Source
Summary: The Guardian shames itself by telling obvious lies in a show about Windows
THE GUARDIAN is generally a decent publication, but on several occasions we have shown that The Guardian spreads anti-GNU/Linux venom. It very typically comes from Microsoft Jack. See for example [1, 2, 3]. Just days ago we found anti-GNU/Linux rhetoric in The Guardian, twice even; it's courtesy of Microsoft Jack again.
Two British readers of ours have
independently complained about even worse content in The Guardian, namely a new podcast.
ThistleWeb writes: "on
the tech podcast from the Guardian, Windows special....Windows rep claiming "we introduced people to the GUI"
ROFL"
"It's a "history of Windows" special," emphasises
ThistleWeb. He adds another mind-blowing quote from the podcast: "One of the principles behind the design of Windows 7 was to make you feel like you were in control..."
".....without actually giving you control," sarcastically remarks
ThistleWeb.
“Windows rep claiming "we introduced people to the GUI"...”
--ThistleWeb"In fairness it is a Windows special," he adds, "interviewing MS employees speaking as MS employees....but they do say a number of wrong or misleading things."
ThistleWeb points out some slip-ups, such as, from the podcast: "the initial impression is how much it looks like Vista, which is the thing I'm not supposed to say."
See our earlier post about the subject, as well as older ones. They are forbidden from admitting that Vista 7 is just like Vista.
Another reader of ours, whose identity shall remain anonymous, writes:
Guardian reinventing history, listen to the audio, MS introduced the GUI to the world.
"We introduced this amazing concept to the world it was called the GUI, the graphical user interface," --Nick McGrath
Introducing a thing called DDE... overlapping screens or Windows...
Introduced a SDK, a single development kit.. the entire independent software community grow up around Windows...
Introduced file and print management...
Solitaire designed to teach people how to use the mouse? (this it total revisionist bullsh*t)...
Reason why we built NT, no mention of OS/2 or IBM (must be erased from history)...
"You gotta do a transcript," said this reader, "I notice a lot of this kind of stuff recently. Putting it out on audio/video so as Google can't pick it up."
Can anyone extract the text from this revisionist show? We have given many other examples of Microsoft revisionism, e.g. [
1,
2,
3,
4]. These examples are mostly recent.
"How much would it cost a business to buy an advert of this size in the Guardian," asks our reader.
"Listen to the end," he summarises rather than concludes, "someone calls them on it. Why is it that in interviewing tech CEOs they give them a blank cheque to say what they like without calling them on it?"
ThistleWeb wrote a few minutes ago: "I never noticed just how much of a MS shill Jack Schofield is until I listen[ed] to this sh*t."
Recently we wrote about
The Register's adverts that are published as 'articles' or 'whitepapers'. It is all rather sad. The Register also hosts Microsoft podcasts from Gavin Clarke and Mary Jo Foley, who are both Microsoft boosters.
What is happening to the British press? The
Telegraph, for example, is now checking GNU/Linux usage in English-speaking countries where Mac figures are very high and GNU/Linux very low; this is not representative of the global sample set at all. There is so much hostility towards Free software in the English-speaking countries, whereas in countries like
Italy,
France or
Germany, for example, the story is vastly different. How about
Brazil?
⬆
Steve Ballmer's presentation slide
from 2009 shows GNU/Linux as bigger than Apple on the desktop
Comments
Needs Sunlight
2009-10-31 13:39:25
The revisionism goes on and on. Just the other week shills tried to spin old press coverage of the Vista failure. The 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898610_1898625_1898627,00.html
your_friend
2009-10-31 14:15:02
The good news is that few people outside of Microsoft's vanishing circle of corruption still trust the mainstream tech press. Readership of the tech press has plummeted even faster than ordinary paper newspapers, temporarily giving Microsoft that much more influence. Vista was a turning point where the public noticed and refused to buy into the Microsoft story as much as they stayed away from Vista. Editors and papers that sang Vista's praises latter issued humiliating apologies [2] and the world did finally catch on. While there was considerable resistance to XP and Microsoft's stock never recovered it's 1999 glory price, XP did manage to gain 50% of the Microsoft desktop market after two or three years. Vista went nowhere. Windows 7 is following the same course at an accelerated pace because it is obvious that Microsoft won't be able to pay the bills much longer. Death spirals only get tighter and less recoverable. These are interesting times.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 14:24:49
your_friend
2009-10-31 15:20:54
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 15:52:04
Dennis Murczak
2009-10-31 18:57:47
To be fair, Heise isn't Microsoft centric in the least but often brings provocative headlines on Fridays to increase traffic.
[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Microsoft-Windows-7-uebertrifft-alle-Erwartungen-846731.html (German) [2] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/foren/S-Heisemeldung-13-03-2007-Microsoft-Deutschland-mit-Vista-Start-sehr-zufrieden/forum-168553/msg-17584066/read/ (German)
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 19:10:37
Dennis Murczak
2009-10-31 19:29:45
Microsoft: Windows 7 "tops all expectations"
A few days after its launch, the new operating system Windows 7 is adopted on a significantly higher scale than its predecessor Vista, according to Microsoft. The company had shipped ten times more packages as originally planned, Microsoft manager Oliver Kaltner told the dpa (Deutsche Presseagentur, German Press Agency, ed.) this Friday. "In the first two days alone Windows 7 sold five times better than Vista at its time." Until today 60 percent of the shipped products had already been sold.
