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Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)

By | February 21, 2010, 10:17am PST

Summary: Devil Mountain Software has been a thorn in the side of Microsoft for years and is adept at garnering headlines. The latest effort is a report claiming that 86 percent of Windows 7 PCs were gobbling up too much memory. Can you trust these findings and the company overall? The short answer: No. Here’s why.

Ed note: We were going to publish this investigation Monday morning after buttoning down a few more key facts. Given the fact that IDG just severed ties with Randall C. Kennedy over having an alter ego, we decided to publish our findings, which go beyond fictional sidekicks.

Devil Mountain Software has been a thorn in the side of Microsoft for years and is adept at garnering headlines. The latest effort is a report claiming that 86 percent of Windows 7 PCs were gobbling up too much memory. Can you trust these findings and the company overall? The short answer: No. Here’s why.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes recapped the technical issues with Devil Mountain Software, but frankly the concerns go well beyond mere code. Kingsley-Hughes noted that Devil Mountain Software (DMS) and its Exo Performance Network (XPNet) aren’t on his “trusted list.” After a discussion with many of our ZDNet experts led by Ed Bott and Jason Perlow in recent days, it’s clear none of us trusted Devil Mountain Software.

Here’s what we’ve found from our investigation of the company:

  • Devil Mountain CTO Craig Barth is InfoWorld columnist Randall C. Kennedy.
  • Devil Mountain’s software has potential privacy issues and the company isn’t afraid to show off that it can peek into your systems.
  • A high-profile customer that “Barth” uses to legitimize Devil Mountain’s software says there is no large implementation of the application at the company (see update on page 4).
  • Numerous disclosure issues about the relationship between Devil Mountain, Kennedy and IDG, essentially the only outlet that has quoted Barth. Note: Between Saturday and Sunday, InfoWorld pulled references to Kennedy in its blog roll and said that it no longer offers the Windows Sentinel software, which is a clone of the DMS Clarity Suite.

Indeed, InfoWorld Editor in Chief Eric Knorr just confirmed the first point and IDG has severed ties with Kennedy. In a blog post, Knorr outlined Kennedy’s fate. Knorr referred our questions to Kennedy, who isn’t picking up the phone. ComputerWorld also said that it didn’t know Barth was really Kennedy.

We saved for posterity a stray screenshot that InfoWorld forgot — a Windows Sentinel plug :

Buckle in, because this tale goes from zero to X-files in minutes.

First, the background.

Who the hell is Devil Mountain Software? And can you trust them?

A small software company based in Florida, Devil Mountain Software regularly releases studies filled with detailed performance and market data about operating systems and browsers, with a special emphasis on Windows. When DMS publishes a report, it invariably makes headlines in some of the leading tech publications on the web. The company isn’t modest about its work, either: ComputerWorld reporter Gregg Keizer last week quoted a company source as boasting, “Outside of Microsoft, I don’t think anyone knows more about Windows performance than us.”

Devil Mountain Software was in the news again last week, with a report claiming that 86% of Windows 7 PCs in the network of 20,000+ machines it monitors worldwide are regularly reaching the breaking point in terms of memory usage. Our in-house Windows experts are skeptical about this data and the company in general.

We asked a team of researchers to look more carefully at Devil Mountain Software and its Exo Performance Network (XPNet) to find out more about the company and its data. What we found is alarming: Dubious claims about the company’s products and its customers; violations of privacy involving the company’s data collection software; and Web posts and interviews with a source who appears to be certainly fictitious.

In search of Craig Barth –>

More from “Between the Lines”

Topics

Performance, PC, Data, Randall, Blog, Site, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Morgan Stanley, Devil Mountain Software, XPNet, Craig Barth, Kennedy, Exo.performance.network, Bio, XPNet.com, Tracker Program, IBM Global Services, Danville, Diablo, Microsoft Windows, Tools & Techniques, Blogging, Operating Systems, Software, Management, Internet, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)
makrekwe71-24353633930533196355905357153626 3rd Nov
errnyy,good post!
View in thread
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Excellent work/article! (nt)
Tom12Tom 21st Feb 2010
no text
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Yeah, kudos to the reporting team.
Sleeper Service 22nd Feb 2010
It's good when an agenda is exposed. It's just a shame that the person concerned has lost all credibility as a result.
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It's not a shame....
daftkey 22nd Feb 2010
It's a wake-up call.. When you're in a position of trust, that trust is your most valuable asset..

