A month ago we spotted Microsoft bribing people for positive reviews of Vista 7 [sic], which is just a horrible variant of Windows Vista. The reviews are a case of naked emperor, which aligns with our previous (fairly old by now) evidence and observations [1, 2].
Not content with denying me my request to be able to, y’know, pay for my Xbox Live services, they’ve now taken to flat-out attacking me by trying to lose me a writing job.
But then I know that Microsoft is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their image and to get _their_ story told. Remember, it was Microsoft who hounded a magazine chief editor to have a story told about one of their new projects. When the editor did assign the article to be written and a writer assigned, it was later found out that Microsoft assigned over a dozen Microsoft employees to this writer. They preplanned phone conversations, passed scripts around so everyone was on the same page, invited the writer to their site and took real good care that the _Microsoft_ version of the project was what was written. But in this case, they made one mistake and that was they accidentally included the writer in one of their planning emails.
They are The Puppe Masters. How else could you explain the great lengths many of these authors go to _not_ say that Microsoft has anything to do with these problems. As this current example shows.
Microsoft spends $BILLIONS$ propping up it's products - and with great success.
Astroturfing, opinion shaping, advertising, paid endorsements, even techniques like elevator marketing at any IT trade show - "Hey Bob, you should see what Microsoft is showing off at their booth!", "Yeah I have - they own the market".
Don't even get me started about Microsoft's ample bag of dirty tricks and influence purchasing.
Microsoft disparages open-source TCO with year-old case study
[...]
The Speedy Hire case study is not new. It dates back to December 2007. So why is Microsoft touting it today? Perhaps due to the recession and desire by companies to find ways to cut costs by using more free software?
Comments
SubSonica
2008-12-04 08:59:52
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/01/mac-internet-share-hits-record-882-windows-drops-below-90/
Also notice how the fastest growing OS is Linux...
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-04 09:16:04
Let's not point to them because it legitimises them.
SubSonica
2008-12-04 09:33:43
"In reply to Louis Kindear:
I see no sign of Linux fading into irrelevance in these stats. In fact, it has the largest relative growth of the top three.
This is something that should make you as a consumer happy, because the threat of Linux is what keeps both Microsoft and Apple (somewhat) on their toes — there is a free alternative they have to compete with, that won’t go away."
It is also worth noting that Gnu/Linux is growing a lot in emerging countries that produce a minority of Internet traffic, so while studies based on internet traffic/visits are useful, they are misleading about the real number of people using Gnu/Linux.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-12-04 10:01:56