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Microsoft-Funded Linux Studies Benefit ... Microsoft
mr.big_pig writes "The Seattle PI had a front page article analyzing the Microsoft's Get The Facts website and related ads compairing Windows to Linux. The short and sweet: follow the money and see just how 'independent' is this research. What caught my eye was that this was on the front page and not buried in the business section."
Why do you even WANT to study something like this?
Either way, it's obvious that Microsoft wants to trumpet itself... so ANY study they do is going to come off unfavourably.
If Microsft just advertised itself similarly to the word of mouth advertising Linux does... then Microsoft would fair better.
Unfortunately, Microsoft can't get the word of mouth advertising that money can't buy....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I've definitely noticed in the last few mnths that Microsoft seems to be REALLY ramping up its PR war against Linux. They've been talking about it for a while, and now we're seeing it.
Linux's true downfall has far less to do with MS's market dominance than it does with basic marketing. It's nice to have a product, but it's useless if no one knows about it.
For example the people that use Internet Explorer do so not because "other browsers don't work with ActiveX" but because they are not even aware of the existence of Opera or Mozilla. The only browser ever mentioned in the same breath as MS is Netscape, which is massively inferior to the aforementioned browsers. At best it's marginally superior to MS, but not enough to have a significant competetive advantage.
Take a look at iMacs, often cited as one of the most brilliant marketing programs conceived. Personally I hated those ugly things, nevertheless they did exceptionally well.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
It is the same reason why drug companies need to perform double blind testing on new medicine to see whether the effects are merely due to influence from the people performing the study and the patients being told that they would get better.
similarly, though Microsoft may demand that the reports be objective, the analysts employed may just by association, subconsciously put Microsoft products in a slightly better light.
mabye the ms goons have got everyone. seriously though. there's talk of a microsoft pr war. what to do in case of pr war? KEEP USING LINUX. keep yourself well fed. if something is totally annoying about linux, fix it! if you don't know how(like me) start getting chest deep in README's, manpages, HOWTO's and whatnot. and if your not a geek, beg a geek to help you, or use BSD or something, which due to academic interests will never die out completely.
hit the wave head on, and don't break. after all, even if microsoft ever does create a supperior OS, it won't matter. we have the highground, and they have no intent of taking it. Freedom, my peers, is what we have chosen. Computers do what we, their owners and commanders tell them to...and freedom means the freedom to know what other people have told our computers to do. No more spyware imbedded into our software! no more fucking buggy windows 98 crash ten times in one session bullshit...i don't care if XP is more stable than this, we know they are capable of this, and they will fall back to this in the future. Their software may become worse with time, but should Linux ever go truly bad, we can always take a few steps back
'2.13.5 sucks soo badly mostly since linus got addicted to heroin? we're bout to start a fork back at 2.9.3 where it was still descent' and we can do this! do you think we're ever going to be able to fork windows 95?
and most importantly, don't let yourself be beaten down to far, after all, what is more impressive, a bunch of broke MS developers who are fighting over the few thousand jobs available (all at microsoft)...or a linux user with all sorts of cool and unthought of applications that will only occur to us in the next decade or two? of course there isn't really such a black and white comparison here but the spectrum of choice...but we have nothing to fear. we have the upper hand, and it's going to stay this way for the near future, at least.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It doesn't really matter *who* does the study...the results are almost guaranteed to be biased unless the study is comissioned by a truly independent organization and carried out by a truly independent studying group.
"SCO study proves Linux is built on SCOde."
"Linux study proves SCO is build on false-promises and deception"
hmm...SCOde is now the term one can use when describing copyrighted/poorly written code that might have fallen into a software product.
Usage:
"Dude, there's some SCOde in your program. Check out the variable."
"What variable?"
"$SCO_rocks"
"Crap..."
The IDC study is such rubbish. It talks of Linux developers and ISVs...
And fails to mention the two corporate giants who are backing and rolling out Linux across the globe. Sun and IBM.
