Slashdot Mirror
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."
The advert appeared in an IT magazine and was headed: "Weighing the cost of Linux vs Windows? Let's review the facts". The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between a Linux images running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.
Hmm, who wants to help me do some "independent research" of our own? We could compare Linux running on a WRT54G versus the cost of, say, a dual CPU P4 XEON system with 4 gbs RAM, SCSI array, redundant everything, and dual 19" LCD monitors.
Lesse, that makes linux roughly 100 times cheaper (70$ vs. 7000$). Didn't I also see this ad on slashdot and in Linux Journal?
Not intended to be a flamebait, it's not just a Microsoft problem - all marketing people are evil. Perhaps we should enact the death penalty for marketing droids?
feh. stuff.
Are you surprised that statistics can be bought and bartered? Everyone knows that the person paying for the data can make it show whatever they want.
In the US the government works FOR corporations, not against them.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Since it has been shown time after time (sorry Ms. Lauper) that EU != US, will MS get smacked here?o nsultants.realresultsmayvarybasedonuseandhardwarep urchases.notresponsibleforvirusesandothersoftwarem alfunctions.seeresellersfordetails'
Probably the only outcome would be a forced disclaimer like the fast talking legal-speak in car commercials: 'Whencomparedbetweendislikesystemsbypaidresearchc
What the study results really show is that for a typical usage patern, the IBM Mainframe product running Linux is a complete waste of money because the typical user needs only a typical PC worth of resources on their server. The fact that the two machines being compared ran different operating systems was more or less incidential.
In the US the government works FOR corporations, not against them.
This is working FOR corporations... for the hundreds of corporations, that could bring about some competitive innovation, that there would be room in the market for if Microsoft weren't sitting on a monopoly.
The real cost savings in running Linux on a zSeries mainframe comes from consolidating multiple server images under one box - either 16 servers running in native LPARs or 20+ under z/VM virtual machines.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
They should have run the two operating systems on identical (PC) hardware. After all, the x86 platform is the original platform of Linux too, and probably the best supported. So this would be fair to both systems.
Thus, the hardware costs would be a draw and the cost comparison would actually be about software.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Most government have heavy laws to try and help protect people from corporations. Yet if a person is brought in to court on so many charges in a time frame the court adds them all up hoping to get a better view of how the person is acting in (and hurting) the society. But giant corporations, they can get hauled to court constantly even over the same charge again and again and courts treat them all as seperate cases. Why not look at the big picture and see what these giants are doing to society and pass judgement trying to change something rather then trying to say something the corperations obviously aren't going to listen to?
*DrugCheese rants*
We don't believe in government. Yes, MS lies in its ads. So what? Caveat empor, as they say.
As my old math prof said:
Statistics are like a Bikini: showing interesting details but hiding the important stuff.
This is good for nothing. Ignore it or send it to the Customer Care Dept.
I think you've got to look at common examples where the profit margin is thin, highly competitive, and tightly linked to actual operating overhead. If you an price web hosting, a Windows/IIS solution is more expensive than a Unix-based one. The cheapest hosts are always Unix-based, and ironically they tend to also be the most "reliable" (according to uptime....)
I'm sure there are examples of where the TCO of Windows on the same hardware is cheaper than something Unix-based, but for most serious work, Unix still rules.
Rephrase:
In the US the government works for the corporations that shovel the most money into the re-election campaigns (if not directly into the pockets) of the politicians.
Now that Microsoft has been "found guilty" of misleading advertising, I wonder what their punishment will be? Life sentence at a hard labour camp? Confinement in a maximum security prison? Did the Gates family weep as the sentence was handed down?
Seriously, the UK Advertising Standards Authority have no authority, and there are likely no repercussions for Microsoft. Many whom have read those false claims and erroneous statements (and especially the poor saps that bought into it) will likely never hear the truth. The lies have been perpetrated and spread. It's like the old man who climbs to the top of a mountain and releases a bag of feathers to a mighty gust of wind. Those feathers are like lies: they spread to the four corners of the earth and are impossible to retract.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Man, its a good thing we don't have that here, or else what fun would political campaigns be?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
If you're doing it for commercial gain, yes. If it's your genuine opinion about me - nothing I can do except try to refute it.
That's the difference. This was commercial speech, not personal. It is not an advert's place to put a blanket insult pointing at a random person using a public space.
Cheers,
Ian
Advertising has always played around the fringes of the truth, like system specs. But lately it's gone from stretching the truth to inventing it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Punishment should be to run advertisements of the same size and in the same magazines as the original ad to retract the claims. That way, it gets the same exposure as the original ad.
Sounds fair to me.
There is more to cost than the software. My time is worth at least $50 an hour. And so if I have to muck around with a free piece of software more than commercial it can quickly become more "expensive" than its commercial counterpart.
Would you take a free car if it cost $1000 for gas and maintenance?
We "guys" don't have a government, hence no government agencies. The corporations do. It's a free market for the masses, but rock-solid socialism for medium to large American businesses. As one poster said, we guys have to rely on "caveat emptor".
About 100 million Americans will demonstrate their lack of understanding of this in November, and will either cast their votes for the pro-business and anti-labor Republican, or pro-business and anti-labor Democrat. {sigh}
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
"About 100 million Americans will demonstrate their lack of understanding of this in November, and will either cast their votes for the pro-business and anti-labor Republican, or pro-business and anti-labor Democrat."
Two things:
1) Please don't call it "pro-business". Pro-corporation is a better term. EVERYONE is involved in business. Being pro-business simply means allowing people to conduct their own business (whether financial or otherwise) freely, while being pro-corporation means taking a socialist/mercantilistic approach, and favoring corporations (especially powerful corporations) above the general population.
2) I'm not sure I agree with your idea that Americans don't understand this. Most of them do, they just aren't sure what to do about it. They pick an R or D system, not because it matches who they are, but because it doesn't go as far outside as the other. In order to correct the situation, it would require funding. That requires bankers, which just undermines the whole concept from the start.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Microsoft appeared on Slashdot when they released open source software. This was new, positive... and unexpected.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
As long as Slashdot carries all the stories about the Monopoly that owns Linux trying to intentionally build incompatibilities into Linux to keep it from working with any other products. The stories about Linus dancing around shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!". The stories about how Alan Cox was being flown around the world offering sweetheart deals to huge companies in order to keep them from considering alternatives.
Oh, and don't forget about the exposes of how the Business Software Alliance performs unannounced searches of businesses, shutting down running machines and having untrained flunkies search for any unlicensed copies of Linux. Don't forget to detail how receipts for the product don't seem to count as proof of purchase - an unlicensed copy of Linux (one sold for different hardware doesn't count!) can cost your company $25k or more in "damages", which thankfully can be waived if you just sign the exclusive software purchase deal for the next ten years and agree to periodic audits...
Also, how during the middle of a federal anti-trust lawsuit the people in charge of writing Linux wrote about using any means necessary to kill the competition.
Oh yeah, Linus and Linux don't seem to generate that kind of news.
Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Microsoft has so many negative articles written about it because they actually do these things?