Summary: Randall Kennedy fooled his own employer (IDG), so his over-the-top 'reporting' will be no more; but the claim that Vista 7 is a pig remains in tact
THE
reality behind Vista 7 remains unchanged, even after
this revelation which will cost sensationalist Randall Kennedy his job:
Editor's note: The person quoted in this story as "Craig Barth" is actually Randall C. Kennedy, an InfoWorld contributor. Kennedy, who presented himself as the CTO of Devil Mountain Software, no longer works at InfoWorld. Given that he disguised his identity to Computerworld and a number of other publications, the credibility of Kennedy's statements is called into question. Rather than simply remove stories in which he is quoted, we have left them online so readers can weigh his data and conclusions for themselves.
Let's remember what Groklaw's Pamela Jones
wrote about Randall Kennedy two weeks ago: "Is he Rob Enderle's son or something?" Kennedy is attacking GNU/Linux quite a lot too and he lies/trolls in order to do this.
Gregg Keizer was
fooled repeatedly by Kennedy:
The Florida firm that last week said most Windows 7 machines exhaust their physical memory, and as a result take a performance hit, defended its data and conclusions after naysayers dismissed its findings.
"Everyone thinks that they're a [Windows] performance expert," said Craig Barth, the chief technology officer of Devil Mountain Software, a performance metrics software maker. "They look at their PC and say, 'My PC doesn't do that.'"
As a bit of background, Vista 7 was shown to be
too bloated as early as 2008 and even last year (it is even
slower than Vista sometimes). Kennedy merely reiterated claims, but he
relied on a benchmark of memory which got covered in many places like
this one.
A Microsoft spokesperson told InternetNews.com that the company had no comment on Devil Mountain's latest report.
Microsoft had no comment, i.e. it did not deny the allegations when approached by its own booster/journalist.
There is a parallel here involving the leak of E-mails about global warming. Just because there was an alleged scandal does not mean that the actual claims are magically being falsified or that the hypothesis gets refuted; in fact, Vista 7 has been a resource hog for quite a while and various journalists pointed this out and showed it empirically, albeit differently. Maybe there is no
"Memory Problem" per se, but there certainly is a speed/performance problem.
Microsoft boosters like Preston Gralla are probably among those who
would deny and then assume that just because the messenger was fake the results too are invalid (like confusing causality and correlation). It's natural to think that if the claim comes from a fictitious source, then that also means that there is no memory problem in Vista 7 (well, Gralla is also
attacking UNIX/Linux and Macs over security this week while pretending to be "just curious", which is a common tactic of Microsoft boosters). Windows is
demonstrably less secure.
Despite some other
reliability problems in Vista 7, Microsoft has its share of
partners who are pushing businesses to adopt scarcely-adopted and scarcely-tested software. Microsoft is paying other parties to impose this it upon businesses (
without success).
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) released several non-security updates for Windows 7 and its server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 Release 2 (R2) two weeks ago.
The main purpose of four of those patches was to improve stability and reliability of the two operating systems. Unfortunately for an undetermined number of users, one of those updates broke their systems rather than make them more stable.
Windows can never be as reliable as UNIX/Linux. Windows was just built so poorly as a shadow of something that was built more properly, sometimes correctly.
⬆
'While both Microsoft's and Apple's systems were graphical, the guts of the two were completely different. McGregor told Gates as much.
'"How are they different?" Gates snapped back. "They both draw fucking lines on the screen, right? They both put things in windows, right? Mac wrote a windows thing, you wrote a windows thing, they ought to be able to run the same stuff together." Which is when it became clear to Eller that Gates still didn't have a clue as to how the Mac system worked.'
--Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, a book composed
by the daughter of Microsoft's PR mogul
Comments
Danielh
2010-02-22 21:16:32
The problem was his message and since it couldnt be refuted in numbers they did a character assassination on him.
Roy Schestowitz
2010-02-22 21:25:29
"I receive an e-mail from Julie McCormick at Waggener Edstrom in which she extends a "special save-the-date" invitation to attend a "unique, invitation-only" event being hosted by the Windows Client team. She labels the subject matter as "confidential"..."
--"Blacklisted by Microsoft!" by Randall C. Kennedy
your_friend
2010-02-23 06:54:50
He does not see that something that needs 6 to 12 times the memory is a bloated pig? Why does he malign Firefox as a hog when it works great on 512 MB GNU/Linux systems? Desktop publishing is as old as desktop PCs, with "high end" systems having previously run on Mac Classics. Scribus, Inkscape and GIMP are applications that do everything serious publishers need on any GNU/Linux system. Speech recognition is something cell phones can do. If this is the best Windows has to offer in 12GB, the franchise is really dead.
Robotron 2084
2010-02-24 02:51:05
Take Photoshop CS3 for instance. It uses 51 megs when it's started. Now let's load 5 digital camera photos at 3648x2736 each. At 30 megs per image we're now allocating 264 megs of memory. We haven't even made any changes yet that will later add to the undo buffer. Change an entire image? Throw another 30 megs in the buffer. Bloated? No. This is what it takes to work with large amounts of data.
It's not 1990 anymore and we aren't printing your high school newsletter. Today's tasks require crunching more data than ever before. Don't even get me started on editing HD video.
your_friend
2010-02-24 06:31:44
Robotron 2084
2010-02-24 10:24:25
"I recommend a minimum of 2GBs of RAM for 32-bit Windows 7 and 4GBs for 64-bit Windows 7. For choice, I like to give either version at least 6GBs."
"For choice" is not the same as "required" or even "optimal". If I were handing raw camera images at 16-bits per channel, I'd want 6GBs too.
Here's a better question though. How is it you can afford a camera that records video in true High Definition.... yet can't afford to edit that video on a machine faster than 1 GHz?
your_friend
2010-02-23 07:04:34
Roy Schestowitz
2010-02-24 08:42:31
clayclamp
2010-02-22 19:36:53
You're so freaked out that even your grammar decided to take a vacation.
Robotron 2084
2010-02-22 23:43:26
http://boycottnovell.com/2010/01/01/syndrome-of-taboo/#comment-77446
I suppose I could be flattered, but I have a feeling when your goal is to post 6 or more anti-Microsoft articles PER DAY it becomes necessary to start recycling. Even using items from people you don't particularly care for.