Ballmer Wants to "Stomp Linux" Using MS community

StefMeister writes "According to this article on CNet, MS wants to fight Linux by using their community support (of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge). My favorite quote of the article is this one "Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way.""

Comments

Can someone say...

[Carnage4Life]

...REMIX!!!!

Re:Can someone say...

[Dr Caleb]

And the link is to the same article by the same author, written on the same day, just a different server.

I think Timothy is rubbing off on Chris.

Re:Can someone say...

[PD]

I think Timothy is rubbing off on Chris.

What exactly are you saying here?

Well...

[daeley]

Well, taking his famous, ah, 'performance' into account, this might not be too far from the truth, if one takes 'stomp' to be in the sense of Godzilla trying to 'stomp' Tokyo.

And uhm.. after that?

[rmadmin]

So uhm, after they stomp out linux, what then, stomp out BSD? And uhm, after that? Apple's OSX? RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.. I'm shaking in my Open Source boots.

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[Lxy]

If they stomped BSD, then where could they get code from?

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[denzo]

If Microsoft keeps stomping everywhere, sooner or later they'll end up with $h*t all over their feet.

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[Alien Being]

After that... Monkeyboy appears on stage with a flock of penguins doing his rendition of "La Cucaracha".

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[plover]

Yeah, he'll sell you a pair, but he has to include the pattern he used to make them.

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[bark76]

Anyone want to write an FAQ on why it should be called BSD/Windows?

Re:And uhm.. after that?

[Nailer]

So uhm, after they stomp out linux, what then, stomp out BSD? And uhm, after that?

Steve will buy some terminator boots and uberstomp Wumpscut. Go on, you've seen him on stage going nuts before. Its obvious he's a hard core rivethead. ;)

What's an MS community?

[MongooseCN]

I'm imaging it's like the /. community except all the posts will be s/microsoft/linux.

Re:What's an MS community?

[KelsoLundeen]

Close.

Try: ActiveWin.com

Re:What's an MS community?

[orkysoft]

Quoth ActiveWin.com:

Sorry for the slower site last night, we got a little over-run because we managed to get a lot of Xbox screenshots before any other sites last night and thus about ten big name sites were linking too us. (emphasis mine)

Amazing! They even make grammatical errors in the editorials, just like Slashdot!

Re:What's an MS community?

[Wakko Warner]

Their "ask slashdots", oddly enough, are the same as ours. (Mostly how to configure NT machines...)

- A.P.

Re:What's an MS community?

[pubjames]

Hmm. Interesting site, but it demonstrates that there isn't much of a "Microsoft community" because hardly anyone posts there.

Re:What's an MS community?

[The J Kid]

Even closer than you think:

From ActiveWin.com:
-------------
#24 By cschweda
I installed Linux for a friend last week and Slashdot posted it as a headline.

Then a bunch of 14 year old zealots posted 345 comments about how (a) Windows sucked, (b) linux didn't, (c) CmdrTaco misspelled a word in the headline, (d) JonKatz sucked, (e) no he doesn't, you suck, (f) Natalie Portman is one hunka svelt flesh, (g) a beowulf cluster would be cool a thing to do, (h) Slashdot isn't like how it was in the old days, (i) yes, it is, STFU.
--------------

Kinds of says it all doesn't it?

Re:What's an MS community?

[Pfhreakaz0id]

MS community is mainly on MSDN, Microsoft.public.* newsgroups, etc. There was an excellent post by a guy a while back listing the resources.

Re:What's an MS community?

[suss]

Nope. It's hidden somewhere in the EULA for XP SP1.

By clicking this, you agree to do MS Community Service for the period of 1 year.
This includes so called "trolling" on "slashdot" and shouting your mouth off in channel "#Debian" on irc.openpro^K^K^K^K^K^K^K^K^K^Kfreenode.net

Re:What's an MS community?

[Bazzargh]

Yup, there were lots of excellent posts a while back. Tham war tha days.

Re:What's an MS community?

[21mhz]

I'm imaging it's like the /. community except all the posts will be s/microsoft/linux

And, accordingly, the reverse?
Then, their pet peeve would be GNU/Microsoft.

Re:What's an MS community?

[Gordonjcp]

Nope. They call themselves ../..%%35%63../

Re:What's an MS community?

[TedCheshireAcad]

Yes, but at ActiveWin, you read through the articles and see things like,

"Does anyone know how to set a password on the background so my sister doesn't keep setting it as the Backstreet Boys?"

Re:What's an MS community?

[plover]

No, here's the difference, as seen on the link you included:

#2 By sodatwit (6 Posts) at 9/25/2002 5:29:18 AM
This comment has been removed due to a violation of the Active Network Terms of Use.

When their editors mod you down, they mod you all the way down.

Re:What's an MS community?

[Yarn]

OK, who's the spy?

Round up all the trolls....

Re:What's an MS community?

[bogie]

That's the worst site ever. Its like a mirror for slashdot except only the worst of. There literally are no resonable people there. Take for example a post yesterday where some guy said XP sucks for wireless and a bunch of us rebuked him. That would never happen there. Its a one way street. Every post is "linux sucks" and if a non-MS product is ever mentioned all they do is crap all over it. Truly Sad.

Re:What's an MS community?

[Coplan]

Hehe...after browsing through that site a bit, I get this whole image in my head resembling "West Side Story". Except the Windows guys are carrying switchblades while the Linux guys are carrying Plastic explosives, heat seeking missles and anything else that is "geeky-cool"

Honestly, I don't understand the whole "religious wars" as I like to call them. I'm a huge supporter of Linux. Most of the reason is because I feel I can actually offer something in that scene. But I'm not entirely against Microsoft. I have a lot of respect for what both factions are trying to do. I am leaning most of my support towards the linux world though for two reasons: 1) I like to support the little guy and 2) even if Linux were the big guy, the profit to be made from open source is in support, not monopoly. This sorta puts in its own checks/balances -- something that I don't believe Microsoft has the benefit of. What it comes down to is "the right tool for the right task". You're not going to see me doing music on Linux any time soon. Most likely, MAC is still the best for that (throw your bottles now, but it's true from a professional level). For net development and servers, e-mail and so on, I choose linux. Joe-schmoe desktop user won't find home in Linux any time soon. Yes, it's getting there...but it's still far from idiot proof.

A little aside about Open Source vs. Closed Source: There are faults to both, but I believe the Open source model could potentially be much more beneficial to the computer world -- not necessarily to the individual company. That's not such a bad thing though. Anyhow, supposing there's a huge security loophole in a closed source project, the consumer identifies the problem, and the company has to spend time and money to fix the problem. However, that's part of overhead at that point, as the consumer has already paid for the product and a service contract, one would assume. Meanwhile, in the open sourced project, said consumer can report the loophole across the 'net. Someone using the product (not necessarily the company) might be able to fix the problem and offer his code to the company. However, said company should take measures to make sure that the code doesn't open another exploit put in there by the devious programmer (not to say it happens often, but it could).

Meanwhile, the chief benefit of Open Source? Your undies are hanging out in the breeze. So your product is no longer the software...its trust. Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE, and so on...how do they earn their money? Trust. People trust them to check the submitted code. People trust their product, no matter how different or similar it is to someone else's product, simply because it's released by said company. That's where competition should lie, in my opinion. Quality, quality, quality. Don't like it? Use some other flavor of the same damn thing. The most will flock to that which has the most quality. Reinstall the uncorruptable medium for competition.

Now say it together: We Love Open Source!!!!

(Coplan needs to go relax now)

Re:What's an MS community?

[Lord Custos]

Stolen from ActiveWin:
Wanted to get this here before the moderators there take it off the site.

#14 By Obsidious (2 Posts) at 9/25/2002 5:34:22 PM I think the comparisons Ballmer tries to distinguish are rather funny, because in the grand scheme of things, the "Microsoft Community" tend to be nothing more than blindfolded, castrated lemmings marching off a cliff.
Before you flame, let me give you an example. Bug patches.
When a bug in a Microsoft product is revealled, users are at the mercy of said bug until a patch is released. Which often takes weeks, or even months after the fact. It seems that Microsoft spends more time and money on PR spin and attacks against bug whistle blowers than it does on fixing the bugs and getting it over with. What is that saying? When you don't have the law, you persecute the prosecutor? We can't count on an MCSE(What you might consider the REAL Microsoft community) to help, since their training is about as broad as playing Solitaire and rebooting when they run into a problem. These people are trained monkeys with toilet paper diplomas.
Enter the open source community. Although there are quite a few loons in the bunch who give most of them a bad name (RMS, ERS, Alan Cox, I'm looking at you guys), the community gets right to the point when it comes to serious bugs and getting fixes out promptly. I can often find patches days, or even hours after an alert has been issued. There's no PR flack or media ass kissing to make up for developer laziness. A patch is made, and life moves on. But that's not where "the community" part really shines. No, the community has a strong sense of self because THEY maintain these programs themselves. They are often developers and artists throwing their lot in to make the software better. Mozilla, for instance, is not the product of a multinational corporation. It is the product of the developers, who are also the users. In the end, the users have total control of their software and what goes into it.
And that's why the community is strong. They have something invested in the software because it's a part of them. It's not something they bought off the shelf.
This is something Ballmer and crew will never achieve. As far as Microsoft is concerned, it's about master and slave. And that's the way it will always be for them.

The rest of the people on that page make me wish their was a moderation system on their site.

Re:What's an MS community?

[WNight]

We get the religious wars. Mac users flame PC users a bit, PC users flame back, BeOS users were insuferable (because they were right!) and so on.

And then someone comes up with a huge holy war, saying that our mere existance is undesirable and they're going to use their combined might to squash us, not just out-doing us, but making it impossible and illegal for us to exist, probably suing a bunch of us along the way for good measure.

That's a totally different type of holy war, it's a jihad. That's what I don't get.

Re:What's an MS community?

[jafac]

I can totally understand what "religious wars" are all about.

I started off as a Novell person, I invested countless hours getting my CNE certification.

I can now wipe my ass with my CNE certificate, it don't mean jack squat anymore.

But I moved on. I now support Windows and Solaris products, and I run OS X at home. I keep telling myself that someday, Linux will be relevant enough for me to need to learn it - but that day has not come yet. When it does, I suppose I will.

I find it very difficult to understand why someone would be "religious" about Microsoft, unless they put effort into certifying on Windows, and only barely made it, and now would feel threatened if they had to move on to another OS, because they're not sure they can handle the complexity. Windows *does* do a good job of hiding the underlying complexity under a lot of abstraction. But the fact is - when you can't do any low-level troubleshooting, because that part is obscured and protected as proprietary trade secrets, then your problem-fixing repertoire will consist of "rebooting or reinstalling the OS". How much is that really worth?

A true technician does not care about what technology he or she is skilled in. A true technician can change when required (unless the vendor has the technology locked up so there's a high price-barrier to enter).

Not a duplicate story

[back_pages]

Sorry, this is not the same article as this Slashdot article. The ZDNet article is exactly the same as the CNet article, except the ZDNet article includes this INSIGHTFUL EASTER EGG OF KNOWLEDGE at the end:

"The big issue there, he said, was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software."

Umm...

[necrognome]

Obviously one editor has no idea what the other is doing. Can we not have back-to-back stories about the same article? That was like, yesterday.

Re:Umm...

[chrisd]

Well sometimes we do step all over each other, but all things considered, it is not the end of the world :-)

chrisd

Re:Umm...

[Ian Wolf]

It isn't!? OMG! Slashdot editors are human! What will I ever do?

My life is a lie.

Re:Umm...

[Dr Caleb]

What colour is your red face? :-)

Re:Umm...

[gamorck]

What I find sad about it is that its quite obvious that the people who edit this site don't bother to actually read it all that much. Now to give credit where it is due, most of the other /.ers haven't noticed the dupe as they are ranting and raving just as they were yesterday about it. I've only seen three comments mentioning this thus far.

