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Microsoft/Unisys Unix-bashing Site Runs FreeBSD
Several people sent in variations on this: "Kind of ironic to see that the the site, dubbed WeHaveTheWayOut from Microsoft and Unisys runs on an Apache Web server powered by FreeBSD. This could have made a great April Fools joke, unfortunately for Microsoft, you can verify it by using Netcraft." This is a follow-up to the original story a few days ago. Other readers noted that there's already a WeHaveTheWayIn site up. Wehavethewayout.com was returning Apache headers yesterday; today it's returning "Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0", so it appears they've dumped FreeBSD in a hurry, or maybe just changed the headers.
Wehavethewayout.com was returning Apache headers yesterday; today it's returning "Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0", so it appears they've dumped FreeBSD in a hurry, or maybe just changed the headers.
Somehow, I doubt it's a big conspiracy. As someone suggested in the Netcraft story this morning, they probably just moved the domain from their marketing firm's hosting farm to their own box or something.
Not that the fact that their own marketing firm won't eat the dog food isn't funny, but this isn't front page news by a long shot.
--saint
Firstly, the ad campaign is about data centers and "big iron", not web servers (i.e. Unisys isn't really about selling low end web serving machines). As such the deployed HTTP platform becomes irrelevant.
Secondly, Unisys apparently contracted an outside vendor, and that vendor just happened to use Apache (and for static content it really, truly doesn't matter. Static HTTP is about as complex as notepad.exe). It's odd that there's a seemingly mixed attitude on Slashdot: One says that Microsoft is an evil beast bashing the world to conform to its ways, and another is a mocking when Microsoft isn't bashing people to conform to their ways. Which do you want?
they didn't just change the HTTP headers. nmap reporst:
:)
Remote OS guesses: Windows Me or Windows 2000 RC1 through final release, MS Wind
ows2000 Professional RC1/W2K Advance Server Beta3, Windows Millenium Edition v4.
90.3000
it also reports a number of interesting ports as open:
21/tcp open ftp
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
110/tcp open pop-3
443/tcp open https
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
2105/tcp open eklogin
3306/tcp open mysql
5900/tcp open vnc
whoever set this up did it in a real hurry.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Of course they were running on unix themselves! They were locked in, they were unable to stop paying for the expensive so called unix 'experts'. They were *hoping* we could ALL find a way out TOGETER.
Liberty.
Since the whole campaign is predicated on GETTING OUT of Unix...the fact that the "way out" of UNIX is hosted on a Unix computer is ... damn funny.
Shoots the whole campaign down the drain, which would explain the rapid spin control to change the server/headers in the past days.
P.S. Someone needs to get on irc://irc.slashnet.org#slashdot and let polaris know about this story. He'll be so surprised!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
They are running two servers at two different IPs. Apparently 130.94.214.143 is running their Windows 2000 IIS server and 198.63.57.204 is still running the Apache server on FreeBSD.
I guess what I am saying is "so what". Microsoft has disclosed the use of Linux for business critical function in their board report a few years ago. We also know that while eBay runs on IIS, the work really is on their database systems, which are on Sun equipment (AFAIK).
Click here or here.
Shall we?
t .comx hit.com
www.anna-nicole-smith-nude.com
www.ex-microsof
www.cannabis.com
www.dykesworld.de
www.se
www.germanparts.com
Don't know about that last one... but I'm not going to visit it.
Plus, slashbots, get this: THE IP CHANGED from 198.63.57.204 to 130.94.214.143. They're both hosted by Verio. Maybe that's all they had available at the time, before they moved to a dedicated server. Ooh, here's another idea: who the fuck cares? It's like saying that since the Zone runs Linux on their stats page... Lynch them! Lynch them!
FYI...
The old site (running BSD) is still up at: http://198.63.57.204/
The new site, running win2k/IIS is at: http://130.94.214.143
People DO know because news sites such as Yahoo! and CNet were running this story yesterday (don't have the links, sorry).
And people SHOULD care what OS and Web server is running that site. The entire purpose of that site is to persuade people to think that Windows is as capable as UNIX and then some. So for the site to be running FreeBSD is an embarrasment to Microsoft (or should be).
Would you buy a Hyundai from a salesman who drives a Toyota? I wouldn't.
I'm running it in wine.
;-)
The full article is on page B2.
A lot more people will see that, and they are your boss, not you.
The old site is definitely faster than the new one! ;)
HTTP_USER_AGENT='"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.01; Windows NT Sucks)"'
I've been sending that header for a long time.
OSS browsers are getting a bit more respect lately, but there are still a lot of sites that only accept browsers with knows USER_AGENTs, so we continue to spoof.
You should know better than to believe stats based on unproven data.
:)
obligatory plug: headers spoofed by JunkBuster
To respond to myself:
One way I think the site could be improved is to have a list of big companies that have converted to Linux/BSD recently. We could make a 'best of Linux users' listing from the following pages:
SUSE ccasestudies
Lufthansa
RedHat casestudies
Oracle, Amazon, Merrill Lynch
IBM case studies
Shell, NCSA
HP Case studies
Dreamworks, Boeing
I guess NASA should go on the list somewhere.
Any more?
...and they can't afford a firewall.