Its like talking about the Superbowl, but not mentioning the teams.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Studies are a marketing device for Microsoft. We may as well get used to being on the sharp end of their marketing department's pointed stick.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unix admins are more expensive than Windows admins, although they generally have a much higher skill level. Maybe as Linux penetrates the market, this will equalize (both in cost and skill level).
I always laugh at the "windows staff is cheaper" stuff. I seriously can't believe the number of people who buy this. It's so blatently obvious that windows staff is cheap. Supply and demand IMHO. More companies use windows so there is more of a need for windows techs, and dare i admit it, there is not much need for skill in the windows market. I know how to stuff ranging from the mundane to the administering on both windows and linux, and even though I think linux is more powerful and practical, many tasks are easier to do on windows. But what do you expect?
I really laugh at the number of people who use windows and think they are getting a deal when they could be using linux or another open source alternative instead. I'm certain that if linux got more advertising it would totally stomp windows in the business market. Do we reall want IBM marketing linux? Look what happened to OS/2.
sig?
To me, the content of the story is not the interesting item here; it's the fact that a well known publication in Microsoft's own stomping grounds is publishing a story like this; I for one am very proud of them.
Keep up the good work SeatlePI and Todd Bishop.
First of all, any vendor TCO study is going to be completely bullshit. However, there's a glimmer of truth in the Microsoft stuff:
Whether the report is biased or not, it would behove the Linux community to respond to the report with innovation, not just scorn. For example, improving ease-of-use on admin tools could create a drop in the cost of a Linux support people. Or better File and Print features (Novell/SuSE migth be doing this) could improve TCO in that arena.
My point is that fixing these perceived areas of "Linux inferiority" would make it even harder for Microsoft to create the next version of a biased report. If Open Source is smart, they will exploit these biased marketing reports to set future development priorities and fill any perceived gaps in functionality, ease-of-use, and TCO.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Thankfully, Microsoft is fixing that now.
Yeah Yeah I know - don't feed the trolls/ACs, but this just needs a comment.
,and he's One of the three in the study, and "it just so happens" that the study finds JimBob SixPack is the best place to get your car serviced - that's suspicious (ie we "suspect" that the study results were influenced by the source of funding)
If JimBob SixPack funds research comparing three mechanics, and he's a mechanic
If , on the other hand, the study found that JimBob kinda sux, and you should go elsewhere.
This is just common sense
The fact that Microsoft often/regularly funds studies which (surprise!) are very complimentary about Microsoft is well-known. The fact that neither Microsoft and nor the group doing the study makes even the slightest mention of the fact that Microsoft Funded the Study (therefore, at least in theory, it's possible that the funding influenced the results) hints even stronger at a conflict of interest.
Again this is just common sense
In no way is this Linux Geeks Against Microsoft this is purely people with more than an ounce of common sense saying Business A funded some research which shows their product is the best - YAWN, why am I not surprised
Fact: when business XYZ funds "research" which says (in conclusion) many nice things about their product, and said research is publicized, anyone with more than half a brain realises this is not "research" but advertising.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
I've been a network engineer for 5 years, and a hard-core computer junkie since I was 7. Every time Microsoft comes up with a new GUI I have to play hide-and-go-seek to find the one dialog box that contains the checkmark I want to pick. That infuriates me, and makes trying to document procedures all but impossible. In unix I simply tell them to go into this file end edit this line. Even better, I can usually write a script to do it for them.
Microsoft would do us all a favor if on the next version of their OS they go back to good old fashioned INI files. Having to break out a registry editor tool every time I discover they forgot to write in a hook for a setting I need is ifuriating.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
One of the things that people miss about this story is that up here in Microsoft Country, it is sacrilege to question Microsoft. When I saw this story in my morning paper, I was very surprised, as the local reporters rarely bite the hand that greases the local palms in many ways. When it comes to Microsoft (and Boeing), the Seattle PI and Times are not normally independent thinkers.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'm going to write a program that searches slashdot for the phrases "mysql" and "transactions" and always posts a short reply that MySQL does support transactions now. And stored procedures will be in the next version.