What makes this really bad is the fact that it was CLEARLY pointed out yesterday that Ballmer and perhaps others were misquoted in the referenced article. On one hand you guys complain about the FUD Microsoft spews yet on the other you obviously have no problem doing the exact same thing yourselves. (Hint: Never take read anything from CNET or ZDNET literally - their articles are usually fluffed up).

Now on an ontopic note - MS' Developer community drawves the size of the Open Source community by at least a few hundred if not a thousand fold. They generally have a richer centralized repository of information and technical knowledge (MSDN) to draw from and their development tools are widely considered to be superior. They also sell a platform which offers the best chance for close to 100% market saturation.

Laugh all you want - but it sounds to me like the man has the right idea. Afterall its not like he said, "We are planning on leveraging the power of our preceived monoply to crush the oppositionary force known as Linux". No he actually said something along the lines of, "By continuing to foster a rich developer community as we have in the past we can make sure the bulk of the talent is writing code for Windows and not Linux".

Whine all you want but that sounds legal and fair in my book.

J

Re:Umm...

[chrisd]

Actually, the reason I didn't know it is because I generally avoid any of the microsoft related articles, I think they're in general repetitive and unlikely to shed any new light on the microsoft issue. That said, I got a kick out of the whole Novell quote, so I posted it, almost as a lark. I like reading slashdot, actually. I still find it fun :-)

That said, I think that proprietary software can use the ideas of open source to expand their influence and make money without opening up code. I've never belonged to the group that thinks that microsoft doesn't see that, either.

To a degree this story for me was about posting yet another microsoft trollm but a fun one. I hoped that people would notice Microsoft aping the least painful and most successful attributes of open source, that of interacting directly with the developers, without going though weird marketing layers.

Ironically, through it's MSDN plan,. microsoft has a good history of doing this, whether it is through the releasing of api specs or file formats, there isn't much they don't provide. That said what they don't provide is often telling. But I don't want to go on too long about this.

chrisd

Re:Umm...

[truthsearch]

MS' Developer community drawves the size of the Open Source community by at least a few hundred if not a thousand fold. They generally have a richer centralized repository of information and technical knowledge (MSDN) to draw from and their development tools are widely considered to be superior. They also sell a platform which offers the best chance for close to 100% market saturation.

The size of the MS developer community isn't so easy to calculate. Do you include corporate in-house developers who may recommend things to friends and co-workers, but MS doesn't know about? The size of the Open Source community is at least as hard to calculate. People can give whatever estimates they want, but chances are they're wrong. So your community size argument is moot.

The "richer centralized repository of information" (MSDN) until recently was written 100% by Microsoft employees and a few outside (payed) contributors. Only recently have newsgroups been added, but articles are almost exclusively from MS employees. The Open Source resources may not be nearly as centralized, but personally I've found far more needed information in the OS community than the "MS community" (I'm a pro VB developer, so I've used MSDN extensively and it's nearly impossible to find answers to hard questions.)

"Platform which offers the best chance for close to 100% market saturation"? A little narrow-minded? Apps that make MS money (other than Office) and the place where Linux is making the most in-roads is in the server market. Ballmer knows he has the desktops, so why say they need to stomp on Linux? Because they're heavily pushing into the server market with little success (compared to the effort they're putting in). MS has less than 40% market saturation in server OSs and apps. The MS professional server-side developer community is not nearly as large as the Unix/Linux professional server developer community (see Netcraft surveys and Oracle on Unix statistics).

Fostering a stronger, united, MS developer community would of course help them compete. But it's not going to be nearly as easy as you describe. IBM alone has tens of thousands of sales people all keeping and making Unix and Linux customers. MS has the most visibility due to consumer marketing and press, but what you perceive is not nearly the reality.

Re:Umm...

[alienmole]

Ironically, through it's MSDN plan,. microsoft has a good history of doing this, whether it is through the releasing of api specs or file formats, there isn't much they don't provide. That said what they don't provide is often telling.

I realize I'm preaching to one of the choirleaders, but as someone who switched away (a number of years ago) from being very involved with development on MS platforms, my perspective is that although MS does provide a lot of useful and well-organized material on MSDN, what they don't provide is not only telling, but can be crippling for a developer.

Microsoft goes out of its way to "strategically" hide and obfuscate things that it considers to provide a competitive edge, or things that it thinks may reflect badly on the company. It repeatedly and consistently takes action based on its own most narrow interpretation of its self-interest (forget about enlightened self-interest - a foreign concept to Microsoft).

I think what Microsoft has missed in the larger sense of assessing its own actions and policies, is that a software company like Microsoft is not like companies that sell other kinds of products. It relies on developers who commit large portions of their time to working intimately with their products. In a sense, every developer who uses Microsoft products should be considered an MVP, in the sense that they should be given access to information that helps them do their jobs without needless frustration and deliberate stonewalling and delaying tactics.

Microsoft is not the only closed-source software company that has problems in this area, but it's certainly the most prominent. In that position, it's in their own interests to try to do a better job. Microsoft showed no inclinations in this direction until open source began threatening its business model. What Ballmer is saying reflects the first time in a long time that Microsoft has actually said something that essentially translates to "we have to do a better job of providing real value to our customers".

Microsoft and its customers owe a tremendous debt to open source for that kick in the pants. It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft is actually capable of delivering the value it's talking about.

Yeah, we started out broke

[Brento]

But we've got nowhere to go but up....

Started Off Bankrupt?

[medscaper]

"Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way."

As opposed to Microsoft, which, of course, will simply end up bankrupt...

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[ceejayoz]

Except idiocy.

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[mtrupe]

Fair enough... In that case I misunderstood your original post. From the point of view of a software developer, the idea of free software scares me a little. Granted, and maybe hypocritically, I use freeware/open source stuff a lot, especially SDKs and whatnot... But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program. The company I work for already looks for freeware whenever it can.

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[scoove]

"Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way." said Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, as he noticed he could not pull up a ticker symbol for Linux on the NASDAQ or NYSE and concluded it could not be any sort of threat.

Wow... I've heard of confused paradigms and misunderstandings leading folks down the wrong path before, but this is amazing (and I think reflects a very deep fear and circling of wagon mentality coming from the top of Microsoft).

At a minimum, Balmer's comment here reflects a complete inability to grasp that the competition this time is different. It's not another Microsoft, another software company that they can pin a name to, use the same strategy and crush it through whatever mechanisms.

I just don't get it, Bill. I know there has to be an evil Linux conspiracy organization out there, but I can't find their headquarters. How can the Microsoft Storm Troopers 2.1(TM) infiltrate an enemy we cannot find?

It's intangible. It's an infectious meme. It'd be like King Charles I dismissing the threat of Parliment because they didn't possess a throne.

Not to get too esoteric, but I'd suggest Balmer read Milton's Areopagetica quickly. He might just learn the answer to all their inherent security problems, as well as the probable long term failure of the current strategy (which he apparently will ride to the ground given present thinking). Then again, maybe he shouldn't and business students can have a good case study of why closed source is a bad idea in the long run.

Closed source doesn't permit "grappling of truth and falsehood." It hides, obscures, conceals falsehoods (such as security problems or bugs) and relies upon official persons of the Microsoft kingdom to be allowed to discuss and determine what truth/falsehood is. Recent aggression with EULAs and service packs prohibiting public exposure of such defects nearly mirrors a sort of Star Chamber - a certification from Microsoft permitting one to speak (and those that criticize are not permitted).

Given the rapidly increasing defensiveness (much of which can be attributed to antitrust, I'd guess), I don't see an ability to change until its probably too late.

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[HiThere]

You probably shouldn't mistake a public pronouncement for what he's really thinking. He's actually quite skilled at lying^h^h^h^h^hpublic relations.

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[ivan256]

But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program.

There are so many open positions programming free software in the poston area right now, that sometimes I wonder why people are complaining about the job market being poor. I make a very good living writing free software. People will still need software, and programmers will still need food, so programmers will still get paid even if software is open.

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[donutello]

At a minimum, Balmer's comment here reflects a complete inability to grasp that the competition this time is different. It's not another Microsoft, another software company that they can pin a name to, use the same strategy and crush it through whatever mechanisms.


I know you want to believe he's an idiot really bad. However, when I read his statement it sounds to me that that is exactly his point. The point he is making is that Linux can't be defeated the same way they defeated Novell. Novell was defeated by making it bankrupt. Linux is a different animal altogether and trying to make it bankrupt is not going to kill it (because it is already bankrupt in a sense and is not dead).

Re:Started Off Bankrupt?

[soloport]

But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program.

Uh, most developers of open source s/w work for a company which develops s/w -- commercialy or for internal use only.

In fact, most s/w is probably developed for internal use. Therefore, why not share? Why not get other companies' talent to help in the effort?

Ok, so at this point I'm just feeling like troll bait... But, to finish my point:

You seem to be basing your fear on the uncertain future of commercial software as if you doubt there are any other means to make a living as a programmer.

I've made an excellent living as a programmer for nearly 20 years. And less than 1% of the code I've written actually went into a commercial application. A lot of the software has been lab-based (embedded Assembly), test-based (C), tools-based (C++), demo-based (Java), accounting-based (SQL), etc.

With open source, the time-to-realease the above kinds of software keeps shrinking. The reliability of the software keeps increasing. The results are: more job security for me.

Cheer up! The future is bright!

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[daeley]

Erm, how about CNet's title: 'Ballmer: United, we'll stomp on Linux'

Ballmer to the Walls

[kalidasa]

What a FUDfest! Well, folks hopefully have seen the Register story on this. A couple of comments.

Technology like clustering would be better in Windows than Linux eventually, said Ballmer: "We will beat Linux on clusters. We can't beat them on price, but we have to add value."

Given the current market for Beowulf, I don't see MS competing on clusters, especially with "add[ed] value."

Asked by one lateral-thinking MVP whether Microsoft planned to offer applications software on Linux, Ballmer said no, adding that the big issue was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software.

"We do not anticipate offering software on Linux," said Ballmer. "Nobody pays for software on Linux." Even StarOffice, sold by Sun, was originally a free product, he said. And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: "It's weird. IBM says 'Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux...from SuSE.'"

StarOffice did not start out as a free product, iirc. And as for IBM promoting Linux, how is that any different from HP and Dell promoting Microsoft. And does the first paragraph, as the Register asked, mean that Microsoft accepts liability for their own software?

Re:Ballmer to the Walls

[SirSlud]

>And does the first paragraph, as the Register asked, mean that Microsoft accepts liability for their own software?

Thats just the funniest part about this whole OS/CS business. The CS folks have their lawyers ensure they are never liable for use of their software, and then turn around and bash OS because theres no legal liability.

I suppose b2b contracts for software might contain certain 'performance metrics', meaning companies can back out of contracts if the software doesn't perform up to spec, but do they usually include legal liability for malfunctions, etc? Can anybody tell me this? Doesn't it just come down to the ability to pass the buck? I mean, by now, "Well, we thought we were okay because it was an MS product" is nearly an allowable defence for IT projects gone wrong.

You can't say the same thing with OS because nobody is making the $$ off of it to be the figure^H^H^Hscapegoat that you can claim should have been a good choice because gee, they make tons of money, and that means good products and culpability gosh darnit!

Re:Ballmer to the Walls

[iceT]

...have to add value...

Is that what they're calling the BSOD these days?

"Added Value"?

clustering

[zrodney]

So, they plan to "beat linux on value" in the
clustering area because they realize that they
really can't beat the price.

But -- how would a 100 node microsoft cluster have
any better value than the same cluster running some
linux clustering sw? The microsoft system would
be around 100 times more expensive, and the
licensing would be outrageous.

Imagine you want to add 20 nodes to your cluster.
With linux -- no problem, cable it up and go.
With microsoft, well, you probably have to get
some more licenses, and another 20 copies of
windows to install. That's around $3500 just
for the os software.

And finally, there are lots of linux clustering
installations running today, and many of those
have been using clusters for years and have a
history of upgrades and improvements. I really
doubt these people will be interested in
switching to a microsoft monolithic cluster.

