, not attempting to vote, but rather attempting to view the resulting page.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Microsoft's Steve Baldrick, er, Ballmer...
If Microsoft were smart they'd have taken advantage of the IIS vulnerabilities that had caused mass bandwidth waste earlier this year. If each of the hacked machines voted in the poll appropriately prior to infecting its peers they wouldn't have been caught. (It would have been detected, but it wouldn't necessarily be attributal to Microsoft)
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
You know, MS has pulled this kind of thing before and have been left unpunished by the general public. They are so confident of their position that they do not FEAR public backlash. Their market share is SO dominant that this kind of this is merely shrugged off and ignored by MS.
THIS is the kind of thing that should tell the doubters that MS is a monopoly. If any other company had done this, the "mea culpa" would have been posted at the bottom of the news story. What has MS done? Nothing, ignored it, becuase they feel that they cannot be impacted by it.
I used to work for a company that would send out emails, encouraging us to write our representitives when a law that was going to hurt the company was coming up for a vote. No matter that the law might be good for the employees or the public at large.
Companies have learned since the eighties, that nothing can touch them, but other companies. The public has no rights, and employees have no rights. Companies are free to pursue thier own best interests, regardless of the dubious moral nature of the actions, or the impact on the public in general.
Many many fear big government, but I fear Big Business more. At least in government I have the illusion of a say.
Part of the problem with all of these online polls is that they are really votes, not polls. Now, granted that these are not dictionary definitions, but it seems that in the common parlance:
Thus, as I see it, most "polls" on the Internet are something closer to your standard vote, with much canvassing and the usual distortion of responses only coming from those who bother to show up. Unfortunately, when people see the word "poll," I suspect that they expect something more along the lines of the definition I've given for "poll". This of course comes down to a matter of perception and education about statistics, doesn't it?
I disagree, and not just because of the technical definition of "fraud". here's my thinking on the subject (for the record, I have helped "fix" online polls before, and I still think Microsoft is evil):
Anybody who knows anything about statistics knows that online polls are meaningless. Unfortunately, a lot of decision makers at large companies are deficient in their math education (which is a whole different story).
So, it's possible that somebody might be influenced by the poll. Since the poll is known to have no scientific basis, there's no reason not to rig it, since that looks better for Microsoft. Unless you get "caught", of course.
Unless online poll providers make some effort to ensure that their poll results are valid and accurate, or to educate the viewers that they're not, it's always going to be in somebody's best interest to try to swing the poll.
Fundamentally, I think that fixing a poll is no different from other actions that companies take to protect their reputation or promote their products.
-Mark
oh puh-lease.
...Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf
There was some on-line poll involving Netscape and someone sent an e-mail around saying "Vote in the Poll!" and a lot of us did. Then the people running the poll turned around and said "we stuffed the ballot box". This simply demonstrates the problem of non-random polling.
Of course, the netscape browser wasn't dumb enough to send the headers of the e-mail to the poll's web log. Yet another (minor) MS security flaw. Nice
Nobody around here would pull something like that... no sir.
rooooar
In moder poll-taking, great care is taken (at least in theory) to select a wide and varied sample supposed to represent a snapshot of society as a whole (the smaller the sample, the bigger the error margin).
In Internet polls, however, the voting is on a voluntary basis, by people who themselves come across the interactive poll. In other words, people who already have an interest in the issue. The sample is therefore quite distorted (and that's not taking into account other issues such as multiple voting and hacking).
Imagine how results would vary if two identical polls ("Do you use Linux at home?") were posted on msn.com and Slashdot?
Reminder: find a new sig
What I find at least mildly irksome is that the conclusion drawn by the author is that this behavior illustrates, not anything about MS' behavior, which would seem to me to be the most obvious point, but rather "the importance of Web services", such that this importance would drive MS to do such a thing.
... is if the "PLEASE STOP AND VOTE FOR .NET" had been distributed through an Outlook virus. Then, I'd've died laughing.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Well, there was a study several years ago that concluded that, under some situations, driving was safer than flying.
I turned out that the study was paid for by the auto companies, and that 'some situations' meant very short trips. (I guess it does seem reasonable that it's safer to drive to the local grocery store than to fly there.)
I agree with the sentiments of some earlier ./'ers: The large number of Microsoft votes were probably NOT orchestrated by a high-level MS exec. Most likely, the large number of votes can be attributed to the large number of individuals withing MS, some of whom voted once, others who voted multiple times, and still others who created scripts to vote for them. So, it is difficult to say that, MS as a "corporation", is guilty of any wrong-doing.
However, something is still rotten in Redmond : MS's culture. At best, it embodies a "take no prisoners" attitude. However, I suspect that there are a large number of MS employees, execs or not, that use "manifest destiny" to reason away ammoral acts. I doubt these individuals are ever punished within MS for breaching ethics. Rather, I fear they are lauded for their "loyalist" efforts. Thus, it is the MS culture that encourages employees to "win at all costs", even if it means breaking the law ("just don't get caught doing it, OK ?") or breeching ethics that most humans take for granted.
Is there such a thing as corporate ethics ? How will history look upon MS ?
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
There's another one here :-)
To most PHBs this would be considered big news that Microsoft intentionally tried to alter an online poll. Just because "we" know how they have behaived badly before doesnt meen that the PHBs do. Most of them are just aware of what the MS salesperson tells them when he visit their company. No sane person would let MS into their company if the knew what they wore locking themswlves into and just how low MS seems to be willing to go in their marketing and sales efforts. Im not biased, just well informed after 20 years in computers.
