Microsoft and the Penguin

[HornyBoy007]

Since that the last posts in the "I need to buy a new computer" forked to a debate for/against microsoft. I decided to create a new thread talking about this subject. Also, Microsoft was in the news today after the decision of the European Union to make it pay an amount of around 500 billion Euros for illegal competition. Below is an article I found in "Le Monde" ,a famous french newspaper, dealing with Microsoft practices to eliminate competition (basically Linux in this article).

Also, there will be a documentary tonight at 8 ET on The Documentary channel on the open software movement and on Linux.

Enjoy.

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Le logiciel libre avance masqué
LEMONDE.FR | 24.03.04 | 14h06

"Si vous décidez de faire des infidélités aux produits Microsoft, faites-le dans le plus grand secret." C'est ce que clame l'informaticien britannique Eddie Bleasdale, l'un des pionniers du logiciel libre, aujourd'hui patron de la société de conseil Netproject. Il vient de créer une association "discrète", pour ne pas dire secrète : The Incubator Club. Lors d'une conférence sur les logiciels libres organisée à Londres, début février 2004, il a fait sensation en révélant l'existence de ce club très particulier. "La règle numéro un de l'Incubator Club, c'est de ne pas parler de l'Incubator Club", a-t-il déclaré avec flegme, faisant référence au film de David Fincher, Fight Club.

Plus sérieusement, il a expliqué que son association a "pour but de réunir les entreprises, collectivités locales ou institutions désireuses d'abandonner les logiciels de la firme de Bill Gates pour adopter le système Linux et, plus généralement, les logiciels libres. Et qu'elles puissent opérer cette mutation le plus sereinement et le plus discrètement du monde" ! Eddie Bleasdale a ainsi créé la première entité d'aide à "la migration secrète du logiciel payant vers le logiciel libre". "Les directeurs de sociétés, les responsables de services informatiques d'administrations, de collectivités membres de The Incubator Club peuvent échanger leurs expériences. Ceux qui travaillent déjà sous Linux démontrent à ceux qui hésitent encore à franchir le pas la valeur ajoutée du système libre. Et tout cela, sans que Microsoft sache qui va basculer vers Linux", détaille Eddie Bleasdale.

Pour lui, la création d'une organisation comme The Incubator Club était devenue une nécessité criante. "A chaque fois que le nom d'une entreprise qui a choisi de migrer vers Linux est rendu public, Microsoft déboule aussitôt et offre d'inimaginables rabais pour l'inciter à ne rien changer..., raconte Eddie Bleasdale. Et lorsque Microsoft monte au créneau, personne ne peut rivaliser avec sa proposition commerciale."

En filigrane de cette opération, Bleasdale dénonce le "dumping", le monopole "de fait" de Microsoft et ses dispendieuses opérations vouées à éradiquer l'alternative Linux. Des accusations fondées. Un mémorandum reproduit dans une enquête de l'International Herald Tribune du 15 mai 2003 prouve l'existence d'un bas de laine et d'une politique de vente à perte pour ne pas céder de parts de marché face au système d'exploitation libre. "Dans AUCUNE circonstance ne perdre (un marché) contre Linux", écrit Orlando Ayala, le directeur des ventes de l'époque, aux services commerciaux et au président de Microsoft. Pour cela, les commerciaux peuvent pratiquer une politique de "hard discount" (rabais sévère) auprès des gouvernements et administrations tentés par Linux. Pour compenser le manque à gagner, une enveloppe de 180 millions de dollars (147 millions d'euros) par an a même été constituée.

"Tenez : lorsque Microsoft a appris que le conseil municipal de Newham, dans la banlieue de Londres, allait passer sous Linux sur mes conseils, la firme de Bill Gates a déclenché une telle offensive commerciale que les édiles ont reculé et conservé les logiciels Microsoft... mais à moindre coût !" "J'avance masqué", disait Descartes, Bleasdale aussi.

