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Microsoft To Exhibit at LinuxWorld Expo
Earendil writes "Linux Today has a confirmed report that Microsoft is going to be an exhibitor at LinuxWorld Expo. One can only guess at what Microsoft's motives might be. It will be interesting to see the reaction to the appearance of a Microsoft booth." No doubt this
means that the more childish among us will make us all look bad. Sigh.
It's a linux expo? I mean, I have nothing against Microsoft, but I'm pretty damn sure they don't have a linux distrobution (God forbid the day of a "Microsoft Linux").
Anyways, I guess they're just going to try to show the competition.... but that makes absolutely NO sense because, again, it's a LINUX EXPO.
"No doubt this means that the more childish among us will make us all look bad. Sigh"
Considering Microsoft has called the GPL a "Cancer" and attacks linux publicly whenever possible by telling outright lies, how can we ever look bad?
Microsoft is publicly out to destroy linux and whatever their motives, they have a lot of nerve to show up in the first place.
Feel free to pelt them with eggs, because that pales in comparison to their attempts to spread FUD and eventually make our OS illegal or impossible to use. Feel free to mod me down, but nothing I said is a lie.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
FUD, .net, their 'rent our code' initiative, and of course, details about their enterprise wide lisencing schemas in order to properly confuse education IT pros and such forth that are finally looking at an open source solutions as a sincere posilbility.
There are some things I fear though;
1) A MS Distro with proprietary libraries and a proprietary office product
2) officially renting a floor space in order to be able to make official complaints regarding the 'competitions' advertising practices.
3) They want to Buy you. Not win you over, not get you to trust them, straight up, here's a free copy of XP, try it out. I've seen this at the chicago CIO conference, where it was brutally succesful.
Of course.. we all know what will really beat MS in the long run, better pr0n harvesting utilities... at least if the succesful net sites are anything to go by.
-GiH
Foot, meet mouth, mouth mrrphrmmm...
Say what you will about all their software (the Soft in microsoft), but they do make some pretty decent keyboards and mice which Linux users can make use of.
They'd best emphasize the hardware over the software; a Linux crowed is not the most recentive place for the software anyway.
... to do so would only result in no further invitations to similar conferences, and getting them bad press amongst a market I'm sure they see as potential customers.
More likely, I expect they'll have information about their Microsoft Windows services for UNIX
Showing off services for Unix goes much further toward generating revenue for Microsoft than trying to tell people why *nix is bad or somehow inferior. It actually shows that Microsoft cares about interoperability with *nix. True of false, that's probably the message they'll try to convey. I'll withold my opinions on the validity of that message.
Remember, in the end MS is out there to make money. Ruling the world is just a means to that end.
Then why is Bill giving away so much to charities? Just for PR? Maybe.
I think it's more likely that the Microsoft coporate personality is more like a control freak than just greedy. Money is the way they maintain control, not the other way around. Remember, money is power.
Nope, no sig
I hear alot of people saying something to the effect of "I hope that the MS booth gets trashed because MS Sucks" This is probably EXACTLY what microsoft wants. Think about it, MS has done all it can to portray Linux as a system designed by crackers and script kiddies, one stop short of terrorists. How do you think the government will react if MS get physically attacked at a trade show? MS Will say: "See, we told you that those Linux geeks are all hackers, you cant trust them to make secure systems, but you can trust us, were the victim here." Which is what will happen im sure.
It's amazing that the same people crying to give Linux a chance because it's superior to Windows don't want to give other opinions a chance when they go against the group-thought that is rampant on this site. The point is that Slashdot isn't a professional looking site and managers will stay away from the ideas and products pushed, despite how technically superior they operate.
1980s: No one ever got fired for buying IBM
1990s and beyond: No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft
Yeah, Microsoft would NEVER do anything childish.
From Wired News October 6, 1997:
Much mirth was had in Mountain View on Wednesday when a certain party favor from the previous night's launch event for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 landed on the lawn of Netscape's world headquarters. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, the giant "e", (which was subsequently decorated by Netscape employees with a Mozilla doll) was surreptitiously transported from the San Francisco waterfront site of the launch party down the Peninsula by a group of unidentified Microsoft employees, and precipitated a pissing match between Microsoft and Netscape spokespersons over how sophomoric the prank was. What's being covered up in all this, of course, is exactly how high up the Microsoft command chain the conspiracy extended. It's not as if anyone's asking, "What did Bill Gates know, and when did he know it?" But we can tell you that many key, senior members of the IE team were co-conspirators. Indeed, there are even reports that the president of a Seattle-area company best known for its major-media-brand Web sites was among the crew joy-riding on the flatbed wielding the "e."
