Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Axes 'Get The Facts'
tom66 writes "Seems like a long time coming, as Microsoft today has axed it's Anti-Linux campaign 'Get the Facts', and Microsoft has replaced it with a new campaign, called 'compare'. This article touches up on why they may have done it, and the criticism surrounding Get the Facts."
I'm not going to bother with a line by line rebuttal, I'll note on the compare Windows to Linux page (which actually is about Red Hat, not linux), the last paragraph reads:If you look in the corresponding MS section however, it doesn't touch on Open Standards (and MS's disregard for them) at all.
Typical of the sickening dishonesty we get from this predatory company.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
... is telling me to Get the Facts...
I guess too many people actually were getting the facts, and the upshot has been erosion of MS's server market share.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Microsoft Axes 'Get the Facts,' Announces 'Kill the Penguin' - Will commission Metallica to record a song to be played on the site.
The Schwartz space ain't from Spaceballs.
Its nice to see some competition, that raises the level of the product
"Compare Windows to Linux"
Even in the earlier campaign they just refer to "Linux" in the print advertisements and they never specify which version of softwares on which version of distribution that they have compared (Once they had compared Redhat Linux 7.1 with Windows XP!).
It is time that responsible people from Linux Mark Institute take a note of this and sue them for libel!
The guy at the Ford dealership told me that Fords are more reliable, safe, and powerful than Chevys. He showed me a bunch of charts he made, and that made me feel better. He also had a nice suit and really nice white teeth, and smiled alot. Nice guy. What reason did I have to check out the Chevy dealership?
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
They are no doubt focusing all their PR efforts on their forthcoming new product.
[Insert pithy quote here]
"Customers want to consume this information in a variety of formats..."
ODF for me please!
Seriously this is just a new FUD campaign. Example:
How can "free" be this expensive?
Red Hat's business is based on annual subscriptions for OS support--you pay a subscription for every server, every year. And, if you want 24/7 support, you'll pay more.
Okay Microsoft, we've been telling you for years but you don't want to get it. Linux is "free as in speech" not "free as in beer." That means that the users get a whole lot of rights that you wouldn't give in your worse nightmare. The freedom to redistribute. The freedome to modify. etc, etc, etc.
Stop with the FUD websites until you know what you're talking about please. Oh, I forgot. You already know all of this but are just misleading your prospective users. Yeah, that's the kind of company with which I would want to do business. NOT!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I'm very glad Red Hat is standing up to Microsoft and their shit. I hope people can see through this campaign the same as they did with Get The Facts.
now i know where i can go to find out how to configure linux services the RedHat and SuSE approved way. Thank you microsoft for those VERY handy videos.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I will tell you of an another great lie, a lie that has existed for decades and continues to be swallowed whole. It is not related but it shows how people lack common sense.
In holland you got a consumer watch agency (consumentenbond) that does (unbiased) comparetive reviews, payed by people who subscribe to them. Pretty good BUT and honest in general as far as I know BUT one of their reviews is one big lie.
It compares the prices in supermarkets and comes with a list of supermarkets by price. You can imagine that the one who is found to be cheapest crows about this a lot.
So what is the lie?
Simple, they buy at each store a selection of standard BRANDNAME goods that an ordinary family might need, and compare the price.
This is NOT all goods a family might need in a full year and offcourse it totally ignores non-brandname goods.
Now here is the killer, the largest supermarket chain in holland (Albert Heijn) often stocks three versions of the same product: cheapo crappy brand (euroshopper) / its own label / big name brand.
The odd thing is that its own label if actually preffered by many people, for instance their peanut butter to me tastes a lot better then the brandname version (its cheapo version is truly disgusting). Yes this cheaper but better peanut butter is NOT on the shopping list.
It gets even sillier with things like sugar, a chemical product where a brandname can offer no additional value except a nicer paper bag. Yet the shopping list insists on getting the brandname product.
For yet more sillyness, a dutch consumer program Kassa, does product reviews including foods and has shown time and time again that cheapo products vs brandname products are NOT always a winner for the exensive products, a reall killer was chocolate letters a few years ago where the extremely cheap no-brand one carried by ALDI beat the established big-brands that were several times cheaper PURELY on quality. Not price vs quality, PURELY on quality.
ALDI products have won several times in these reviews, yet scores low in the price review because it doesn't carry many brandnames.