More and more, microsoft is getting desperate.

Re:clustering

[stox]

The numbers have probably changed since I last ran them, but last I looked, in terms of the raw compute power available on a cluster, {Linux/BSD/Solaris} delivered almost twice as many usable processing cycles as a Windows solution. No matter what, the windowing system was consuming a fair number of cycles even when not in use. Has this changed or has it gotten worse under XP?

Re:clustering

[splume]

I think you are confusing "value" with economic cost. There is a difference. If Microsoft makes it so clustering takes less time, with better monitoring and configuration tools than the current Linux tool set, then they have created better value. Yes, it is going to cost a hell of a lot more, but if your Boss wants a cluster setup by tomorrow, and you only have a Windows Admin on hand, what is going to be more valuable to him? Value is created when something is offered that makes the job at hand easier, faster, more maintainable, etc.

Note: I do not disagree with you that the cost is going to be much much much higher in a Windows cluster.

Re:clustering

[Ian Wolf]

He's obviously losing his mind. I'm too lazy to do the search, but there are plenty of articles out there about how Dreamworks, WEGA, and other special effects companies have switched to Linux cluster farms because of price. Their arguments have been that to implement the same cluster with MS or proprietary UNIX products would cost them three times as much money.

"Check this out! It's an active-active SQL2K cluster! It actually works!", said the highly ecstatic SQL Server admin. "That's nice.", said the unimpressed Oracle DBA without looking up from his latest copy of -insert favorite magazine here-.

Re:clustering

[thelexx]

A boss who wants a cluster installed with only 24 hours notice, who only has a single admin on staff, and an MS admin at that, deserves precisely what he/she gets.

Re:clustering

[Ian Wolf]

Linux clustering is a walk in the park for a Linux admin, about as easy as setting up a Windows cluster is for a windows admin. If a company is hiring the right people for the job, it doesn't matter which way they go, the costs of setting up the cluster are moot. Now, if a company wants a windows admin to set up a linux cluster or vice versa, then you've got a problem.

Re:clustering

[tomhudson]

look around for CLIC-Phase-1-DL.iso

This is a single-cdrom iso for installing a cluster of mandrake linux boxes, includes the s/w for the servers and clients (look for filenames like ganglia-monitor, clusterit, etc) at a cost of $0.00

I don't see how they're going to beat this

Best regards, Tom

Re:clustering

[rseuhs]

if your Boss wants a cluster setup by tomorrow

Do you even get the licenses as fast as that? I also highly doubt that you get clustering for Windows (or however they call their clustering software) so fast.

Actually the license-hassle and the buerocracy involved (request expenses, negotiate volume agreements, etc.) almost certainly will make a Windows-solution far more expensive in both money and time especially in larger organizations.

In contrast many distributions contain Beowulf (for example SuSE does) so in theory you can start right away. (Of course if you have zero experience it will take some time to get to know how to set it up, but that's also true for the Windows-solution)

Re:clustering

[stinky wizzleteats]

So Microsoft's clustering solution is going to be better than free, even after you've paid for it?

Re:clustering

[Tschaess]

Okey... let's say... 24h to get the licence.. oh shit time's up

Re:clustering

[Lumpy]

you are forgetting something....

windows Server requires per seat licenses also.. so not only do you have to get a license for each machine the OS is on but also for each machine that will access that machine..

It snowballs really fast and the BSA nails you on the per seat's as they know that nobody has bought the per seat licenses....

Re:clustering

[jelle]

"but if your Boss wants a cluster setup by tomorrow, and you only have a Windows Admin on hand"

Option 1) Windows admin calls Microsoft, waits on-hold for three hours to hear that he needs to become a registered enterprise customer first, and that then he can request a quote, after which .... yada yada the 24 hours are gone. No alternatives.

Option 2) Use one of the so many turnkey solutions available for Linux.

Re:clustering

[WNight]

The more annoying thing about the licensing crap is that it doesn't work properly. My old work had a 10-license Win2k server because some software required it, so we decided to actually use the machine to file serve. We loaded it up with drives and tossed everything on it.

And then something happened that the unix programs had never seen before. It refused to accept connections, it'd work fine for a while and then suddenly refuse to talk to anyone, though it'd ping just fine.

Turns out is would only share files with ten clients at once!? (We didn't know about that ten-licenses things at this point.) Worse was that the 9x machines didn't seem to work with it, they'd connect and hold a connection even after you closed explorer. If you didn't reboot they counted as one of the ten.

We'd have had to buy four more licenses to let all the developers connect at once, assuming nobody connected from an extra machine (everyone had test networks at their desk) and this was assuming that machines would let go of their slot when not using it.

I assume there's an MCSE way to fix this. Nothing immediately obvious presented itself, so Win2k went away and we threw Redhat on there. A few minutes of tweaking, and samba was up and running. Despite the common view it was easier to find a Samba HOWTO on google than finding a Win2k HOWTO (not that it takes a lot of howto, it's pretty straight forward) and we were up and running. I dunno if 9x machines have the same issue and won't close a connection, samba doesn't run out of licenses. It was even faster because we could tweak how often it advertised itself, etc. Great when you're trying to connect from a just-rebooted test machine.

That was our foray into licensing. It was annoying enough that the company switched all the hardware test beds to Linux even though it involved some rewrites to the test scripts.

End result, faster and better networking, more stable test boxes (they only crash when the hardware does something flaky (with devel hardware this is common)) so we get better results, and less hassle.

But, we could have hired an MCSE consultant to come in, tell us to buy a bunch of licenses, and leave us with a still substandard system.

This gets even more obvious with big networks. A friend of mine in university set up a distributed computing package (running in user-space, thus any OS was an option) on a 200+ machine network. They got all the machines for $600 each with 1U case, software was free with Linux and would have been $100/machine for windows even with edu pricing. Imagine that not at a university and it'll be about half the price of the hardware. 300 computers w/ Linux, or 200 w/ Windows.

Besides, who knows if they'd see each other as clients and refuse to allow more connections, or some silly thing? (They used a multi-linked network topology, each machine sustained connections to a fair number of computers.)

Re:clustering

[WNight]

If you ignore licensing issues, and ignore the "problem" Windows boxes have in accepting connections from more than a few other boxes at once (without the server version), it's about equal. A talented C programmer can open a socket and start pumping data around in about the same way on either OS. The processing programs are usually written in-house so they can be compiled for either OS.

Any skilled programmer will have used a bit of everything in university and will be fairly comfortable in either OS.

(A cheap MCSE may not, but then I'm assuming that we're talking skilled employees, the ones HR looks for "with 6 years programming experience and a BS in Comp Sci", not a graduate of Devry Institute, or whatever. This does increase the TCO, but chances are you'll need these people for either system to actually make the code that makes it do real work.)

The hardware is the same, except that with Linux it's a bit easier to boot from the network without another proprietary solution. Going this way saves the HD in every system and saves you from having to image an OS onto them.

So then you "just" buy a few 100mbps switches and draw up a decent topology. ("Just", heh, this is the hard part but it's OS-independent.) Buy some racks, hook up the machines, and go.

The TCO difference is pretty much all OS, and if you don't get remote booting working properly on Windows, included 1 HD/system, but it's a fairly trivial cost.

Linux wins easily.

That was quick...

[chuckw]

Usually it takes a few weeks for a dupe to cycle back in. Apparently chrisd hasn't been taking his daily dose of slashdot???

Re:That was quick...

[Ctrl-Z]

Hmmm... it usually takes timothy at most 24 hours. I guess chrisd is trying to outdo him?

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[tmark]

Where in this article does Ballmer say he is going to "stomp Linux?"

Did you ever see the video of Ballmer 'stomp'ing around a convention stage, almost tripping over himself and hyperventilating at the end ? If you did, you can't read any Ballmer quotes without picturing him stomping around like some sort of wanna-be-silverback gorilla in mating season.

can we at leat try not to slant the headlines?

[Pov]

I'm kind of offended by the "few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge" line in the main post. There are a lot of advantages to Linux or ANY coding system in use today. So Linux has a very large and vocal community. Does that mean you have to give people another reason to dislike you by flaunting it instead of just appreciating it? There are a lot more M$ coders out there than you think. Just look for the .asp pages on sites both small and large. [insert joke about hacking them next here]

Re:can we at leat try not to slant the headlines?

[GigsVT]

Nor can I find, any jobs in my area listing Linux as a qualification

Jobs get listed in job databases in markets like this because the jobs suck. Any reasonable job is going to be filled locally, or from personal networks. Anyone would jump at the opportunity to admin or program for Linux servers, because you can get so much done so easily.

The coverse, no one wants to get stuck administering or programming for closed source shitty software, hence, the jobs wind up unfilled and on monster.com.

I keep saying, I'll learn Linux as soon as I see a significant market for it

"I'll learn computers as soon as I see a significant market for them." --Anonymous Luddite, Circa 1982

Re:can we at leat try not to slant the headlines?

[Pfhreakaz0id]

oh, come on. That's just a ridiculous argument. where I live, unless you know someone and a job is filled instantly, it is advertised. I wouldn't jump at the opportunity to admin or program for Linux servers, because of the twenty or so programmers I know, only one has any linux experience. Conversely, when Microsoft has a tech event here in Oklahoma City, hundreds of folks show up.

Your statement about "no one wants..." is just ridiculous. Folks go where the money is. Hell, the big money is in Oracle right now or SQL Server, at least in this market, so that's what people want to learn. You don't get much more closed source than Oracle or Microsoft.

I guess that's the point I'm making here. Linux/open Source has not penetrated to the job market I live/work in. It's just not here to any extent.

And yeah, If I was an electronics tech. in 1982, I wouldn't have learned computers either. Not a significant programming job market until much later (not that there weren't programmers, but I'd wager that was a smaller job market than electronics tech, for sure). Similiarly, I'm not saying that Linux won't be a big, big piece of the job market here in 3-4 years. It may be, but you know what? All the other stuff I use now will be obsolete as well, and I'll pick up Linux skills if it is a big deal. Hell, I've got a redhat partition now on a box, I just don't use it very often.

Life is more than business

[Yohahn]

These people crack me up.

They have to turn everything in life into a business.

"In a way they started out bankrupt"

You have to have debt in order to go bankrupt.
A social movement is not a busness. There is no way it could have been bankrupt. Stop trying to spin business terms where they don't apply.

Microsoft probably started more bankrupt than Linux. They were a business, and they probably had alot of debt. This is how most businesses start out. You get a little funding to start (if you can't pay it back.. you're bankrupt).

Re:Life is more than business

[stratjakt]

> A social movement is not a busness.

And linux is not a social movement, it's an operating system.

Seriously, I'm sick of all the lame typecasting based on what OS happens to be on my box at any particular time.

Right now I'm running Windows 2k, working through some bugs in a custom DCOM object. So I guess I'm a corporate sheep. In an hour or so I'll be working through some fortran code in unix. Then I'm a greasy peace loving hippy.

If you want to brand yourself, go ahead. Keep me out of it. It's just as lame as the 'nintendo vs ps2 vs xbox' crapfests that 12 year olds have on irc.

Re:Life is more than business

[Yohahn]

From dictionary.com:

"Society - A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture."

Linux users would be a society, having their muterial interests be Linux.

Re:Life is more than business

[Yohahn]

I'm arguing that even then it is a stretch.
Otherwise we could say:

In a way, we all started out bankrupt.
In a way, the universe started out bankrupt.

I'm saying that since there was no debt, there was no "being bankrupt", not even in a way.

Re:Life is more than business

[Bartab]

In an hour or so I'll be working through some fortran code in unix. Then I'm a greasy peace loving hippy.


No, you're a slide rule using, broken glasses with tape wearing, pocket protecting, greasy haired, slumped over uber-nerd.

Fortran indeed!

Re:Life is more than business

[CoughDropAddict]

Your self-righteousness is amusing.

And linux is not a social movement, it's an operating system.

Are you kidding me? Thousands of developers worldwide spontaneously volunteer millions of hours into a collective pot, the fruits of which eventually rival the biggest software companies on the planet. Sounds like a social movement to me.

