Slashdot Mirror
Novell Swings Back at Ballmer
Jeff.Ingalls writes "Novell Inc has issued a response to Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer's recent anti-Linux memo, using the same reports cited by Ballmer in defense of the open source operating system."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
But ultimately this is all just noise. I think we can all foresee the rise of FOSS and the gradual decline of Windows over the next decade or so. Ballmer was right: developers, developers, developers. And guess what? Developers like freedom.
Novell have done some good things recently and I will be eternally grateful but I'm still not convinced buying into their current mindset (esp re: Mono) isn't some faustian pact I'll later regret.
Why does he do this?
Because he has the biggest soapbox and no one's loud enough to shout him down.
Ever seen a streetcorner preacher before?
[insert witty sig here]
Because a lie repeated often enough can become truth.
Since when did huge multinational corporations ever prioritize honesty and integrity?
I disagree; simplified, easily digestible sound-bites -- even if factually incorrect -- sell. People like them, because if all of their information is derived from them they just don't have to think. It's the basis of mainstream private media. No doubt about it, Ballmer got to be where he is because he understands that the system rewards bullshit.
no OS can prevent stupidity/ignorance
"Invent something foolproof, and they'll just make a better fool"
Error 407 - No creative sig found
It's not because he's dumb. Assuming he does it because he's dumb blinds you to the method he's using. It goes like this: throw a neverending stream of utter bullshit about how great things are going and how anybody not on your side is wrong about everything. You'll get laughed at for a while, but if you just keep spewing, eventually even those "objective" reporters will let a lot of egregious bullshit pass by, which will eventually get regarded as "common sense."
This method unquestionably works in U.S. Politics.
Because sound bytes are what sell right now. When Ballmer released his memo, the key phrases were gobbled up by oodles of gullible execs. How many people are going to see the rebuttal? The rebuttal will repair less than the original memo hurt. Ballmer wins. Again.
I keep forgetting my place. Jesus is for losers. Why do I still play to the crowd?
Ballmer's target audience does not really cares whether people tell the truth, they're members of the "Nobody got fired for buying IBM-->Microsoft" brigade. All they want is reassurance and a stream of soundbites to keep them warm and fuzzy. If the repots are doctored, they don't care.
The last thing an IT manager really wants to do is switch from Windows to Linux just because of TCO. In any switch, shit happens and the IT manager gets heat which (s)he does not want. The CFO might get on his case periodically to reduce IT spending and Ballmer provides ammo to go back to the CFO to show it won't save. That this is all based on lies doesn't really matter.
Corporations are primarily political entities where people prefer to hide from problems than address them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yeah, fine, but it's not like you could get elected President using that kind of...oh, wait.
I suppose you can criticize Ballmer for selectively quoting the half that makes his product look good (are there any CEO's who wouldn't do that?) but it hardly seems worth having a seizure over.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It's murphey's often mis-quoted law, "If it's in any way possible for the pilot [in a computer's case, user] to screw things up, he will screw things up."
(I may have misquoted also, but at least it's closer to what Murphey actually said than "If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.")
What? You don't want to improve the quality of fools in the world? God knows they couldn't be any worse.
Yes, it's pretty silly, isn't it? But the suckers are not OSTG or Rob Malda. The suckers are Microsoft for paying OSTG all this money to put those ads there, especially for articles like this one.
Hey, if Microsoft wanted to pay you a bunch of money to buy up your predetermined ad space, would you sell it to them? Ad space is there to make money, not to preach to people about morals and good business practices. You use *content* for that, when applicable.
-Jem
The customer doesn't want to hear the truth, he wants his hand held, and he wants to hear that spending his money is going to make it all better and life will be good. He may know its all lies, but he still needs to hear it or he won't feel good.
I guess it's not surprising that it was true for befuddled consumers and small businessmen buying what were, in 1985, expensive toys. The sad thing is that this seems to be equally true for CIOs of big corporations twenty years later.
See what I've been reading.
well, sure, but a good designer can mitigate the consequences of said stupidity/ignorance.
Forget about indemnification from Microsoft. You'll be lucky if Microsoft acknowledges any problems of any kind at all.
The EULA clearly states that Microsoft does not assert their products' suitability for any purpose whatsoever. And if a mistake is made in keeping records of licensing, they are more likely to sue you than to indemnify you.
Does the Microsoft TCO factor in the wasted hours and paperwork associated with keeping track of various licenses?