"The first sales week tops all our expectations", Kaltner said. Presumably, the following christmas sales would be the most successful in its corporate history again. "However we have also always said that the success of Windows 7 not only depends on its starting phase." Microsoft had put much hope into compensating for the false start of the predecessor Vista. Due to the strong demand Microsoft had had to increase production several times in the past weeks.
Windows 7 was put onto store shelves worldwide eight days ago and had already received a lot of premature praise a fairly long time ago. Other than Vista, Windows 7 now also fits on the popular netbooks. Microsoft is currently considering shipping a version of Windows 7 on a USB stick in Germany too, Kaltner said. In the USA Microsoft is already offering such a solution for netbooks which are not equipped with a DVD drive.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 19:47:31
Either:
1) they are very bad at predictions
Or
2) they are lying
Or
3) They should have lowered predictions tenfold and then claim "a HUNDRED times more packages as originally planned."
Microsoft played the same statistical games when Vista was released. Check out old news and you will see.
Dennis Murczak
2009-10-31 20:52:48
There weren't any Vista 7 laptops or PCs on the shelves at Saturn (big electronics chain) as of yesterday. I wouldn't call that a "high-scale adoption". Of course it will gradually creep in during the next few weeks via the usual channels. But what I see doesn't resemble the situation with Vista, where the sellers were falling over each other to take part the hype, and the customers were pissed off big time.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 21:01:47
Yes, no-one like the ASA (in the UK) verifies those claims. See the original post about what Microsoft got away with in the Guardian podcast.
satipera
2009-10-31 14:50:40
The only time I see a Microsoft Jack article is when the link has no clue near it that it is his work.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 15:51:16
your_friend
2009-11-01 00:35:13
It is also impossible to report intelligently about changes to the industry in general without a firm grasp of free software. How does someone like Microsoft Jack explain Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Twitter and other giant success stories of this century? Do these types imagine any of that would be possible without "non commercial" software that no one uses or cares about? They are equally unable to see the departure point, where these services start to ignore IE and later Windows because Microsoft's refusal to follow web standards makes service impossible otherwise. Perhaps people in orbit around planet Redmond really are unable to see changes on the IT ground. That's OK, but they should not be offering tech advice or telling people what OS to use.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-11-01 00:47:58
satipera
2009-10-31 17:29:37
When all is said and done they are following the crowd and providing precious little progressive journalism. What is going to cheese me off in the future is when the same journalists say "We saw it all happening and did our best to move things on". They might be able to see what is happening but they have hardly lifted a finger to report it.
It is a shame that the whole section will be remembered mostly for Microsoft Jack over the last 15 years.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-10-31 21:04:42
TropicalCoder
2009-11-01 16:24:32
Gavin Clarke is a journalist who impressed me the most in the past months with his savvy article on the motivation behind Microsoft's manoeuvring to dodge the European Union's efforts to level the playing field in the browser market. Read his article Behind Microsoft's IE-free, Windows-for-Europe ploy carefully and tell me if you still feel it is fair to call him a "Microsoft booster". I submit that that characterization was unwarranted and unfair. In his article, Gavin Clarke comes to the conclusion that...
Roy Schestowitz
2009-11-01 16:59:27
TropicalCoder
2009-11-01 17:38:59
Personally, I follow the discussion on sites such as Groklaw, Slashdot, and Boycott Novell, and I am well educated on Microsoft's Machiavellian tactics and the harm they do to us all. However, Microsoft is not going to go away until main stream Microsoft users and share holders finally come to understand what Microsoft stands for. They are not going to read the web sites just mentioned. The only hope for their education lies with the main stream press where they will feel comfortable and at home. We must be careful not to alienate the mainstream press, but rather be kind and patient and teach them how to properly educate their readers and how and why this will benefit us all in the long run. Most important, we must give them credit and encouragement where warranted. Perhaps along these lines Boycott Novel could hand out Mainstream Press Rewards like some kind of a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding reporting as seen from Bocott Novell's unique perspective.
your_friend
2009-11-01 20:04:15
Boycott Novell does a fine job of promoting software freedom and others that promote it. Links bring well deserved attention to projects that don't get it otherwise. Scorn is dumped where it belongs.
The whole browser thing is a distraction. The larger injustice is at the OEM, distribution and retail level, where Microsoft has insured that their OS is always the one that's cheapest and best advertised. Competitors are sabotaged at all levels from hardware specs to retail floor. Sites like Groklaw, Boycott Novell, FSF and many others are seriously discussing this issue and deserve credit for it. People worried about "browser choice" have missed the big picture.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-11-01 20:13:49
A lot of "boosters" use the talking points served by Microsoft and European front groups like ACT and CompTIA, who insist that it's all about offering choice. They have managed to change the debate. It's spin doctoring.
Roy Schestowitz
2009-11-01 19:56:07
I try to be gentle towards those whom I disagree with and the word "booster" is hopefully not offensive. Actually, OpenSUSE has just created a "boosters team" (yes, they call it that).
If you spot abundant rudeness in my posts, please point it out. I'm just not to sure how to emphasise sufficiently that a particular reporter works in tandem with Waggener Edstrom and those PR chaps. It is actually important to point this stuff out in order to put convictions into perspective, e.g. a Red hat employee or OSI president (or both as it happens to be) writing about FOSS and Novell.
BrownieBoy
2009-11-02 22:52:40
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/oct/27/ubuntu-koala-windows7-review
Microsoft Jack is the problem. (Needless to say, the abouve review was not from him). Surely, the other journalists who work in that section must be counting off the days to his retirement.