This has the positive side-effect of reminding those who do the trusting to question themselves from time-to-time, and those who wish to keep the trust of others to understand how easy it is to destroy.
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not really, his actions are what is shameful
shadfurman 22nd Feb 2010
This is another example of a person who felt the end justified the means, creating fraudulent data to discredit a multi-billion dollar company. I'm sure microsoft could come after him for lost sales, but I would guess his total personal worth isn't worth the effort, he's still lucky they don't make an example of him. If his actions were somehow noble, many might hail him as a hero, but to me they seem slighted and pathetic. Assuming of course the article is accurate, I would say that he is not a person of moral character.
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RCK had no credibility anyways
ckeledjian 22nd Feb 2010
Is not a shame, if had ever read a Randall Kennedy article, and you knew a little about computers, you would know he had no credibility, he would go pages of article blasting Windows performance without providing any numbers at all. He lived from the Microsoft hatred and apple fanboys and escandalous articles bashing windows. Every time I would read one of his articles my blood would boil at how blatantly he lied and how biased he was. Now is over, he is no longer credible and he'll have no job, unless he uses again another pseudonym and in a few years we see another expose like this.
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"The greatest trick the Devil Mountain ever pulled...
Edward R. Murrow 22nd Feb 2010
...was convincing the world that Craig Barth existed. And like that, *poof*, he's gone. Underground. Nobody's ever seen him since. He becomes a myth -- a spook story that project managers tell their developers at night: 'Don't fix those bugs, and Craig Barth will test your software.'" -- Keizer Soze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnGo6Qm0Wt8
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Great Read... hope a former mgr sees what I was...
c79ram 6th Mar 2010
talking about. He made mention of both names to me and pointed me to a few of his articles and I, put in a nice way to him, told him he was crazy to believe some of the things Kennedy/Barth stated. Yeah, some of them had a little ground but no solid proof.

Now if indeed his software was collecting more data than it should (most likely) he could have some companies by the balls if it were install. So that being said ZDnet Tech really might not hear back from Morgan Stanley.
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Totally Agree
darrell.penning@... 26th Feb 2010
A fascinating read, well researched, really shows what ZDNet can deliver when it is on form.
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RE: Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)
spuwho 5th May 2010
This is a late post, but I kind of find it funny that people are just now figuring this out. Right after RCK announced his Clarity Suite on InfoWorld years ago, I checked out Devil Mountain right away as it sounded like the CSA product. I simply tracked down the WHOIS on the Devil Mountain DNS entry and found that it traced back to RCK's house outside Tampa.

On the second point, anyone who thinks InfoWorld, ComputerWorld or Network World has any kind of special journalistic integrity has been keeping their head in the sand or just uninformed.

Gibson pushing SpinRite in his IW columns for years, Johna Johnson pushing Nemertes in NW. How did you think you got these issues for free? Did you think that ads paid for everything? IDG's free rags are free because they print semi-ad press releases, allow "editors" that own and maintain ongoing firms.

Why RCK went to great lengths to conceal himself is unknown, but I can say it had nothing to do with any desire for some higher journalistic purpose. The Clarity Suite does expose some MS shortcomings and RCK has found his niche in exposing them. However he is no more the leach than the Windows Secrets man Livingston. He used his "Secrets" column to solicit enough free material from people to write two books and fund a website. Bet you can't find many columns where he didn't give a copy away, a little promotion i would say.

Christine Comaford probably beat them all, but perhaps these research writers can check her out on their own.

In summary, RCK is just one of many in the IT space who have to go to odd measures to maintain visibility for some balm they are selling. Been happening for years, someone just woke up!
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Contributr
Wow. Just, wow.
zwhittaker 21st Feb 2010
nt.
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RE: Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)
iAbhishek 21st Feb 2010
Wow...it felt like reading a mystery story!
Larry, you and your guys may try for a career in sleuthing if and when next recession occurs wink
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RE: Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)
guildwarsguy123 31st Dec 2010
@iAbhishek Next recession? Let's worry about the current one first.
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Enough with the Microsoft hate disease
honeymonster 21st Feb 2010
Randall C Kennedy is but one seriously deranged persona.
Infoworld were all for his rabid ramblings as long as
they generated page hits.

They should take a look at Gregg Keizer as well. How come
he was frequently the one to "report" from the "friends"
at xpnet?
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What's strange
markbn Updated - 21st Feb 2010
is that his (latest) blog posts, don't seem to be anti-MS really, but quite the contrary.

another person to take a look at is Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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Randal C Kennedy, Gregg Keizer
honeymonster Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
EDIT: My apologies for including Steven J.
Vaughan-Nichols with the above.

He was not anti-MS? He tried all he could to do
a Vista on Windows 7:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/7-deadly-
sins-windows-7-036?source=fssr

http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/test-center-
benchmarks-windows-7-unmasked-543

http://www.cio.com/article/481526/Opinion_Micro
soft_Should_Stop_Cutting_Corners_with_Windows_7
?page=1&taxonomyId=3081

http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-7-
rtm-revenge-windows-vista-356?page=0,2

RCK was all over the Windows 7 launch, trying
to derail it Vista-style.