I think what you will never get over is your own arrogance. Your fellow American's are decent and hardworking people who don't all agree. I know as many truly bright and well-informed people who voted for one candidate as well as the other. Both parties are filled with "powerufl, wealthy.." people. How many poor people are in government? Both candidates had or had access to more money than God. Our system works better than anything else.
http://www.busyweather.com/
I just can't help cringing whenever I see Novell associated with Linux. For the past ten years, Novell has leapt onto every industry fad at it's peak, proclaimed it as the saviour of the company, then watched it die underneath them . Anyone else remember SuperNOS? How about 'Netware - the fastest Java execution environment'? Or the Wordperfect debacle? Maybe we should try getting Novell interested in the wonderfullness of .Net.
Here's hoping that Novell can break it's loosing streak - and not drag Linux down with it.
Not FUD, just CYA
Charlie's Magic
" A sales woman at a little value added retail computer shop I used to work for said (of me): ``Don't let him talk to the customers, he's an engineer, he'll tell them the truth!''"
I talked to customers all the time. Some transfered from sales. I didn't have to lie. I was however careful in the way I phrased the truth.
"The customer doesn't want to hear the truth, he wants his hand held, and he wants to hear that spending his money is going to make it all better and life will be good. He may know its all lies, but he still needs to hear it or he won't feel good."
Maybe instead of viewing this as a negative. You should see it as an incentive to produce a product that no one has to lie about?
"I guess it's not surprising that it was true for befuddled consumers and small businessmen buying what were, in 1985, expensive toys. The sad thing is that this seems to be equally true for CIOs of big corporations twenty years later."
Computers have come far, but they still haven't come far enough. That's why people feel nervous around computers.
...have driven away a big chunk of the /. readership, I guess they are getting kind of desperate.
You're absolutely right by pointing out the differences between a distribution and a kernel. ... :(
However, you're average PHB, when reading the Ballmer article, doesn't know the difference and believes everything Ballmer is telling about Linux vs. Windows. Worse, I recently had to explain the difference to an ICT professional with 10+ years of experience in ICT
It doesn't matter if it's bullshit or not. The system rewards what looks appealing, not what *is* appealing.
So a simple speech that looks good is better rewarded than either a long speech that looks good or a short speech that looks bad.
And nothing is better than saying "we have 99% of the marker so that means we are the best".
If you're an average Joe User, who'd you believe? Some vulgar bearded guy who says some documents were faked, or the President of the US?
High ranks in businesses ACTUALLY BELIEVE what Microsoft says. "It's Microsoft, why not believe them?". I've SEEN IT.
Ballmer doesn't lie to the people who don't trust them (DOH), but to the people who DO believe every piece of crap that Microsoft says.
Think of Microsoft as a "software cult". Opposers are qualified as evil, while supporters spend lots of resources in maintaining credibility behind a wall that is forbidden to cross.
We used Groupwise from 4.1 to 5.x, and I'm frankly glad to be on Exchange. Sure you can gripe a lot of about Exchange and Win2k, but we've had nothing but good luck with it, certainly far better luck than the CPU-crushing bombfest that Groupwise on Netware 4.x was.
The closest thing to a problem in 3 years has been getting Entourage 2004 to work with it, and that was fixed with a post SP3 rollup we hadn't yet installed.
The good thing about a hugely popular email system is the amount of software and third party support for it. As you suggest, this is good for the lusers, especially the executive-types who guy buy a gadget from zitpopper at Best Buy and then expect it to work with email. It does with Outlook, with Groupwise probably not, and *maybe* with Notes.
It is only *because* they had access to more money than God that they could even consider running for the presidency. You will never again see a person of modest means leading our country. As a result our leaders can never fully appreciate or understand the damage being done by their economic policies. It's a shame that their primary concern is how their policies will affect their chances of re-election rather than how are they going to pay their mortgage.
That's pages of text. How the hell is that supposed to sell anything to a suit or a PHB? If you're very lucky, a PHB will throw it derisively at the closest passing nerd to read. If the nerd renders an opinion in favour of Novell, the PHB will reject it because he thought Novell was the codename for a new microsoft product.
Scary thought for the day: can you imagine a future in which one day we find ourselves cheering Microsoft? (Personally, I think history will remember Bill Gates much more for the charitable contributions of the Gates Foundation than for his role in founding Microsoft. Much like Andrew Carnegie, the original robber baron.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"I think what you will never get over is your own arrogance."
It's not arrogance when you're right.
Now, before you write this off as a flame, hear me out. Throughout history, people with unpopular views have believed that if they could just get the information out, their message would be accepted and acted on.
Elsewhere in this thread, someone said that Ballmer was like a street preacher, spouting tales of Armageddon from his soapbox pulpit. That's not true. He is a cardinal in his robes, descending from on high with the Word.