MySQL has a LONG way to go to be comparable to Oracle obviously, but I just wish everyone would stop repeating this same stuff about features it has had for a while now.
Also, why does everyone ignore Firebird (the database)? It supports all those features and is Free.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
MySQL is making strides towards all of the 'enterprise' features of db's like Oracle. (side note: why do people say enterprise when they mean 'scales well'). Stored procedures and the like will be available in MySQL probably in a year.
In my experience, JBoss fares really well against Weblogic, and offers similar support levels. Use Eclipse as your dev. platform, as its features and plugins (as well as ease of plugin development) surpass commericial offerings.
So thus far the only thing we are paying for is Oracle, and it's not that expensive, especially for the quality support that you get. So for a small to medium sized company, get a couple of quality admins, forgo 'enterprise' workstations in favor of a decent Fedora setup. Of couple of good admins should be handle this, without the need for external support. Get enterprise support for the servers and network infrastructure.
Thus with F/OSS you are saving (per workstation) probably in the nieghborhood of $1000. Multiply by 100 workstations, and you can buy yourself another admin.
The problem with comparing a certain offering against Linux/BSD/and OSS, is that with the latter there are so many different possible solutions (which I admit can be a problem) that you can probably find one that will save you significant money, solve your problem, and do it well.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Firebird was born when Borland open-sourced their database product. I worked at Borland for a number of years. You would think I would be its biggest advocate, rather than giving quotes to promote a non-ACID competitor. But let me tell you why I, and possibly other people, haven't embraced Firebird-the-database. First, having worked at Borland, I saw some of its problems up close & personal. We tried to move borland.com to a database-backed site at one point, and our own product couldn't keep up with the load. Of course, this was 1998, so it's old news. Someone at the company, whose name I wish I could remember, eventually built a smart little system that would pre-generate every possible combination of db-built pages, and pre-load our server with hundreds of thousands of static HTML files. This worked, as the database never took any direct hits, and only had to rebuild the pages at midnight each night. However, since I had just come off a bad experience with IntraBuilder (now cancelled, partly thanks to me & Chris Malatesta trying to use it on borland.com, and watching it crash & burn), I was really wary, and felt that the database was a big compromise.
In addition, the database at the time had a number of bad limitations. One was that, even after deleting records, the database size would grow. We had a customer that wanted to create and delete about a million records a day, but after a month, the database size looked like it housed 30 million records, not 1 million. I initially just assumed that the indexes were not properly maintained, but since Borland eventually lost the customer, I assume a simple regen of the indexes didn't fix it. And of course, as most of us know, after the database was open-sourced, a pretty severe exploit was found, and it existed in all or nearly all versions, including the proprietary ones. That the open-source guys found the exploit and repaired it is a testament to OSS. And as further testament, I just assume that they've tightened up the code now to the point that every previous complaint or concern I've had is moot.
So what's the problem? Well, in the last 6 years, I've left Borland, and found better databases (IMHO) in MySQL and PostgreSQL. MySQL had a reputation for being very basic, but very fast without a lot of tuning, and very easy, and very reliable. PostgreSQL had a reputation for being (nearly) as feature-complete as Oracle. Over the last few years, I've simply defaulted to them -- they're what I know, they're what I use, they work, and I've not had a reason to look elsewhere. And I think that's Firebird's problem: the bulk of Web people have already been in the business for a while, and already grown accustomed to other databases. It's inertia.
To solve this, one of the only things I can think of would be an anti-MySQL campaign, where you clearly outlined MySQL's silent error problem. It's the only problem I've had with MySQL -- this scenario where it doesn't process the request properly, and silently discards it or picks some (never quite right) defaults. I'm currently getting this with some date fields, where it helpfully inserts an unexpected 0000-00-00 date. If someone documented all those issues, and explained them simply, and showed better alternatives, it might open up people's minds. Of course, in my case, I'm enough of a MySQL fan that I'd rather just wait for Monty & others to improve their product. But I'm sure some people could be encouraged to reconsider their loyalties. And until they do, Firebird could be better but still have no mindshare.
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