Right now I'm running Windows 2k, working through some bugs in a custom DCOM object. So I guess I'm a corporate sheep. In an hour or so I'll be working through some fortran code in unix. Then I'm a greasy peace loving hippy.

Straw man. No one is making judgements about users based on what OS they are running on their desktop. The claim is that you can't try to discuss the development model of Linux based on terms that only make sense for businesses (such as "bankrupt") since they simply don't apply (there is no entity involved that can have assets or debt).

Re:Life is more than business

[BWJones]

Yes, and right now I am listening to a random mix of 40 GB of music on iTunes, compiling a program originally coded for SGI's IRIX in the background, AND running a hyperdimensional image classification in the background, creating an image in Photoshop for a presentation I will be making in Powerpoint, and......oh yeah, surfing Slashdot.

I could'nt do this with any other OS than OSX and if that brands me as an Apple user so be it. It's what makes me as productive as I am, keeps the work going out and the dollars coming in.

Re:Life is more than business

[e2d2]

They have to turn everything in life into a business.
It might be because they ARE a business. The whole reason he was even speaking is because that's how he makes a living - running MS. I'd hate to see a business that wasn't about making profit. I'm not saying a company should be morally corrupt, far from it, but to accuse a CEO of a billion dollar company of being a dupe because he has his eye on profit is laughable. He probably wakes up in a cold sweat having nightmares when his stock drops .05%, I mean do you expect any less?

In a way they started out bankrupt
I think he emphasized this point to stress the fact that MS cannot beat Linux using conventional means. They cannot out advertise Linux or buy Linux so they will have to resort to different measures. They cannot tie up owners in huge legal battles like they have with previous victims. They can't strong arm the community so he emphasizes that then goes on to essentially say "But we can build a larger community". If he can or not well that's another question that only time can answer.

Re:Life is more than business

[An Onerous Coward]

"And linux is not a social movement, it's an operating system."

Indeed. Excellent point. And can an operating system go bankrupt? Windows may crash for many reasons, but never due to a lack of steady revenue. By the 2012 revision of Windows, this statement may no longer hold, but let's ignore that for the time being.

The Linux OS does not constitute a social movement. Linux users do not constitute a social movement. But Linux kernel hackers do, and they're part of a larger social movement that they've created: people who have a wholehearted and irrational love for their operating system of choice.

Just because you code for Unix doesn't make you part of this movement. But if you find yourself browsing ThinkGeek and thinking that it would be prudent to buy five hundred plush Tux toys for all your friends and family, you just might be. Double points for setting them up so that they stare at a poster of Bill Gates a la Alfred Hitchcock.

Re:Life is more than business

[dublin]

FORTRAN. Even after all these years, still the best way to kick floating point butt!

Seriously, reagardless of your fellings about the language, it's still vital - the modern world would literally come to a screeching halt if FORTRAN went away. It does the vast majority of the heavy lifting in areas such as oil exploration, computational fluid dynamics, finite element modeling, weather forecasting, and increasingly, protein folding and other bioinformatics applications.

In may ways, post Y2K, it may be a more vital part of the world computing infrastructure than even COBOL. I've worked for one major oil company where FORTRAN code is the backbone of the exploration business, a business that makes a billion dollars a year, a figure that reliably pays the company's dividend year-in and year-out. It may be old, but it's still straegically vital.

Re:Life is more than business

[stratjakt]

There was nothing anti-anything about my comment.

My point is that using linux doesnt make me a socialist/libertarian any more than wearing Doc Martens would make me a skinhead.

What's self-righteous about that?

Though, it's flattering you've noticed me, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Secret crushes are the most exhilirating.

Can do without the editorial comments

[goldspider]

"(of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge)"

I think we all could have gotten the point of the story without the editorial. I'm not talking about censoring the guy, I'm just saying that it detracts from an otherwise decent story.

Developers, developers, developers, developers

[Lejade]

Yeah, right. Keep stomping monkey boy... ;)

All I have to say

[afidel]

is Balmer is a crack monkey. For evidence see here

Re:All I have to say

[PD]

It's understandable. For a few billion dollars I'd jump around like a monkey on a stage too. I'd even gain 100 pounds and pull out all my hair just to make the effect complete. And I would have sweat glands surgically implanted so I could effectively soak a shirt.

Re:All I have to say

[GypC]

Oh man... that's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

/me wipes tears out of eyes.

Balmer and RMS

[smoondog]

Dammit Balmer! that's GNU/Linux ...

-Sean

Re:Balmer and RMS

[thelexx]

Not if he is only referring to the kernel. If referring generically to Linux distributions, then yes, you're correct.

Energy focussed in the wrong places...

[tcc]

They should stomps the annoying Bugs in their software before stomping the competition with FUD... A better product always sells by itself, especially in a monopoly situation. They could have an happy userbase and a more pro-microsoft community by doing so.

RIght now they are focussing their energy in stomping both consumer (DRM) and market rights, stomping competition, and stomping whatever or whoever dares to say something bad against them. This is such a waste of energy only a PR departement with too much staff can afford.

Stupid yet annoying bug to give ONE example out of probably 1000+ that people could bring up:

Since windows 95, when I'm dragging a huge folder, explorer STILL doesn't display the remanining time correctly, saying example 2 minutes remaning, and then 388432 minutes (and going down by 600 minutes every 2 seconds), I mean, for god's sake, 5 years later, 3 service pack later, windows 2000 *STILL* has that bug. This is one dumb example, but imagine all the bugs that you don't directly see.

So please microsoft, don't focus on the few users you don't have, focus on making your current userbase HAPPY so that they aren't bleeding off to your potential competitor as soon as they get a chance or get too fed up, because THIS will cost you.

Re:Energy focussed in the wrong places...

[rseuhs]

You don't understand how Microsoft sells software.

To find out, post in a pro-MS forum (or in *any* forum, it works even on Slashdot) that you are using Win98 and have some kind of problem.

At least 10 Microsofties will fall over you and will scream at you: "upgrade!", "upgrade!", "everything execpt Win2K/XP sucks!".

Re:Energy focussed in the wrong places...

[jafac]

Personally, I'd tear that fucking piece of shit feature out. It's totally stupid.
It should perhaps display progress as total files/bytes copied/left to copy, start time, and average transfer rate statistics. Those are actual figures the OS can get ahold of - but having to estimate how much time it's going to take is utter folly because it's dependent on so many factors like CPU load, cache, and network bandwidth, all of which can change over the time of the copy.

People just want to know that the copy is doing something, that it's not hung or chorking on disk errors or something.

Re:Energy focussed in the wrong places...

[WNight]

The last place I saw that message, and the broken counter, was when I was copying a friend's MP3s to a backup drive before wiping their main HD and installing Linux.

They weren't much of a gamer and they didn't really notice the difference, except that it crashes a bit less. They're clued enough to handle a few instructions so I gave them Mandrake, not a baby-proofed distro, and they seem happy.

XP didn't like their computer, they were told it was their hardware, but Linux recognized it all and uses it just fine...

MS Certification Exams exposed!

[L1nuxGuy]

Did'ja catch this little gem?

The (MVP) title is highly regarded, said Thomas Lee, a Windows 2000 MVP who specializes in directory issues, and has just been appointed as chief technologist at QA Training. "You are recognized by your peers, not by an exam that you can cheat in."

Sure makes ya respect those pricey pieces of paper.

Re:MS Certification Exams exposed!

[Dirtside]

MVP seems a lot like the Stonecutters.

Homer: These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. [sniffs tearily]

(thanks to snpp.com)

Re:MS Certification Exams exposed!

[Dalcius]

Well, if this stuff about cheating on your MCSE is a rumor, it's a pretty big rumor.

Some of these MCSEs are so fscking clueless it's scary. I wouldn't be at all surprised.

M$ shift Strategies.

[buswolley]

M$ no longer seems to claim that M$ products have a lower "Total Cost Of Ownerhip" than its competitors, namely Linux. As Balmer admits:

"We have to compete with free software on value, but in a smart way. We cannot price at zero, so we need to justify our posture and pricing. Linux isn't going to go away--our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace."

M$ knows that it has to make a better product than Linux to survive. I think they have a long way to go.. **Evidence**that people/community can shake huge corporations!!! C'mon M$ is afraid of /.

This is a wonderful argument...

[Lendrick]

...for allowing people to use their mod points on articles.

Bankruptcy

[Lxy]

Linux will always be financially bankrupt.

Microsoft will always be morally bankrupt.

So, "in a way", hasn't Microsoft always been bankrupt?

Deja Vu like a.....

[PrimeNumber]

To quote houseparty 2....

Wasnt the link in this Slashdot article essentially saying the same thing?

From the I've got some growing up to do dept.

[bogie]

Linux is a Cancer!

We'll stomp on Linux!

I'm taking my ball and going home!

How embarassing for Microsoft, their CEO sounds like a ranting 3 year old. Time for a timeout.

Stop the madness

[qurob]

(of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge)

Are you kidding me?

Want to make some cash?

Get a group of guys together who have MCP's and MCSE's, maybe an A+ and Cisco guy for cool logos to put on your business cards.

Go around 'consulting' networks for the local small businesses for $60 an hour, $120 an hour for the SE's ;)

If you can find the business and there's not much competition, it's like taking sugary treats from an infant.

Good

[smack_attack]

They can pull all of their collective necks together into one, making it easier for us to cut it off.

Bankrupt??

[AltGrendel]

I perfer to call it "poor but honest".

Better fit, don't you think.

Balls to the walls

[Ethelred Unraed]

Quoth Ballmer: It's not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way.

*laugh* Ballmer only seems to see things in terms of money. It should be painfully obvious that Linux didn't start off "bankrupt", it started off free, which is hardly the same thing.

Quoth kalidasa: StarOffice did not start out as a free product, iirc. And as for IBM promoting Linux, how is that any different from HP and Dell promoting Microsoft.

It isn't, of course -- well, there's one crucial difference. MS doesn't get any money out of it.

And does the first paragraph, as the Register asked, mean that Microsoft accepts liability for their own software?

They keep dancing around that issue. They have, one the one hand, tried with EULAs and so on to get out of liability -- but they are also starting to realize that that lack of responbility has meant that they release shoddy software and have no immediate need to fix it. But now their reputation for less-than-good software is starting to come around and bite them in the *ss. A symptom is all the buzz that Linux and UN*X is getting. So they are starting to acknowledge *moral*, as opposed to *legal*, liability for their software products ("Trustworthy Computing").

Which could be dangerous, 'cos you can't have it both ways, really. Eventually someone's going to start suing the bejeezus out of them, once some NT-based thing goes blooey and costs someone a fortune...

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[Ooblek]

Or how about this in the parent:

of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge

Few?!? I think someone is in denial.....

Raarghhh!

[Dirtside]

"Linux... making me angry... can't... contain... emotions... third-person... narration... taking... over... RAAARGHHHH!!!"

*Ballmer transforms into a giant, green-skinned version of himself, tearing his clothes and exposing his enormous gut*

"BALLMER STOMP LINUX!!! RAARRGHH!!! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!"

Re:Raarghhh!

[haggar]

I can almost picture that thing running back and forth on a podium, screaming, jumping and sweating profusely.

Oh, wait...

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[edrugtrader]

READ THE TITLE OF THE ARTICLE... "Ballmer: United, we'll stomp on Linux"

that implies he said it.

-1 RTFA.

Clarification

[wazzzup]

Perhaps Linux is bankrupt in a sense but one thing is for certain, Linux is not morally bankrupt. Be honest, can you say the same Steve?

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[daeley]

Not necessarily, as quotes can also mean a paraphrase, as someone else pointed out here, e.g., what we're doing when we make quote marks with our fingers during a conversation. :) In any case, I think the parent's "outrage" was misplaced.

(Hunkering down for an offtopic mod.)

MS reaps what it sows

[flacco]

MS has made its fortune turning its "community" into a gaggle of hand-held idiots; now they're going to turn to THEM for their salvation?