HTTP/1.1 400
These polls always have disclaimers about how they're not statistically valid, and, well, they're right. Self-selecting samples aren't trustworthy. Example: my ex-girlfriend was a member of the Campus Crusade for Christ, and they used to organize massive voting efforts on high-visibility online polls, to weigh in with a false appearance of a conservative majority. The only way you can get a poll that validly reflects the populace is if you select the sample at random.
they should have taken advantage of their own users inability to apply security patches and made a worm to go out and vote from them. at least it wouldn't have seemed so suspect... that is until their worm is so effective that they effectively get all the votes.
-- john
Had the MS programmers spent that much time and effort on reviewing their own code instead of rigging polls, maybe their next release would not be so unstable and behind schedule.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Here's what we make:
One daemon that will be fed with desirable options for online polls by some lucky geek. Maybe we'll make a slashdot like moderating system so that we'll reduce the obvious potential for abuse.
One debian package that will contain a client to the daemon.
The client will automatically contact the daemon and request an url. It gets the url, casts its vote and stores the url. Next time cron activates it, it will get a different url, and if it gets the same, it'll ask again up to three times.
Folks, this scheme can be done easily and somewhat securely. I'm quite sure quite a few geeks would run it if it was Yet Another Deb.
Is it ethical? Practical? Needed? (one question is rethorical)
Stop the brainwash
Why must it have been a salesman? I can see that a developer would also like to see his project ranked highly, so maybe it was the .NET dev team that started this.
Also, I don't think this is evil at all; Mac sites do this (Ever see those polls where Mac OS is #1 with 85-90% of the vote?). So do linux sites. Just because MS is a company doesn't make this extra evil. However, I would think they'd be smart enough not to do stuff like this, knowing how people scrutinize MS's actions so much more than everybody else. I guess Uncle Steve's gonna have to give everyone over at MS a stern talking-to!
rooooar
No I understand why 'The *Neal' varies anywhere from 7 - 77% of the polls... Depends on which poll he wants to lead. Cowboy Neal you cheater, quit rigging the vote!
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
With all the automated voting and link manipulation, we'll find out the most popular platform for Web Services is Britney Spears' "Baby, One More Time" video.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Is it wrong, because somewhere, five miles underground in Redmond, Bill Gates cackled the words, "Slant the polls!", and issued forth from his subterranean lair, a horde of orc, er, Microsoft employees following him?
No, because more than likely, Bill couldn't give a rat's arse about a ZDnet poll.
What happened, in all probability, was some mid-level manager somewhere saw a poll involving Microsoft and insisted everyone in the company should vote for MS.
What's wrong with this?
Corporate ethics.
You're working for a company. You're being paid by them. And then you vote in a poll and click on your own product?
Erm - that ain't right, bub. For exactly the reason that employees and their families of McDonald's can't win in their monopoly games they have every year or so.
Why was microsoft.com and sun.com excluded from polling at all?
Employees are always excluded from participating in company sponsored contests.
At least you would get a better class of script kiddies.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
The coolest must be Metroxplex. Come on, he's a fuckin city! Of course I have a Transformer network naming scheme. Matches personalities too. eg. pussywhipped=Silverbolt. Always gives me chuckle.
"To deny our own impulses, is to deny the very thing that makes us human." - Mouse
So, I'm off-topic. So then, where does one make suggestions about the system itself without getting karma punched by 'Offtopic' happy moderators?
Geez...
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Are you 200 people who will be implementing .net(like the one person who tried to vote 200 times)? Are you an automated script(Like the one that was detected voting from the microsoft.com domain)? If ZDnet accuses microsoft of cheating, you'd better read the article and realize that they were actually cheating. The article wouldn't exist if every developer in the company had come in and voted once, but they didn't. They obviously cheated.
It's been a long time.
While Webster's doesn't back me up ("to manipulate dishonestly for personal gain"), 'rigged' to me gives the impression that they manipulated the mechanism to achieve a predestined outcome. That isn't what happened here - they [the voters] played by the rules and out-voted others.
Does anyone truly believe that none of the votes for Java originated from sun.com and that none of them attempted multiple votes?
Funny, had the tables been reversed, I sincerely doubt we'd see the headline that "Sun Caught Rigging ZD Net Poll", instead we'd be reading "Overvoting in ZD Net Poll by Crazed Java Supporters Proves Entusiastic Zeal for Platform!"
It's not never trust an online poll, it's never trust a volunteer poll.
volunteer polls are where people answer if they want, like phone in polls etc. They are bogus and statistically invalid. To have a proper poll you need a random sample population. In a volunteer poll, the population is only those willing to volunteer, and it is usually only the highly opiniated portion of the population.
...I found a poll on PGP that did nothing but take an HTTP post request to vote. It was also on a really really fast server. So I set up a lil' script from my company that ran for like five hours and resulted in a poll that said:
"Do you regularly update your security policy as new threats arise?"
99% No (32,817,531 votes)
1% Yes (1,200 votes)
Apparently, pgp.com wasn't a very popular site. (Not many people voted). The poll was right on the main page for several months, again, with little change. THen afterward you could see it in the archives, where the polls were like
old question 1
yes 48% (2,234 votes)
no 64% (3,420 votes)
old question 2
yes 38% (3,231 votes)
no 72% (7,423 votes)
old question 3
yes 22% (1,234 votes)
no 88% (3,420 votes)
old question 4
1% Yes (1,200 votes)
99% No (32,817,531 votes)
of course I'm mkaing this up to illustrate something, and the numbers dont' ad up, but youy get the point...
These polls are lame anyway...a friend of mine calls them "cheese polls". ZDNet is lame for taking this seriously.