So what the fuck is your point? This is news for Nerds, not housewives! you might say.
Simple, it shows how biased any review is even when it tries to be honest. Even something as simple as deciding WHAT to review can introduce bias.
It would offcourse be unfair if the supermarket review just picked the lowest priced version of a product because that would just review price, not quality, so they go for a given quality (the exact same brand/jar-size/flavour of peanut butter) and just compare price but this ignores that this might not be the best price/quality product available.
The real truth? Well, that means that at AH you need to shop for their own brand name products and special offers, and go to Edah (the price winner) for brandname products and go to ALDI (the straight cheap price winner) for those products were quality if irrelevant (toilet paper, sugar, etc etc).
The same is true in IT, even if a review tries to be honest, you gotta ask yourselve WHAT they reviewed. One that is often missing with regards to linux is the cost of support. Not in the way most people mean it however. Say that you got a qaulity techinical team already, do you REALLY need outside support then if your own people already contribute to the kernel?
It would be like a car mechanic shop paying for car repairs on their own cars. Seems a bit silly, just maintain them yourselves.
Just because a review lists support as important doesn't mean it is important to YOU.
That is the real kicker in OS reviews, the variousses OS'es out there are totally different beasts, trying to do different things in different ways. One of the fundemental MS differences is that its servers are also a desktop. Windows 2003 can easily be converted into a XP like product capable of playing games. It leads to many a MS server being administered directly from its desktop (even if i
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
because if you use loonix and you want to kill a process you have to use
ps xu | grep konqueror | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9
Microsoft's fud site claims that the most expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux version costs $2,499 per server per year for 24/7 premium phone and web support, unlimited users, no license restrictions, unlimited software upgrades, etc.
...and wait for it...
So how about we compare that to Windows Server 2003?
- $3,999/server for the enterprise version of Windows Server 2003 R2
- have to repurchase it every ~5 years when a new version is made available
- maximum of 25 users/workstations ($40 per extra user per Windows version)
- *NO SUPPORT WHATSOEVER!*
And we're not even getting into the real savings such as comparing MS SQL Server with an equivalent Red Hat offer, desktop Linux cost comparisons (including Office/Productivity applications), scaling costs up to 5000 users...etc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running. But you have this exact same cost when using Windows Server as well! You pay Red Hat to provide support services to you - not for the actual product itself. If you go down the Microsoft path, you have to pay for the product AND the service (which Microsoft has conveniently ignored on their new fud website).
Their new website is self-damaging. If I was a potential Microsoft customer who was looking at the comparison between Linux and Windows, I'd instantly note Microsoft spreading fud and lies to make up for deficiencies in their offer. It is hardly reassuring that Microsoft is running scared at companies like Red Hat and feels the need to launch a big anti-Linux PR campaign based on lies and fud. The question I'd be asking myself is, "if Windows Server is so great, why can't Microsoft sell it to me based on features and facts?".
thanks for the linke whineymacfanboy :)
A little down the road you ll find
"Red Hat includes the Yum update tool to help you download packages and software updates, but doesn't address IT professionals' broader needs--managing applications and workloads, like mail and collaboration, database and business applications."
Give me a break. Is the guy who wrote this nuts?
What blatant lie.
Enough with FUD, i am going to format my windows partition at work machine too.
-- "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" - TAE --
From a technology standpoint, the /compare site isn't that bad. It's clearly not intended for technical people, but for business executives. It tries to put Windows in the best possible light while scaring the beeswax out of you for even thinking of trying Red Hat. The usual Marketing stuff.
The section on interoperability is somewhat humorous, in a dark sort of way, given Microsoft's reputation as the baddest of the bad when it comes to following anyone's standards but their own.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
It is a good thing the Linux mascot is a penguin and not a rabbit, or we would have had Elmer Fud singing 'Kill the Wabbit!'
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
1. Get the facts
2. Compare
3. Oops!
But I guess that's the problem... techies know the truth, but they have to battle against the ignorant manager who believes the shit MS writes.
Meh.
Windows: Pain in the ass activation system
Linux: Not
Windows: Media Player monitors what you are watching/listening to and logs it with Microsoft.