Getting desperate

[anonymous_wombat]

We can't beat them on price, but we have to add value.

M@cr$s&ft must be getting pretty desperate if they are going to start adding value to their products.

In the title of the article

[jabbo]

Even with a Slashdot attention span (eg. none), I'm surprised that someone could miss that.

Another option is to use the 'Find' feature in your browser (be it IE, Lynx, Mozilla, Galeon...) and search for 'stomp'. It worked for me.

United, with who?

[schowley]

In reading the article I find it ironic that some of Ballmer's statements are similar to practices M$ employed in the mid 90's. I believe it was M$ that provided Internet Explorer free in order to displace Netscape's market share. As for the Microsoft community goes, I would rather use an OS that has been reviewed by many eyes than one that seems to have only been reviewed by the elite M$ few!

Sounds to me like M$ is getting a taste of their own medicine.

I Saw This Show In Vegas

[cmdr_beeftaco]

"Stomp Linux" is an excellent production, clever choregraphy and wonderful Celtic tunes. A truly worthwhile followup to "The Sprit of The Dance." I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats...

MVP?

[DrXym]

Most Valuable Primate?

I've never taken this guy seriously since he came hunkering across the stage like a deranged orangutan.

Bankrupt?

[rossz]

Cash wise, perhaps. At least we aren't morally bankrupt. At least we, the Linux community, can look ourselves in the mirror and not be ashamed that we have fucked over anyone at any time for a few bucks. We don't destroy someone's business because we hate competetion, no matter how insignificant. We don't extort money from cash strapped schools to improve our balance sheet a few more pennies. We don't lie to our "customers" about our quality and security.

I have a one question for you, Ballmer. What's it like to have so much money and yet do so little for the good of mankind?

Ummmm... Not really

[cascadefx]

"We do not anticipate offering software on Linux," said Ballmer. "Nobody pays for software on Linux." Even StarOffice, sold by Sun, was originally a free product, he said.

Well, actually, Star Office started as a commericial product from a company called Star Division. The company was eventually aquired by Sun who in turned offered Star Office as a free download and then open souced a version of it and has now gone back to selling branded versions of the open source project (wheww!!!).

favourite quote

[martin]

"adding that the big issue was a reluctance to accept legal liability for open-source software. "

I'm sorry but whem has anyone tried legal action against M$ for selling you duff software. There's a big disclaimer in the license if I remember correctly. Something along the lines of ...

"If you lose data and your business suffers financially as a result, Microsoft accept no liability for any errors in our sofware. Tough"

Or am I wrong...???

A few points...

[bytesmythe]

From the article:

The MVP initiative will be a big part of Microsoft's efforts to promote a sense of "community" among users and developers,

It's hard to have the same sense of "community" when people all know that they are connected solely through the exchange of cash.

Linux and its community have a symbiotic relationship,

Symbiotic? I'm afraid not. Symbiotic means EACH could not survive without the other. Even if linux vanished overnight, the free software community does have other alternative open source operating systems to use. And even if all central kernel development stopped, we still have millions of copies of kernel source floating around and a new effort would begin. "Linux" (as a concept) doesn't really depend on the community; it IS the community.

Lee said: "You don't have that same thing at Microsoft, but there are people who are passionate and technical who are committed to doing a great job."

Not to sound like I'm trolling or flaming, but most companies I've seen that are "dedicated" to Microsoft only do so because it is perceived as financially risky to do otherwise.

Ballmer-style inspiration

[g4dget]

Oh, that will be so much fun. Ballmer will rally the Microsoft "community" by taking is Monkeyboy act on the road (you know, the one where he hops around the stage screaming to get Microsoft employees into the mood--quite funny if you haven't seen it). That will surely inspire the 98% of Microsoft users, you know, secretaries and home users, ... well, I don't know. But it will surely inspire them.

(Of course, Ballmer has been "using" the MS community for a long time, he just zeroed in on their wallets.)

Nobody pays for software on Linux.

[TheLastUser]

Favorite quote: "Nobody pays for software on Linux." given as a justification for not porting MS apps to Linux.

I guess I am the only one out there who paid for Oracle on Linux, can't imagine why Oracle keeps producing the new versions.

How about "We won't be porting our apps to Linux because that will kill sales of our less than useless OS" isn't that a bit closer to the truth?

Re:Nobody pays for software on Linux.

[Zemran]

A bit of honesty that I really should not reveal is that I now buy software for Linux and spend more. When I was using M$ I would always rip everything and not feel guilty because I knew they were trying to rip me. Now I use Linux and although the legitimate cost is much less I actually pay it. I like to get the box set with books so I buy it. Several distros (I only once paid for NT). I like to have a few games so I do not mind paying for them etc. End result is that I find Linux more expensive because I actually get my wallet out when I am not getting robbed.

Re:Nobody pays for software on Linux.

[Leolo]

How about "We won't be porting our apps to Linux because that will kill sales of our less than useless OS" isn't that a bit closer to the truth?

Why use Office? I've been using OpenOffce.org for a week now and guess what? IT KICKS ASS! So now I'm going to be going around installing Linux and OpenOffice on all the old computers people want me to repaire. IMHO, linux for the common mortal has arrived.

Re:Windows (Lawyer) Clustering... an oxymoron

[phorm]

Cluster (k l ah1 s t er0 ) [hyperdic.net]
Noun: group: A grouping of a number of similar things.
Verb: motion: Come together as in a cluster or flock.

Therefore we can infer that:

Windows cluster: A large group of lawyers ready to surround sue the ass off of anyone they can who crosses them.

Microsoft cluster, large 500lb gorilla hands closing around the throats of competition

From these, it seems Microsoft does indeed have an effective clustering solution, albeit by different interpretation - phorm

Novell, huh?

[The Second Horseman]

Of course, the fact that most of the Novell sites are site licensed and have a significant commitment, the fact that they're making money, the fact that they have no significant debt and that some decent property holdings doesn't factor.

With products like DirXML, Netmail, Zenworks for Desktops, and yes, even Netware, trust me, they're going to be around. A Netware 6 cluster offering native Netware, NFS, Apple FS and CIFS support is pretty amazing. So are products like Account Managment, which lets you sync AD and eDirectory users, as well as Unix accounts, IBM mainframe user accounts, etc. Probably doesn't mean much to the usual /. poster, but integrating this stuff makes a huge difference in a large enterprise. And you're not going to hear an integration story from Microsoft.

Sure, it's not always flashy, but you can get real work done, which is what those of us getting paid to do IT work should be focusing on.

Hey Steve, here is a crazy idea..

[verch]

Instead of giving snappy speeches to rally the masees, maybe the way to compete is to BUILD A BETTER PRODUCT THAN THE OTHER GUY! Nah.. They wouldn't want to do that. Thats just crazy.

Competition

[nuggz]

Good, this is what MS should do.

They are looking at their competition, asking themselves what their competitors do better, and work to at least do it to.

They are giving their customers more support. They are giving their resellers more tools to work with.

By recognizing that their customers and the community of service providers are key to their success MS really has the potential to remain a serious force in the future.

Truce

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

I call for a truce. BSD is not the enemy. Linux is not the enemy. Hell, Mac isn't the enemy. Microsoft is the enemy. We need to prove to the masses that free software is the answer. Be it Linux, or BSD, or Mac, that doesn't matter. These stupid licenseing wars need to stop. If you like GPL for your code, then friggen license it as GPL. If you like BSD/MIT for your license, then use it. Make superior software, and support it. We need to unite. Truce amongst ourselfs, then educate the masses, don't just tell them that Linux/BSD is better, prove it.

(And for the love of God, STFU about Linux vs GNU/Linux. The MS-drones are laughing at us for that damn war.)

Err... Yeah

[JMZero]

They have to turn everything in life into a business.

Who knows what Ballmer is like on his days off. Probably he's still a dork. Probably business is still on his mind. But at the moment of this speech, he was talking about business. You might as well say, "To Microsoft, it's like making and selling software is all some kind of business.".

"In a way they started out bankrupt"

In the context of the speech, this makes sense - and I think it's clear what he was getting at.

Put through my idiot translator, it reads "We cannot eliminate this competition by depriving them of money from their business, as there never was any money in their business."

Eventually MS will fall - I think that's clear. Until then, I fully expect them to continue to try to compete. I'll still hassle them when they try to do so unfairly, but it seems a little immature to criticize them generally for talking about the competition and laying out strategies.

Re:Err... Yeah

[Yohahn]

While I can see your point. I think that there are many that read that article that do not think about it as clearly as you do.

Since the way words are presented to us color how we react, I think that this is a type of spin, talking about business where it dosen't apply.

I call I as I see it. By spinning the word "bankrupt" they can associate linux with a "bad" term. On top of that, he associates it as being there since the beginning.

Media dosen't control what we think, but it does control what we think about.

I do not think pointing this out is an immature act. If it is, I hope I never develope maturity as it sound like death.

MS got it wrong.

[garoush]

With 3 front page post about MS in a day on /. it is easy to see that /. has already stomped on MS.

It's a losing battle...

[E-Rock-23]

Microsoft thinks that, with a few thousand "insiders" that know what's going on, they're going to "stomp Linux?" That's a knee slapper *proceeds to slap elbow*. While I don't have any exact numbers, I'm willing to bet that Linux has quite a bit more people behind it, whether it's mainstream or not.

The only thing MS can do to beat Linux is create a better product. And since their OS wasn't really designed with security in mind (it was designed to be used by the computer stupid masses, more or less), they'd litterally have to start from the ground up. *NIX style OSs have the jump on MS in many different areas, including 64bit architecture support, value for your buck (since Linux is free, it's a much better value, even if it lacks the major apps Windoze has), and even technical support (just scour the net, someone somewhere will be glad to help if they can).

Their "community" is bogus. Nothing more than just a bunch of higher-ups whom MS deems are suitable to be "in the know." The Linux community is just what it says it is. Regular people (not just higher-ups with keys to the executive bathroom) can take it upon themselves to learn what they want about it. And what makes up a community? Regular folks. Granted, it's regular folks with IQs higher than average and technical know-how, but regular folks all the same. From the geek in his/her parents' basement to Linus himself, and all points in between. Each, in some form or another, is welcome to take Linux apart and contribute whatever they want to it. With MS, the buck stops with Bill and company. When was the last time you saw a Windows CD that had a /contrib folder? I haven't seen any in my travels...

Is it just me, or should Steve Ballmer be doing stand-up at wee-tiny coffee bars and little improv theaters? All his malarky is making me laugh, and that's about it...

Re:It's a losing battle...

[The Bungi]

There are about 600 MVPs. The difference with the Linux community is that most are past puberty.

So I guess that balances the scale.

Re:It's a losing battle...

[flacco]

There are about 600 MVPs. [microsoft.com] The difference with the Linux community is that most are past puberty.

...and more or less settled into the role of "Bitch" in their vendor/customer relationship.

Re:It's a losing battle...

[The Bungi]

...and more or less settled into the role of "Bitch" in their vendor/customer relationship.

Hmmm yes. Well, thanks for making my point.

Re:It's a losing battle...

[flacco]

Hmmm yes. Well, thanks for making my point.

If your point is that you value decorum over substance, well, perhaps.

Wrong problem

[beleg777]

I think the reason they don't make the high quality software we want them to is because it's too late. They have huge amounts of work in Windows, and a number of the problems are architectural rather than just bugs. To entirely fix windows, to the point where most /. users trust it, would require going back to square one. There is no way to justify that in a business like MS.

Oh jeez.

[zapfie]

Um, am I to take it the "stomp Linux" in quotes implies that Ballmer said this?

Because even though it's in the article headline, Ballmer is never QUOTED as saying it in the article. It is just the author's interpretation of what Ballmer said.

Ballmer gave a very calm, non-confrontation argument (pro-Microsoft, yes, but what did you expect?).

Come on, people would be up in arms if a Slashdot headline wrongfully said "FSF says 'fuck you' to those not using GNU/Linux".