Talk about missing some obvious problems with the assertion that Microsoft is stuffing the ballot box.
.NET, because anybody who would choose to implement a web service on Java over .NET is probably insane.
:-)
Microsoft employs 40,000 people. What evidence does anybody have that Microsoft's leadership directed its employees to commit these acts? Is this not like saying if an American kills somebody, all Americans are killers?
Is it not possible that a few of those 40,000 people have minds of their own, and wanted to promote what they or their company has worked on?
That's not to say what they did was kosher, I'm just saying that people who think it was a company-wide plot, or a plot by Bill and his cronies to misinform, is plain silly.
Chances are it was a few enthusiastic people acting completely on their own fruition.
At any rate, the fact that Java was winning is quite enlightening. It shows that people are typically completely ignorant of the capabilities of
Either that, or they have some insane project managers / clients who insist on promoting cross-platform capabilities for server applications, which illustrates their insanity.
When Time Magazine noticed us folks at Georgia Tech were stuffing the ballot box trying to get George P. Burdell named Person of the Year, they removed all the votes for him.
.NET.
I think that's sufficient precedent to remove all the votes for
-JDF
You know how you always see online polls that say "Not scientifically valid?" This is what that means.
If you check again you will see that ZDNet now states that the poll has been rigged by MS. Too bad this probably happens all the time. At one point I actually held some hopes of that MS was going to play (almost) fair in the future. Then I woke up... Really it's a shame a company that size can't show some common sense or style.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Let this be a lesson: watch out for the "VOTE FOR .NET" Outlook virus!
There's a difference between the company advocating employees to do this and some employees doing it themselves. If I worked for a company, and suddently started killing people that doesn't neccessarily mean my company told me or reimbursed me to kill those people.
This could just happen to be a bunch of misguided MS employees, not everyone is perfect.
-shane
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Why, this would NEVER happen on slashdot...
Cool a Baldur's Gate .sig
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Well, /. out of being relevant. The buggers keep rating me as a Troll! When did bashing Microsoft, the most hated and guilty of every possible bad thing a corporation can do short of poisoning Bhopal, become a crime on /. ?? Now, this story shows up. Hmmm. CmdrTaco please wake up!
No one has ever seen my posts regarding the mass of M$ poseurs who are moderating
This had me ROLF for a while.
:)
When these day they may start rigging elections just to get people that agree with in government.
Because of comapanies like my MS is why the computer industry is the way it's is more corrupt and greedy(Their are some exception)
Regards,
Alex
The dead people are back, rooting for M$, but this time online.
We need a new setting for our friend/foe lists...
I figured, o.k, -1, troll, fair enough, I deserve it, but I got modded +4 insightful. Hmmm.
Full plate and packing steel! -Minsc
Check out this for a nice page about other things Microsoft has done.
IMHO ..
I believe it is poll fixing. If you read the article, they mention multiple posts / votes from the same people / machine.
Though I understand what you mean, and in normal cases where multiple posting isn't taking place, then that would be a fair comment.
If Microsofts offcial stockholder statments discuss .Net as a future segment of their profit stategy, shouldn't the SEC investigate this a a possible fraud on the stockholders?
Don't people go to jail for fradulent websites artifically boosting a companies outlook? Don't people go to jail for defacing say CNN? Is this better or worse for Microsoft because they manipulated another companies site rather than generating their own?
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
The part of this story that impresses me is not the ballot stuffing. That's been happening for as long as there have been polls.
The interesting part, from an "evolution of the Internet" perspective is how well the pollsters were able to characterize the ballot stuffing and point a finger squarely at M$ employees. Not only was the polling system sophisticated enough to prevent the obvious old-school ballot stuffing methods; ZD captured and stored enough data (and actually LOOKED at it when the poll results went wonky) to determine conclusively that ballot stuffing had occurred, as well as the source.
It may raise some privacy issues about MS Exchange etc, as others have noted, but I think it's a pretty good example of responsible reporting, and creative use of the Internet's more sophisticated polling potential. (remember those old TV polls? "Call in now to vote! dial this number to vote 'yes' and this number to vote 'no' !!")
OK, so at least some users cheated and voted more than once. But its doubtful that upper management directed the cheating or would have even condoned it, as obvious cheating would only apply more tarnish to Microsofts reputation.
As far as I'm concerned, unless the poll specified that Microsoft employees were ineligible to vote, its a valid win, even if 95 percent of the respondents came from the microsoft.com domain.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
They knew Microsoft stuffed the ballot box right? That would suggest they keep web logs. All they have to do is hack out a little script to dig through the logs and subtract a vote from MS's count for every vote from microsoft.com. Presto, ballot stuff reversed. (A bit crude but you get the idea...)
You lucky bastard! I get butkiss! I get troll ratings. Ahh, this is weird. I am beginning to wonder if the moderation system isn't susceptible to "waves" of moderations. Something. *sigh*. You know, I come to /. for the posts. There are many really intelligent people here, but man... they are gonna bolt if this keeps up. Maybe I'm over reacting but the M$ plants are really annoying. Their posts are like reading molasses.
A rather persistent fellow, don't you think? If something doesn't come up I usually give up after 3-4 tries. If Microsoft is paying emplyees to sit around and try to look at some stupid ZDNet poll 228 times then they are not an efficient outfit.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Check out your own link man! The poll does have a warning and link to the story which says about the fraudulent votes.
MS has proved, time and again, to be a very despicable organization. This is just business as usual for them.
yeah baby...
Get JeffK to take care of that poll, Lunix will get all teh voets!!11!1
You can automatically log in by clicking This Link and Bookmarking the resulting page. This is totally insecure, but ver
Has anyone emailed this link to the email address for comments at the Justice Department?
