“Well, they’ve done it again. In prime-time. With malice aforethought. The duplicitous droogs, the denizens of deep-doodoo, I’m talking about Bill Gates’ Microsoft: caught in a bald-faced lie about HD DVD-ROM discs. This is news? Not any more than the fact it’s hot in Texas this summer or that Katrina caused a lot of damage. It is, after all, the Microsoft way: dishonesty in all things.”
As much as I like OSNews, this seems squarely centered on starting a flame war.
Microsoft is a corporation, a large entity. All large entities encompassing so many different viewpoints and personalities will have flaws, some very glaring. But is it really news to have an article attacking on of these so called flaws, even if it might be a false truth?
I’d rather you just post real news, such as new OS releases and computer information, than some odd fillers. That’s what Slashdot is for.
Alexander Drummond
http://www.symphonyos.com
I completely agree.
Well, that makes a couple with that article about Windows XP “not ready for desktops”…
Heres a basic translation of MS speak
Get the Facts = Get the lying propaganda
We Innovate = We copy/steal our competitors ideas
We support standards = We screw formal standards and create incompatible closed ones instead
VISTA = Viruses, infections, spyware, trojans, adware
I agree with all but the last point.
Vista hasn’t been released to the general public yet, I think Microsoft could make a safer OS than previous versions of Windows if they gave it a good effort. I haven’t tried Vista yet so I don’t know how secure it is right now, but there is still time to improve the security as much as the Windows design will allow for.
Personally I’m waiting to see if commercial companies won’t stop making OS kernels and the like in favor of just building on top of OSS kernels like Apple did with OS X. I think that could solve a lot of problems, could speed up innovation (for companies that do innovate) since they wouldn’t have to worry about the kernel beyond modifying it a little, and at least two of the current major OSS operating systems are more secure by design than all the proprietary ones I can think of.
“But is it really news to have an article attacking on of these so called flaws, even if it might be a false truth?”
Ehm, read the article, it goes far beyond attacking one of these flaws.
It asserts that MS has a corporate culture of lying and tries to back this up with some examples.
Now you don’t have to agree, but it’s an interesting read imho.
Read the article yourself! First guy talks half of article about Win95 performance against OS/2. So he builds whole Microsoft is lying on 2 points, first Win95 16-bit code and Blue-Ray capacity. Big deal, you could say that all companies are dishonest since they use stuff like that for marketing.
Two points:
1) There’s the fact that MS is lying and lying is never good, no matter how widespread a disease it is. If you’ve got the tough-guy personality to say “Read the article yourself!”, then I suggest you use it and direct it to more righteous endeavors like exposing liers for what they are.
2) Microsoft happens to be one company who’s lying and scheming ways affect a wide array of people from various walks of life. All their actions have been geared to locking people in to their solution regardless of whether it works or not and for prices they themselves make. This is exemplified in the fact that MS products have become ubuquitous in the industry, and if there’s any one company we should call on for lying, it’s MS.
If you don’t care about protecting that freedom and right of yours, shut up while others do.
No, why I agree with you to a degree, you must realise, that with the current brand of American Capitalism, that companies, to a certain degree, will operate that way.
Is it the way it should be? Most likely not, but it will continue to do so. By trying to just bash Microsoft, we are acting as though vocal protesting is not euhemeristic. It is.
If you don’t like Microsoft, protest with your WALLET. Invest in alternative hardware and software companies that you have faith in. Donate a slight stipend to an open source project each month. Finally, learn all that you can about open source or paid alternatives. Even educating yourself about the various differences can change your point of view.
The question that everyone is ignoring, that seperates honest mistakes from intentional disception, is “will Microsoft admit to being wrong or will they try and sweep it under the rug?”
People make mistakes, and in big open companies like Microsoft they tend to become Public. But when you make a mistake, you attempt to make right on it (at least by admitting the mistake).
They are… Any company that markets things with an intent to deceive is lying (in its worst form) and you should hold them accountable for it (i.e. shop for their competition).
False marketing should have a negative impact in a properly run free market. People should see the false marketing, recognize it, and take it as reason to look for competitors (which means your false advertising would end up helping your competitors).
But in our “help me Mr. President” US we don’t do that, we cry and ask why there’s no alphabet soup to police this horrible issue. We ask them to sue because we screwed up and bought into the lie.
Ignorance is truly bliss, until your new lemon coughs, sputters, and leaves you stranded 18 miles from a gas station. Then who do you have to blame? Yourself, for blaming someone else for a problem you were able to solve, that’s who.
As one major example, they claimed that their Internet Explorer browser technology was an integrated and inseparable part of the OS.