If anyone needs me, I'll be tearing my hair out...

Re:Oh jeez.

[kerrbear]

Um, am I to take it the "stomp Linux" in quotes implies that Ballmer said this?

No, that was an interpretation. What actually happened is he took off his shoe, banged it on the desk repeatedly and shouted "Linux, we will bury you!"

Jesus, you morons did it again!

[TomatoMan]

Go ahead and take my friggin' karma, I can't imagine what I'm saving it for. Nowhere did Ballmer say MS would "stomp Linux." I hate MS as much as the next geek, but I hate dirty catfighting even more.

Follow these steps for shoddy journalism: (honestly, can someone please explain the difference between /. and a $0.50 supermarket tabloid?)

1. C|Net gives a title to an article about Ballmer that uses the word "stomp" as if Ballmer had said it. They don't quote him saying it.
2. /. picks up the story (again) without reading it, and further butchers it by altering the title again and attributing a quote that's entirely fictitous but sounds really inflammatory and good, presenting it as fact.
3. People who angrily point this out get modded -1, Panties In A Twist, and they disappear into the Troll Pits, and the site is run by those who remain and who don't give a fuck. Repeat from step 1.

Like the demise of Wired all those years ago, it's just really sad. This place used to be a great source of information. It's fallen a long, long way.

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh!

[chris_mahan]

Essentially, thought, Ballmer says "United, we'll stomp on Linux"

Who was he speaking to? MS MVPs.

So he's saying that MS CORP and the MSMVPs need to unite, and that after they are united they will stomp on linux.

First problem: Uniting the MS MVPs to MS.

Second problem: Getting MS and the MVP to do some stomping (regardless of what is being stomped). That would imply that MS and the MVPs would somehow be "in-step". I wonder how many MVPs will actually dance that dance.

Third problem: Stomp on Linux? Are they going to download distros and pile them in the street and physically stomp on them? Ahh, of course not, it's figurative. They are going to fight them. But how? Are they going to buy them out? Nah. Are they going to try to make their system so much better that linux will seem to be the "worst" alternative? Yes. That's what they meant. But what does that really mean, making their systems so much better? I think it means compete. So microsoft is saying that it will compete against Linux and the developer community behind it. But what does that mean? I mean, Microsoft the monied MNC needs help from MS MVPs to compete against a non-business run by a bunch of volunteers?

This brings me to my point. Ballmer essentially feels directionless. MS is financially directly being impacted by the GNU/Linux operating system and the various distributions. Yet there is no one company to compete against. There is no company to compete against. There is no way to underprice linux until they can't pay their devs and go BK. There is no way to advertise better than linux since MS can't buy word-of-mouth, and word-of-mouth is the best form of advertising. So in effect MS is losing sales and there's nothing they can do about about it.
But MVPs can. They can do the word-of-mouth. These people recommend solutions to large and medium customers. MVPs are are consulting comapnies, solutions providers. They can be the MS advocate and Linux bad-mouthers.

Except that there are more Linux Zealots (and I use the term endearingly) than MS MVPs.

So in fact ballmer hit it on the nose. Together they will stomp on Linux.

Of course, Linux will stomp right back... But that's another story altogether. Goodnight children.

Luke, I am your Father!

[roman_mir]

As opposed as this community is to Microsoft and closed source software (should be non-free software,) it seems to me that some interesting conclusions can be made as to the origins of open source software and Linux (GNU/Linux?) in particular.

It strikes as an interesting idea that if it was not for the Microsoft predatory practices, their successful atempts to eliminate any competition in client side operating system software Linux could never become what it is today - a success.

If Microsoft did not behave in the way they did to all their OS competitors - DR-DOS, OS/2 and other commercial operating system developments, there would be a large number of these client focused operating systems out on the market by now, some of them could even be open source operating systems (like what Red Hat is today) but not necesserily.

In a market saturated with various OS vendors, the prices for the OS could not be too high, maybe 5-10 times smaller than what MS Windows costs. If the prices are low, the OS still remains a commodity but it is not critical for open source developers to build their own OS if they could just buy one that suits their needs for 10$.

Well, do you think I have a valid point here? Can Microsoft ever say to OS - "Luke, I am your father!" :)

Oh for some mod points!

[Shade, The]

This nearly made me laugh out loud. Not a good idea in a quiet, computer science room :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bonehead

[codepunk]

I can set up a redhat advanced server cluster in 10 minutes or less, anyone that knows clusters finds Ballmers statement hilarious.

Re:The problem

[tomhudson]

Don't feed the trolls, please.

Also, please note: the majority of PC sales are white boxes - no support from M$,

Re:When Ballmer said...

[symbolic]

"Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way.""

Did he mean fiscally bankrupt? As opposed to, um, someone else who is ethically and morally bankrupt?

MCSEs of the world!

[autopr0n]

Unite, and be used!

Ballmer is right!

[dcavanaugh]

"It's not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money..."

Steve almost has a clue. Linux has very little money, no central base to be attacked or bought, and it's massively distributed into residential basements and dark corners of IT departments.

This has to be Microsoft's worst nightmare -- an enemy that doesn't care about money or "winning" market share. An enemy that takes Microsoft's "clone and lowball" strategy and turns it back against them. Indeed, Linux is the Viet Cong of the internet.

I find it fascinating to watch Microsoft fumble and bumble with ineffective strategies against an enemy that they truly don't understand. When Microsoft decides to concede the OS battle and tries to take over the Linux desktop, then I'll be worried about the monopoly being perpetuated. They keep denying any intention of porting Office to Linux, so maybe it's Microsoft that will run out of money.

Re:Ballmer is right!

[dcavanaugh]

Neither M$ nor Linux are "terrorists". It is possible to have decentralized management and guerilla tactics without terrorism. Let's save the "T" word for those who have really earned it.

If Linux is like the Viet Cong, then Microsoft is like the U.S. government. Since Microsoft is becoming the U.S. government, my analogy is working even better than originally intended.

Bad examples

[Srin Tuar]

Right now I'm running Windows 2k, working through some bugs in a custom DCOM object. So I guess I'm a corporate sheep. In an hour or so I'll be working through some fortran code in unix. Then I'm a greasy peace loving hippy.

Although I agree about not subscribing to archtypes, you need to pick some better examples:

• Windows 2k, DCOM: corporate sheep
  
• Fortran, commercial unix: old corporate sheep
  

Re:Bad examples

[Dalcius]

Ohhhhhh that's a good laugh that I needed right now.

Wish I had some mod points. =)

Now I knew there were some peace loving hippy folks who used UNIX, but I always thought the Linux folks took the cake... =)

BK?

[autopr0n]

There is no way to underprice linux until they can't pay their devs and go BK

You mean, go to Burger King??

Re:BK?

[chris_mahan]

I meant Bankrupt.

great for OS X

[commodoresloat]

Fact is, while Micros~1 concentrates its efforts on Linux and open source, OS X is quietly improving and delivering a full-featured BSD with an irresistably cuddly UI. While any predictions about the death of M$ or the triumph of Apple are probably exaggerated, I can see M$'s obsessive focus on countering linux - an effort that is likely to do little to actually harm most linux-related businesses - will distract them from a task that is actually within the realm of their capability: waging a propaganda campaign to rival Apple's "switch" campaign. I know several computer-savvy former Windows users who now swear by OS X. I also know of a few organizations that rely on Windows + MS Office who are in no hurry to upgrade either for cost and learning curve reasons. If OS X improves without breaking the last release of Office for OS X, more organizations might see the wisdom in the switch. I don't foresee the "end" of Micros~1 as a result, but in terms of market- and mind-share this could help OS X in the long run. Which would be a good thing for open source, IMHO.

Re:great for OS X

[MartinB]

Possibly it will be great for OSX. But in terms of revenue, that's not the MS competition. MS make most of their money from corporates, both desktops (more for Office licenses than Windows) and servers.

MS are facing two threats from Linux:

1. The loss of their market in servers - basic NT fileservers, mailservers and general authentication, the stuff which basically makes corporate networks run
2. The increasing realisation by corporate senior execs exactly how much they're paying MS on an annual basis just to provide all their office staff with desktop computers running simple office apps (ie not the high-end of Word, Excel and Access, the basic, simple spreadsheets and documents).

3. Linux (plus StarOffice) have a ready solution to all those problems, both in terms of price and stability and also in terms of a basis in standards (which is the rebuttal to the MS tax).

   Yes, OSX is/can be many of those things too. Hell, I use it to run my network at home, providing all the basic network services to a mix of other OSs. But I'm not a 20,000 seat enterprise, and those guys ain't buying Macs for anyone outside their design/communications departments.

"GET ON YOUR FEET!"

[mekkab]

How embarassing for Microsoft, their CEO jumped around on stage like a monkey on angeldust and HURT HIS ANKLE afterwhich he limped breathelessly to the podium.

time for a review of your public image!

P.S.- I will never be able to listen to Gloria Estefan again (not that I would have before, but...)

Beowulf has nothing to do with this.

[sheldon]

You may wish to read up on the Beowulf project and better understand what it is:

http://www.beowulf.org/intro.html

Beowulf clusters are designed for doing parallel computations as may be done in a university research environment.

The kind of clusters that Microsoft is talking about is not for purposes of computation but rather for scalability and failover. Look more towards the history of the VAX Clustering solutions, also look for High Availability clustering solutions from Sun, HP, Oracle and so forth.

Microsoft is not going to be competing with Beowulf, they are going to be competing with the Linux-HA project.

http://linux-ha.org/

Re:Beowulf has nothing to do with this.

[kalidasa]

Thanks for the correction. I do know what Beowulf clusters are for; I did not realize that Ballmer was talking about a VAX-like cluster.

Re:Ahh Morality

[Lxy]

Microsoft will crush you too

All my base already belong to Microsoft, so it wouldn't really be a change, would it?

Re:Arrgrgrgrgrghhhh! ( stomp monkeyboy, stomp )

[Locutus]

Steve and company and stomp all they want but it isn't going to help. They can't preload, they can't make their products secure( ok in 10 years MAYBE ), and they can't give their OS away( they could but it would kill about 40% of their revenue ).

So go ahead and stomp MonkeyBoy, it's going to be as fun to watch as your MonkeyBoy Dance(see link below).

Stomp MonkeyBoy, Stomp

Microsoft is a company in a dire search for an air supply. Like a fish out of water flopping around. It's obvious from the fact that they said the "L" word in public yet again.

Lob

Microsoft Community

[Tadrith]

I keep seeing comments posted in regards to Microsoft not having a community, and quite honestly, they baffle me.

No, Microsoft doesn't have groups of users who all get together on the weekend and chat about how great Windows is, or what new features are coming up, or the next release of the Windows kernel. What Microsoft does have, however, is a very large base of software developers and resellers who are perfectly content selling or developing for Microsoft.

To be perfectly clear here, I work for a reseller who is in this exact situation. We get two types of people, generally. Those who wish to completely wash their hands of their network and hand it over to us, or those who want to be able to manage their network themselves. Typically a customer will either come to us with Microsoft in mind, or ask us which we prefer. We're not a Microsoft only shop, we do plenty of other work, but our recommendation is always Windows. Why?

Well, if we're managing their network, Windows makes more sense to us. More people know it, more of us can work on it, and 90% of the time a problem can be solved with a quick visit to Microsoft's TechNet. If we aren't managing it, we push Windows because it's the easiest for the client to administrate. Contrary to popular belief, for the most part Windows will run fine. You might have the occasional problem, but it's not enough to bother anybody. I'm not saying that it is superior to Linux, merely that it is adequate for most people.

A lot of the inroads we see Linux making comes from companies who have computer savvy people in control of their network. Unfortunately, we're not the most common people, which I think will limit how far Linux expands.

To the developer, Windows represents a massive pool of users to offer a product to. To the resellers, Windows represents a widely accepted product that is easy to support because of the amount of people familiar with it. If Linux is going to see massive progress in displacing Windows on any level, it needs to provide both developers and resellers with a compelling reason to switch.