Yes, his pals should be look at accordingly.
Gregg Keizer is either in on the scam, or
unfathomable naive. Reading his pieces he does
have an argument that it is "just" the latter.
That guy will gobble up anything he can use to
portrait Microsoft in a bad light.

Strike that - he seems to just post anything
which will generate controversy.

  • Flagged
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Contributr
Unfair
Ed Bott Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
I believe Gregg Keizer was duped and was too eager to accept a story without checking his sources.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is an honest analyst. We often disagree, but he doesn't deserve to be mentioned in this list. You owe him an apology.
  • Flagged
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I agree with you Ed
Info-Dave 22nd Feb 2010
It's sad that people want to drag Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols into this conversation.
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Point taken. My apologies to SJVN
honeymonster Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
Going over his blog I can see you are right. As
I
said, he makes no attempt at hiding his
preferences, but even so his reporting
does
seem to be honest.

My apologies to SJVN.


But what bothers me now is what both Paul
Thurott *and* RCK are now implying: That
Computerworld's editor knew all along about
this alter persona, but chose to look the other
way because the controversies generate
pagehits and thus advertising revenue.

If it was just RCK we could now dismiss it, as
he is a proven liar. But an article on
InfoWorld (written by Knorr IIRC) does connect
RCK directly to Devil Mountain Software. So did
InfoWorld know about these sock puppets but
chose to remain silent because it generated
page hits?

This seems to be backed up by Paul Thurott who
recall that he had contacted InfoWorld about
the (technical) honesty and integrity of RCK.
He was shown the door with reference to the
number of page hits.
  • Flagged
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Now that you've made nice with SJVN,....
Lester Young 22nd Feb 2010
...I'm going to muck things up. There was one post in particular where I thought he was, at best, feckless and uninformed, or at worst, disingenuous. In that post he was writing about the "inherent" problem of Windows security being "single user heritage" and how it was not addressed by Vista/7. It turned out he was writing about an issue specific to XP and before, which was addressed by the implementation of MILs. I was a little taken aback that someone in his position would state such a falsehood. In fairness, though, some XP boosters also blur that difference while touting XP as more secure than it really is.

Sorry, no link right now.
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OK
markbn 22nd Feb 2010
But to be honest, I had never read his column.
Nonetheless, a cursory view at the titles of his
latest blog posts didn't make me think about any
anti-MS bias (looked more as anti-Apple bias), but
I guess you are right

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Although unethical and wrong...
Socratesfoot Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
When a company does try to compete with Microsoft, they are copied, bought out, or crushed. then buried in legal red tape. Two wrongs don't make a right...Yet, the public forgets (again and again) the moral indiscretions of Microsoft and go right back to dumping their money into Windows OS. Although unethical and wrong, I suppose some would figure they were doing the world a favor by falsely dis-crediting Microsoft. Maybe even beating them at their own game. They are so big and so arrogant that in the end you can't function without them. In that regards, they are a monopoly...and the government won't do anything about it. They sow what the reap and have lowered the ethical standards for everyone in general.

Think about every "feature" Microsoft has ever offered, every time a company comes up with something really revolutionary MS copies it and then uses its size to crush them out of the market. One day Microsoft will be the only OS left, then nothing will be free, licensing will be insane, there will be no new features offered on any product. You call it fraud, I call it Karma.

While I respect the effort and the sleuthing, I wonder if ZDNET would have put so much effort into dis-crediting a Microsoft fan boy making similar false accusations about Linux in the same manner. Maybe, maybe not. But I suspect they wouldn't. I'm not saying they should turn the other way, but maybe I would find their efforts more heroic if they weren't so obviously pro-Microsoft.
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you had me after "unethical and wrong"
rtk 22nd Feb 2010
the rest is an excuse, leave it off.

And just a little FYI. "big blue" is IBM, not MS.
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You don't think similar things go on at MS
Socratesfoot Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
I find it hard to believe MS isn't stacking the deck similarly when before every new software release even makes it out of alpha every blog and news site screams its praise. Even vista...They have also marketed software that did not perform as advertised and was insecure...they have misrepresented and re-branded products as well. Ms Search v. Bing, Windows Anti-Virus v. Windows Defender...

The only difference here was this guy got caught because he lacked the money or resources to hide what he was doing or spin it in a positive light. Even then, it took years.

Again, I'm not saying it was right, I just can't get that excited about it.

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In Vista's defence ...
de-void-21165590650301806002836337787023 Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
... other than a few minor perf glitches around RTM that were resolved by improved drivers that shipped shortly afterwards, I didn't experience any major perf problems, stability problems or app compat issues. Nor have the many thousands of Vista users I have known and spoken to over the last few years.

Don't get me wrong - while I liked Vista, I did think it was not all it could have been, but it was NOT as bad as some will have you believe.