Yeah, sure, its application functions are arbitrarily sprinkled all over the system DLLs in a manner which flies in the face of all formal OS design theory that I’ve ever seen, but … inseparable?
Not really.
Yes, removing it would break certain things — until you put the same IE functions back in a more secure and compartmentalized way (e.g., in a removable application library or two), which would be a far better design on many levels (IMO).
It just wouldn’t have quite the same level of customer lock-in, that’s all. And that’s all Microsoft seems to care about these days.
The fact that all companies might behave a certain way doesn’t necessarily excuse such behavior, especially when we’re talking about a convicted monopolist with a virtual deathgrip on the IT industry and not just Joe Blow Software Company, Inc.
They already exist in a secure, compartmentalized way. IE functionality is provided via a few dlls. The problem with removing those dlls is that several Windows features and MS/3rd-party applications rely on those dlls being present to provide functionality such as content rendering. It’s simple code reuse and also good design.
The problem is that some people wanted their apps to work just the same even though that code wasn’t there. Witness the EU/WMP stupidity as another example (i.e., EU acting surprised that MS Word no longer worked with embedded video w/o the dlls that made up the media infrastructure they told MS to remove). It’s simply something that won’t work no matter what platform you are on. The affected apps functionality would be degraded until the code is replaced.
Even though I really don’t care whether MS Corp. is lying, devilish or whatever you might think about them, we must up open our eyes and see “things” that actually happened, are happening and might happen. They have 30 years of being in the computing industry..
Now, if you don’t wanna see those _real_ facts.. Ok, it’s YOUR choice to being “blind”.
I don’t know why you got voted up. What you just said was so vague it can be construed as self contradictory. You said you don’t care about them lying, but we should watch what they’ve been doing.
One way to take it: By doing you mean all non-vocal actions. Then you’re ok, and you mean quit listening to them and look at what they’ve built.
The other way to take it, the literal way, is self contradictory. “I don’t care what they say, let’s worry about what they do!” Since “lie” in this context is an active verb, well it’s something they’re doing. But you’re not worried about it.
Geez, do people analyze things when they vote them up, or do you just say “oh that’s not radical it must be right!”
I can’t believe there is so much hate for Microsoft as a corporation. Some of the militants on the net make me sick. STFU and DO BETTER! This reminds me of the “Democrats” vs. the “Republicans” shit that I see on television.
I can’t believe there is so much hate for Microsoft as a corporation. Some of the militants on the net make me sick. STFU and DO BETTER! This reminds me of the “Democrats” vs. the “Republicans” shit that I see on television.
It’s not hate for the old farts like myself. It’s fundimental distrust, earned by Microsoft over decades.
As a general rule, if something is promoted as being a certian way, the opposite is most likely true. For example; mass produced beer and sexy women. ‘Press releases’ as well as paid placements are especially prone to this distortion.
This rule applies to most advertising — corporate or not — and Microsoft’s advertising doubly so.
So they used a skewed metric to say HD DVD is higher capacity then Blu-ray? How is this any different than Apple claiming PPC is faster and posting benchmarks of Apple favored Photoshop filters, or 4 out of 5 dentists recommending every single brand of toothpaste?
What about every car company selling the safest, most reliable cars with the best waranty? Or the 15 “leading brand”‘s of toilet paper?
What about the $50/month $25 cell phone plan?
The problem is not really just with Microsoft, it is advertising in general.
Oh, and this part: Brave enough? Yes, gentle readers, there was a time when it was downright dangerous for scribes to write something which wasn’t aligned with the MS view.
This sounds an awful lot like any criticism of Linux 3 years ago or even today.
I don’t think that’s an entirely fair comparison. A much better analogy would be Apple saying that the G5 had a higher clock-speed than any Opteron, by comparing the 2.0GHz G5 to the 1.4GHz Opteron. Indeed, that’s *precisely* the deception that Microsoft was caught in.
I remember when the backlash and flaming started to seriously fade for those with an Anti-MS viewpoint.
It started in earnest right around 96/97, shortly after Windows 95 but before Windows NT 4.0 … and it snowballed from there.
What else was happening around then? RedHat, Debian, FreeBSD, and BeOS. Competition and alternatives.
Microsoft could no longer hold their own, and the tech community could see that. The commencement of their death throes (that is to say, their anti-competition tactics like FUD and OEM preloading) also helped to sour the tech community on the corporation as a whole.
If you rip it horribly out of context it does. Indeed, for criticizing Linux you’ll often get ripped apart in forums all around the net. But you won’t get sued or fired…
Many of those people from 3 years ago *cough* Enderle *cough* Ou *cough* are still employed and making stupid comments.
