Main "Hating Microsoft in a nutshell" thread

[je_fro]

I didn't say "switch". I mean to embrace and try to corrupt the opensource system...not that they could, but you can bet they're looking for a way to poison all those wonderful programs by "improving" them.

[Sepero]

duely noted

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by blackbelt_jones
Nice hypothetical... but in the real world, Linux servers have proven to be far more stable and secure, Microsoft support has been reputed to SUCK (I wouldn't know) and this whole "Googling your brains out" options seems to assume that that there aren't trained and certified Linux tech support people out there. Guess what? There are, and there are more every year. Some of them are working for IBM-- a major company by anyone's standards, and in particular a company whose reputation for top-flight service and support have been established over generations.

My comparison, stripped of the fluff, was commercial vs. community supported. If you can't see my point just because I use Microsoft as an example, switch it with Red Hat or SuSe. It still ends up costing the same, if not more so.

Thanks for missing my point, though.

[voidinit]

Originally posted by nextbillgates
You are an administrator of a mission-critical server cluster that must remain up at all times. Suddenly and without warning, clients are no longer able to communicate with the cluster. There are no obvious problems in the logs or in the configuration, and you've tried everything you can think of. Every hour that this cluster is down costs the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone from the customer support techs to the executives are breathing down your neck.

Until recently I was an administrator for a hospital and I have been in similar situations with mission-critical applications on Microsoft (Citrix Farm), Linux (enterprise printing services), HP-UX (Patient Tracking apps), and AIX (Arizona Integrated Pharmacy apps) platforms. During these times of crisis I only found myself reaching for the phone when dealing with the Microsoft and AIX boxes. I would have been better off not wasting my time and money working with either of them. My solutions were found either in the manuals or online. Sum and substance: What good is Microsoft doing by providing commercial technical support that can't fix problems?

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
Of course, there some less than ethical business practices they engage in...but I don't know that makes them that much different than a great percentage of the companies out there. The main difference perhaps to some of the people here is they are aware of it.

On the technical side of the house, the only real beef I have with Microsoft has already been stated. They take well known standards, extend them, and then not allow anybody else's platform to use their extensions. They can get away with this because of the side of microsoft that I hate. The business side. I think them immoral, unethical and certaintly under-handed. It's not because they are aware of their practices, it's more because they use their monopoly to boost their profits by forcing platform lock-in. In short, they need to share a great deal more. Microsoft isn't like GM or DuPont or GE, these companies have competition, and their competition prevents them from bringing whatever piece of crap they can throw together to market. If GM brought crap to market and sold it as gold it would be in the same shape it was in during the 80's, that is, it would be loosing to Toyota. Unfortunately until recently there wasn't another big boy on the block that could take advantage whenever MS slipped. There is now, and unlike in the past, MS can't simply buy them out and absorb their technologies. You can't purchase a GPL and pull a you-no-lookie.

The company I now work for is a Microsoft Certified Partnet, and I am a Microsoft Certified Pro (<--yeah, whatever). Anyway, every month, as a partner, we recieve tech notes, demos, betas, development kits, etc. We also recieve marketing packs that cover reseller's strategies. I don't know what I can or can't say in a public forum about these documents, so I'll be pretty vague and careful here.

Competing with Linux has been a column in their marketing newsletter and also the subject of several marketing briefs both on paper and DVD. The main point that Microsoft tries to stress to it's sales people is to not discuss nor contradict technical points and differences between the platforms. Thus a salesperson is not to claim that Windows is faster, more secure or more stable. Reason being? Whatever a sales person sells, the IT staff must implement, so the sales staff should not sell what it can't prove. Microsoft resellers are supposed to stress interoperablity, TOC and industry standards. To me that seems proposterous! Microsoft only interoperates with Microsoft, TOC has yet to be proven, and finally Microsoft makes up it's own industry standards at it goes along! Thus it is true that Microsoft's marketing campaign against others is all about fear, uncertainty and doubt with a bit of peer pressure (c'mon, everybody's doin' it). I've seen it first hand. I'd love to publish these documents online, but I don't know if there are any nondisclosure agreements or anything like that. I know I can't give a non-Certified partner a beta to evaluate, so I'm guessing I can't pulicize this stuff without loosing my job and/or putting my employer at risk.

[Azul]

Linux is not flawless. Linux has a steeper learning curve and requires involvement, it requires a desire to understand.

Windows has more flaws, bigger flaws, the biggest one is that it requires minimal thought and involvement. Most people want to get on their PC, check their email, shop for the latest fashion and that is it. They don't want to think. They deserve Windows. As long as their are stupid people in the world, there will be Windows.

