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Microsoft's Magical 'Myth-Busting' Tour
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."
"La-La-La-La-Myth-Busting-Tour!
Nick,
This word 'reality', I do not think it means what you think it means.
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.
Oh, wait...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
RJR and Phillip Morris unveiled their plans for a traveling road show to promote cigarettes as an effective weight loss solution as well as a stimulant and antidepressant.
>Redmond is as at least cheap and as secure as its open-source rival
Yes, and I am as at least rich as Bill Gates.
Andrej
Hello,
Windows is the best OS, you know. If you use it, you find it makes your mind processes improve all the time, it teaches you how to temple your nerves when something goes wrong (very often, I mean)... and it's much more beautiful (there's something magical in that funny blue screen, don't you think so?)
Muaaaaaaaaaks
--
You'd stumble in my footsteps (Depeche Mode, "Walking in my shoes")
This is a load of FUD.
Microsoft want you to believe that while, Microsoft software may be more in the purchase price department compared to open source software, it's less in implementation costs or maintenance costs, and its TCO will be lower.
This is, of course, considering the plentiful viruses, worms and other security issues, not the case in reality. The winner in this case is Open Source software.
Open Source software, of the BSD kind and the GPL kind, has totally changed the way we think about and work with software. One day, we will be able to scientifically determine what software we need to suit our needs. We will know ahead of time exactly what limits and what capabilities each piece of software has. IT managers will be able to sort through real facts based on real research, rather than a bunch of shallow articles and biased reports. Software will survive on its merits alone.
The whole industry is going to benefit by this, in a large, large way. The question one day will no longer be "Microsoft or Linux?" but "Which Open Source software should we use, and why?"
Microsoft is severely threatened and it knows it. Pay no attention to it and it will eventually go away.
Eh, something tells me there'll be plenty of crashing even without your intervention...
I also reply below your current threshold.
Every day, Microsoft employees are physically in CIO and CEO boardrooms trying to convince executives that Microsoft is a better bet than Linux. Even with a large body of evidence to the contrary, this is something Linux is missing - the financial warchest to use the media and "war buses" to convince people to the contrary.
There's no such thing as reality - there's only what you believe. The best ideas in history of gone down because nobody believed in them. The worst ideas in history have flourished because somebody sold it stronger than anybody else.
So yeah, they may be spreading their own version of the truth, but, as is obvious, I think we should be very, very wary of that truth being accepted as reality.
This just in...
Apparently Microsoft's tour bus crashed because of a faulty driver.
Unknown host pong.
Cheap as in "look at all the free software that gets downloaded to your computer" cheap. Or maybe cheap as in the type of shots that will be flying around here soon :-)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
...That the tour is taking place in Europe, where they were just slammed with HEAVY antitrust fines, and not the U.S. ?
I bet that their battle bus is really just one of those short yellow buses.
Linux does have that now. Do you think IBM, Novell/Suse, and Redhat are just sitting around? IBM has gotten a bunch of big installations of Linux done. Novell/Suse just got McDonald's to test changing over it's POS's. Microsoft is not the only one doing this anymore.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/facts/default.asp
3 50 - $1000 (no seat limit?)
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/
$
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)
Yes, that's subtle, comparing Linux advocates to Al Qaeda and Iraqi rebels. This is after Jim Allchin calling Linux a "destroyer", Ballmer calling it a "cancer" and so forth.
I take it as a matter of faith that Microsoft desires to destroy Linux. Part one is public relations, part two is getting the government to go after it.
It didn't escape my attention that the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's Ken Brown is saying he's looking into the employment agreements of Linux contributors to see if any of the employers might own the copyright to off-hours work of Linux contributors. I remember a prominent case a few years ago where some developer wrote something after work and his employer sued him later saying it belonged to them even if it wasn't work related. The battle stretches from the workplace, to the government, to big business as far as I can see - the employment agreements wage slaves have to sign due to poor collective bargaining power helps lead to the destruction of Linux (or perhaps just a monkey wrench like the one that stalled BSD for years and years in litigation). It is already having an effect - Linus is spending time worrying about legal nonsense instead of developing the kernel. It doesn't just go away when ignored, Microsoft and company seem to desire some sort of primitive accumulation of the digital commons. The solution is to look into the OSDL and their Linux legal defense fund and that sort of thing. The travesty of employment contracts which comes in to haunt Linux has to be fought in workplaces. These people are playing for keeps. And it has already had an effect if you think about it.
Maybe it makes sense over a five or ten year span
It certainly does. There is this myth that Microsoft products do not require training. This is just not true. The transitions from NT4 to Win2K or XP, for example, are significant, especially for administrators. For users, the change between different MS Office versions have often been highly troublesome, both in terms of interfaces and add-on/script migration. These are expensive matters. A significant issue for corporate clients of Microsoft is that the licencing and support enforces upgrades.
My point is that over a 5-10 year period, the training requirements enforced by Microsoft licencing combined with OS changes could well be much worse than the cost of migration and training for a Linux desktop; a decision which allows a break from the hardware/software upgrade cycle, and can lead to significant cost savings in the long term.
Linux will increase significantly in viability against Microsoft systems because it has rapidly increasing support from companies who have the resources to ensure that it does: Companies like Sun, Novell, HP and RedHat are putting huge resources into making Linux an even better desktop system.
People in Skopje, Macedonia were first, giving away 1000 CDs last week!
"Switching from Windows to Linux Prohibitively Eexpensive, Extremely Complex"
I did this 2 days ago. Rebuilding a fried box, reinstalling Windows took about 3 hours (including a 45 minute search for my legitimate license key), I had to constantly babysit the computer for a each prompt, and when it was finally complete, did not work properly. Rather than waste the rest of the night trying to troubleshoot the damned thing and get it all working I gave up, stuck in the Lindows cd I got for free, clicked I agree and started smoking a cigarette. Before I was done smoking the install was completed and was waiting for me to reboot. Now all I have to do is apt-get the programs I want to use (already using the windows version of just about every GNU/Linux software anyone needs on a pc) and I'll be done.
I'm kinda lazy and cheap, but not stupid.
Do I pick Windows (Pain in the ass to install, Hell to operate and protect, and expensive to buy and get support for, which needs to be periodically reinstalled when it stops working for no apparent reason)
Or do I pick Linux (easy to install, free to get, and millions of developers that give you the info you need to keep things going for free on a stable platform that can be trusted not to inexplicably decide not to work)?
-Yeah, I know I picked Lindows in this example, but I've tried installing other distros, and they were all easier and faster than the Windows Reinstall Hell I've been through many times.
-Yes I do still use windows, they have some of my important data locked up in some of their apps that I can't use without their platform. I've learned from this mistake and am going through the painful transition of RECREATING the info in opensource formats.
-Damn. That last one let me know that Microsoft is right. It really is a complicated, expensive and painful procedure to transition from Windows to Linux: Complicated because you have to free your info from their locked-down shitty closed source applications-usually fixing a crapload of errors generated by these same apps, wasting a lot of time(=money), and wishing you never made the mistake of using Microsoft crap in the first place (painful).
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!