Speaking of skewed metrics… Ripping things out of context, another similar form of deception..
I looked up the Enderle guy you mentioned, and found this http://daringfireball.net/2003/12/enderle
That article (from 2003) tears Enderle apart for predicting Apple will move to x86, and also release a lower-capacity iPod.
The only prediction that article mentioned that did not come true (yes) was a video iPod.
This is the best part of the rant: “And so here is the chance for Enderle to get one right, to get on the record with a prediction that might actually pan out. And but he blows it, piping in with his own prediction: “Odds are it’s a flash-memory-based player”.”
He turned out to be exactly right.
‘I looked up the Enderle guy you mentioned, and found this [article] from 2003.’
2003? Why so current? Why not pick something from years ago, say, 2002? :/
As for him being right, so are broken analog clocks once in a while. Want to go over his other insightful and honest works from any quarter in the last year?
Oh Enderle’s not stupid, he’s simply anti-OSS. You do have to have some intelligence to get a job as a journalist.
If you don’t believe me look at the grammar in the comments section of this site!
While there is a grain of truth in this…
<P>Brave enough? Yes, gentle readers, there was a time when it was downright dangerous for scribes to write something which wasn’t aligned with the MS view. That’s what got one of the more popular PC Magazine writers fired, and the editor of InfoWorld a personal call from Bill Gates, and me the threat of legal action if I dared to publish a story on the online shenanigans of MS employees.
…it’s a bit excessive. Way back when, there were plenty of comments about both Win95 and 98 having 16 bit parts including drivers. Thunking — bitness conversions — was a big deal.
For the most part, the writers didn’t hype up the 32-bitness of any version of Windows once it was released except for NT.
There are plenty of suck ups both then and now, though fear seemed to be less of an issue than gushing press-release reposting gropupies and ample use of misinformation (intentional or not) about MS and non-MS products.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
OK…I spoke too soon. Joe backs it up. He’s right.
Though before it was called Public Relations which got it’s name after Propaganda, which is what it was called in the olden days, got a bad connotation.
Companies do it, governments do it. It’s wrong (IMHO) but certainly not limited to Microsoft. I recommend the excellent BBC documentary “History of the self”, especially the second episode “The Engineering of Consent” ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_… ) for anyone who is interested in this issue.
An article on Newsforge bashing Micrososft. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Open source vs. Proprietary, of course the other side is going to flame and bash. I’m just trying to figure out who is more clueless, Joe Barr or Rob Limo.
what your definition of ‘is’ is.
For reasonably chosen values of all nouns and verbs in question, none of the Gates assertions are totally false.
Go FSF!
Seemed like an average troll, not a well written artical. Like it has been said above, all companies skew the truth when they are launching a new product.
Look at all the great demos for games to appear on the PS2, later it was found that these are pure CGI myth and the actual games to appear will not be as good as the demo’s.
Look at all the great demos for games to appear on the PS2, later it was found that these are pure CGI myth and the actual games to appear will not be as good as the demo’s.
Ah, the ignoble art of the “bullshot” ( http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php?date=2005-09-12&res=l ) I really hope that words gets in the dictionary someday 🙂
Newsforge FUD as usual.
Newsforge here (again) took a quote out of context to build a case against Microsoft as liars.
The quote about Bluray being 25GB now to be specific. That’s not a lie, and they DID also point to that Bluray “will be” 50GB later. I’m still sceptical if Bluray will truly BE 50GB at launch as some people claim, where others in the Bluray camp claim that it’s still far away from 50GB.
So please move on. Nothing to see here for people that actually want real news and not FUD-slinging from an anti-Microsoft newssite.
Can’t really claim the overall quality of Newsforge articles has been increasing recently. The site used to offer some interesting stuff a year or two ago, but lately I find visiting it more entertaining than educating.
The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
Oh, poor baby.
You’re heavenly dreams of Microsoft shattered.
The text “50”, “fifty”, and “Fifty” are not found on this page: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/sep05/09-26HDDVDPromo… .
Found this gem interesting:
Managed Copy: A first for DVDs. Managed Copy is a guaranteed feature within HD DVD that gives consumers the freedom to make copies of their discs to a hard drive or home server, including Media Center PCs using Intel Viiv technology, and enjoy them in every room of the house over their home networks. HD DVD discs also will allow copies of the movie to be played on portable devices.