-Greg
Therefore, we could conclude that people were paid to vote on MSs behalf.
.net programming department could have gotten this ball rolling with almost no effort, using their own adress books. Simple lemming psychology, a 'forward this to everyone' line in the email, and corporate conformity does the rest. I've seen it happen within my industry, (which is non tech BTW), as well as on endless newsgroups, forums, etc... Here on Slashdot, it's even got a nickname, The Slashdot effect.
We could indeed conclude that, if we are in the habit of drawing conclusions from evidence so slender it's all but non-existent.
Sorry, but I don't buy it. There's no evidence that anyone was paid, or that there was any concerted effort, or that their was any conspiracy. Yes, the votes originated from a microsoft.com account, yes emails appear to have originated from a microsoft.com account, no there is no evidence of 'official' action.
Three guys from the
I guess what I'd argue ethics wise is whether its right for the employees for the company creating the product should vote to say "I'm using the product its cool". On one hand it is a whole bunch of people that ARE implementing .NET products. On the other hand its 1 single company implementing all those projects.
Not that I will defend MS on the ethics front here because they were trying to boost the score for .NET. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say they rigged the vote. There are 40,000 MS employees many of which who are extremely loyal to the company who would vote from inside the MS firewall. All of those votes would be routed through the proxies so all 40,000 votes from independant people would actually look like they came from a few hundred IP's.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
No wonder M$ software is shitty....their freaking employees are doing nothing but surfing the web...
Get to work!!!!!
"Look where we worship" -- Jim Morrison
Come on we all know that M$ was doing this kind of thing to polls. They have been doing it for years with the market!!!!!
Hey, ZD has added a warning now! Which means they get their news from /. ?! Shouldn't there be another warning about that, too? ;
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
is at unhelpful.org.
c tion=view
"Do you vote in web polls?"
Answer options:
"yes"
The results: http://www.unhelpful.org/cgi/vote.cgi?name=vote&a
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I rather hope they don't. Part of me hopes that a company so lame as to engineer a product like Exchange (that here at least has proved their undoing) won't get smart, that it will be this easy to fend them off in the future.
Part of me fears I may be wrong in harboring that hope.
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, Bill. My concern is how many you will take with you before you go.
--
And in the end, reality always tends to hit theory hard in the face when you least expect it.
-- Linus Torvalds
That Windows would be absolutely bullet proof and nobody would own a copy of it. Some other company would be selling mildly deffective software, and would be slowly driving Microsoft out of business through a series of orchestrated incompatibilities between the products.
Say, what you will but ubiquity is the trump card in OS's. People can learn to adapt to crashes, bugs, worms, and all the other chaos that ensues because of Microsoft's focus. But it's hard to argue that having software that works on 90% of computers is rather handy.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"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. "
(Slashdot)
"Microsoft have..."
Next time they want to rig a poll, perhaps they should put a 1x1 image tag on the micorosft home page which casts a vote for MS. That way they can get millions of votes from around the world, and not use their valuable bandwidth doing it!
Ok, I take back part of my argument if what I recently read is correct. It looks like there were nutz people clicking the link over and over but that was the stupidity of a zealot (linux supporters have stupid zealots in thier midsts as well).
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Here is an opportunity to apply the Prisoner's Dilemma part of Game Theory.
explanation. Or read Beautiful Mind by Silvia Nasar.
.forsight
we've been monitoring/debunking this NYT forum for almost 4 years now. all day, every day, the screen is filled with billygate's paid2post ?pr? bot's screed. bashing/demeaning/attempting to discredit ALL things that aren't payper liesense fud, whilst shilling/touting for the felonious kingdumb, & IT's variety of payper (stock market) FraUDs. fuddy thing is, IT's the SAME guise, all day, every day. what cheapskate scammers they are. J. Public deserves MUCH better.
As an on-line poll, this is both silly and trivial. The problem comes when there's a context shift.
If this poll is removed from the web and placed at the side of a fancy brochure, it will look respectable. You may well need to read the small print, or even check the bibliography, to find that the source was a web-based poll. And yet no fraud would, technically, be involved. That's what the poll did report.
So this is useable outside the context where it originates, and with the original context not being clearly obvious.
If you wish to say that this practice is not new, I will agree with you. But it is a frequently effective approach that is done because it usually works, and because those who do happen to check up on it will consider it silly more than criminal. I presume that it isn't technically fraud, because it is done frequently. And that's my only reason.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
Well...I don't think so. Because lots of places use proxies, AOL for example, corporations for example and so forth...once would *presume* that ZD is smart enough to use a combination of IP and cookie to determine if the user has already voted.
.NET, Microsoft appears to be quite agressive (can you say 'monopoly'?) in their efforts because of the *TONS* on $$ they'll make from it.
In particular, with
Bottom line...ANYONE who thinks an on-line poll has any validity....give me a call, I've got this bridge for sale, you might be interested!
Why is it that, whenever a "leaked" email appears from Microsoft, and is hailed by slashdotters as another example of M$ stupidity/arrogance/terminal jerkosity, suddenly a croaking chorus of Microsofties rears their collective head and cries "O! But for this incessent M$ bashing on Slashdot, the world would see M$ is pure as the driven snow."
.NET XPerience as pure as, well, you get the picture!") BLECHH!
But now that an authoritative source shows that, indeed, M$ is deceitful and ready for their basement suite in Hell, the chorus changes to apologetic cries of "People can learn to adapt to crashes, bugs, worms..." and moans of "There's no evidence that anyone was paid, or that there was any concerted effort, or that their was any conspiracy."