For the agnostics in the audience, those who can see that prima facie his statements are false, their immediate urge is to point out the untruths. In their world, the right information is all that's required to correct false reason.
But there is a significant proportion of the population whose world is not ruled by that same empiricism. For those people, it's more important to follow the appropriate leader than to be right. There are really good reasons to act this way, not the least of which is that it keeps one from being singled out. The only trouble these people experience is shared by everyone. Nonetheless, this drives the empiricists crazy. Their world cannot permit behaviour like this.
Worse, being 'comfortably wrong' (i.e. following the dominant mantra) can prove extremely destructive at times. So the rationalists feel compelled to shout the truth loudly. Problem is, the truth is useless to those who don't operate in a world driven by logic. This is nothing new; the Iliad tells us about Cassandra, doomed to know the future, and never to be believed.
None of this is to excuse those who rant at the 'stupidity' of the majority. Nor is this an attempt to excuse people who will not be swayed by reason. All I'm trying to do is to point out that there are two languages being spoken most of the time. Both may sound like English, but their purposes and means of expression are only close enough to cause confusion.
Again: There is nothing arrogant about being right, and letting the world know it. Arrogance comes when you continue insisting that you're right long after you've been proven wrong.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Sound like he's been taking technique notes from watching Michael Moore movies. Cut, paste, rearrange, and even doctor to make anything fit your "message".
It's not at all limited to one side of the political spectrum.
You can be arrogant and right. Being arrogant and right is a pretty quick way of making everyone hate you.
...And I'll say it again. For all the work Novell and the rest might be doing in evangelising Linux to corporate drones, they're still selling a stock product. A lot of people who've bought an assembly-line produced hamburger (and no, I'm not naming any specific vendors here, so nobody needs to get up in arms) will surely know that in terms of freshness, price, flavor, and nutritional value, you can't do much better than buying the actual ingredients and making it yourself. Certainly, the mass-produced burger is *convenient*...but using your own initiative has all of the advantages listed above.
To my mind, exactly the same principle applies with Linux. For my residential system, I downloaded Linux From Scratch and built it exactly the way I wanted it from the ground up, following on with the expansion volume from that site as well. Although I haven't had to do a commercial deployment myself before, from the reading I've done I know I'd still get LFS, work on adapting a version of the ports system for it (which I'm currently doing) and then use the information at infrastructures.org as well in order to build a rock solid system in exactly the configuration asked for.
From everything I've seen, self-determination is largely a prerequisite for UNIX use. Predigested package deals might work for Windows...but I think the Open Group's UNIX slogan of Live Free or Die definitely applies...and those sorts of terms do not imply to me that hand-holding is an option.
A desire to refrain as much as possible from exercising either intelligence or responsibility genuinely seems to be the bedrock of the corporate ethos in most cases...I think until that changes, companies like Microsoft are going to continue to hold sway. Corporations seem to want a software company which will do virtually everything for them...and because it only increases their level of control, Microsoft have been only too happy to oblige.
Don't assign the American value system (democracy) to a political system you don't understand. Price of doing business in China is the course of action they've taken.
Michalangelo Progr
I use Windows Server 2003, I use Solaris. Novell can take SuSE Linux 9.x and Enterprise Server 8 and 9 and shove it up their ass, I am not going to change. i will change if i see a compelling reason to change, I dont see it, so i stay with what I like and what has proven time and time again for me to work very, very well
Must be nice to have so much money to throw away. The initial investment in your platforms of choice must've been quite impressively high.
For me, besides money, SQL slammer was enough to make me start wondering and Blaster and its varients were quite compelling reasons for me to look at changing.
Ah, but for that to happen, Microsoft needs to become insignificant for a little while, and then make a huge come back using something like Linux or the like. That's why it works for IBM and Novell.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Stop posting flamebait. That is an outrageous statement that you made that "every single Bush supporter I know is stupid and/or delusional". I know many intelligent and wise people who voted for Bush.
When you make broad generalizations like that, you don't win any points.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
A political system that allows the people to choose its leaders or make decisions on issues may tend towards freedom, but this tendancy is not absolute. As Hermann Goering insightfully noted,
While any comparison of the state of affairs in the US today to the situation in Germany under the Third Reich is inappropriate, flaimbait and in violation of Godwin's Law, I think it's important to note that, regardless of how decisions are made, the powerful are in a unique position to influence the decisions of the electorate.
Democracy is most certainly a great and noble thing, and preferable to many of the other systems available, but it is not a panacea. In the US, we have a democratic republic founded on the principle of civil rights. It is this combination of values which the OP was projecting on the Chinese government, not democracy in itself.