Yesterday I didn’t care which technology won. Today I just don’t wanna see HD-DVD win just because of the DRM. I don’t even care if BR has DRM, I just don’t want to see Microsoft running the DRM’ed DVD format in the future, the idea scares me (I rather like movies, and I don’t want to have to stop buying them).
So Marcellus, it appears, at first reading, that page doesn’t mention a 50GB blu ray. Apologize.
OTOH, Newsforge articles do tend to be pretty crappy :/.
It’s because of MS that you’ll even have Managed Copies. Blu-Ray DRM will be at least as “bad” as HD-DVD yet it’s not certain at this point whether they’ll offer similar allowances for copying. The DRM will be part of the standard (the consortium over it is called AACS IIRC) — not controlled by MS. Some have mentioned Blu-Eay using the same standard but it currently does not.
This article/essay puts it very nicely in terms of nice sentences and a broad vocabulary. It just needs a few more examples.
Does anybody have a link for a website that actually tracks any lies/inaccuracies in MS marketing?
Does anybody have a link for a website that actually tracks any lies/inaccuracies in MS marketing?
Not quite, but somewhat:
http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/innovation.shtml
If he intends to stop doing business with all the companies that lie and distort for PR reasons, he’d better pack up and go live in a cave.
Either that or expose the truth. Support the old Consumer Protection agencies and shows. Spread the word to their constituents so they can avoid those companies.
Contrary to what you are suggesting, there are companies which don’t lie to sell their product. I happen to work for one and in my personal life deal with a lot of companies and institutions that don’t. If they did, I would certainly do something about it.
You’d let them trample all over you? Who’s the poor guy?
“Contrary to what you are suggesting, there are companies which don’t lie to sell their product”
Yeah I know, and they have umpa lumpas in the assembly line
Pathetic. Have you even watched that movie or read the book? That guy wasn’t exactly what you’d call “your ideal consumer advocate”
.
There are companies out there who aren’t trying to screw their customers. I think Microsoft has a lot of decent competition:
OS — Several decent Linux vendors.
Hardware — Logitech (since almost all of their stuff is peripherals)
Game Console — Nintendo
Office — Open/Star (Sun may be pathetic at business, but it’s generally pretty decent to its customers: Not so nice to retailers though)
Devel tools — Go with the platform. Is Borland decent? I know I’ve never liked their products.
Either that or do business with Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP, etc. On average they lie much less often than Microsoft and Sun. Its also interesting to notice how open minded they are about Free Software. I wonder if there’s a correlation.
Either that or do business with Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP, etc. On average they lie much less often than Microsoft and Sun.
You mean your perception is that they lie less. I wonder if there’s a correlation between your perception and the fact they are Open Source friendly …
You mean your perception is that they lie less. I wonder if there’s a correlation between your perception and the fact they are Open Source friendly …
It is my perception, yes. However, I said open minded about Free Software, not Open Source friendly. There’s a difference. Both Sun and Microsoft are Open Source friendly.
Now, please, show me how my perspective is wrong. Where are Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP, SGI and the countless other Free Software friendly businesses lying? There must be numerous examples to backup your perception.
You want to talk about correlation? Help us collect and observe the data without bias. I’m certain this thread has plenty of specific examples how Microsoft lies.
Sun:
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124681,00.htm
http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/12/21/1749219&tid=2
http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020505,39167442,00.htm
SCO:
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid…
Who supported SCO? Microsoft and Sun.
I think we can all agree SCO lies a lot. Microsoft, not so much, Sun even less. But it is my perception these three lie more than any Free Software friendly businesses.
Where are Red Hat, Novell, IBM, HP, SGI and the countless other Free Software friendly businesses lying?
You sound like Free Software is some kind of blessing- embrace it and you become incapable of lying or doing bad things in general.
GPL is just another license for software developers. Don’t worship it.
Why the hate?
It’s called marketing. That’s why you go to independent sources for your information.
Marketing = spin. For all companies.
That’s a rather dismal view to take on the subject, and not even a true one. There are lots of companies that don’t spin. IBM, in their present incarnation, doesn’t really spin. HP, pre Fiorina, didn’t really spin. Lot’s of smaller companies don’t spin.
“That’s a rather dismal view to take on the subject, and not even a true one. There are lots of companies that don’t spin. IBM, in their present incarnation, doesn’t really spin. ”
IBM doesn’t spin? hahahaha
I work for an enterprise software company. We go up against IBM all the time competively. They lie about us in every instance. They lie about what features they have. They lie about what features we have. They get the deal and then write a ton of code to hack their way into making their stuff (sort of ) work.
We, of course, do the same…. it’s called sales and marketing.
You’re quite the naive one
So, you’ve never seen these IBM commercials?
