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Microsoft Found Guilty of Misleading Advertising
gtoomey writes "The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that Microsoft misled consumers by running advertisements claiming Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows. The print advertisements used "independent research" to compare the cost of Linux on an expensive mainframe to Windows on a PC."
Here's a link to the adjudication at the Advertising Standards Authority.
This is the same agency that has nailed Apple to the wall several times in the past.
If we had some of Microsoft's droids working for us, the open-source community in promoting open-source software, we may possibly have a big market share (as if we haven't got a growing one already).
Fine, Linux may be expensive in the short-term, i.e. upgrading and replacing some incompatible hardware, training staff, etc. but as ESR says, pay-per-seat Microsoft licensing fees are forever.Just my two pence.
no karma required .asp]
from http://www.asa.org.uk/ [ironically running on IIS with
-- - - - - -
Microsoft Ltd
Microsoft Campus
Thames Valley Park
Reading
Berkshire
RG6 1WG
Date: 25th August 2004
Media: Magazine
Sector: Computers and telecommunications
Agency: McCann Erickson
Public Complaints From: Liverpool, Surrey, Wiltshire
Complaint:
Objections to a specialist magazine advertisement, for a computer operating system, that was headed "WEIGHING THE COST OF LINUX VS. WINDOWS? LET'S REVIEW THE FACTS." A graph compared the cost (US$) per Megabit per second of "One Linux image running on two z900 mainframe CPUs" with "One Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900 MHz Intel Xeon CPUs". Underneath it stated "Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows? Serverâ 2003 in a recent study ⦠audited by leading independent research analyst META Group, measured costs of Linux running on IBM's z900 mainframe for Windows-comparable functions of file serving and Web serving. The results showed that IBM z900 mainframe running Linux is much less capable and vastly more expensive than Windows Server 2003 as a platform for server consolidation.* To get the full study and other third-party findings, visit Microsoft.com/uk/getthefacts." The asterisk linked to a footnote that stated "Results may vary outside the United States â¦". The complainants challenged whether the comparison was misleading, because the operating systems were run on different hardware.
Codes Section: 3.1, 7.1, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3 (Ed 11)
Adjudication:
Complaints upheld
The advertisers said they intended the advertisement to compare competing file-serving set-ups that met the same needs and were intended for the same purposes. They said they had prepared the advertisement in response to an advertising campaign by IBM in which Linux running on an IBM mainframe was tested for file serving and web serving. They said their advertisement was based on results from a benchmark study and the advertisement informed the public of the results from that study about the relative performance and cost of one Linux image running on IBM's z900 mainframe CPUs and Windows Server 2003 image running on two 900MHz Xeon CPUs. The advertisers said the benchmark study was a network load performance test that was neither hardware specific nor operating system specific; they said the fact that the hardware and operating systems were different was irrelevant. They pointed out that the client PC did not determine the server used and that the server workloads were the same and were functionally equivalent. The advertisers explained that each server was tested to deal with increasing numbers of functions from client PCs. They said they took measurements from the client PCs to assess how fast the server would respond. They asserted that the study was audited by Meta, an independent consultancy firm, who reported that the study was a fair comparison.
The Authority noted the advertisers intended the advertisement to compare competing file serving set-ups that met the same needs and had the same function. It noted the study was audited and was a fair comparison of the operating systems on different hardware. The Authority considered, however, that because the advertisement stated " ⦠WEIGHING THE COST OF LINUX VS. WINDOWS ⦠Linux was found to be over 10 times more expensive than Windows ⦠" it implied the comparison was between Linux and Windows operating systems only, and not about the performance of operating systems on different hardware. It took expert advice. It understood that the study measured the cost of Linux, running on IBM's z900 mainframe, to a Windows Server 2003 image, running on 900 MHz Intel Xeon CPUs, and was therefore a comparison that demonstrated the price and performance between IBM zSeries hardware and Intel Xeon CPUs. It understood that the pri
... the Open-source marketing droids. If we managed to get some of Microsoft's marketing department staff into open-source, and have them promoting it, we would have a faster-growing marketshare than what we have now. The problem with Microsoft is that the so-called "Independent Studies" aren't independent, and they only look at the short-term expenses. Migrating to Linux may be expensive for a business, e.g. buying new hardware if the selection you have is incompatible, training staff to use the new system, etc. but if you look at the long term benefits, you'll find that costs are reduced dramatically. Windows IIS web servers are more likely to be defaced than Apache servers, although IIS is a small fraction of the servers on port 80 out of the entire internet! Security? Pah! The only reason that there is more security patches is that they are found and fixed quicker. I am using Mandrake 10.0 and I download the updates in bulk. There is a batch every to download and when I have finished there is no more to download for the rest of the week! Read http://opensource.org/, ESR's article Get The FUD in the Halloween documents section. Its just brilliant.
But think how many CDR's you'd need in order to pirate all the equivalent apps for windows aswell..
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
For all you Americans, this serves as an introduction. This here is what we call "regulation". It stops businesses being dicks by not bending over backwards to them at every opportunity. Our economy has not yet collapsed. Amazing, that.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Incidentally, the ASA is one of Britain's better agencies. It seems to have - some - real power, and doesn't seem to abuse it.
The ASA is the industries own self-regulating group, and its "real power" is basically a loud voice. Self-regulating groups are usually setup with the intent of keeping the government out by implying that the industry needs no external control.
http://www.asa.org.uk/index.asp
How is the system funded?