Loïck Coriou

 

[RickZler]

I work as a consultant for E.D.S. The average network I deploy is about 15-25 servers and severeal hundred workstations. The clients i deal with are all F-500 companies worth billions of dollars.
They invest countless man hours and resources into finding the safest fastest networks money can buy. I can't remember the last
time I did a pure Micro$oft roll-out. There was much interest in
Windoze 2000 initially and now most of the places I originally deployed Windoze 2000 have all schedueled for changes. I like to
personally thank Micro$oft for the job security. Bill Gates is a marketing genius,no doubt, but Micro$oft products are basically
all re-hashed N.T. products that don't run true N.D.S. Micro$oft is
constantly buying start-up companies at outlandish prices and basically just shelfing the products becuase they're much simpler but more robust then Windoze. Lets face it Gates wrote his first O.S. on a college mainframe and promised that it was a done deal even before he started thinking about how to start it.
He lied from the begining and he's still lying now.

What I find to be the biggest problem with Micro$oft is that they lie. They lie about their own products:

- Lie: NT v4 is C2 compliant
+ Truth: Only in a locked room with no NIC

- Lie: AD is a multi-master replication model
+ Truth: Individual DCs can ignore/overwrite changes to multi-value attribute objects sent by other DCs - its really Master-slave model

- Lie: AD is an enterprise-quality directory service
+ Truth: Limit of 5000 members in the group, having to reboot a DC to repair the directory, no timesync, no partitioning

- Lie: Windows is just as stable and secure as NetWare and UNIX
+ Truth: NIMDA, CodeRed, C2MYASS, L0phtcrack and a lot more (what, 32 just this year, right?)

They lie about their competitors products:

- Lie: NetWare v5 doesn't support RAID/disk mirroring
+ Truth: It was a lie and Redmond knew it and didn't care

And I could go on. My point being, why would you trust your business operations to a company that has largely gotten where it is by lying. Lying to its customers, to its business partners, and about its competitors.

 

[LDS]

Rick, I agree with your points for businesses. But for the average home user, not people who really understand computers and how they work, there is no other choice besides Windows or Mac. And that isn't really a choice at all! Macs suck

 

[Lawless]

For the home uuser at this time. I have to agree with LDS, forget about anything else unless you are a Mac user.
Linux, eventually will become more user friendly for the home user, but now, who wants to go back to fighting with your computer to install programs.
Business is another world all together and window might be secondary. But even so, look at the local business and it would be interresting to know which specific field can go without a Microsoft program (I exclude arts, editions, web building and some others using powerful Macs)
I remember trying to get a friendly interface on my first DOS computer, never would I go back go back for the sake of getting rid of a bad corporate citizen giant such as Microsoft.
Name me a company not lying in marketing its products..I will start to buy that product tomorrow morning if it's usable at all and we should all of us jump on the shares of that company!! ...to take losses in our tax returns!!!!

 

[RickZler]

L.D.S :

Thats what Gates wants you to believe. The only reason we're even having this discussion is because I.B.M in their
hast to produce the first marketable P.C. (read hardware) was
so adamant about shipping the thing they gave a OEM software
licensing agreement to Micro$oft. After all who cares about software right? Since every P.C. is a clone of the I.B.M. it caries
its original agreement at the time. So there was an original
PC-DOS and MS-DOS. Which Micro$oft basically stole from
Digital Resrearch's CP/M-80.In the short-term, PC-DOS looked like a winner. Microsoft, however, had not suddenly dropped out of the DOS feature war without reason: their plan was to release a version of Windows that would only run on top of their own DOS 7.0 and make it impractical to sell a competing operating system, and Windows 95 did exactly that. This was Gate's second stroke of genius making all the rest of the fledgling O.S obsolete. Until
LINUX reared its ugly head and spit at the boys in Redmond. It
is a better choice then M.S. Windoze and if it wasn't do you think
that Micro$oft would be so perturbed and upset? But please don't
take my word on it. I'm not a big fan of the Red Hat but as Lawless has stated the tides will soon change and I really hope
that people will give Linux a chance



www.euronet.nl/users/frankvw/IhateMS.html


http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12603 http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html http://www.kmfms.com/whatsbad.html http://www.linuxtoday.com/stories/1468.html

 

[Lawless]

RZ
Then meanwhile, and after all your above, I am quite pleased to hear Billy.
IBM had a nice OS in the wing, but as usual, they preferred to outsource!!!
I have to admit however that the apple did it for me for a long while.
My life has been easier after Bill started the big ly, until naturally W came over. But W still has to come up with an OS, not because he did not try hard under warm weather!!
W should look closely at the EU decision, Tony the tayler could assist him with spam and horses, unless Berno steps in with his own pawns!!!..and takes care of the EU.
Linus is like an Octopus, hard to control.
Meanwhile, I will still be using Office tomorrow to earn my living and the one of my family!

