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Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-lotta-drama dept.

A few days ago, we ran word of a report alleging that Windows 7 consumed more memory than it should, based on a report from Devil Mountain Software; a followup post linked to Ars Technica's robust deconstruction of that claim. Now the story gets weird: Fred Flowers writes The original story quoted the company's CTO, Craig Barth on the issue. Now, InfoWorld editor in chief Eric Knorr has still more to add. From Knorr's blog at InfoWorld.com: 'On Friday, Feb. 19, we discovered that one of our contributors, Randall C. Kennedy, had been misrepresenting himself to other media organizations as Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software (aka exo.performance.network), in interviews for a number of stories regarding Windows and other Microsoft software topics. ... There is no Craig Barth.' Knorr's post goes on to say that Kennedy has been fired from his blogging gig at InfoWorld over this 'serious breach of trust,' and that his blog will be removed."

19 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Rewind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even with all the real things you can slam Microsoft for, some people feel the need to make things up. Reminds me of that pre-Vista paper by that (I think) NZ guy that was full of stuff that even then people who had the RC knew to be false. Sensational things get page views I guess.

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    1. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Vista was mostly looked badly because they introduced new security features.

      Nope, it was how they did it.

      Features that linux zealots always yell about, like proper admin/multiple user control, securing files and directories and so on.

      Yep, not only did they rip off sudo (which would've been fine), they managed to screw it up.

      It's a lot better than Linux's su and sudo alternatives.

      I'm sure you'll tell me how...

      With su you give full control over the root account,

      Yep, just like UAC.

      with sudo you need to write it every time you require root account.

      WTF do you mean by "write it"? Did you mean, edit the sudoers file? Yeah, you could do it that way, I suppose. Or did you mean, enter your password? Nope, sudo will cache it for a certain length of time.

      UAC is actually a lot better than what there is available for linux, in desktop use...

      Yet you haven't explained how it's different than the above.

      Win7 is more popular now because people have got used to these features.

      Nope, it's because Microsoft finally got it to work, and polished performance to where Win7 is faster than XP, whereas Vista was slower than XP.

      I never claimed, and I don't think anyone claimed, that all the design decisions in Vista were bad. No, the issue is that the Vista release, like most Microsoft products, was at best beta quality, more like alpha quality. So Vista was Microsoft's way of, yet again, using their consumers as beta-testers, while collecting some revenue to justify finishing the product and releasing it as Win7.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    2. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by asdf7890 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Vista was mostly looked badly because they introduced new security features.

      This was one of the issues, yes, but not the only one and not even the most important one for many users. Vista's key problem was lack of drivers for a lot of hardware and some of the drivers available for common parts were not all that stable initially even though they passed relevant certififcation. Second came performance especially on "vista capable" (or "vista ready", which ever was the lower designation) machines (many reported significant issues on better kit too, though this situation improved greatly with service pack 1). UAC was thrid on the average user's list of hates though it sounded worse as it was usually the straw that started the major rant "it asked me for confirmation X times before very slowly failing to work because of driver problems!".

      UAC is not a bad idea, though it is not IMO particularly well implemented. They tried to so sudo but for the traditional Windows way of working (i.e. admin by default and adding blockers, where the sudo way starts unprivelaged). The result didn't fit as well as intended with Windows users processes and was sometimes overly naggy (three prompts for some file operations where sudo would need one escalation request) and just ended up being more OK buttons for clueless users to click, and to top it off it worked badly for people expecting a more linux/bsd/other way of doing thing - so essentually they failed to please either major group (i.e. neither those the feature was intended to protect nor those most likely to make a noise about such things were happy with it).

    3. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 5, Informative

      With su you give full control over the root account, with sudo you need to write it every time you require root account.

      I like UAC, and I'm kind of an MS fanboy, but that's just wrong. There are solutions like gksudo that work much like UAC, including a user-friendly GUI and caching of credentials. Not to mention PolicyKit and other capability-based security mechanisms. Every major distro (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) has these features by default.

    4. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by tgd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      sudo and the UAC are vastly different beasts.

      You may want to read up on winlogon, credential providers and user tokens, particularly relative to the UAC.