Parallels with the 'war' on Terrorism

[ShieldWolf]

Compare Balmer's talk with the new foreign policy Bush just gave congress.

With both you have a large seemingly unbeatable force with money to burn that believes it can outspend the competition to maintain a monopoly. This monopoly is widely loathed yet many people cherish the stability it brings. Meanwhile you have a DIY group of individuals who are trying to bring down said monopoly with ingenuity and far less funds.

Not that I think Linux hackers are terrorists IN ANY WAY, likewise I am not condoning terrorists either. I just find it interesting as a comparison.

Thoughts?

the difference

[Xtifr]

honestly, can someone please explain the difference between /. and a $0.50 supermarket tabloid?

Sure. The tabloid has better pictures! :)

Microsoft versus Freedom, Justice, et al

[defile]

Given problem X, the Linux admin will fiddle with some commands, adjust some settings, tweak some variables, and the problem is solved.

The Windows admin looks in a trade magazine about what products solve what, evaluates a bunch of them, picks one, and asks the boss for his/her credit card.

Now obviously if you were in the business of producing shrinkwrap software the Windows platform is the greatest invention ever.

But if you're using software to get real work done and don't want to put up with that kind of shit, Windows is out. It's just not acceptable. Linux is the direct result of an unfulfilled need, a tool that builders can use with total freedom. It is not merely the anticipation or the reduction of our collective needs to the common denominator. Linux would simply not exist if Microsoft made its customers happy. This isn't marketshare that's been stolen from Microsoft, it's the market that Microsoft lost all by itself.

Microsoft is dealing with an enemy created from their own oblivion, which exists in a dimension it cannot even perceive. Through their own ineptitude they created their demise. It is poetic, and it is just.

Popular hacker lore makes my signature more apropos:

We've been spoon-fed baby food when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.

But...

[Storm Damage]

...they changed the headline, so that makes it all okay, right?

about that community... (long)

[Stalcair]

From the article...

The MVP initiative will be a big part of Microsoft's efforts to promote a sense of "community" among users and developers, connecting its own product developers with the users most in touch with product issues.

While this would be a very wise thing for them to do, I wonder if they trully realize that their tactics and strategies in the past are part of the problem. Developers being in the equation also includes the companies that sponser and employ them. Last November, MS commented about its current community that frankly was showing its true colors (meaning there was no loyalty or trust, but merely a wait and see attitude).

Personally, I think they have a LONG way to go in changing their business ethos, otherwise even the best layed plans will turn to crap after a short time (its like giving cars to monkeys, if they don't care or know how to upkeep them then while they will look more sophisticated and advanced to outward observers at first, it will soon become apparent that they were just not meant for devices like that).

When asked about Linux being a platform for MS products, Ballmer answered no. Ironically however, the reason stated in this article is about MS's "reluctance to accept legal liability for OpenSource Software." Does that mean that they have been accepting legal liability for other vendor's software, much less their own? I remember one time last year on the news there was a reporter doing a rundown of many of the "neglected" portions of the DoJ and friends' case(s) against MS. One of them was to establish an open door for end users and companies (especially small ones) who had lost significant amounts of money due to negligence on the part of MS. Have people been getting cash back or free support for MS created problems? (I don't want to start a debate here, most people know that no software is perfect so this assumption is based on that tenet)

Next we have,

And IBM, arguably the No. 1 player in the Linux market, promotes Linux to big users, but does not actually sell Linux: "It's weird. IBM says 'Hey British Aerospace! Buy Linux...from SuSE.'"

Here I had to laugh... some more. This seems to be a window into Ballmer's and Microsoft's way of thinking about software and Operating Systems. IBM is not selling an operating system, they are selling hardware and an entire computing suite/environment. Can someone use RedHat instead of Suse? I think so. Can someone take advantage of the (arguably) more efficient, modular, secure and extensible nature of Linux to tailor it for their own needs? (including scaling BACK to make leaner systems) I believe that is one of the selling points. (I could be wrong, but I have seen a few ads that touted such things recently) I sincerely hope for Ballmer's and MS shareholder's sake that what he said was either quoted way out of context or is just fronting BS. What integration companies (and even just regular non-IT companies) have been moving to non-MS solutions for was to allow THEM to have the choice in the system (among other reasons of course). People don't really like to either be restricted in choices or be presented with only options that force payment for services unwanted and unrendered (I consider services rendered to mean it WORKS).

What if, when you went to a grocery you were ONLY presented with "Value Packs" that they had very few differing combinations but all of them had about 70% of the same items between them (the Store Brand(tm)). You might not like the store brand. You may remember using some other brand that you liked and that the store no longer carries it (because it magically became "Incompatable" after the Grocery Store bought out one of the competitor's (of your favorite brand) factory. You may also get tired of finding that the food items are often spoiled, leaking, smashed etc yet in order to get assistance you are actually CHARGED by the Grocery Store. Then you hear about how other small grocery stores (or makers of particular grocery items) are strongarmed into going out of business, accepting only MS as a distributor, or being bought out. Hell, even the local farmers won't look you in the eye anymore because of their shame at being whipped.

Now would this work? Well it would if people were stupid, the vendors were spineless and short sighted and all around everyone was too busy making excuses and looking for Mighty Big Brother to once again tell them what to do, how to think, etc. (in other words, to save them from their own stupidity)

So, with this in mind... if the IT community (meaning end users, company procurement, developers, etc) let themselves be led into this once again then it will be real hard not to just let them rot in the jail they made for themselves. If MS is interested in technological solutions then they will HAVE to change their internal thinking about strategy and operational tactics. Or, they could just continue to focus more on marketing and litigation... however I doubt that solution will work for much longer. Some people are slowly waking up (sorta like the Matrix I guess...) and seeing the mess they let be made. Hmm, the big flaw in this is not 'the people' it is bureacrats. These empty headed monkeys will be the problem as ever before. They will blindly put foolishly to action, those things that can clearly be seen as harmful for long term capital. The business world has been riding on this forward wave of progress that if said progress shifts (to another market) or begins to depend on Process Improvement instead of raw technical prowess they will flounder and die. That will hurt a lot of people so I hope they will pull their collective heads out of their red-tape puckered arses soon.

Do the math -- Windows/NT clusters are 100% slower

[ronaldgminnich]

In industry you try to get nodes for ca. $1200. That's how I used to build them anyway. You can't run NT Client on a cluster node -- you have the "10 TCP connections" limit for one thing, so MPI dies hard.

What's an NT server license cost with all the trimmings? Ca. $1200.

So you can build a cluster with Linux, or build a cluster with NT and watch half your money go to software cost.

Which is why NT will always be a loser for clusters.

Re:Tell you what

[rseuhs]

??

On one hand you get vendor lock-in and an EULA that can randomly mutate with every service-pack.

on the other hand you get a vendor-agnostic solution without any license hassles plus 200000$ on top.

And now you ask if it's "worth it".

Your semantic quibbles get you nowhere

[CoughDropAddict]

Original poster: "Ballmer is too devout a capitalist to understand things that aren't businesses. You can't bankrupt a social movement." (Note he didn't even say "Linux")

Reply, desperately looking for a cause: "Linux isn't a social movement. Waaaaah, don't stereotype me based on what OS I run." (Onlookers: "WTF is he talking about?")

Me: "Linux is definitely part of a social movement. And drop the persecution complex."

You: "Technically, Linux is an OS and Open Source is the social movement." (Onlookers: "WTF does that have to do with anything?)

Re:When Ballmer said...

[Citizen of Earth]

"Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way."
Did he mean fiscally bankrupt? As opposed to, um, someone else who is ethically and morally bankrupt?

Linux:
Total assets: $0.00
Total liabilities: $0.00
Good will: $3,200,000,000.00

Doesn't look "bankrupt" to me, either fiscally or morally.

What? No Java references??

[jbuilder]

Perhaps Bill and Monkey-boy have realized that they can't take on Java after all.

What kind of community effort would they really provide? Look at the JCP and what is happening there. Developers, when they find bugs and provide code fixes to the JDK, are actually seeing their changes in future JDK releases ! How many developers using Microsoft products can make *that* claim?

So, take on Linux where the *same claims* can be made with respect to fixes to the OS, but perhaps are a bit more obscure to find since the Linux Community Process (sm) is really in fact Linus himself... (Hint: Linus.. let GO of the kernel.. put stewards on it with you in charge of *them*).

Again, more FUD from the Dud....

bankrupcy beeats the alternatives!

[extra the woos]

I duno, but I'd certainly rather be bankrupt than run around waving my arms like a chicken screaming "give it to me!" in front of a large group of people. But that's just me. I'd say Ballmers went bankrupt and his dance skills were confiscated by the bank.

PHB city

[0x0d0a]

"Yes, so we've accepted the nuclear weapons development contract. We need to ship in a month, so we need the testing cluster up tomorrow. You've got tonight to purchase and set up a 300 node cluster."

the problem is that microsoft is *ahead*.

[kipple]

seriously, Microsoft has enough resources to decide to *pay* 1000 people for 5 years to come up with something great, secure, smart, whatever. And just because they would work for Microsoft, it doesn't mean that they are incapable to work or that they are just dumb ignorants. People are people.

The point is: if the GNU/Linux and free software movement want to avoid a monopoly to take place, then new utilities, new standards and new concepts need to be invented. We need to use our resources, our mind, to *create*. The day that that community will stop chasing Microsoft because GNU/Linux and free software standards are *BETTER* than Microsoft's, then we will have improvement.

Microsoft philosophy is "embrace and extend".. and this leaves little space for new ideas developed for business reasons - sooner or later they'll show up with a paycheck and buy your company, your software, your ideas. They can.
But they have a weak point: they are slaves of their own power. They cannot just stop everything and fix their mistakes. They need to sell more software to get more money to pay for the marketing/ads/media/White House financing/whatever. They are basically being eaten by their own stomach. No longer is to sell good and for-everyone software their goal. Now they have to sell - period. No matter what, no matter how, no matter the way to get their 'competitors' out of the way.
Once they were the savers from IBM's monopoly. Now IBM is our "hero".. but the improvement of the Free Software community is their not-for-money-alone philosophy. This will break the cycle of monopolists that succeed every few years.

Right now 'we' (the free software community) are just trying to stay compatible with them - and this lets them having the steering wheel hold tight.
Think about samba, openoffice that "can read and write microsoft word documents", instant messaging clients, file servers, authentication, protocols, and so on. Sure they are excellent applications. And I know that the concepts are standards, the protocols are well-defined, the files format is well-known.

Unfortunately, right now the trend in the GNU/Linux and free software community is just to be as compatible as possible with them. And this is *NOT* the way to go. It is ok as long as we just want to be number #2 or as long as they are harmless (like they were until now), but it is not ok when they can dictate the rules.

Now, Microsoft's position as a monopoly gives them the "right" to do whatever they can to "outsmart" or plain wipe out the independent software community. Palladium, the licensing of Windows, whatever else they'll come up with - all that is a sign of what is the new trend.

Microsoft doesn't consider the free software community as "kids" anymore. They understood that there is smart people in there. They understand that this will cause troubles to them if they don't act soon.

For example, how long will pass before they'll give software houses that develop software for Microsoft Windows draconian restrictions, for example the request to hire people that don't write "free software" even in their spare time? Scary? Impossible? ...you sure?
I fear that they'll soon try to crack down on the people that write free software. Those people need to eat and live. Few of them can sustain themselves with their free software - but they do it for fun, and maybe have a regular job as a closed source programmer. What happens when their private life will be threatened (like getting fired) by the fact that they contribute to the Free Software community?

Back on topic, I was digressing - sorry.

The point, again, is that the Free Software community needs to unite and join resources to come up with new ideas that are superior to those that circulate right now - and are monopolyzed by Microsoft.