 

[HornyBoy007]

Lawless,

Do you have Linux installed on your machine or did you ever used Linux recently? Linux has the reputation of a hacker's OS, text-based thing, hard to install, control and configure...

In the last 4 or 3 years linux had completely changed thanks to a very nice user interface which is called KDE 3. There are other graphical interfaces that come with Linux and you are not just stuck to a single one like in Windows. KDE is very intuitive and far better and more user-friendly the ugly Windows Xp interface. Installing Linux is as easy as installing Windows today. Some distributions will even allow to install it from windows. Many companies like Red Hat and Mandrake are working very hard to make Linux easy to install to the wide public. Except of some fancy hardware platforms, installing Linux is really straightforward.

I think that people should stop being paranoic with this system and should give it a try. The best thing is to install both systems on the computer : Linux and Windows. This makes the transition to Linux smooth and whenever you are bored of the system or if you are missing some programs you can still restart your computer with windows.

An alternative to MS Office is Open Office, www.openoffice.org This suite is free and it supports Micro$oft formats besides many other features.

I think that Microsoft is so naive to think that peope are so stupid that the will spend hundreds of bucks to get some software while they can get a more reliable, faster and user-friendlier software for free or just for paying like 20-30 bucks.

Personally, I don't even consider Windows a real/serious system. It is just a nice toy with many "des caprices", and any person/business seeking a reliable system should find an alternative OS.

Linux is not the only alternative. Other OSs are FreeBSD, OpenBSD (probably the most secure one) and NetBSD (a portable OS).

 

[Marsouin]

Originally posted by LDS
Rick, I agree with your points for businesses. But for the average home user, not people who really understand computers and how they work, there is no other choice besides Windows or Mac. And that isn't really a choice at all! Macs suck

IMHO Mac doesn't suck at all. Mac OS X is a very cool, stable and secure Unix platform.

 

[donbusch]

Why all this anti-Microsoft sentiments? Microsoft works hard at producing a new version every few years even if there's no need to and they let you download all the versions from the internet, free of charge

Don "Oh my God, Windows isn't free??!!" Busch


BobCrane, sorry but I couldn't resist it.

 

[vmlinuz]

Just for laughs

Windows = a 64 bit rewrite for a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit GUI on an 8 bit OS written for a 4 bit architecture by a 2 bit company who can't stand 1 bit of competition.

 

[HornyBoy007]

vmlinuz,

I just knew the 32 bit version of the joke, I didn't know they altready released the 64 bit verrsion

"windows is free", that's also another joke.

 

[LDS]

I think some of you guys are overestimating the average user by a lot. They don't want lots of choices on which GUI they can use, it's too confusing. And while it's very true that Linux has improved by leaps and bounds in user friendliness you still need to understand more about computers than how to push the power button to use it effectively. That's not the case with Windows. Not to mention that software and driver support from other companies is a million times better for Windows than Linux. I stand by what I said, for the average home user the only choice is Windows or Mac. And you're right, the truth is Mac doesn't suck, it's just that I hate them even more than Microsoft

 

[Lawless]

Whoever wants to try Linus may indeed install it as a second OS in a partition; you don't have to be a wizzard to do it. If I can do it, Joe Average can certainly do it.
Personally, I have not tried Linus in the last two years and my experience at the time was a nightmare; but I understand the interface has improved since. Still, for the novice, wait before venturing beyong WinXP.
I have used Mac computers and if it wasn't for my field of work, I would still have a Mac on the side.
Matter left opened, do you get a PC from a well known company or do you get one built for you. Who do you trust to built your own machine.

 

[HornyBoy007]

Personally, I am still using Windows 98 besides Linux (I also have windows Xp, but I barely use it). You still need windows e.g. to play realOne or media player videos for e.g.

I had nightmares with Linux once when I wanted to make the OS recognize my very old sound card. But, finally I made it (after some sleepless nights browsing internet forums and technical documents for a solution to my problem. After succeeding, I found out that I learned many things about sound cards, loading modules in the kernel... But I understand that the average user would consider that as a nightmare and would certainly perefer to have the system run at the first time. But as I mentioned before, this only happens when either you are using a very old hardware or a very new hardware (i.e. a few months old). In the old days (i.e. in 1999), people had to recompile the kernel in order to install a new printer or modem. I tried once to recompile the kernel, but that was a real nightmare for me. Fortunately, users don't need to do that anymore, and in most cases the Linux installation program will recognize your hardware without any difficulties. Just give this system a try. 1GB or 1.5 GB is enough to install the system and you still have a decent disk capacity for user accounts.

