Slashdot Mirror
OS Stats Removed From Google's Zeitgeist
Kelly McNeill writes "Google's Zeitgeist service is sometimes used by news sources as a resource to generate install-base (don't call it market share!), statistics for operating systems. osViews contacted Google to bring some clarity to questionable aspects of the OS statistic, to which Google said that Zeitgeist is only a fun search inquiry resource and should not be used to generate statistical information. A couple days after that inquiry, we found that Google has since removed the OS stats from the Zeitgeist service."
You'd be surprised - A page went from PR0 to PR5 with a slashdot sig i used once.
Business Voyeur
A man, a plan...a canal, Panama
/I'll get my coat
Shouldn't that last word be goatse?
The Canadians must like their anime. Inuyasha was the 3rd most popular query in the month of July.
Except MSDN is clearly marked as Microsoft Developer Network.
Slashdot is billed as a "hobby" site that posts tech "news." Meanwhile, there is a company that owns it which has an incentive to use their news site to bash competitors like Microsoft.
I don't care if the grandparent believes there is no tech news or that there was bias before the buyout. Malda and the editors are OSDN employees now. I don't know about you, but the anti-Microsoft articles have *definitely* been kicked up a notch in the past few years. You used to go for days without one, and now it's about three or four a day. In fact, there is more Microsoft news posted on Slashdot than Linux or OSS news. Honestly, count 'em and see for yourself.
This is all off-topic.
I think it has less to do with the "geeky image" than the militant zealots. I finally got tired of trying to fix my Linux problems and constantly being called a liar for having problems with it. It usually went like this: Liar. Oh, you must have misconfigured something. Oh, your hardware's broken then. You messed with the config files, DON'T DO THAT. Er...the hardware doesn't conform to spec. The manufacturer's open source drivers are...uh....broken? IT'S NEVER THE OS! It works on my machine, so yours is clearly broken!
I don't even dual boot any more, I'm 100% Windows now. I don't have any computer problems (go ahead, call me a liar now, here's where the obnoxious pricks do, you know you want to!) and I don't have to ask surly, overly defensive assholes for information on how to fix stuff that's not in TFM. Problem solved.
The Linux community is incredibly unwelcoming, even to Linux users. You're welcome to jump in and crow about how 1337 you are, but you'd better STFU if you have any problems, or at least blame them on MS and then maybe someone will help you fix them. The helpful users are being drowned out by the assholes.
5 year long Linux hobbyist, back to the loving arms of Microsoft. Keep it up guys, you're doing swell!