I know no product or company that is hated,distatisfed and untrusted that comes close to Microsoft/Windows. The amount of control and dirty tricks over the years is unbelievable, so can anyone say different?.
Thankfully we have Linux and a solid choice, but even Microsoft tried to FUD our choice with blatient lies. Microsoft will never mend it’s ways, just find another way to FUD there customers. Thanks to Linux Windows users will get a better OS in the form of Vista, but the back shafting will still go on. This is way I use Linux, never will trust Microsoft again.
Tobacco companies, of course
At least the products Microsoft sells aren’t known cancer causing things designed to get you so addicted you can’t readily switch away from using them. Yes, tobacco companies worked on making the ingredients even *more* addicting than they were naturally! In the past, tobacco companies (not sure which one(s) ) used to promote menthol cigarettes as being good for asthma!!!!!!
If you *really* think Microsoft is as evil as that, selling stuff that they know kills people (literally) by using it, perhaps you should lobby whatever governments you are governed by to put a legal age requirement on buying/using Microsoft products, and tax them heavily, like tobacco products are, at least here in the US
Doesn’t Vista contain some chemically addictive additives? I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere (link?)
Well, I doubt you’d want to eat the plastic they make the disks out of…
In the past, tobacco companies (not sure which one(s) ) used to promote menthol cigarettes as being good for asthma!!!!!!
They are actually good for people with asthma, in the short run. In the long run it’ll kill them or at least shorten a couple of decades of their lives.
But the cigarettes actually makes it easier to breath for people with asthma. But you can also get medicine for that, which of course is a healthier way of doing it.
dylansmrjones
kristian AT herkild DOT dk
I apparently must be an asthmatic freak if that’s true, then! <cough>
Perhaps if you can get over the short-term (perhaps long-term) coughing that inhaling the smoke will cause, the menthol might make it *feel* like you’re breathing easier, but I’m at a loss as to how something that gums up the lungs with pollution will honestly help, even in the short-term.
And yes, the legitimate medicine that helps that is infinitely better, though it isn’t perfect
Same here!
I got sick of MS’s antics and went with open-source solutions!
Here’s some crap that ticked me off!
(1) Product Activation (Pointless ver 1.0)
(2) Windows Genuine Advantage (Pointless ver 2.0)
(3) MS’s Anti-spyware solution
They can pick which ad company can pass the detection!
(4) “Get the Facts” (Yes, Microsoft selected facts!)
I think this was a total failure as the tech people picked this nonsense of a website to bits.
(5) Bill said that his company can offer 24 hour turn around time from being informed to releasing a patch. (Reality = It takes a minimum of 1 month! Typically its 2 months! If you’re lucky)
(6) If a customer has requirements that MS cannot provide, they provide excuses instead!
(a) FUD = “Its not mature, not good enough for the user”
(b) Stall tactic = “More studies should be done.”
(c) Expresses concern for user if user decides to go with alternatives…Things like “Users will experience trouble making the transition”
(7) They were informed of an exploit by a third-party security company. They then wrap the information to promote their ideas of an active honeypot, called (in their terms) “Honeymonkey”. They claimed the this implementation found the issue.
(Interesting that only 2 people from slashdot actually looked further into MS’s claims!)
(8) Windows ME
I feel sorry for ALL those people who paid for this!
(9) Their stance on security issues.
As in, just do enough to keep the users happy.
Don’t waste too much time and money on it.
Provide band-aids…Not real solutions.
(10) Complete lack of innovation.
VISTA’s GUI says it all…
Its reminiscent of Apple’s OS X.
OpenBSD has a annual hackathon…
Guess what MS did this year? Yeap, they brought their own one in! Naturally, MS engineers were surprised how much of a security joke their products were.
IE gets updated…
Only when alternatives start to eat into MS’s marketshare! Firefox starts to nibble, and Opera smells opportunties and come galloping!
(11) The Microsoft way of doing things.
Ever done an MCSE or similar? Ever read or glance at their texts? You’ll understand this one.
And finally…This gem.
(12) VISTA and DRM enforcement technologies.
“Trusted Computing” where the company trusts the systems they control. Makes the RIAA and MPAA happy.
Its a natural fact that all companies are expect to lie to earn a sale, but Microsoft’s lies are so blindingly obvious that its not funny!
Its equivalent to a lighthouse in the middle of the night! No ship can miss it!