Sigh... I'm only asking....
Oh, and by the way, give them a chance, and M$ will make it illegal to say "Pure as the driven Snow," as it will undoubtably be an infringement on some Hailstorm-related vapor ("Upgrade to MS SnowXP for a
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
But anyone with a single ounce of common sense could easily foresee that voting for YOUR OWN PRODUCT - thousands of times - is the tactic of a sleazeball. A rather stupid sleazeball, too.
And defending that behavior is the act of a professional apologist.
But hey, what else does one expect from the trolls at Microsoft?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I like reading the -1 posts on slashdot. Sometimes they're the most interesting.
But a post with someone's anti-linux opinion that gets moderated to -1 and goatse flood that gets moderated to -1 are not in the same catagory.
Then again, if this "Flood" mod rating was added, all the linux zealots would start moding anti-linux posts to "flood."
Screw it nevermind...
MS want to manage all of this data, and yet they clearly have a culture of dishonesty, a lack of ethics. Would you trust a bank that behaved like this?
-- Welcome to nowhere fast / nothing here ever lasts.
They don't need a ZDNet poll to convince people to use .Net, or any of their other products.
Say that again, with a straight face, after the sentence "Microsoft's latest operating system has the biggest security flaw ever."
Do you like Japanese imports?
It is damn obvious to me that you work for the DOJ.
Got Code?
I've heard colleagues say things like "That's business". Businessmen are being conditioned to operate in this way, with no sense of responsibility to consumers. Microsoft has forced this industry to operate at an extreme, where lying, cheating and stealing are considered acceptable business practices. If you get the deal, you did good, and that's business. The money justifies the means, and many Americans believe that: if you're rich, you did something right.
It's important to realize the extent of the damage Microsoft is doing. If they were split into a thousand companies today, we'd still be left with a million companies operating with the currently accepted business practices.
"Hello, World", 17 errors, 31 warnings
Before breaking out the nooses and rounding up suspects let's consider for a moment that this, and other instances, are not the result of an executive order from the big fraud himself (Balmer), but the work of loyal employees (minions)
Under either scenario it's a PR ding for Microsoft. Look for their deflector shields to be raised (spin-meisters, obfuscators, trolls) to preserve the untarnished image of the company (recently found guilty of being an evil monopolist, which is just fine with the current administration's cabinet.)
In all fairness, there's probably hoards of OpenSource advocates, Linux faithful, or just hackers, who would do the same thing if there were a ZD uk poll on best operating system.
Ok, now you can bust out the ropes and round up suspects, because they're likely guilty of something anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Right conversation, wrong names. Don't forget who was a programmer once upon a time, even if they're just a figurehead now.
You mean Paul Allen? ;-)
(Yeah, yeah, I know, Gates has done his time, too [he's sure as hell a better programmer than I am]. But who could resist such a setup?)
But should they be TOLD to go and vote for it? I mean its just a POLL! Perhaps some of us want to see what NORMAL people are going to use.. Not just these 'loyal ms' employee freaks.
"when people click there from a Microsoft Exchange email message, Exchange helpfully gives us the subject line and username. "
And MS don't know this about their own product?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
Somebody ought to write a virus that doesn't do anything malicious, but randomly votes in any online survey it encounters. Better yet, it should then infect the server of the survey so that the survey itself will infect new hosts.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
If you're going to stuff ballots properly you need loads of IP addresses. Imagine all those insecure IIS systems voting against .NET! That would make a much better story when they worked out what was going on.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I think that this needs to be investigated as an attempt by Microsoft to make itself look better to investors than it really is.
And if this is what they were trying to do, then it is very, very illegal. Astroturfing is not just morally wrong, it can result in jail time if there is an SEC violation.
Not to mention that it is very pathetic that their products are so poorly designed and executed that they are incapable of competing with free software written by people whose only communication is over the internet.
Can you imagine how pathetic our computing experience would be if we only had msn? It used proprietary formats for all it's proprietary content. That would have truely, truely sucked.
Do you think that a forum like slashdot would have existed under msn? I think not.
I can understand the problem here if this was an official Microsoft campaign. But if an employee took it upon themselves to email their department and screw up the poll a bit, how is that "Microsoft rigging a poll"?
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Fuck you...
This shit was FUNNY!
People are told to go and vote for something all the time. You go to planetfortress.com and the latest poll on whatever site featuring TF2 is mentioned (usually with the statement 'you know what to do'), and planetunreal will feature the same poll if it's got Unreal 2 on it, planetquake does if it's got Doom 3, and so on.
If anything, this shows what we all should've known a long time ago: web polls are worthless.
I don't know, if I had a rather pesky and hard-to-find bug that needed fixing, I might call up the guy that tried 228 times rather than the guy that gave up after 3 or 4.
I think it's rather obvious that Microsoft has at least a few employees who do nothing but waste their time pushing a pro-Microsoft slant on popular web forums, masquerading as 'average joes'. Y'know, someone to back up the BillyG Phallic Worship Society.
Want to know who they are? Check out the apologists for Microsoft re this news item. Because only an apologist would actually waste time defending Microsoft for rigging the poll, and only a paid apologist would do such a half-assed job of it.
I swear, you guys crack me up. Don't give your day job for undercover p.i. work, okay?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Is it ethical? Practical? Needed? (one question is rethorical)
Practical maybe, but neither needed nor ethical. We'd only go down to the same level. It's not the first time Microsoft had tried to bias an "independent survey", and this has already had some effect of a loss in credibility in the public. Be honest - if you saw the poll on ZDnet, would you really think of anyone to believe the result being the true and neutral opinion of ZDnet readers?
