03.09.10
IDG Gives a Platform for Microsoft’s Familiar Attack Dogs (and Former Employees) to Smear GNU/Linux
Summary: Formerly-paid Microsoft employee and technical evangelist Michael Gartenberg belittles GNU/Linux again, this time through IDG
IN OUR PREVIOUS post we showed that the market share of GNU/Linux can easily be misrepresented due to quiet deployments that receive no proper attention because Linux and GNU have no public relations departments with advertisements and such conventional means of mind control.
Another vector of mind control (promotion and ridicule) consists of paid marketing people and pushers whom Mirosoft labels “technical evangelists” (TEs for short) and pays full wages. We covered these before [1, 2] (with concrete proof and confirmation) because Boycott Novell was among their victims.
A regular basher of GNU/Linux makes his appearance again. He is no stranger to us because we gave an example of his mischiefs in:
- Paid Microsoft Slug Michael Gartenberg Does the OLPC Slog
- Microsoft’s Twitter AstroTurf Continues
- What is Microsoft Doing Inside the ‘Press’?
- Microsoft-Funded “Analysts” Fight Against the Truth
- Deceptive Vista 7 Advertising, Neglect, Bugs, and More Security Problems
That is former Microsoft employee (evangelist) Michael Gartenberg, who merely does that “anti-Linux” job once again (as he does every now and then, using similar arguments). He also pretends to care about GNU/Linux, by starting with “I’d love to see viable alternatives to the current mainstream operating systems.”
“It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.”This is the equivalent of “I like Linux, but…”
It’s a lie with which the author tries to gain some credibility to begin with. It was only yesterday (or earlier today, depending on geography) that we wrote about the Microsoft-affiliated “Linux curious” persona attacking more often than before.
“Linux on the desktop: Still not happening,” says the former Microsoft TE over at ComputerWorld today. Shame on IDG for publishing this nonsense despite the obvious yet undisclosed conflict of interests. It’s either malicious or IDG was bamboozled again (IDG relies on Microsoft as a large revenue stream [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]). IDG might as well pass over some writing responsibilities to Microsoft’s many PR agencies. It’s not reporting, it’s opinionated placements in disguise, daemonising one’s professional rival.
Last week we wrote about how big statistics firms produce and spread lies that benefit those who pay them [1, 2]. Here is a decent new post which explains the role of money.
Oh Linux, how shall I count thy installs?
[...]
I have also heard it said that 76.3% of people believe that you put a percentage sign behind any random number they will believe it to be true.
Research and marketing companies especially love statistics. That is how they make their money by providing the numbers to make their paying customers feel good. Yet there is the old adage GIGO, which means Garbage In, Garbage Out. It seems to me that just about all of the numbers regarding operating system installs fall into that GIGO category.
Of course bloggers, journalists and article writers take those numbers and spin them into fanciful stories for their readers to eat up like so many cream puffs. These fevered outpourings of fanatical minds are often used to show how their operating system has the most market share and consequently is the bees knees and of course everyone should be using it.
Where do these statistics come from? Most of the time it comes from sales data provided by the companies supplying the operating systems and this is where the problem lies. This is because while companies of proprietary operating systems actually rent their products, open source operating systems are not. So any statistics regarding operating system market share are automatically bogus and can only be used for FUD campaigns.
What about Web sites that are not included in those Microsoft-sponsored aggregations of logs, such as this new one?
Operating System on WWWUSE on W3Counter Windows XP 28.00% 53.60% Linux 20.00% 1.55% Windows 7 18.00% 10.66% Windows Vista 16.00% 20.07% Mac OS X 13.00% 8.12% Unknown 3.00% under 1% Windows 2003 1.00% 1.01% iPhone OSX 0.60% 0.75% Android 0.20% 0.10% Windows 2000 0.10% 0.43% All Microsoft 63.10% 85.77% All no Microsoft 36.80% 14.23%
As a side note, Alex Brown, Jesper Lund Stocholm, and Microsoft employees are flirting at the moment in Twitter, promoting their agenda for Microsoft lock-in. We won’t go into it on this occasion. The important point to remember is that Microsoft is getting very desperate. It relies on known allies attacking GNU/Linux with lies that they repeat over and over again. Lies need to be rejected. Tolerating them only helps them spread. █
“I’d put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1.”
–Steve Ballmer, 2001