The difference from the Win95 era compared to today is that you can’t fool people forever…People start to realise “WTF? I’ve been lied too?”…People will react. (Especially women…They don’t like to be lied to!)
is of course lying. We know that and have known it for years. And they are not alone in lying. It’s symptomatic for most companies (small and large) to lie to some extent.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the local mart or Microsoft. They are lying to some extent.
The question is: Do we have to accept that or not? Feel free to make up your own mind.
dylansmrjones
kristian AT herkild DOT dk
this is a good example of the one thing I dislike about OSNews – links to articles are most of the time nicely hidden. Now is the real article under “dishonesty of all things” or “HD DVD-ROM discs”? If I read only the links neither of them mean anything sencible. Why don’t you guys just use something general like “read the article”?
No. I for one will never trust them, not even as little as one can trust a commercial company these days.
We all have had reason for quite awhile now not to allow Microsoft onto our computers for awhile right? And I would like to think we’ve had reason to not buy any Intel or Intel supported hardware and/or products. I’ve been AMD only for over 3 years now. What I’m getting at is MS is already an evil enough empire, and then to join up with Intel who is already pretty perverted and self-indulgant themselves as well, the fact that the 2 of them are throwing their(what was ours) money behind HD-DVD, I personally hope with automatically make people switch to or go Blu-Ray DVD only. I mean if Apple(the fabulous Mac OS X Panther and Tiger makers), Sony(Cell CPU developers) and company are supporting Blu-Ray, then I’m completely sold on Blu-Ray alone when you look at the names behind it and the top-notch products they’ve developed.
In closing, it’s because of Wintel, I’m thinking of setting up or joining forces with a brother to start an all AMD & Linux/BSD only business for hardware systems I would sell or repair and what operating systems I would be willing to formally support as a company. “I’m sorry, we don’t support Windows here, only open source operating systems I would love to help show you how to use” 🙂 Lord bless people!
I do not know if the MSFT press release on HD-DVD superiority over Blu-Ray is lying or if it is more likely to be spin. Spin is what competitors use all the time, just look at Apple and their touting of the superiority over Intel processors, never minding that many prefer AMD anyways.
The author points out that Blue Ray will have 50 gig discs at opening, but right now, there are no real avaialiblity of anything yet, so MSFT can state these things without lying; until the stuff is released, who knows what will be available. Was Steve Jobs lying about 3ghz?
It is simplistic to conclude HD-DVD=Microsoft=Bad.
BlueRay may clearly be the better technology, but HD-DVD has some things going for it, not least of which is the fact that I do not have to upgrade my Dvd player if I dont want to. HD-DVDs can store both regular and HD content on the same disk. My old Dvd player will just ignore the HD stuff and show me my movie.
Anybody in for voting with their wallet?
Another attack from the open source chimps…
and see how they all are clapping.
Now some informed newsforge quote:
The replication equipment to mass produce DL 50GB BD-ROM doesn’t exist. The process definition for DL 50GB BD-ROM doesn’t exist, and in fact there are two *very* different ways being explored (read argued) within the BDA as to how best to stamp a DL BD-ROM. MSFT and Intel were very clear in interviews that the promised 50GB DL BD-ROM is, currently, just that: a promise. The world’s first non-lab pilot line for DL BD-ROM isn’t scheduled to be installed until this December, best case. DL 30GB HD-DVD is reality. They went with reality over promise.
Newsforge has lost it all. The quality of their stuff is so low and so bad. And really once i used to like Open Source, but clowns like this with their childish rant all the time and trying so hard to convince me has put me off completely with it. It is like Open source guys want to stuff Linux down my throat no matter if i want it or not. OSS community is one of the most dishonest one now a days. Their single argument that Linux is better without facts, ignoring shortcomings is just sad. Linux was made by a brilliant and is getting killed by the illegal sons/daughters of stallman aka OSS zealots.
The word “Linux” never appeared in the article.
“OSS” never appeared.
“free” never appeared.
How are you associating this with them shoving Linux down your throat?
Also, the article was labeled “Commentary.” I don’t read much newsforge, but I imagine it’s something like having an editorials section.
Also, let me quote:
Superior capacity. HD DVD-ROM discs will offer dual-layer 30GB discs at launch, compared with BD-ROM discs, which will be limited to 25GB.
The correct way for them to say that is:
Superior capacity. HD DVD-ROM discs will offer dual-layer 30GB discs at launch, compared with BD-ROM discs, which is limited to 25GB.
See the diff? I’ll show you:
-which will be limited to 25GB.
+which is limited to 25GB.
Tense is important my son
. They needed to use the present tense, not the future progressive!
The article in itself is poorly written and lacks a few more examples to make its point. On the other hand, the question it asks is a valid one.
