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Gates Comdex Keynote Shows Plans, Matrix Spoof
An anonymous reader writes "According to Eweek, Bill Gates' keynote speech at this year's Comdex showed Microsoft's 'focus on security, spam and [the] tablet PC', including a new version of its Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, an extension of the SmartScreen Technology for spam prevention, and the next version of the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system. But the showstopper was a filmed spoof of The Matrix (screencaps available here), with Gates and Steve Ballmer as Morpheus and Neo respectively, and including a jab at Linux."
Borland did this years ago
Borland Matrix spoof
So much for Microsoft inovation.
The irony is that Linux still has a very small market share, but Billy's response to Linux in this spoof, by linking it to IBM, tends to make Linux even bigger than it is, and makes it look like it is more competition than it is yet.
As someone who has been in marketing for 20 years now, I know the best way to make your competition look small is ignore them in public, and sweat them in private. This is just petty crapola by Billy and Company, but it serves to make MS look bad, and Linux to look better by being the butt of a joke made by "the evil empire". I mean, the method they used to parody Linux is fine, even remotely humorous, but doesn't serve their marketing dept. very well.
Seriously, this may sound odd to some of you, but this is a fundamental marketing mistake, this is Marketing 201 stuff, not that advanced. This is typical of a company that thinks it is invincible, or thinks the competition can never catch up. Problem is, no one else believes this except Billy and Co.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
pictures only
Please mod parent back down to normal. He has a highly misleading view of history that has been modded up to +3.
Misleading item #1: "Linux is a clone of Minux, itself a clone of Unix". Completely incorrect, although seemingly-plausible to newbies due to the historical association of these things.
I evaluated Minix back when it was hot stuff, and I rejected it precisely because it was not a clone of Unix. It was a toy version of Unix. If it had been a good clone, I would have used it, no problem.
A few years later, I evaluated Linux. It was not a toy version of either Minix nor Unix, it was a true clone of Unix. So I started using it.
Now, ok, Linux was a true clone of Unix back then, this much is true (although not quite what the poster said), and hence yes, Linux back then was not a new idea.
But so what? The point is that it was a FREELY AVAILABLE, OPEN SOURCE clone of Unix -- which is exactly what millions of us were waiting for. Minix wasn't real Unix...BSD was, but wasn't freely available back then...Linux was a god send.
Misleading item #2: "UNIX: A rough implementation of Multics, written expressly so that Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie could port a game called Space Travel to old, cheap hardware."
No, Unix is not any kind of version of Multics, that is just plain wrong. Sure, it borrowed a few ideas; the Unix authors were involved in authoring Multics, so surely that is no surprise. But "a version of"? No. Wrong. Completely wrong.
As for "Written so that...Space Travel..." could run on some platform? Sure, that's part of the history...so what? The question is, what did they come up with as a result?
The parent post is a cynical, distorted view of history that is grinding an axe to achieve an agenda. Please mod it back down to a normal +1 opinion. It is NOT insightful nor informative.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
This whole thing started when Bill G got laughed out of the homebrew computer club for throwing a hissy fit over how people were copying his version of basic.
This is true (and Bill did some dumpster diving to get BASIC), but the OP also has a valid point. When I built my first PC clone, I went to a *software boutique* and tried to buy a copy of MS DOS. (Anyone else remember PC software being so trendy that you had to go to a boutique to buy it?) It wasn't for sale, and they just laughed at me. You didn't *buy* DOS, you just *got it*, nudge, wink, get it? And MicroSoft didn't seem to mind it at all. Try doing that now.
You don't speak for me. I think this is great. Why? Because it means Linux has finally entered the collective consciousness.
What the fuck am I talking about? Parody only works when the audience knows exactly what you're talking about with just the subtlest hints. The spoof didn't need to spell out what Linux is. It was assumed knowledge. Microsoft assumed that the audience knew that Larry Ewing's Tux logo is the Linux mascot, that the audience knew what Linux is and what Linux does, that the audience knew that Linux is competing with Microsoft, and so on.
It is great news that Microsoft acknowledges Linux in this way. It shows that Linux has become big enough to not just attract attention from Microsoft (the Halloween documents demonstrated that) but that everybody in the computing industry is expected to know about Linux by now.
Woohoo. I still remember when this site was called Chips and Dips. I remember the cheering and stomping of feet when the first paper magazine ran an article on Linux. Now Linux inspires spoofs from one of the world's biggest software companies! This is a great day for Linux.