The ASA's work is funded by a small levy on display advertising and direct mail expenditure. In order for the ASA to preserve its independence from the advertising industry, a separate body, the Advertising Standards Board of Finance, collects this income. The only cost to consumers is the price of a stamp, or the time spent online, to send a complaint. The ASA's budget for the year 2003 is just over £4 million.
I didn't bother checking, but most advertising boards are self-regulating groups that actually have zero real authority.
The ASA is indeed a self-regulating body. On the bright side, however, it is generally taken fairly seriously in the UK, and when it upholds a complaint the offending advert is almost invariably withdrawn.
Having said that, you'd be even better off if you could find a way to let your application run on a bunch of PC Linux boxes that together meet the scalability and reliability of z900 systems.
d ex.asp?id=252
Just to clear up some misconceptions about the mainframe:
Mainframes don't just get their power from having faster CPUs:
- The z/Series I/O architecture is far more efficient, requiring significantly less CPU overhead than x86 designs.
- IBM implements bleeding-edge tech into their hardware designs, things that are a good 2-5 years ahead of the consumer market. Of course, you wind up paying a premium for the priviledge...
- The most recent designs are geared toward grid computing and server-farm-in-a-box implementations. Sysplex and the coupling facility (think Beowulf clusters), shared kernels, and so on.
For an interesting overview of the benefits of using a z/Series mainframe as a server farm, I'd suggest reading this article -
http://eservercomputing.com/mainframe/articles/in
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
I'm an Apple fan, but they should have done a mea culpa on that one and blamed the different standards UK v. US for confusion and moved on.
I didn't bother checking, but most advertising boards are self-regulating groups that actually have zero real authority.
The UK's ASA is a government sponsored body that has the power to levy fines and issue orders that specific advertisements not be used in future.
The UK's ASA is a government sponsored body that has the power to levy fines and issue orders that specific advertisements not be used in future.
Sigh. No, the ASA is an industry body whose sanctions basically amount to loudly saying that what you're doing is misleading, and by members possibly punishing a violator by refusing to do business with them. It's all clearly there on their own webpage.
Who They Are
Sanctions
They don't have to blatently state it in big bold letters. It is part of the underlying document that is attached to the *. It is up to the viewer to verify the research.
This is not uncommon to say the least - companies do this all the time. Notice that every movie is given awesome reviews by someone, that almost every book is on some best seller list, and that every brand is the "best" brand out there.
Marketers know what they are doing, and after they are done it goes through the legal department for checks and balances.
Also, since words like "best", "most effective", etc are vague, they can and do utilize these statements. So when Microsoft says "We have the BEST OS on the market" they are not wrong, they just didn't state who thinks they are the "BEST", and they do not have to.
To help give a real example, years ago Bayer got sued for slanderous advertising. They were accused of stating that other companies dilute their headache medicine with water in their advertisements. Bayer turned around and said - no we did not say that, we just said that we do not use water to dilute our headache medicine. - (paraphrase obviously). Their statement has a blatent hidden meaning, but it doesn't break the literal meaning.
Its marketing - kill the marketers.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The real evil is the "lazyness or dumbness" you mention in your last sentence not advertising.
Since we don't teaching critical thinking skills in schools, we aren't equipped for democracy and freedom in general. We need to arm our population with the tools to recognize bs when it is shoveled on them.
Microsoft does have a directly competing product. They have Windows 2000/2003 Data Center Edition. It spawns off virtual machines. If MS wanted to do an apples to apples comparison, that's the box they need to test.
TW
In England they take truth in advertising very seriously. Not like here in the US, where in commercials it's OK to show a truck tumble off a cliff, yet it doesn't so much as have a scratch on it afterwards. :/
some quick braging:
our EDC over 1000 servers not huge but still large:
Windows uptime 98.65%
Unix uptime 99.998%
Linux portion of Unix uptime 100%
of course now that I'm braging about it something is going to crash. 18moths of over 75 Linux servers running several diffrent applications like tomcat, websphear, Oracle, plust several diffrent specialized apps. And now we get to add another 75 in the next 3 months.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Aspirin is quite hard on the lining of the stomach, and also the kidneys. Ibuprofin (Advil, Motrin) is generally considered the drug of choice for mild to moderate pain control, since you have to be taking a lot of it for a rather long time before the dangerous side effects crop up, and it has the same anti-inflammatory and anagelisic effects of aspirin.
Acetemenophin (Tylenol) is somewhat more effective as a pain reliever, but isn't an anti-inflammatory, and is hard on the liver. However, it is effective in combination with many drugs, and combining it with others can allow lower doses of both acetemenophin and the other. I.e. darvocets are a mixture of darvon (a narcotic painkiller) and acetemenophin. For over the counter use, taking tylenol and ibuprofin together is effective (but that's more than the one drug we get on our desert island).
Given the studies results, I doubt that ibuprofin was on the checkbox list.
Link to a video showing the aforementioned BSOD: http://www.windowscrash.com/albums/movies/gates_30 _240.mov
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
Here in Norway, if a company claims that their product(s) are the BEST, the official watchdogs ("marketing authorities") may ask the company for actual proof of this.
:-D
:-)
One important aspect of this prosess is that you can't just footnote* something and then "it's up to the consumer to investigate". It is the first impression whithin a few seconds that counts! If the advertisment has the "ability to mislead" than the authorities may choose to ask for evidence.
And the authorities don't accept no "bullshit-document" or study funded by the company where conclusions have been drawn in advance.
If the "marketing authorities" aren't convinsed by the "evidence" presented to them, they effectivly forbid the company to state that their product(s) are the best.
Punishment for breaking the prohibition is large fines (e.g. 80.000$) that cannot be appealed at any court.
Norwegian consumer-laws are very good