And seeing some of the comments here I wonder if some people have come to expect being lied to. “Of course they lie, which company doesn’t”, is the kind of comment that makes me think some things are not right, not right at all.
Not so much because we acknowledge that we know we’re being lied to, but because we seem to almost be expecting it, almost finding it natural and reasonable. And that is quite sad.
MS is a typical american large corporation, all they care is a quick buck. For a monopoly leader FUD is cheaper than putting resources on developing quality products.
Why don’t you mention puppies, kittens, women, children and HIV in the headline while you’re at it?
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
I thought that Bob Marley said that… 😛
Business is War, we are living with the consequences of the fifty year old global corporate capitalist system where the interest of anonymous owners (usually entities like pension companies) are put ahead of ethical principles, the customers, the workers or the local national interest.
As in any War the first casualty is the Truth.
If Microsoft are liars that would be normal.
Are Apple not famous for a reality distortion field.
Rock on shareholder value.
Rock on shareholder value.
True dat.
All commercial corporations are not capable of honesty. end of discussion.
An e-mail that I wrote to osnews-crew on 26 August 2005:
Hello–
I wanted to comment on your noticeably Linux-biased lean. It seems that once or twice a week, there is an article posted about some event that is going to cause floods of people to move from Windows to Linux. Most of the articles tend to make Windows the “bad guy” that Linux is saving the world from. They usually start by describing a new Linux product, then going on to say how it should cause a flood of Windows users to move to the Linux “desktop.”
I like both Windows and Linux, but I’d like to see a few articles about products for Windows that would cause lots of people to move from Linux to Windows as well, in the interest of fairness.
-Josh
Daily OSNews reader
It seems that OSNews is not the only site trying to grab readers’ attention by posting inflamatory articles (aka trolling). Slashdot does this fairly frequently too. Recently they posted an article [ http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/02/000258&tid=123 ] citing that Yahoo! had “raided” Nuance Communications, when in fact they had offered a number of their employees better jobs with better working conditions.
Is any business when a lot money is at stake?
Vista has already 5 viruses or so for it and it even hasn’t been released yet.
Why would MS buy all these anti-virus companies if it had plans to make their OS secure? Either they did it to shut them up or they are convinced, which they admit, that no OS is secure. (or they had to buy talent?)
I’ll stick with Mac OS X with a virus free track record and a company who thinks about the customer first, not marketeers and spooks.
I’ll be glad be able to boot off a 50GB disk instead of these animic 4.7GB disks. This way I can clone my drive to a DVD disk.
Heard about the formats, but didn’t know enough about them. Thanks for the article!
Note I personally don’t care if Microsoft is involved one way or another or not. It’s a new technology fork for which I didn’t know enough about.
Having said that, it seems to me Blu-ray is far ahead in its development that some people want us to believe…
See http://www.blu-ray.com/ifa2005/
A dishonest writer writting about dishonesty… Kind of ironic.
Sunday evening crapflood filler from newforge idiots.
Which companies back which format is largely irrelevant, the consumer will decide. Both formats may fail if the public remains satisfied with DVD quality. After all, it depends on your eyesight whether HDTV is worthwhile to you. By the time this format war is resolved we may well be seeing plug in solid state drives of similar speed, price and capacity. Let’s face it, noisey and cumbersome mechanical storage devices are doomed to land-fill in the near future.
I HATE MICROSOFT.
I HATE MICROSOFT.
I HATE MICROSOFT.
Is any big company capable of honesty?
I’ve been comming here often and posting every now and then… Lately I think the quality has gone down hill on the site and I will no longer be visitng the site as this little “article” is the last straw.
Just for the record, I do use MS products and yes, I realize they are not perfect. I also use non MS products too and when the situation is right I will happily use a non MS product that gets the job done right.
This is the kind of crap I would see on slashdot and there are several reasons why I dont go there anymore. I would wonder how long it is until I see an anti Linux or Apple article in response to this, but I guess I’ll never know now… Not that I care anyways…
You said: I would wonder how long it is until I see an anti Linux or Apple article in response to this
Is that what you really want? Really? You think there’s a need to publish an “anti-Linux or anti-Apple” article in response to this?
So, in other words, you think each time a site publishes an article critizising someone, they should publish n articles doing the same with the competition? Like… mmm… let’s say Tom’s Hardware reviews a Logitech keyboard which just happens to be bad (expensive, uncomfortable, fragile, whatever). Then they should inmediately have a series of articles giving bad reviews about other maker’s keyboards. would that make them “fair”?
I’m not saying OSNews doesn’t have (nor that it has) any preferences, just that your idea of fairness is flawed.