      The Vista and Windows 7 security model is vastly more sophisticated than out-of-the-box Linux implementations, and the UAC is related to that. Unlike su/sudo, the user does *not* transition to the administrative user, they switch between their administrative token, and the default neutered token, but in both cases other security policies can still be applied, but most importantly (especially where network security is concerned) *they still are themselves*. The network provider may or may not allow transparent use of the token across the network using the administrative token, depending on policies, but it *can*.

      The knee-jerk anti-Microsoft crowd on here tends to discount the sophistication of the Windows security model, but the reality is that its two decades more modern and more capable, particularly in networked environments, than the typical Linux system.

      That crowd could learn something by learning, in more detail, about the things they (incorrectly) discredit.

    5. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by tgd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The UAC, in Vista, nagged constantly early on because of poorly written software. The UAC prompting means a program at launch either via code or manifest, or certain other compatibility-conditions (like being an installer) needs access to the user's administrative token, rather than the default neutered token. Typically that means its doing something it shouldn't have been doing, such as writing files into the installation directory rather than the user's profile (and thus needing administrative rights) or, for example, writing runtime settings into the local machine's registry rather than the user's registry.

      The UAC prompts became far less common as time went on because publishers fixed their software that was doing things that even in XP they shouldn't have been doing (and getting more secure in the process).

      They're reduced in Windows 7 primarily because a request for privilege escalation that is a direct result of a user action (based on a bunch of criteria, including a valid digital signature on the application, and I believe on the MSI that installed it) gets escalated automatically.

      You *really* should almost never see a UAC prompt. Now, if you're a developer and are doing things that need to be escalated all the time, then no shit you're going to see it a lot. But a normal end user should virtually never see one on up-to-date versions of software on Vista or Windows 7. If you are, you should contact whoever publishes the software in question and tell them to fix it.

    6. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by jon3k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The Vista and Windows 7 security model is vastly more sophisticated than out-of-the-box Linux implementation"

      SELinux is enabled by default on Fedora. I wouldn't call UAC "vastly more sophisticated".

    7. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by Ralish · · Score: 5, Informative

      Depends what you mean by "vetted"; the NSA created SELinux, so nothing really compares to that, but they've regularly put out security guides in conjunction with Microsoft for every major Windows release (as well as for other operating systems). They're always comprehensive and a very solid resource on hardening Windows systems to varying extents, not to mention good learning material. Just don't get too overboard, a lot of the suggestions take security to extremes, to the extent that you'll definitely break a large number of programs by removing permissions and modifying defaults that they'd never expect to encounter (I say this from experience). They definitely don't get the attention they deserve:

      Windows 7 Security Compliance Management Toolkit

    8. Re:Eh wouldn't surprise me... by LinuxAndLube · · Score: 5, Insightful

      + 5, psychedelic for using enormously complex system and huge security benefits in the same sentence.

  2. The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    from what it looks like. Rather, it was about the identity of the blogger. It looks like he was a paid blogger for InfoWorld and a Windows performance analyst at the same time, and wrote the Windows memory consumption post under a pseudonym without disclosing the relationship to InfoWorld. It doesn't mean the memory consumption article's contents are faked or wrong. Its conclusions are disputed, but that's a a separate issue. The issue is disclosure of its authorship.

    1. Re:The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I really don't think it was a case of him merely "being wrong" about Win7. His software company sells a suite that is supposed to make Windows "run better". He had a direct motivation for lying about the performance of Windows. That's fraud in my book, and not merely "being wrong".

    2. Re:The fraud was not in the claims about Windows by postbigbang · · Score: 5, Informative

      See http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10532-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=75498&messageID=1468379 for what he claims he is and does.

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      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  3. Re:Reason by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder what his motivation for lying like about it was.

    I'm not sure, but Craig Barth is an anagram for Hair Grab Ct, which is obviously the location of the next clue.

  4. More information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ZDNet, an InfoWorld competitor, was about to go public with an exposé on Randall C. Kennedy and Devil Mountain Software, but InfoWorld actually beat it to the punch by disclosing the matter itself.

    InfoWorld's editor in chief, Eric Knorr, should be commended for dealing this matter quickly and decisively when he discovered Mr. Kennedy's deception. At the same time, he should think very carefully about the series of decisions that led to this outcome.