Just an idea: do you know Microsoft Visio? It's an excellent software. Nothing _free_ like it is as powerful as Visio. Creating something like that would mean chase their standard, at the beginning. But, what then? Go on - create something like that and make it more useful. Join it with a web framework, design a new kind of office environment where the PCs have no hard disk but a flash ROM with linux on it, and all the rest is loaded from a central server. Make the spare CPU cycles and RAM in every idle PC act as a single, parallel-processing machine a-la-MOSIX (yes OpenMOSIX cannot share ram, it was just an example).

Then sell it. Sell assistance. Follow the GNU license, give the source code away. Teach it to young people. Create a no-profit and donate the spare money to free- software houses. Show how your idea IS superior and gives better performaces/value/whatever. It will take time, surely - better start as soon as possible.

Ok it may be a bad, naive idea, I do not even call myself a programmer. But I'm learning it. And I'm learning it for free (as education should be) thanks to the Free Software community.

This is - for now - my contribution.

Thanks to all the Free Software coders that helped my learning progress.

[and sorry for the over-long comment]

moderation rant

[Lxy]

To whomever moderated me down as "redundant":

Do you understand the word "redundant"? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANS??!?!?!???

Redundant means that it's been posted before. There are posts about the comment that linux started off bankrupt, but none of them share the same ideas as mine. Therefore, my comment is unique, not redundant.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY, AT LEAST MODERATE IT INTELLIGENTLY!!!!!! Mod me down as a troll, falmebait, overrated, or off-topic. To mod me down with the wrong attribute shows your lack of understanding for the moderation system. It also shows me that you have no business moderating posts on Slashdot, if you don't even know what the term means.

If you don't like my comment, that's fine. I used humor to express my opinion that MS in morally bankrupt. If you don't agree with that opinion, don't just wildly moderate me down. That shows that you just don't like what I have to say, and can't think of a real reason why. If that's the case, just leave it alone. Someone with a real opinion either positive or negative will moderate me appropritely. By moderating me as redundant when it's the only post of its kind makes me think you're too stupid to be given moderator priveledges.

Duhhhh

[orius_khan]

If they stomped BSD, then where could they get code from?

Duhh, they'll just keep copying the code of independent open source high school graduates which they get by reading their monitors via the secret cameras they have installed in everyone's house. Then the programmer dies in a freak accident/hate crime so he can't dispute the origin of the code.

Geez, I guess some people just don't pay attention to what their television tells them anymore...

ActiveWin?

[llywrch]

If this is the best the pro-MS crowd can do, then MS really is in a lot of trouble!

A selection of topics that look like what an intern at MS's own PR department would pick, most of the fora empty, & the few fora that have any comments
degenerate within 15 minutes into Linux vs. Windows flamefest.

Someone even thought a car accident one month ago was worth an article on this site. It took me some digging (the way they link to stories suck) to confirm what I suspected: Heikki Kanerva, one of the victims in this accident, was an employee at MS. In other words, a story so poorly written a reader really had to work at to care about it.

There *HAS* to be a better pro-MS discussion forum somewhere. Any suggestions?

Geoff

Re:When Ballmer said...

[symbolic]

I'd rather invest my money in a company with fiscal assets than one with moral and ethical ones.

I doubt you'd get any of the former Enron employees to agree with you - or any of the investors, for that matter.

Heh

[DaytonCIM]

Where do I begin?

so we need to justify our posture and pricing.
I'm guessing that MS is going to justify there pricing and secure their posture by pushing DRM. (Another good DRM site, here)

He acknowledged there was more to Linux than free software--the main benefit of the open-source movement was the community developing software and sharing ideas. "Linux is not about free software, it is about community,"
Absolutely correct. Those who actually use the product get input into its future. Unlike most commercial software, where users are force fed a marketing department's idea of what is or isn't important.

Ballmer hits on an important issue: the Linux community. Here is a group of people that are as diverse as you can possibly get, yet share a single OS and philosophy. But, Ballmer completely misses the ideal behind community.
For nine years, the company has designated users with particular skills--usually seen by how often they intervene helpfully in newsgroups--as "most valued professionals". Currently there are about 1,200 MVPs, half of whom are in the United States.

The title is highly regarded, said Thomas Lee, a Windows 2000 MVP who specializes in directory issues, and has just been appointed as chief technologist at QA Training. "You are recognized by your peers, not by an exam that you can cheat in."

MS believes that they can create their own community, when in fact they will only succeed in alienating more people with their elitist attitude and the MVP award.

Re:When Ballmer said...

[NumberSyx]

I'd rather invest my money in a company with fiscal assets than one with moral and ethical ones.

I know someone with 10,000 WorldCom stock they'd sell you cheap.

Re:When Ballmer said...

[gweihir]

Did he mean fiscally bankrupt? As opposed to, um, someone else who is ethically and morally bankrupt?

If most people behave ethically, a minority can benefit from unethical behaviour. If more people start to behave unethical, everybody looses, beacuse the community looses as a whole and this compensates for the gains unethical people have.

Anyway, if it where not for gaming, I would be entirerly MS free by now. A toy OS for use as a toy. Only MacOS is shinier as a toy and is far more than a toy and Linux, while not shiny, is not a toy at all....

Ballmer and Zippy

[uncoveror]

Did anyone else notice how much Steve Ballmer looks like Zippy The Pinhead? You know, I've never seen the two together. Could it be that Ballmer is Zippy The Pinhead?

Closed source exists ONLY with M$ and Windows devs

[crovira]

There is no closed source on servers and certain no closed source on mainframes.

At, on average, $299/line of COBOL or SQL you damn well want to get the source because you have to recompile in into your production environment. You have to be able to do a complete software metrics exrcise to do capacity planning and can insure that you meet you SLAs (Service Level Agreeements.)

Closed source is only for unimportant crap.

It didn't exist before Li'l Billy whined in Byte Magazine that he was getting ripped off and after ripping US off for billions and billions, its coming to an end.

It also syncs with LDAP.

[Maskirovka]

It also syncs with LDAP.

Re:It also syncs with LDAP.

[haggar]

For that matter, it "syncs" with the old-style NT domains (with NDS for NT), Oracle 8 db users (natively) and PeopleSoft users (don't know the details about this one).

Well, I guess you'd be avoiding Micro$oft then...

[leonbrooks]

Enclosed, careful descriptions of how Microsoft is (1) going bankrupt; and (2) ripping everyone off in the process; and (3) effectively stealing from every US taxpayer; and (4) thereby destabilisiing the whole economy. Who needs terrorists?

Proposed HP Merger: Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) Found Not Independent and along with Barclays plays key Role in Microsoft Pyramid Scheme

Inside Story on Microsoft and Enron

Senate Proposal Could Cost Microsoft Billions

Microsoft Circles of Influence and Enron's Collapse

http://www.billparish.com/20010404americaonline.ht ml and Microsoft Collapses AOL Part II - FTC Inquiry Requested

Buybacks Backfire, Microsoft Loses $8.4B Speculating on Own Stock

Microsoft Scheme Costs Seattle Its Largest Employer, Boeing

"How Cisco Systems and Microsoft Avoid Tax"

Microsoft Financial Pyramid Summary and Microsoft Financial Pyramid Summary Updated

How Microsoft Pays No Federal Income Tax on Current Income ...and so on, ad nauseum, plenty more waiting to be read...

Mirror image

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Heheh, nice site, it's like a mirror-image of slashdot, albeit much smaller. This is one of the first posts my eyes fell on:

#2 By donpacman (56 Posts) at 9/26/2002 2:58:29 AM At least it's not Linux.
Never on my machine.

Pay less get less

Re:microsoft apps for linux -- hmm

[dcavanaugh]

"But MS aren't interested in making small amounts of money; they can't afford it."

They can't afford to do it now, but they can definitely afford it when the competition raises the stakes. If the emulator people (Wine + Crossover Office) have a major breakthrough, then Office runs with Linux whether M$ likes it or not.

Microsoft won't spend their own money for the privilege of throwing away the OS business. But when the competition ports Office anyway, it's a different decision: (1) Lose BOTH the OS and the desktop, or (2) Cut their losses on the OS and defend the desktop. I'm sure Microsoft would like to get $200 per seat for a Linux upgrade, as opposed to getting $0 when people buy Crossover Office and keep their MS Office version.

In ancient times, Digital Equipment had the opportunity to port their OS and hundreds of software products to the x86 platform. They ignored the opportunity because it would have killed their hardware revenue stream, and it would place them in price competition with the low-priced Microsoft offerings. The x86 commodity market was built around DOS and Windows because none of the heavy hitters in the OS business wanted to touch the price point of DOS/Windows. They couldn't afford to. After a while, these same heavy hitters couldn't afford to do anything at all, except build their own x86 boxes and resell Microsoft's OS.

There will always be certain things that you can't afford to do, but a little competition changes everything.

Patents are a 2-edged sword

[dcavanaugh]

Given IBM's patent portfolio, support for Linux, and disdain for Microsoft, I think any Microsoft patent-based action against Linux would result in a counter-offensive launched by IBM.

Think about it. Who has more patents, M$ or IBM? Anyone who can prove patent infringement against Microsoft would hit the proverbial jackpot because of the hundreds of millions of infringing software installations.

Besides, how does anyone sue Linux? Where is Linux? Who is Linux? What if the author of the allegedly infringing code is from a country that does not recognize software patents? What if the defendant's contact information is nothing more than a Hotmail spam trap?

If Microsoft get's obnoxious with patents, it will become initiate World War III among all the software patent holders.

Re:When Ballmer said...

[WNight]

And I'll be there to point and laugh when your investment fails.

If you had invested in something that didn't exploit others though I might care and give you a helping hand. I know people like you who took sleazy jobs with spammers writing the first address gathering tools. Nobody talks to them, nobody mentions neat job openings to them. They got a fairly large short term gain but they blew their credibility to hell by selling everyone else down the river.

So buy your dirty stock, but if it doesn't make enough for you to live happily on you've screwing yourself if anyone finds out.

[META] Re:Jesus, you morons did it again!

[tuxedo-steve]

/. picks up the story (again) without reading it, and further butchers it by altering the title again and attributing a quote that's entirely fictitous but sounds really inflammatory and good, presenting it as fact.

I'm beginning to suspect that the /. editors are doing this on purpose. People come to this site not only for discussion, but because it incites them. Those who skim the headlines without dipping into the discussion get worked up over Ballmer's "intent to stomp." Those of us who are regulars here in the forums, however, perhaps come back (just a little bit) because of the endless shenanigans of the editors.

JonKatz's fabricated "letter from Afghanistan." The "fictitous but inflammatory" misquotations of well-known figures. Bitchslap script investigations. Troll wars. Frequent story double-posts. (Well, maybe not that last one, that's just annoying.) Point being, we enjoy picking these things apart in the discussions, and that keeps us coming back. Increases the page-views, thereby increasing the ad-views, and revenue goes up.

Slashdot isn't about news, it's about entertainment. It's the internal politics that keep the regulars regular. I just can't help but wonder sometimes if that's not somehow intentional (I mean, what other explanation could there possibly be for JonKatz still being on staff?)

Now, if this gets modded down, it's because of an editor conspiracy. Tell the people!

Re:When Ballmer said...

[WNight]

Even if IBM and everyone else stop supporting Linux it'll still go on the way it always has, as a hobbyist project keeping hobbyists happy. They'll no more go broke doing it than a model airplane enthusiast will doing his not-for-profit hobby.

But that won't happen. IBM, Oracle, Corel, Sun, they've all had a taste of freedom from a demanding OS provider and their pet monopoly. Microsoft won't ever go away, DataGeneral is still with us even, in a way, but their market dominance will fade and people will realize that their stock price will never climb again. Even if they start to pay dividends they'll never regain their former glory. They've created the image of sustainable exponential growth for so long that when people realize they've slowed down for good, not just as a result of the dot-com collapse, they'll lose their 'Buy' rating.

btw, as for that charity crap, most of what they give is licenses. Check me out, I just wrote a "Hello World" program, priced it at $1B and donated six copies to the Red Cross. Now I'm more generous than Bill. Can I claim this on my taxes like they do?