I just read a news article from vnunet.com (referred to by Tom's Hardware Guide RSS feed) which turned out to be quotes from Nick McGrath of MS's UK branch. With a title like "Linux security is a 'myth', claims Microsoft" I figured it would be a good laugh to read. I clicked, I read, I got angered.

Here's my two cents

Through the entire article, I noticed an ego the size of Alaska. He goes on to say that Linux security is not real in any way, how "the only reason people use Linux is because it's pre-installed", and that Linux programmers are very few and unskilled. (NOTE: This is MY interpretation of certain statements made in the article) In the meantime, Nick is also praising Windows at every chance, say that MS security is so amazing, and that there are thousands of professional programmers working on MS products that are dedicated to MS. Also, when he mentioned Linux being pre-installed, it kind of reminded me of what MS tried to do with all the computer manufacturers... forcing the companies to put Windows and ONLY Windows on their machines and force it onto the computer company's customers while at the same time trying to make sure that the hardware was ONLY compatible with Windows (winmodem anybody?).

Did anybody else read this garbage? Am I the only one that's infuriated by the utter BS coming from MS? The article I read is located at:

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160853

Please do read the article and give some feedback. I could go on for quite some time about this, but I may just end up breaking my keyboard at this rate.

Also, if anyone has more information about this hateful campaign, please do share. Or maybe I've been wrong all this time and Microsoft is actually the light side and they will, one day, bring balance to the force... no wait... this isn't Star Wars, oh well, guess Billy-Boy really IS evil.


Josh

Money makes people do silly and disgusting things. When you have as much money as M$, things just break down and don't make sense at all. Don't worry about it - Linux/Open Source will be the end of companies like MS. Just give it a little more time to get widely accepted as a viable alternative.

jrtayloriv

The guy works for the Microsoft. What would you expect? That he tells how good and stable Linux is, quit his job and start creating non profitable applications with a link to "donate if you liked this application"? I doubt it... he is just protecting his field and his cash.

There are some truths in that article though. How many peoples here actually have ever looked into the Linux kernel source, _understood it_ or even better, sent some patches/correction for it?. I bet my X, that none did it... (ok, I take it back, but I really doubt that someone ever did it).

The rest, as secutiry and patches is just Bantha podoo (star wars fan here too, lol). WinXP SP2 created a world-wide chaos. IE has gotten no-pop fix a few months ago. We have had that in our browsers for a long, long while. There's also daily security updates for Linux. Windows can take weeks to get a hole fix, or even weeks to make it public.

Again, that article is a mix of truth and bs. The guy writing it, is just doing what he is supposed to do... protect his job. Everybody making a review of two things incapable of being impartial, should simply be ignored...

I'm sorry about how I came off in my opening post. I didn't mean for it to sound like flaming Microsoft or anything. I just don't think the guy had any right to trash talk Linux. Promoting MS, I can understand, gotta pay for the new BMW and all, right? But him talking about Linux like that left a nasty taste in my mouth. Yes, Windows has it's purpose and all, but it's NOT to bash the competition. (I've been known to say it's good for virus coders to target so they don't aim for us Linux users though )

As far as how many people are working on the perspective projects and their qualifications, I'm a long time believer that a handful of people working on something in the best interest of the race is worth thousands of people working on something for their own greed. It's kind of like the religious standpoint of 1 priest against 10 sinners.

Security? I only needed one example to turn me to open source for that much... Linux has a built in firewall that can be setup at install and it actually WORKS. Windows didn't get the firewall until XP and it didn't even work any better than security settings in the web browsers.

Overall, I think that Microsoft is worried that once their bank accounts stop growing at over $10 billion per year, people start using other OSes, and people will realize that Windows isn't as useful as they thought. Apps and drivers will get ported to other OSes rather than Microsoft all but holding a gun to people's heads telling them not to port anything to anybody but them. Granted it's a money pot, but to some, there are things much more important than money, for instance: reliability, stability, efficiency, and the general "does it work?" factor.

Like I said, they have their place just like music/movie genres, religions, and politicians all have their places, but all of them should at least have the professional standards to not try to bash the competition out of business like they're running for president or something. We might bash Microsoft on these forums, but it's different when a Microsoft exec goes public with half truths telling people how "bad" Linux is. I can't really see Linus or anybody under him doing that if the roles were switched. It doesn't seem like something a guy would do after creating the greatest OS of all time and just GIVING it to the world. Maybe McGrath should think about that, and maybe Billy-Boy should think about canning the disrespectful schmuck for saying that stuff to the public. Yes, it's business, but that was BAD business. Been there, seen what it can do. Not pretty when you're at the wrong end of the stick. (thankfully, I was just watching the stick from the sidelines at that time.)

Of course, this is all just my opinion. I can't speak for too many people other than myself. I'm sorry if anybody gets bored with my ranting.

Josh

PS: Megaman X
Thanks for the Star Wars props, may the force be with you.

The thing is it really has some truths in there. I can understand your anger, but really.

Don't flame me for shielding microsoft in this instance, because i'm no fan of theirs as it is.

The last statement, that linux is not for mission-critical computers is a laugh, but windows does have it's advantages. Working out of the box (well, in most cases) is one of them. And, let's be truthful, it stays at that . When you install windows, it works. And it works for about a week the way it's supposed to. And then it goes down .

Linux, however, rarely works out of the box, there is a lot of tweaking, knowledge about hardware, compiling, adjusting... required to set it up. But once you set it up it's simply gonna work. 1 year, 2 years... it goes on and on. And then, in 5 years, you realise that a quiet, 166MHz machine in the corner without a screen/keyboard/mouse has been running all the time and being the school dns for years. You ssh to the box and see that it has (i'm making this up) 2.2.3 kernel and an uptime of 4 years (the last shutdown was dirty, meaning power outage ).

That's the difference.

atom, you are definitely right about the differences. As I said in my last post (which going by timing, you probably barely missed before posting), Windows has it's purpose. I use it to do virus scans on the home network since I'm the only one willing to put some work into updating the anti-virus. And on top of that... um... well... it has spider solitaire... oh yeah, Linux does too. Well I use the anti-virus.

Windows has it's consumer base and they should worry about that base, not about who's running who's software. Their greed is one of the things that turned me away from them in the first place.

Well, the little clock in the corner of the screen says 6:09 AM... must be bedtime. Good morning all!

Josh