It took a lot of time and was a great effort for GNU/Linux, Free Software and the Open Source Initiative to gain today's amount of credibility and momentum. It was credibility which made it possible for GNU/Linux not only to be considered as a serious competitor against Unix, but in many cases as the only potential competitor against Microsoft, and the only way to escape a 100%-Microsoft-dominated world. Exactly that is what the PR people at Microsoft know, and it's what they want to combat - by Microsoft's rules if we consider to play the game with them.
So little could be more stupid than sacrificing much credibility by manipulating a public opinion poll or doing other unfair things which we don't find tolerable even if done by Microsoft. You're right with your statement that Microsoft's biasing of public surveys and polls can't be tolerated. But it won't change the fact that our rigging of public surveys and polls wouldn't be tolerated either.
Not computer industry but The ultimate Strip Club List was, in the beginning a very useful way for fans of naked women to find the best place to go. In Honolulu it took just one 18 yearold stripper w/ a computer to start a flame war with the other clubs to destroy the usefullness of the list. Comments like Angel's #$$&% stinks like week old tuna, or Club Blank is a Lesbian club that hates men, etc... The same but not the same eh?
Poor billG, he may soon have to explain their "fidel" user why they have yet to learn another revolutionary technology and get rid to dotNet .... to go the Java way :-)
4R34'.
No. A poll is *supposed* to present a balanced view of a larger population. By arming yourself with statistics that reflect a subset of a population you are not proving anything except that you will accept anything that supports your point of view - this is not making an informed decision, it is defending an emotional position.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
I'll upgrade to Windows Me:
Right away 6009 (13%)
In a few months 4153 (9%)
When I buy a new computer 9693 (22%)
When Hell freezes over 24835 (56%)
To vote yourself, go to http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10 738,2627324,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews02 and show them what you think!
The chad weren't coming all the way out...oh wait, internet...
They can just discount all votes that came from within the microsoft.com domain. Of course, to be fair, they should also discount any votes that came from the sun.com domain too... That takes care of .net and java head on, afaics.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I could critise Microsoft over this (but this is probably just a few odd employees who did this), but then I'd be a hypocrite because I have participated in ballot stuffing before.
About two months ago, Entertainment Weekly did a poll on Entertainer of the year. It was soon posted on Fark and then slowly migrated itself to the Something Awful forums. Now, we decided to ballot stuff it with "Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka" due to the fact that they didn't have any sort of security method to stop people from doing multiple votes.
It soon became a battle when the Shack News forums and some other forum started a battle with us. So we then got cocky and wrote various scripts in langauges varying from Perl to JavaScript (I wrote a script in mIRC considering I wanted to write it in a small bit of time). From all of our efforts, Lowtax got over 500,000 votes.
Yes, Lowtax was on top, but then they took the site down and then reopened it with a security measure and a little comment in the webpage taunting us. A few weeks later the results came out and I am not sure who got into the Top 10, but Lowtax and Something Awful DID get a mention in an article they wrote later.
If I hadn't done that, I'd be saying things differently here.
One would of course be naive to think that the same thing isn't done by others to HURT Microsoft.
...or suffering from severe schizophrenia; and all working on the same project.
Is this really a surprise?
Well, I try to innovate where I can :-)
Don't you mean Microsoft didn't do anything *illegal*?
No, I really mean that I think they didn't do anything wrong, given the nature of web polls. I'll try to explain:
If I insult you and tell you lies, I have done nothing illegal, but does that make it right?
Technically, that is a crime - at least if you do it in public. People get sued for it all the time. Look up the terms "slander" and "defamation of character" sometime.
Microsoft has clearly violated the intent of this poll. If Sun had done the same thing, you know Microsoft would be howling for blood.
What evidence do you have that Sun didn't try to rig the poll? Or that somebody at ZDNet didn't "adjust" the results to make them look more interesting? For that matter, what evidence can you offer that any of the votes were cast by somebody who actually builds software for a living? There simply isn't any evidence to be had re: the validity of the results...
And that's my whole point. From the perspective of an end-user of the poll data, the results are essentially random (in that they have no correlation to what the poll purports to "measure"). If my reputation, or the reputation of my company or its products might be harmed by the results of one of these polls, then I should do whatever I can to ensure a good outcome. An argument could be made that for a public company like Microsoft, that they have an obligation to the shareholders to do these sorts of things.
I do believe that the situation is quite different in the case of scientifically conducted surveys. But a web-poll is one step above graffiti on a wall in terms of scientific rigor.
My preferred solution would actually be to have a rational discussion with the various "news" sites about why these kinds of polls do more harm than good, or about ways to encourage more accurate data collection. However, I really doubt they'd be interested, since they have no vested interest in getting accurate results.
This is disinformation, plain and simple.
If there was any information content to be had from the poll, I'd agree. Given that there isn't, it's hard to argue that the final results are any more "disinforming" than the results before the "tampering".
I know that I will never buy any software written by Mark Bessey.
Oh well. I guess I'll just have to live with that. On the other hand, since you apparently base your purchasing decisions on ZDNet's user polls, that's probably not much of a loss, anyway. :-)
-Mark
I heard a report that microsoft is innocent!
Apparently, the same dead guys that sent the DOJ letters have whipped up some jscript and vbscript to throw off the zdnet poll!
This proves 2 things:
1) Microsoft isn't the devil (or presumably they would be controlling the undead).
2) The undead can't resist a good prank!
I just wonder how many comments posted around the net are posted with the same goals in mind.