On behalf of Unix Engineers everywhere: Thank you Unisys. Thank you, Microsoft.
URL 1: http://130.94.214.143/ (IIS)
connects_completed: 12373, responses_completed: 12373 (41.2433/sec), total_errors: 0
msecs/connect: 87.503 mean, 3082.84 max, 81.047 min, 81.308 95min, 84.234 95max
msecs/response: 87.5983 mean, 3098.43 max, 81.848 min, 82.295 95min, 91.204 95max
URL 2: http://198.63.57.204/ (BSD)
connects_completed: 12322, responses_completed: 12322 (41.0733/sec), total_errors: 0
msecs/connect: 17.4765 mean, 21009.6 max, 9.477 min, 9.75 95min, 12.135 95max
msecs/response: 47.6064 mean, 3013.33 max, 12.329 min, 12.651 95min, 162.082 95max
This is very unscientific, and it's only wrt to the index page on both sites. It'd be interesting to see a detailed side-by-side comparison of the two sites. How often will you get to compare a BSD machine against a Microsoft machine maintained by Microsoft themselves, hosting exactly the same content.
Now, wouldn't it be a terrible thing if that site got hacked and then the story got onto Cnet and Yahoo news!
Wouldn't that be terrible PR for Microsoft! Poor them! I do hope that doesn't happen. Especially bearing in mind that there must be a lot of people reading Slashdot who know how to do such a thing, and might be tempted to do it, or to post information about the open ports to mailing lists that black-hat hackers read. I do hope that doesn't happen, for Microsoft's sake. Poor them.
here I noted that Unisys has many webservers running mostly WinNT, and run a variety of webserver sw on them mostly IIS but also Lotus Domino, and Netscape. And in at least one instance they run Apache on Red Hat Linux.
Also per this chart they also run Apache on two other 'unknown' Unix platforms.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
5900/tcp open vnc
Good job they're not running XP then or they'd be violating their own license
As a Microsoft/Unisys PR manager, I would like to thank to everyone who made wehavethewayout popular.
Thanks to your obsessiveness about netcraft & pretty much useless arguments which web server you use to serve static web pages, we are actually able to make many CIO/CTO's register & have a look at what we have to offer in replacing big-irons hosting databases & directory servers(not web servers serving static web pages, in case you still havn't got it)
The best part was we never spent $1 on marketing this web-site, just released details to CNet.
Again, thanks to everyone, we never imagined we would get so many hits or people looking into it
..this IS news, and here's why:
:-)
Because there is no better product endorsement than to be seen in public "eating your own dogfood," or "putting your money where your mouth is." Conversely, there's nothing worse you can do to hurt a company's reputation than to work for them and be seen using the products of their competitor. This makes people wonder, "If Company A's product is supposed to be so good, how come a Company A employee, who probably gets it cheaper than Joe Schmoe consumer (or even free), still chooses Company B's competing product?"
This is why people who work at car dealerships are given demo cars for personal use. Would you want to buy a GM car from a salesman who drives to the dealership every day in a Toyota? Would you find his pitch about how GM cars are superior to all others very believable, when his personal funds went to buy a non-GM car?
I remember reading a couple months ago (and just Googled the article, 2nd from the top) that highly-paid Pepsi shill Britney Spears was photographed with Coca Cola products. Twice, in a rather short time frame. Pepsi publicly pooh-poohed this, but you can be sure that their PR people are chugging Pepto Bismol over it, because she holds sway over a nation of twelve year-old girls who want to be her-- which would entail them consuming Coke when they're not busy filming a commercial for Pepsi.
This is why it's news when Microsoft chooses someone else's product to run something, or when they fail when trying to replace a competing product with their own and end up proving that said Microsoft product doesn't live up to its marketing hype (e.g. Hotmail's original failed NT conversion). In this particular case, it's just a boneheaded mistake-- nobody thought to say, "Oh, by the way, let's make sure that our anti-UNIX site is running on IIS," but it's still noteworthy if for not other reason than because of the almost comical irony.
~Philly
Would you buy a Hyundai from a salesman who drives a Toyota? I wouldn't.
That's a bit of an understatement. Maybe a better statement would be "Would you buy a Hyundai from a salesman who bashes Toyotas as being unreliable, expensive and unsafe, but sends his kids to school in a Corrolla?"
I'm really pleased Slashdotters are just talking about hacking the site, rather than actually doing it. After all, I'm sure lots of people at Microsoft read Slashdot, so now they have been altered to the fact that their box is insecure and are probably making plans to secure it. I'm really pleased that people aren't hacking this as soon as possible, and causing Microsoft a terrible PR disaster. It's great that Microsoft is being given time to put a firewall in place. We wouldn't want embarassing PR for them, would we?
Frankly, I think Microsoft sees promotion of FreeBSD as:
1) An opensource OS it can reap benefits from without giving back
2) A way of fragmenting unix/linux, thus hurting microsoft's biggest threat: linux. Just as keeping Apple just lively enough to keep the justice department off their backs, I think they realize that splitting unix/linux into factions will keep microsoft stronger, relatively speaking. Both of these are things right out of go strategy, and Gates is a go player.
In other words, I wouldn't be surprised a bit if we were supposed to discover that the site is running FreeBSD.