P.S. BTW, this article is not about any MS products.
What is Microsoft lying about in that article?
What they said is all true. You can use google can’t you? Look it up for yourself.
Another anti-microsoft trollish article on the OSNews website. So much FUD makes me not want to even visit this website anymore.
I’m not saying that everything that Microsoft does is right. No way is that even close to being true, but some of you liberals have computers now so you think you can post whatever crap you want and that is just wrong. A lot of people don’t want to understand microsoft, they don’t care about what they do, all they want is someone to blame.
“but some of you liberals have computers now so you think you can post whatever crap you want and that is just wrong”
Yeah, some people just like to run their mouths. I voted you -1.
than Stallman and his open sore troll minions.
how ?
come on,
explain…
if you can’t then keep your opinions to yourself
if you can’t then keep your opinions to yourself
Uhh, no. The fascists that want everything to be “free” software are the biggest low life liars to ever exist.
Humm… NO! Come on, the answer to this question is easy.
Not a big deal really and not very interesting. What I find interesting is that some feel the need to apologise for big corporate monopolies’ practices – out of sheer devotion, I guess. People, MS does not need you – they’ve got lawyers to do it.
Well… I bought my wife a Apple Powerbook 12″, and the battery life didn’t ever come close to the life claimed on the Apple website.
I bought a JVC video camera after I was assured by the sales person that it supported Apple Mac OS X, but I later found out that while I could transfer the files to the Mac, I couldn’t edit them and needed to buy additional software to get it to work properly.
I bought a Sony Mini-disc player, the sales person assured me that I could use it with my mac. Again while I could transfer data files to and from the discs I couldn’t actually load my music on there from the Mac, and have to use a PC to do that.
I bought some salted eggs and was told that they were excellent and would keep for months. When I got home the sales person had slipped in a box of eggs that were out of date by 2 months.
I have downloaded and installed various Linux distributions on countless occasions having read reviews, and propaganda by the Linux community telling me that this is the version that is suitable for the main stream, only to discover that it wasn’t suitable at all.
I don’t want to go on and on here. I don’t use MS products if I can help it. I won’t buy from the 3 stores that lied to me (or deceived me) regarding their products either. And I won’t download another distribution of Linux until I absolutely need it because everyone else is using it and it’s the only way I can be compatible.
I could write articles blasting the shops that lied and cheated me over the years, but life is short. Is MS capable of telling the truth. Yes they are. When the get something write, make a nice product, break sales records, of course they will tell the truth about it. If things go badly they will lie. If they want to sell you something they might lie or color the facts about it. This is my experience of ALL companies. Point me to an honest company and I’ll go and work for them!
I’ve never heard such nonsence, your views fail in comparision to the millions of people who brought a computer with Windows on. Tell me, If you had to take your computer back because it was crashing, spyware. virus ridden, wouldn’t you want another choice?
I’d hardly call that “suitable for the main stream” because with any other product you can take back and get something else, you can’t with Windows. We have a choice and if you dont want Linux, thats your choice because in your opinion it’s not “suitable for the main stream”, thats your view not a lie.
Of course MS has lied in the past and will continue to lie. Maybe not bald face lies, but definitely emptry promises to users will be made. Havn’t you been paying attention, it’s called marketing. Many major technology companies engage in this practice.
Because Sony lies even more in the gaming Console war between Nintendo and Sega in the old days.
I equally hates MS and Sony.
Sony: PS2 is a supercomputer which can produce 78 million
polygon per second.
Yes, it can, but only in wireframe mode.
With all the light, texture, mapping…
the ps2 can only produce a few millioin polygon persecond.
————————————————
MS is lying, so do Sony and other companies at the Blu-ray disc camp. No big deal here.
Msft abuses international legal, and polical, systems like mad.
Msft often secretly hires shills to do the lying for them. This makes it appear that the views are indepenant. In particular, msft “contributes” to several conservative think tanks. These so-called think-tanks are very vocally opposed to any government action against msft.
Msft also patents prior art like made. About four new patents a week for, at least, the last year. Msft purpose here is obvious, to intimidate smaller companies into not inovating. Innovate anything, and you might be msft in a bogus patent lawsuit.
Msft also files bogus lawsuits, by proxie, to intimate companies to not contribute to, or even use, competing products.
The amount of criminal liars that have infested osnews over the past few years is amazing. Open Sores worst enemy is its own advocates.
A Microsoft bashing article from newsforge? Gee, who would have thought? You can replace Microsoft in the article with FSF and describe the same kind of dishonesty from the FSF.