Once they get into your machine that way, well, there's all kinds of little features, e.g. sound, that might "accidentally" break here and there unless you are using a particular linux distro. With whom they would naturally have a partnering agreement, since somebody's got to do the support for that. What's next? Gee, you need to use this "drm-approved" sound driver if you want our emulator to work. Sorry. Pretty soon they've taken over your allegedly free system in any way they please.
It doesn't have to work all that well. It shouldn't, in fact. It should work just well enough that it gets adopted, but badly enough to make sure it doesn't outshine their own OS.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Microsoft exhibiting at a Linux expo just begs for someone to pull a prank with their booth. Nothing illegal, but something that could really cause a headache.
:) That was the name of the non-existent computer that Steve Jobs (believe it or not, I don't think it was actually Woz who did this) made a fake brochure for and planted at the MITS booth, MITS being the makers of the real Altair.
I wonder if someone will pull a "Zaltair."
From what I've read, it was hilarious - the poor MITS people were inundated with questions about a product they didn't even know existed (which wasn't their fault, since it didn't)! The real kicker is that Jobs even managed to arrange the brochure so that the hidden "clue" pointed to a different company, Processor Technologies. The only reason we even know this is because of the confession a few years later.
I can just imagine it now - someone will plant a professionally-made brochure for "Microsoft Linux" or a proprietary Windows emulator for Linux, and the Microsoft reps will be bombarded... or at least, teased mercilessly.
how is this new?
i've been going to linuxworld for a few years now.. and well.. m$ has been there EVERY year.
> (God forbid the day of a "Microsoft Linux").
When MS sold its Xenix to SCO (yes it really was Microsoft Xenix before it was SCO Xenix) it signed an agreement that MS would never issue another Unix operating system. This was to ally fears in SCO that MS wanted to dump Xenix (an edition 7 Unix) to bring out a System III based Unix.
Now Caldera owns SCO, and thus this piece of paper. Ray Noorda has sucessfully sued MS by buying DR-DOS from Novell and using that as a means of suing. Perhaps the real reason that he bought SCO was this piece of paper so that he can sue MS if they ever brought out a Linux or BSD based OS.
I believe (based on my own highly irrational speculation as well as anecdotes from the MS & IBM OS/2 collaboration - where MS apparently understood OS/2 internals better than IBM's engineers ever did.) that MS probably does have a secret Linux unit operating right now tearing through the source code and gathering 'information' - hell, they probably know more about the Linux kernel than Linus does. I suspect they're also porting unofficial hush-hush Linux version of Office and IE, and probably also a .Net CLI, .Net server and Exchange Server, maybe even their own desktop environment running on top of X. With their R budget, they'd be nuts not to, especially considering that they consider Linux to be a threat.
Now, for those of you who think I've gone all loopy: NO, I don't expect that we're ever going to see 'MS Office for Linux', 'IE for MS-XWindows' or 'MS Linux.net' or anything similar at Comp-USA. If any of this stuff exists, I am quite certain MS is working on it to make their own platform better, and not to join the Linux universe - look how they strung out the Java platform.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Odd as it sounds, I actually fully expect that to happen someday. It is ESSENTIAL to the future health of the technology industry that the de-facto platform that people use is open source, and people are finally starting to realize that.
:)
When the tidal wave of people switching to Linux hits -- and I do believe it will within the next couple years -- what else is Microsoft going to do? Their proprietary licenses just won't cut it. They will NEED to make Windows open source to keep control of the platform people use, to keep people from dumping it like a hot potato, and to make a market for their other products.
Of course with OpenOfice.org, they'll even have trouble with THAT.
Unfortiunately, they may actually have a reason for being there to show interoperability.
MS does have a product that they call "Unix Services for NT" and "Microsoft Windows Services for UNIX (SFU)"
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/productinf
Then there is the FUD from
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/migrat
--
Time is on my side
I dunno, Ceren in a Borg suit would work for me. I'd have to spank her bottom for going to the Dark side though.
Rawr.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Microsoft has every right to exhibit at that expo. As to what they'll do there, they'll obviously try to convince some of the attendees that they have useful products and services for sale. Since Linux seems more a threat to proprietary Unix vendors than to Microsoft, I'd guess they'll hype Unix-Windows interoperability gizmos.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
whats immature about voicing an opinion? the previous poster shows you that although he/she does not like the fact that they have Unix connectivity software, he/she does link to the pages that contain the info so that you can decide with your own reasoning.