.NET. I love .NET, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, everyone should be using it...[/sarcasm]
[sarcasm]People would never rig comments or posts on the web, don't you trust your users? I mean really, who would ever take advantage of a gaping security hole or flaw? Computer users just want to be happy and friendly, that's why they should use
Ok, I couldn't resist...
So if I click on a link in Outlook the Web site gets to see my e-mail address.
Another reason to not use Outlook. Privacy.
And while I agree that the manager who makes the boneheaded decision to use X based on an online poll deserves something nasty
I don't think most people really decide to use X. It's big and slow and it's a bitch to program. OTOH it's what comes with Unix.
No one's made that argument because MS'ers are a bunch of FUCKSTICKS!
HOORJ!
I've been a system admin for many years on many operating systems. I got talked into working for Microsoft as a contractor even though I think their operating systems are poorly designed.
I've given this a lot of thought over some years but would like to get additional input from other system admins who have been in the field for a long time (over 10 years) and have administered a variety of shared operating systems (e.g. both mainframes and fileservers).
I have a brief window of time in which to present our case and I don't want to leave anything out. Help me get them to understand! Specific facts and examples!"
Many people are paid to read /. - it's just that their PHBs haven't realized this fact yet :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
that's pretty damn funny. You can add every SUV to that list, except for maybe over-priced range rovers.
Sorry, couldn't resist
Home of all your base: www.allyourbase.net
ltl, 1tp -- tie
This is hardly surprising - Microsoft DID, after all, invent people to lobby on behalf of it's "Freedom to Innovate" a while back. we don't all hate and deride them for nothing now, do we?
That was classic intercourse!
\m/ rawk \m/ shacknews strikes again!
is a list of the usernames logged. Any users named 'billg'? How about 'steveb'?
Here's an excerpt from an article a few clicks away from that story:
C# is also expected to support IL, a method of development that permits developers to access code dumped in the garbage collector, without wasting time moving it back into the main development environment. A set of workarounds currently exists to permit access to dumped code, but implementing them soaks up developers' valuable time.
WTF???
"It amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations." -- Jean-Paul Sartre
rofl :D
Execute? [Y/N] _
(Note: I'm not positive this guy is from Microsoft, but for the hell of it I'll assume he is. A disproportionately high number of Microsoft employees are bound to be reading this thread in any case- unless they're all at "backslashdot.org".)
.NET is to make Java irrelevant. Even you seem to be convinced Java is already dead.
.NET, the point seems to be creating a copy of Java with a 1-to-1 mapping to every concept in it- from the JVM ("CLR") on up to the language itself. This fits the standard MS pattern; every technology Microsoft has ever produced is an incompatible imitation of an existing successful technology. Java might not be the best technology; in fact it has some real flaws- but it's successful, so you've copied it, flaws and all. Except you aren't calling it Java, you're calling it something else- because dammit, if people aren't going to let you royally screw something up with your "innovation", you're just going to go off and play with your own toys! Funny how you make the C# to Java migration path so short. I'm sure I could learn all the differences between C# and Java in twenty minutes. In fact, I'm sure someone could write a book "C# for Java programmers" with ten pages in it, that I could finish on the toilet in one sitting. I'm not going to bother. I remember all too well the stunts you played, how you refused to support standard APIs and kept coming out with your own oddball Windows-only crap, how you made my programs not work unless I wrote MS and non-MS versions of everything. Now all of a sudden you're going to make it easy for me? Screw you. You've completely alienated all your target developers. Now nobody trusts you.
What kind of Enterprise or large business consults Internet Polls for business decision-making?
You'd be surprised. People get promoted until they reach a level at which they're incompetent. They have no idea what they should be doing. They're too scared to ask anyone what technology is appropriate for their situation, because that would reveal their incompetency. They want someone to tell them what to do. They desperately want to know what everyone else is doing, and what everyone else is going to be doing in five years. They hunger for safe decisions. They fall for FUD tactics easily. Why do you think so many shops use things like VB, ASP, and IIS? Being (obviously) from Microsoft, you must surely appreciate the tactical advantages to be gained from marketing your products to such people. Stop acting like they don't exist; they're your bread and butter.
You too are considering MS was acting as a collective... where do you stand on the bogey man and the tooth fairy?
Ummm, it really doesn't matter whether the rigging was done by MS as a "collective" or by individual idiots at MS forwarding parameterized URLs to each other. What really stands out to most observers is the way you're always faithful to your stereotype, whether you're acting as a single company or a collection of individuals. The fact is that you fools got caught rigging a poll, and your own poorly-designed technology is what gave you away! Now you have egg on your face, and everyone's opinion of you has been reaffirmed yet again.
The whole point of
Well, you could say the whole point of any Microsoft technology is to make non-Microsoft technologies "irrelevant". In the case of
I'll only learn C# when I'm forced to use it, most likely by some middle management bonehead who's seen a rigged poll.
Finally a use for .NET. Spamming!
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
I'm suprised by the people who think just that. A lot of people, even(or especially...) on slashdot seem to think we hate and deride them because they are rich or something. It sort of scares me because they are also the ones who often carry the microsoft company line(cmon, notice how few people have counter arguements for our problems with MS until MS provides one?).
It's been a long time.
I don't see why everyone is so harsh on microsoft, this is the sort of community thing that a lot of people do. It's just spam e-mail to kill the days, I really doubt that anyone "high-up" organized this effort. I bet the people who did this were even punished for it.
A regular poll picks a "random" cross section of people (yeah right) that should include someone thats pretty much like all the someones in the world. That way the distribution of preference in the sample should match the distribution of preference in general.