Linux: None
Windows: Intrusive DRM, Scarce Driver Support, Many incompatabilities, Huge Security Holes
Linux: None
Windows: Parent company breaks anti-trust laws, slap on wrist by Justice Department, continues to flaunt law without penalty
Linux: None
Windows: Threatens small competitors with a flood of patent lawsuits
Linux: None
Windows: Includes code to spy on China
Linux: None
Hey, Microsoft is right! Linux can't do anything!
Yeah...
*cough* OOXML,MS OFFICE,VISTA,NETWORKING,THERESTOFTHEIRPRODUCTS *cough*
I think that he was being sarcastic. Windows Server isn't losing market share, quite the contrary.
If you care to dive into the article, download and read the .doc format 'case studies', you will see there is nothing much to crow about.
.. but its hard to build a case for operating systems around it. You could just as easily say that the original Java/Oracle first cut (which ran on HP proliants) was replaced with a .NET rebuild (running on Dell), and therefore Dell is a better choice than HP.
.. whatever it is that it does. Linux doesnt even come into the discussion - they never used it at all, so its hardly even a comparison. Very lame choice of stories to include in the 'Comparison' site I would have thought.
If you are looking for hard empirical stats on a real comparison of Linux vs Windows, then these case studies are not for you. If you are looking for fuzzy feel-good buzzword-laden coffee table anecdotes, then its worth the download.
In the comparison cases presented, the reasoning is basically as follows :
"I went out with a Blonde once, and she was cool, except she had no job, and was stuck at home with 3 noisy kids - so we rarely got out together. Then I met this independent Brunette chick with a rich Dad and no ties, and we had a ball together. Therefore, based on my extensive experience with such a broad variety of women, I must conclude that in 100% of cases Brunettes make better girlfriends than Blondes'.
SwissAir's initial problem was that their existing Java/Oracle web site was less than optimal, and the code mixed presentation with business logic at all levels of the spaghetti triangle. So they went for a ground-up rebuild using their newly aquirred experience in how not to build a system. The operating systems hosting the bad-build / good-build of their web site are not even relevant to the study, but they happen to be Linux the first time around, and Windows the second time around.
Its a good article if you are interested in the subject of system development lifecycles
The State of Illinois story is no better. Their initial problem is an aging hulk of a Groupwise messaging system running on Novell Netware. They chose to go to an unspecified line of Microsoft products, the prime deciding motivation being 'Because of Microsoft's position in the market'. The IT director even goes so far as to admit that 'We are not a science outfit - we just need something to get the job done', and they forgot to edit out the comment that 'For us, security was not a driving issue'. In other words, here is an organisation that is flat out doing whatever it does, and it just wants to outsource all of it's IT problems to a big outside company, and get on with the business of
if you want to get the facts from people who know what they are talking about then check wikipedia. this is the ONLY way to get unbiased results. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Windows _and_Linux
Why would anyone go to Microsoft for opinions on things like Windows Server 2003? Why? They can't possibly list any scenario with major disadvantages, because they sell the OS. Sure, it's not easy to find decent third party sources (you can obviously not ask on Linux-oriented sites either), but I'm pretty sure that the effort would be worth it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The only place it lookes like power shell won was in killing a process, but it could've been much more easily accomplished with a single command, killall konquorer. Why he did all the grepping, awking, and piping, I don't know.
Put identity in the browser.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Apache runs on Windows, too. NCSA runs on multiple platforms, too. Web server statistics don't say much about operating systems.
Because, of course, a comparison between Windows and Linux written by you would be entirely unbiased and would take in the merits and demerits of each equally.
Company says things about competitor to sell product; news at 11.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
You've made a parsing error that's not windows power shell, but Windows Powers Hell, its an advert showing how one of their big clients has seen huge rises in productivity since they shifted the demons from Gentoo to Windows ME
obviously for this particular client increased productivity == increased suffering, but i understand a lot of companies use the same metric...
The State of Illinois case study is bullshit. I worked as a contractor for the Department of Human Services in Springfield for a year just a few years back. My wife's stepdad worked for Department of Public Aid as a contractor for years. He's now DPA staff because the AFSCME union strongarmed the state into getting rid of knowledgeable contractors and giving the work to state employees. They couldn't do it with state employees, so he became one to continue doing his old job for additional pay plus benefits. There's a budget solution for you...
The company I worked for also had contracts with Corrections, Courts, State Police, Public Aid, and some other state agencies, so I sometimes went to locations for those as well.