[bandwidth_pig]

I think Windows is very much like television. We could take it a step further and say as long as their are stupid lazy people there will be television and windows. Of course, I myself have just placed myself in the stupid and lazy category, but I have no problem with that (being a watcher of television and user of windows ).

voidint your old job sounds rather interesting. One of my customers where I work does the same thing you described. I always get a little envious/curious when I go into a hospital data center, as they have the bucks to do some real nice things. Anyway...if you looked closer (while you put up a good argument) you will find more examples. And since you have put up such a good argument, I would have to do some research and fact posting that would require some effort, of which I am too lazy to muster on this Sunday monring. I could talk about my employer, but I don't think that would be very smart of me. I thought you were going into buisness for yourself anyway? Your like a spy in the enemy camp now you know.

[Sepero]

Originally posted by Azul
Linux is not flawless. Linux has a steeper learning curve and requires involvement, it requires a desire to understand.

With most distributions, this is very true.

Windows has more flaws, bigger flaws, the biggest one is that it requires minimal thought and involvement.

I think that we would all agree that Microsoft programs have serious flaws. There is a strange reversal happening though. As GNU/Linux becomes easier to use, Microsoft products become more difficult. Just think about their lastest release, XP: true multiple users and groups, data encryption, administration tools, digital signatures on installs, rights management.

Most people want to get on their PC, check their email, shop for the latest fashion and that is it. They don't want to think. They deserve Windows.

Are you saying that Lindows isn't capable of being simple enough to accomplishing these tasks?
Perhaps you haven't tried very many distros yet. (troll?)

[voidinit]

Originally posted by bandwidth_pig
I thought you were going into buisness for yourself anyway? Your like a spy in the enemy camp now you know.

Yes I am . So far I have no clients, but I'm only working for my current employer part time now so I can go about getting some clients.

--Edit---
About bandwidth_pig's remark on hospitals. To any IT professional a hospital is a dream challenge! They usually have huge networks with wide user bases and remote sites for clinics etc. They also usually have large datacenters diverse with platforms and operating systems. In our datacenter we had:

OSes
HP-UX
SCO
LINUX
COMPAQ VMS
MAC OS 9
SOLARIS
AIX
Windows 2000 Server
Windows NT Server
Windows 95 (servers)
AS/400

Hardware

Intel
Alpha
SPARC
Apple

It was mad fun.

P.S. The Apple/Mac and Solaris/SPARC stuff was for GE PACS Radiology Imaging. This is the coolest system I've ever seen.

[bandwidth_pig]

It's funny you should say that voidinit (regarding the hospitals). I just put a OC-12 into one of my local hospitals data centers and the platforms you discuss are just like this one, except add in Windows 2003 server and subtract Linux. And you forgot to mention the political aspect of the challenge in relation to these hospitals. Oh man. Politics up the wazoo. Goes hand in hand with money it seems.

[nextbillgates]

Originally posted by voidinit

Windows 95 (servers)

[steventux]

Originally posted by MB[DK]
How can you hate a company? Just don't use any of their products! And it goes without saying that Bill wants to annihalate any other OS out there, given half a chance Apple and Sun would do the same, no doubt.

I swear, some of you guys really need to step away from it all, and visit real life.

Real life tells us that Microsoft donated $1.6 billion to the Republican party (more than Enron). Given the repercussions of having monkey man waging war on t'rists (is that tourists or terrorists?) I can safely say i hate Microsoft for thinking about their Anti-Trust lawsuit more than who might be a responsible and fairly elected president.

[voidinit]

Originally posted by nextbillgates

Yeah, applications programmers pick some curious platforms. These boxes were for an application called Omega that verified certain types of insurance eligibility. Yes, we did reboot them four to six times a day.

[lugoteehalt]

Real life tells us that Microsoft donated $1.6 billion to the Republican party (more than Enron). Given the repercussions of having monkey man waging war on t'rists (is that tourists or terrorists?) I can safely say i hate Microsoft for thinking about their Anti-Trust lawsuit more than who might be a responsible and fairly elected president.

Yup - under the American system 'Monsanto is the state, the state Monsanto'.

[ikellen]

A linux friend and I were pondering why M$ uses the NTFS file system for Windows 2000/XP. As it turns out, the main feature of the NTFS filesystem is its ability to recover from crashes better. Interesting that M$ would use a filesystem that recovers from crashes better in Windows. Hmm, I wonder why?

For those that don't get it, scroll down...









































Windows is renowned for crashing a ton, so Billy Gates needed a filesystem to save his *** when his software crashed on customers computers.

[AnonyPuss]

My understanding is that NTFS is similar to ext3, they're both journaling file systems, but I believe that the security is better on ext3.

Just to be fair, I've had many crashes on Windows 2000/XP, without losing files. I have only had one crash on Linux since using it and lost files.

Might have been due to my inexperience with Linux at the time, but nonetheless, I lost files.