For example, many democracies do not grant absolute freedom of speech, and some have attempted to censor hate speech on the internet when they felt it was appropriate.
What most people find reprehensible about Chinese government censorship is the combination of censorship and totalitarianism. Because arguably, if the French or Germans decide that they don't want their people looking at Nazi propaganda, say, it is with the consent of the people that this speech is censored.
A place that respects civil rights (or has historically, at any rate, and continues to do so today, despite the looming threat of crackdown) but is not democratic is Hong Kong.
I know you know all of this, but I think it's important that we use words in a manner consistant with their meaning, because there are exceptions to the generalization "all democracies are against censorship", and to its converse, "all governments against censorship are democracies."
/. readers nailed the baloney in Ballmer's missives when they first came to slashdot The digs at Linux from Microsoft bigwigs have gotten more strident and less factual than some recent politcal advertisements. To me this signals one thing: Microsoft has finally, at the highest levels, gotten as scared as /. readers have always said it SHOULD be. Here we have Ballmer, a shrewd manager and businessman saying pure nonsense that he could not possibly believe. A few weeks back /. reported a Gates interview blaming the flakey reputation of his joined-at-hip browser/os duo on the way users use the products...do you think Billy Billions really can be that stupid and still have made the company as dominant as it is? Billy bull and Ballmy bull! This is pure desperation talking at us
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
With respect, his anecdotal evidence and your anecdotal evidence are both irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence often is.
I know a number of intelligent Bush supporters, and I know a number of rather dumb Kerry-supporters. Dumb supporters on both sides of the equation are usually sheep. That is, they can't take the time to form their own political opinions, and so they absorb the opinions of those around them, and end up voting someone else's conscience.
The thing is, intelligent Bush supporters seem to fall into two camps. The wealthy elite support Bush because he serves their own interests; working in investment I know quite a number of them. They make more money when he's in office, and so voting for him is a no-brainer. These people aren't stupid, but their values are not in-line with the majority of the world's -- they live on a different planet.
The other group of intelligent Bush supporters are mostly middle class, educated white folks who aren't the wealthy elite but hope to be. They see the support of tax-cutting, wealthy-favoring government as being a long-term investment -- they're ambitious and expect to eventually be in a position to benefit from the political climate created by the GOP.
Now, with due respect, most people that don't fall into these two categories are sheep. Many of them superficially resemble the second group of intelligent supporters, in the sense that they support Bush's aid to the wealthy because they dream of being wealthy themselves someday -- it's the myth of the American dream, and its the cornerstone of American political and social rhetoric. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (based on social studies of social mobility in American society), people do believe that they can be born on the streets and lift themselves up to the top through hard work.
Unfortunately, the days of that being true are mostly behind us.
The sheep in this case, unlike their intelligent counterparts, don't truly understand the nature of the "fiscally conservative" measures being taken by the Party, but believe that, while they may be hurt in the short term, they will somehow live to see the benefits. They aspire to be wealthy landowning oil barons like Dubya. He represents what they want to be -- and why not? He seems like a simple guy, not overly intelligent or good looking, but just an average joe. If he can do it, why can't I? It's part of what makes him so popular. He seems just like you and me.
Of course, rather like Clinton (a Rhodes scholar who went to Oxford) and his affected southern drawl, it's all an act. Bush went to Yale, grew up in a rich political family, and is essentially the same kind of elitist bastard that made everyone (including myself) dislike Kerry so much. The difference is, Bush knew how to hide this from the American people, but Kerry didn't.
Now, Kerry supporters also can be easily divided into the intelligent and the, shall we say, less than intelligent. Among the poor and uneducated, people supporting the left probably think the idea of greater social benefits doesn't sound half bad, and we lefties make a point of using this to our advantage when trying to recruit votes. These people are no different in terms of education or wealth, essentially, than the "trailer trash Bush supporter" we all love to hate.
But they come overwhelmingly from minorities, and minorities, having been shafted by the system for generations, gobble up the myth of the American Dream with less readiness than poor whites from the midwest, who aren't constantly reminded that everyone in a position of power has a different skin color, ethnicity, or religion than they do.
My personal opinion in all of this is that idiots exist on both sides of the equation, and each party really knows how to play this to their advantage. Democrats play on the disenfranchised minority vote that would benefit most from social aid; Republicans play on the disenfranchised poor white vote by propogating the idea that "if you just wo
"Being arrogant and right is a pretty quick way of making everyone hate you."
Good. At least you've got their attention.
