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Most Outrageous Vendor Lie Ever Told?
i8msft writes "CIO published a guide on How To Cut Through Vendor Hype. While light, the article did prompt me to wonder what is the most outrageous lie ever told by a vendor? I mean, in person, face to face, preferably with witnesses (boss, coworkers, someone on your side of the fence). Forget press releases, trade show presentations and the like, where they lie like dogs! Specific examples only, please."
I got news for ya. You actually can do stuff with Windows. The vast majority of problems with the WinNT line (Win9X is horrid and i won't defend it at all) has nothing to do with Windows itself.
I realize I'm going to draw criticism for this, seeing as how apparently some people have issues with Win2k. My perspective on this is from being the assistant-administrator for my office of around 17 or so. Almost everybody is on Win2k, I think one person is on 98. Other than a minor issue with an old laptop having difficulty going into standby mode (a bios flash fixed this), I've had no Windows or even Microsoft related problems to report. The problems that do come up are nearly always the fault of the company making the software. Netscape, for example, doesn't like to stay running for an entire day without crashing at least once. That's not a Windows problem. Netscape has never been known for its stability on any platform.
In any case, MS certainly kept their promise of greater stability with Windows 2k, and I am very glad that we upgraded the whole office to it.
Let me give you a piece of advice, though. Do some research before you make a switch like that. Go to www.deja.com, for example, to see what people have to say about a product. If they say it sucks, then keep that in mind. Find out why. We didn't go to 2K until we had tested it on a few machines. We didn't buy it based on a vendor promise. We certainly aren't running MS servers, we're running Linux there. We know better because we looked into it. It is a lot harder to be succeptable to vendor lies when you do reasearch like this.
"Derp de derp."
Has anyone stopped to ponder the sales culture that encourages this hype?
Show me a sales rep who is patient enough to sit down and listen to the specifics of what a product does and doesn't. I have worked in sales for a long time, and I've seen one, maybe two who can. (Oddly enough, these guys were ENGINEERS before they become sales clowns.)
Too many sales reps thrive on the intangible: possibility, maybes, etc. Put them in front of an Excel sheet (or WORSE) a white board, and you're REALLY in for a doosy. I see my own people committing these atrocities in meetings with customers. I then have to then gracefully butt in and "clarify" what the assclown has just promised.
It's also sick to see them all assemble together. These fuckwads get drunk and there's no stopping the information warpage. I have seen sales goons literally gut a company that once had a bright future.
Don't you guys remember when Oracle started advertising their database server as unbreakable?
"The reason that Playstations are going bad is because people are misusing them." -- that's what Sony said when they had LOTS of returned, defective Playstations.
"Derp de derp."
Be glad. Comcast makes @home, at their worst, look good.
Limited NNTP Service. They dislike it when you run servers. They really dislike it when you have a NAT. Their mail service is pretty unreliable, sometimes working fine but sometimes taking hours to send or recieve a message.
They won't even talk to you if you dont have their software installed.
one of my calls with them went like so:
"Whats your mailserver address?"
"Install our software and it will set all that up for you, in addition make some highly technical changes to your system to improve the performance of our software"
"is that what i asked you?"
"Its all we can tell you."
I explained to them that I am the only person i want making changes to my system.. as i was irritated.
Ugh.. i want an ISP with a clue. I'll get DSL once i find a new job. anyone know where i can find a new job?
Maybe i'll start my own ISP.. with a advanced support option over the phone that says "If you have a clue, press the digit corresponding to the difference of the number of layers in the OSI Model and the DOD model. Otherwise, press one to speak to our customer support center."
Comcast's local support number actually has the audacity to state: "If you have not installed the comcast software press 1. If you have installed the software, press 2."
If you press one, it says "Please install the software, downloadable from www.comcast.net/connectioncenter/, and call back *hangup*".
thats just wrong on so many different levels.
A few years back, my Mom wanted to buy a computer. She asked my older brother what to get. "Don't buy an IBM AT, buy a compatible with a 386." She in turn asked my other brother, and me, and we all gave the same answer: get a 386.
So she bought an IBM PC AT with a 286 and 512 KB of RAM. "Why?!?!?" I asked.
"Well, the salesman told me it was the fastest computer they made." Okay, the AT he sold her was an 8 MHz 286, not the usual 6 MHz 286, and that did in fact make it the fastest PC AT that IBM ever made. But any 386 would have smoked it, and been able to run real software as well.
Not a vendor lie story, but still interesting, is the postscript to this story. After a year or so, the power supply in her AT died. As it died, it fried her motherboard too. We contacted IBM, and they informed us that we would have to ship the computer to them, then wait 6 to 8 weeks, for a repair; there would be no guarantee of any sort on the repair; and it would cost $X00 (I don't remember exactly how much but it was a lot). And of course after all this she would still have a 286 running at 8 MHz.
We went down to a friendly local computer shop. They installed a new power supply, a new motherboard with a 386SX and 2 MB of RAM, and a new VGA-compatible display adapter. They burned it in overnight to make sure all was working, and we picked it up the next day. Total cost was less than IBM had wanted to repair the AT.
I like to tell this story when people don't understand why I like my computers to be made from standard, easily-replaceable parts. (Apple's new iMac is cute, but I don't want one.)
My mom still has that computer, by the way, and it still works.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
There's a problem with your complaint here --
u dio2/95x7.htm
When you copy a CD you -are- changing the data. I know what you're about to say as a rebuttal - "CDs are Digital, therefore copying a CD means that I'm doing a digital copy, right?" Wrong.
If you rip a CD, copy the file to disk, and then burn ten copies of that digital File, then all of those CDs are identical.
Now, if you read in the CD, write it out, read in the new CD, write it out, and so on, you're changing the data, if the CD contains any small errors.
Due to interpolation (minor error), concealment (larger error), and muting (massive error), the data coming from the CD reader changes.
References:
Audio Compact Disc http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/cda