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Microsoft's Magical 'Myth-Busting' Tour

Posted by michael on from the drive-offensively dept.

Mz6 writes "Microsoft has launched its 'Get the Facts' road show -- the tech equivalent of a political battle bus -- to tour the country and convince the wavering that Redmond is as at least cheap and as secure as its open-source rival and to spread the word that Windows is better than Linux. Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy, described the campaign as 'a reality check we're bringing out', aiming to tackle the 'myths' surrounding Linux. Microsoft's road show will be in Edinburgh on June 17, Manchester on June 29 and Newport on July 7."

7 of 649 comments (clear)

  1. Bit of info by PatrickThomson · · Score: 5, Informative

    for the internationally-impaired, the tour is in the UK.

    --
    I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
  2. Pictures from the event by HenrikOxUK · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is more coverage of the event with pictures.

  3. how are those figures fudged? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp
    Win2003 less then RedHat E3 or Suse8?
    was it per copy or per seat?
    per copy i can beleive

    i find it hard to believe that windows won on the per seat.

    http://www.redhat.com/apps/commerce/rhel/es/
    $3 50 - $1000 (no seat limit?)

    http://www.pricewatch.com/
    winServer 2003 5 seats - $150
    winServer 2003 25 seats - $1150

    so take a small business 100 machines plus servers.

    windows - $4600 per server
    redhat - $1000 total (for the uber delux edition, just to make it more fair)

  4. Re:So who will be the first? by HenrikOxUK · · Score: 5, Informative

    People in Skopje, Macedonia were first, giving away 1000 CDs last week!

  5. Re:Cool! by HenrikOxUK · · Score: 4, Informative

    FSM gave away 1000 CDs of Knoppix and TheOpenCD at a similar event in Skopje, Mecedonia last week.

  6. Re:Hmm ... by stevey · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem with many studies on security is that they are not comparing like with like.

    For example a Microsoft person should be looking at a bare install with XP, IE 6, and all service packs. Nothing else.

    To contrast that with a Linux system you'd install RedHat / Debian and tons of extra softawre, basically whatever comes as part of the "default" installation - however this clearly has a lot more software included, Emacs, Vi, etc.

    On the Linux side trivial security problems with games, or whatever would be counted - artificially inflating the security exploits on the Linux side.

    True there have been several kernel security problems over the past few months, but they should be pretty much all that is compared against Kernel flaws in Windows + Internet Explorer bugs.

  7. Re:And bumblebees can't fly... by mangu · · Score: 4, Informative
    I look in my firewall syslogs and see LOTS of scanning for Windows specific ports and zero for *nix. My IIS logs are full of attempts to exploit known IIS vulnerabilities. From my logs, I conclude that Windows is simply targeted 100x more than Apache.


    So do you all and the whole Internet, my friend, that's what they call "worms"! I have seen in my logs countless of the same attacks against IIS, even if my system is clearly labeled as Apache. It just happens that attacking IIS systems is so easy that it has been automated, there are millions systems out there looking for IIS vulnerabilities. But, if you read carefully my post, you'll notice I didn't mention such automated attacks. The cracked sites I mentioned were those that crackers defaced by hand, that is, by a personal effort. But, in the end, it doesn't matter. Microsoft systems are more vulnerable to automated attacks, they are more vulnerable to people-initiated attacks, they are more vulnerable, period!