For countless years, women fighting for equality have had to cope with being characterised as 'bitches' whenever they tried to be heard. Why? They were ignored until they shouted so loud that people were forced to take notice.
For countless years, African Americans were persecuted, beaten, murdered for being 'uppity'. Anyone who spoke out in even the mildest fashion was subject to extreme punishment.
These days, one of the most significant issues in electronic communication is its abuse by people who systematically spread disinformation and suppress truth. The motives for doing so are manifold. In Microsoft's case, it's likely because the truth is fatal to their way of doing business.
People in a position to know better first assumed that the problem was that others just didn't have access to the right information. They packaged up the data in the proper format, and presented it to the world. They were largely ignored.
Still believing that the word just wasn't getting out, they tried harder, spoke a little more forcefully, worked harder at discrediting the other sources.
At a certain point, the propagandists realised that they could not win the argument on merit. So they attacked the source. They ascribed their own dubious motives to others (Linus 'stole' Linux), they made baseless threats (SCO). And now, they try to kill the messenger, not because of the message, but because he was shouting when he delivered it.
Your post seems to say, 'You may be right, but you're a prick, so nobody's going to believe you.' Problem is: Nobody listened before. Sometimes, there's no option but to be pushy. This fact has given us arrogant pricks from Galileo to Patrick Henry to Martin Luther King.
'Nevertheless, it moves.'
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Someone mentioned cost of training... imagine 50 or so year old lady, who FINALLY figured out that "ANY' is not a key and that you can have more than one explorer version running at the same time. Okay, this might be an extreme example, but seriously, if you're a bank, training everyone to switch might be a pretty penny. Even Novell hasn't switched all employees over, which tells us how slow of the process this might be. Then you have to deal with things such as proprietary Powerpoint, "database" called Access and so on. I am sure M$ will capitalize on this for many years to come. After all, this is part of the business model they seem to follow, make users upgrade all the time, thus giving them more money.
Wow, I never knew about that. You paid 80% of your salary in taxes under a Democratic president? Amazing. Which president? Are you the only one?
It's nice that you're morally opposed to welfare programs, but what about other issues? Do you, perhaps, wish to repeal the constitution as well? Things WOULD go a lot better around here if only white, male, Christian landowners could vote, wouldn't they? And while we're at it, let's really open 'er up and get rid of all those protections we currently have against unreasonable search and seizure and governmental invasion of privacy, and let's reinstitute the draft - we managed to kill off a BUNCH of minorities with the draft in the 'Nam era! If potential draftees aren't rich enough to wangle a spot in the Air National Guard, they deserve to get killed - right?
Let me tell you what's retarded, assmunch. Voting AGAIN for a president who starts two wars in less than FOUR FUCKING YEARS, at least one of which was completely unnecessary and universally denounced by the world community; who lies - flat-out LIES - to the people who elected him in order to get approval for this war; who makes it a personal goal to restrict and remove our constitution protections AGAINST governmental misconduct; who gives out multi-billion (trillion?) dollar contracts to his vice-president's last employer WITHOUT A SINGLE COMPETING BID; who is stupid enough to try to name a military campaign - against MUSLIMS, note - Operation Desert CRUSADE, for fuck's sake!;who does all of these things because he thinks God wants him to, especially the part about attacking Islam.
I don't care what your political party affiliation is; George W. Bush is a bad president. He has no business running a little league baseball team, much less the single most powerful nation on the planet. Even his father would have been better.
Lastly, before you tell me that you're glad that GWB got re-elected because he'll be "tough on terror", let me leave you with a quote: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." -Hermann Goering, Nuremburg, 1947
Looks like you swallowed the bait, sucker. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Being educated might have made a difference.
There's a big difference.
The saying goes "Lie to yourself long enough and you might believe it" not "Lie to yourself long enough and it will come true."
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The only part of that statement that is "myth" is that it leaves out calculated risk. I personally know far too many people that have indeed started out with next to nothing and in 20 to 30 years ended up as prosperous business owners for it to be a myth. The part people get tripped up on is that hard work alone will get you next to nowhere. You must take calculated risks and assume overwhelming responsibility at times if you are to succeed. Money just about grows on trees if you have those two character traits.
My brother, who never went to college and had only the funds amassed from working very low-wage jobs, started his own cleaning business and was doing quite well for himself. He eventually exited the business because he decided that spending time with his family was a higher priority (a decision I agree with).
The apparent inability for those on the lower levels of the socio-economic strata to progress is probably related to the cultural values that are necessary for success not being emphisized. Asian immigrants, especially after WWII when discrimination against them was rampant, as a people group managed to do suprisingly well.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it