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Microsoft To Start Running Anti-Unix Ads

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the our-burgers-are-better dept.

PhreakinPenguin writes: "According to this article on News.com, Microsoft and Unisys are preparing to pay for a slew of ads to 'undermine' Unix with the theme of 'We have the way out.' They are apparently hyping that Unix is an expensive money trap. One ad states, 'No wonder Unix makes you feel boxed in. It ties you to an inflexible system. It requires you to pay for expensive experts. It makes you struggle daily with a server environment that's more complex than ever.' Unisys is apparently putting up $25 million and Microsoft won't say how much they're chipping in but you can bet it's more than Unisys." As the article notes, this comes after floundering attempts to sell (through Dell, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard) the high-end Unisys machines pushed by these ads.

4 of 984 comments (clear)

  1. The campaign website runs FreeBSD by semis · · Score: 4, Redundant
    This is amusing.

    Check out www.wehavethewayout.com - the official campaign site. It runs FreeBSD!
    According to netcraft
    The site www.wehavethewayout.com is running Rapidsite/Apa-1.3.14 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3 mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.5a on FreeBSD.

    Check out the netcraft results here.

  2. Re:Never heard of a Mac? by zerocool^ · · Score: 1, Redundant
    from the article:

    Sun still does not see Microsoft as a real threat in the datacenter market where reliability, availability, serviceability and security are key," the company said. "As for Unix being 'inflexible,' 'expensive,' and 'complex,' we feel those are terms much better suited to the closed and proprietary world of Windows."


    Way to go, sun. Now, give me better shells and i'll love you and solaris forever...

    ~z
    --
    sig?
  3. RE: Webserver running on FreeBSD by syrupMatt · · Score: 3, Redundant

    While this may seem like a gotcha, remember the fact that this ad push isn't intended to make people switch from apache to iis, it is intended for high server performing data crunching.

    If anything, the site running on FreeBSD could be spun as Microsoft knowing the advantages of unices, having used the variants themselves, and still believing their high-end servers are better for more serious tasks.

    Whatever, just playing devil's advocate.

    --
    "Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
  4. Kind of ironic... by fruitloops · · Score: 2, Redundant

    That a Unix bashing site hosted by Microsoft/Unisys is actually running on a Unix box.

    A HTTP HEAD reveals the following:

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 14:58:02 GMT
    Server: Rapidsite/Apa-1.3.14 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3 mod_ssl/2.7.1 OpenSSL/0.9.5a
    Last-Modified: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 20:52:25 GMT
    ETag: "11f79ad-2595-3ca38289"
    Accept-Ranges: bytes
    Content-Length: 9621
    Connection: close
    Content-Type: text/html