In a web poll you can't control the (easily anyways) the sample so you have to analyse the poll for selection effects in order to make any sense of the results. It may well be that the valid conclusion to draw from this web poll is that 90% of MS employees will be implementing .NET applications.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
What's up Andy.
Say, when are you coming back to school? I'll be arriving sometime this weekend. Drop me an email.
If you don't know who this is... I use linux, and am unfortunate enough to know who chris the hockey player is.
I have just followed the link to the poll and ZDNet clearly state( at the top of the page) the poll has been rigged my Microsoft
The problem is that Microsoft ARE getting away with it. Ask any number of decision-makers about Microsoft's credibility. They might complain about fuzzy license schemes, but that's it.
Do we take it up the a**, or do we fight back dirtily?
Though I agree that one of our strenghts is righteousness and integrity, I am not sure if it's wise to lie back and take it when they've got such a powerful coverup-machine.
Stop the brainwash
I really dislike the term "Microsoft Caught Rigging." I mean it makes a catchy title, but its not entirely true.
:) like the good ol' days of throwing tomatoes, at people who stole bread.
:P
For it to be Microsoft Caught Rigging it, they would have had to read the minutes of MS's weekly board meeting.
What i see that happened is one guy sent an email round, he may or may not have talked to anyone before he had done that, and then some people inocently voted and some did not.
I know its fun to make fun of MS, im getting sick of it though. Why cant we just see who voted more than once and publish it somewhere. Kinda like a public humiliation
*sigh*
Im sure MS's board have better things to do than rig polls. Like try to get the world theres.
-----------
Rodney McDonell
Here are the thoughts of security guru Bruce Schneier (of "Applied Cryptography" and "Secrets and Lies" fame) about national ID cards.
Definitely worth a read.
His conclusion:
"I am not saying that national IDs are completely ineffective, or that they are useless. That's not the question. But given the effectiveness and the costs, are IDs worth it? Hell, no."
Raymond
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Heh, why not require MS Passport for voting, that should eliminate, or at least reveal multiple voting :)
Why is there an overwhelming sentiment here of "It happens all the time, so Microsoft can't be wrong". This is sad and childish rubbish.
Lying and cheating is still wrong, whether a lot of people are doing it or not. There are still notions of personal and corporate responsibility, and I would hope that we are not so jaded as to think they are impossible to achieve or meaningless.
It would be heartening if people used their discussion energy to encourage other people to ACT BETTER and treat each other with respect and honesty. . . people don't need encouragement the other way.
If a corporation (or a person for that matter) is spending time lying and cheating your fellow citizens, call them on the carpet. . . don't try to justify it !@&?
....of the slime factor network and the association of stupid MS supporters around the world. Yeah!!!!
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
Tee Hee.
Two identical polls ("Do you use Linux at home?") posted on msn.com and Slashdot /. readers use BSD/UNIX instead?"
Personally, I think the results would be rather interesting, primarily to get a feel of how many people would bother to vote.
The poll tries to ask something like "How many Linux users?". The answers are more like "Do Linux users visit msn.com?" and "How many
I think the main value of a poll is to get some handle on how hot or dead a subject is, and to a slight extent, to whom. It could also be used to measure audience bias.
Even if you have a statistically valid random sample, there is still bias because the respondents will always think ahead to the consequences. For example Clinton's popularity poll numbers at the time of his attempted impeachment. The measurement is always confounded (I think that is the term). The statistically valid random sample has a further problem in that it assumes equal weight between don't-really-care and violent-opinion.
See:
8 619
l d=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=2808467
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24415&cid=264
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25899&thresho
You might want to check the dates......
All your base are belong to us!
Waves. Yes. Dunno if it's the script or something else with the timing. /. seems to me to be more like following a soap opera than anything like dutifully following the news.
.... painful slow.
/. is the best available resource for dealing with Microsoft worms/viruses/etc, for those of us still using the stuff. Response time is like hours compared to Microsoft's days.
.NET.
There was a time many months back when the ms-bashing leads were posted shortly after the astroturfers had gone beddy-bye. Fun.
The M$ plants remind me of Iraq's ambassador to the UN during the Gulf War. Sounds like it should mean something but
M$ has a problem with damage control. At this point,
I don't think the intelligent people will bolt. The mass of moldering molasses of microsoft minions gives a preview of the morass known as
This is one of the dumbest things that they could do useing there owe domain to send multiple votes they should have used more than as in many
So who cares if Microsoft rigged an online poll how much will this effect there sales? i doubt none.
I think that thier are alot of people that have the same goals in mind. I don't beleive that microsoft rigged the poll.
HA HA! I actually still have some transformers left from the late 80s and early 90s. I stored them in my sisters garage over 10 years ago, and now my nephew plays with them! I had tons of them, my favorite was the CONSTRUCTICONS. The construction vehicles we cool by themselves, and they came together to for CONSTRUCTOR!
Does this mean I'm ethically challenged if I voted for penguin crackers in that Nabisco "what should the next animal cracker be" poll due to a link I received on some Perl Mongers email list?
;-)
--LP
Posted as AC because those crackhead moderators are going to tear this up. Natch.
It once affected Mozilla and once affected Netscape 4 too.
Webmail suffers from leaving delicious referers in my log files. I couldn't find any [Netscape 4 style] mailbox:// urls in my referer logs sorry, but I have seen them before.
Not if you asked the user to write down the numbers on a picture or the number from a sound. I believe yahoo and many other web sites do just this to prevent DOS from automated scripts.
But in reality the freaking TRUTH hurts...
"Look where we worship" -- Jim Morrison