Anyway, Novell wasn't the source of the "desktop productivity solution" when I did desktop support for them. They ran Groupwise (which does email and calendars) at DHS. They also ran Office and in some cases also WordPerfect Suite. They ran Crystal Reports when needed. There is, or was anyway, an entire subdepartment of DHS that handles creating, modifying, warehousing, and distributing paper forms. Those people had additional software for that. There were mainframes in the Harris building (the main DHS office center on South Main St. East) and many users had terminal emulation packages to access that. In no way did they switch everything from Novell to Microsoft on the desktop.
The servers were NT 4, Novell 4 and 5, some NT 3.5, some commercial Unix on Alpha (although that was mostly being replaced with Win2k), and the IBM mainframe stuff. There were contractors running the actual servers in every case. Most of them worked for the same company I did.
CMS is an agency that's supposed to consolidate resources across the state for the other agencies to improve security, decrease waste, and "improve" accountability (although that has never seemed an appropriate goal for the convicted Republican George Ryan nor the current governor Democrat Rod Blagojevich either one). We had to have our badges for DHS buildings issued through CMS, for example. When there was a network outage, DHS had to bother CMS to bother the phone companies. Real efficient and cost effective, that.
The State Police had Avid equipment and such for reconstructing accidents. I'm sure Microsoft Windows Movie Maker hasn't entirely displaced that. They might have replaced some of the serial dumb terminals in the maximum security prisons with Windows PCs, but I'm not sure you'd want something with lots of little voids and such in with the inmates. The schools for the visually impaired and for the deaf already ran Windows PCs for students and teachers, as did the developmental and mental health centers (all part of DHS). The department of the courts had Windows PCs. The local Office of Rehabilitative Services (part of DHS) offices had Windows and OS/2 PCs, and sometimes were not even on the statewide Novell networks for DHS. DCFS (part of DHS) had Windows PCs.
Other than replacing Groupwise server and client with Exchange and Outlook and upgrading the desktops to newer versions of Windows (which was always being done anyway, as any PC more than 3 or 4 years old goes to CMS auction to the public), I'm not sure what they've really done for DHS. They've traded Novell's superior print server, client management (ZenWorks/snapshots anyone?), firewall (Bordermanager worked well), years of employee training, and working with certified consultants familiar with the old network all for Windows printer sharing, Windows remote client management (if they're doing that at all), probably going to Cisco's firewall solutions as Microsoft's suck, having to retrain their workforce, and having to find new contractors (or hire more unionized employees away from consulting companies).
All this is from a state that can't pay Medicaid on time and has run pharmacies out of business. It's a state that uses taxpayer money to pay government employees to campaign for their elected bosses. The federal government is very concer
Why the negative spin?
"Red Hat [is] required to protect its trademarks. But they were quite friendly and polite and they went as far as to confirm that they had no objection to our product. We were more than happy to reword our advert," Setchell said. Red Hat has always been a strong contributor to open source projects, and does not deserve that sort of FUD."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running.
but afaict redhat tries to hide the fact this option exists. Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS. They also make them replace the update mechanism but that is a fairly minor point.
RedHat(TM) is a trademarked name. That is the reason that the CentOS folks must remove the RedHat trademark from the SRPMS before redistributing them. Everything that RedHat has released is GPL or LGPL-licensed - if they were concerned about hiding the source code, that would be a particularly bizarre choice! RedHat can not continue to use the RedHat trademark if they do not protect its use, such being the requirements of trademark law.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Enough said. Microsoft is just being silly. In the long term they cannot compete. I do find it quite amazing that Linux on the desktop doubled in the past year. I would expect even greater growth now that the nasty DRM nightmare called Vista is out and is showing its true colors. 47 programs that spy on you, WGA/WGN accusing you of stealing and then searching your home (your computer is an extension of your home after all). With performance issues relating to the implementation of the hardware requirements dictated to the hardware manufacturers, etc.
I think this is just a silly mess that Microsoft has created for itself. They forgot one important thing. Serve the customer. You don't go violating everyone privacy because you want a few extra billion dollars--billions more than the billions you already have. Just pathetic. They have markets greater than you can imagine in the world and they are violating our privacy, invading our homes, manipulating the police authorities into stupid raids on xbox modchip makers. Just pathetic.
Now they are saying they like open source but it must be Microsoft Windows only code? That's not open source. And then they have the gall to try to win a comparison war? I think FOSS wins, hands down.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.