As for the PC issue. Last time I bought one I was seriously considering to buy a "home-made" PC. But, I finally bought one from e-machines. The PC is Ok, I was only mad about all the software packaged with it : AOL,... I have both Windows and Linux installed.
I know some friends who bought clone PCs. Generally, some glitches pop-up later due to some hw incompatibilities, and my friends had to take the PC back to the store, but nothing really serious. I would say that if you are planning to buy a clone, go to a store/sb who has a good reputation. Don't step in the first store you see. Best thing is to ask your friends, those who bought clones, for advice. When it comes to the price, I don't think that clones are much cheaper than Brand-names but they allow more freedom in choosing the components, if you know how to choose them. It is more a matter of customization, I think. My next PC will be a clone with a 64 bit Athlon processor running Linux.

 

[HornyBoy007]

Those who are concerned about their privacy when using Windows XP, this is an anti-spyware software that will protect your privacy. It a complement to other famous spyware programs like Adawre or Spybot. This program will basically allow you to get rid of many Windows XP pop-ups and many of your firewall popups because some of Windows processes are trying to access the internet or making your poor PC act as a server! This software also gets rid of the Media player's spyware. It may downloaded at : http://www.xp-antispy.org/

RickZler, thanks for the links you posted. I visited the first one, and I am reading the article.

 

[MaltedMilk]

Linux sucks for home. Trust me. I use at work for running my mail and DNS but for everything else, it is too much hastle. Yes, it will work, but no, it is not worth it.

Sure, Microsoft has its holes, but for home use they are easily plugged with some 3rd party software. (Whether you should have to buy the 3rd party software or whether it should come built in is for another discussion. )

Well, my 2¢. Anyone that believes that linux is ready for the common user is deluding themselves. (Those of you who believe that it is need to get outside and get more sunlight -- or else a unix-loving, purple-hair, punk-rock sex puppet.).

Windows has its faults, but it's currently the top-o-the-heap. Get used to it.

Peace out,

MM

 

[MaltedMilk]

As an answer to Lawless:

Neither do you get a PC from a well known company nor do you get one built for you.

You build your own! Its not hard and you get exactly what you want.

MM

 

[LDS]

As for the question of where to buy a new PC... I bought mine piece by piece and built it myself. I did this so I could choose exactly what I wanted and get the best possible quality. I'd do this again if I were to buy another one soon.

For most people I'd suggest either Dell (great quality and good service) or a clone from a local PC store. However only buy from a local store if you know a few people who have already bought from them and have good things to say. Both about the quality and the service (if problems have come up). If you don't know these things about a store you could be setting yourself up for disaster.

 

[LDS]

Originally posted by MaltedMilk
Well, my 2¢. Anyone that believes that linux is ready for the common user is deluding themselves.
[/B]

MM.. I couldn't agree more.

 

[HornyBoy007]

Originally posted by MaltedMilk
Linux sucks for home. Trust me. I use at work for running my mail and DNS but for everything else, it is too much hastle. Yes, it will work, but no, it is not worth it.

Sure, Microsoft has its holes, but for home use they are easily plugged with some 3rd party software. (Whether you should have to buy the 3rd party software or whether it should come built in is for another discussion. )

Well, my 2¢. Anyone that believes that linux is ready for the common user is deluding themselves. (Those of you who believe that it is need to get outside and get more sunlight -- or else a unix-loving, purple-hair, punk-rock sex puppet.).

Windows has its faults, but it's currently the top-o-the-heap. Get used to it.

Peace out,

MM

Ah! a typical windows user. I work on operating systems so I can tell what is a good OS. Windows is not even an OS. Enjoy your Windows, make Bill gates richer, enjoy the viruses and the crashes. As the joke says : Does microsoft need to do research on fault tolerant systems? Answer : No, because microsoft has been working so hard to make fault-tolerant users

this is a link that shows some KDE screenshots. KDE is one of the main graphic interfaces for Linux/unix :

http://www.kde.org/screenshots/kde320shots.php