    Randall C. Kennedy was an InfoWorld blogger known for his outrageous, inflammatory posts. Often these posts appeared to disregard the facts, overinflate the issues, or otherwise ignore the tenets of basic journalism in favor of sensationalism and manufactured furor. Doubtless InfoWorld appreciated the traffic such posts drove to its site. What it should have realized, however, was that beyond contributing to InfoWorld's success, Mr. Kennedy had a personal incentive for generating that traffic: promoting his own company, Devil Mountain Software. With that as his motive, he had far less incentive to consider InfoWorld's journalistic integrity when crafting his blog posts. Preserving that integrity was the job of InfoWorld's editorial staff. They failed to do so.

    Compounding the issue is InfoWorld's decision to partner with Mr. Kennedy on the "Windows Sentinel" project, InfoWorld's in-house branded version of Devil Mountain Software's exo.performance.network Windows monitoring product. The original post announcing Windows Sentinel is currently hidden behind a password, but the Google cache clearly shows that InfoWorld was aware that Mr. Kennedy was behind Devil Mountain Software all along:

    Today, I'm happy to announce the beta version of InfoWorld Windows Sentinel, a joint project with the exo.performance.network founded by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Randall C. Kennedy. ... According to Randall, the main point is "to develop a more concise picture of the Windows computing landscape.

    InfoWorld's editorial staff should have seen that allowing a contributor to use InfoWorld's brand to promote his own company's products and/or services constituted a conflict of interest at best, and at worst, a serious breach of InfoWorld's responsibility to provide truthful, unbiased reporting to its readers.

    InfoWorld needs to think very carefully about how to proceed in future if it hopes to recover its integrity after this incident. In an age where publications are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their power to drive revenue, it is more important than ever that editors take a stand for the paramount importance of high-quality, thorough, accurate reporting and editorials, untainted by financial interests or the pursuit of personal gain. InfoWorld stumbled by continuing to support Randall C. Kennedy when it should have, at the very least, questioned his judgment. It can and must do better.

  5. Re:Reason by Trev311 · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's simple. Money.

  6. Yup... by recoiledsnake · · Score: 5, Informative

    That guy was behind a lot of anti-Vista FUD, especially stuff that was reported here on Slashdot.

    Some samples here:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/1710245
    Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance

    Researchers from the Devil Mountain Software group is claiming that a series of in-house benchmark tests showed that users hoping to receive a speed boost from the update will be disappointed.
    "Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a "barn burner" -- dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory -- to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut. 'One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn't make a difference,' said [CTO Craig] Barth. 'SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.'"

    http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/18/2016228.shtml
    One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?

    "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"

    http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/02/1418252
    IE8 Beta 2 Fatter Than Firefox and XP

    "Consuming twice as much RAM as Firefox and saturating the CPU with nearly six times as many execution threads, Microsoft's latest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 is in fact more demanding on your PC than Windows XP itself, research firm Devil Mountain Software found in performance tests. According to the firm, which operates a community-based testing network, IE8 Beta 2 consumed 380MB of RAM and spawned 171 concurrent threads during a multi-tab browsing test of popular Web destinations. InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy speculates that Microsoft may be designing IE8 for the multicore future. But until your machine sports four or eight discrete processing cores, IE8 will remain 'porcine,' Devil Mountain's Craig Barth says."

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    This space for rent.
    1. Re:Yup... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doesn't matter. In my book, caught submitting false data, all data should be tossed out. Everything this guy has ever claimed is now suspect.

  7. Re:NEWS! Slashdot doesn't check facts, gets letter by selven · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you actually read the story in question on Slashdot, you'll see everyone point out what an idiot whoever put the story up is and explain that the whole point of memory is that you use close to 100% of it since every byte you use makes things go faster. It's been this way for years. kdawson et al's anti-MS biases get on the front page, and everyone kicks them down (unless they're justified).

  8. Re:Windows 7 does use too much ram. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As has been explained countless times, yes Windows 7 uses more memory BUT it uses most of it as disk cache. It's more like Linux now compared to older versions of Windows. Using otherwise unused memory for disk cache is a good thing and does not affect application performance or available memory negatively.