Why did I not see the issues? I ALWAYS reinstall Windows the way I want it (C: partitioned to 40GB, D: gets the rest - all user data on D:) and I do not install crapware unless I absolutely have to.

The one time I did experience issues with Vista was when my father in law came to visit and brought his brand new, retail-purchased Sony Vaio laptop with him.

The machine had more than enough horsepower to make Vista sing, but it ran like a dog with no legs and continually crashed and BSOD once a day.

After reinstalling Windows from scratch, my Father In Law was astonished to see how fast, problem free and usable his laptop was once more.

The culprit? Well, there were many, but the trial copy of Norton AV that was preinstalled along with the McAffee suite that was also installed, along with a mountain of Adobe crapware that loaded several task-tray applets and several other pointless and useless startup apps all drove the machine's perf into the ground.

Sony should have been ashamed of themselves. My experience with this box was almost identical to Ed Bott's experience that he wrote up in a couple of posts after RTM:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=429

Other than that, the VAST majority of Vista issues I've seen reported are almost all on OEM OS builds. This is not something that MS has ever had any control over: MS passes the RTM build of a new OS over to the OEM and they customize it and install it along with whatever machine-specific drivers they need on their hardware.

Alas, the OEM's got it HORRIBLY wrong around Vista RTM.

SP1 fixed a few small issues in Vista, but BY FAR, the biggest improvements came from updated drivers & software from the likes of AMD, nVidia, Intel, Marvell and others.

---
Regarding Kennedy's actions: He perpetrated a fraud: He published analysis purported to be from a 3rd party which had gathered data that did not contain PII which was transported over HTTPS from data gatherers running on customers' computers.

1) The company wasn't just Kennedy's - it WAS Kennedy.
2) Kennedy did not disclaim his involvement with said company.
3) The data DID contain PII which he used to publish an ARSTechnica contriubutor's machine-specific data ... without that contributor's permission.
4) The data was not transported in an encrypted manner - it was simply passed via HTTP.
5) The customers Kennedy named (without their permission) stated that they were not customers of his nor his company's.
6) He admitted to all this.

Whichever way you slice or dice this, he's made one hell of an almighty ****-up that was several years in the making.

Which part of this do you NOT understand?
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One big difference...
Cayble 22nd Feb 2010
You say you wonder if as much effort would have been put into discrediting a Microsoft fan boy making similar false accusations. Thats a very odd thing to say.

It implies that most of what you see is MS getting a pass on their poor behavior. From what I see, nothing would be less likely considering the bad press MS has gotten in recent years.

The EU has been doing nothing but crapping on them, Apple has a long running ad campaign thats designed to make MS, Windows and Windows users look like jerks and a very high percentage of readers and writers around here who are pro Apple or pro Linux waste no time in railing against MS for the slightest indiscretion. In the end, I don't think you would have had much difficulty finding some heavy criticism in a number of locations around ZDNet if Microsoft or anyone pro Microsoft had of tried to pull something like this. It would have meant a nasty pasting for MS many times over I am sure.
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I disagree...in fairness
Socratesfoot Updated - 22nd Feb 2010
Not to get too much off topic...

But while the EU has gone after Microsoft, the US has not. Furthermore the reasons for going after them were quite obviously about extorting fines and concessions, not making real changes in the behavior of the company. If anything Europe made Microsoft look like the victim in that whole thing. While I'm glad to see Apple actually advertising (this wasn't always the case) I would hardly call their one successful ad campaign "ever" a smear campaign. As for the comments, the pro Mac/Linux arguments are primarily in forum from users, not ZDNET articles and are in response to the obviously skewed MS perspective. The articles that are pro Mac/Linux are usually link backs to CNET.

I was just saying...it's hard to feel bad when the 9th graders steal lunch money from the playground bully.
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Except, the US did go after MS
rtk 22nd Feb 2010
google "United States v. Microsoft".

Big case, surprised you missed it.
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United States v. Microsoft?
Socratesfoot 22nd Feb 2010
They once took MS to court asking they split the browser from the OS, when Microsoft said, "We can't, they're impossible to separate." ...the US said, "Oh, gosh..Alright y, guess there is nothing we can do then! Just share your API with the other browser manufacturers so they can use it too."

How does that in any way count as the US taking a hard stand against Microsoft's bad business practices?

Anyway, won't let me reply and it is off topic, I'll drop it.
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Here ya go.
Lester Young 22nd Feb 2010
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=30886&tag=col1;post-30886

It wasn't the most competent effort but he sure tried, and it does show that there are anti-Microsoft rants sponsored by ZDNET.
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The U.S. is not the E.U.
xuniL_z 22nd Feb 2010
And I for one am definately glad for it.
Although B.O.'s AT team has stated they want to align U.S. antitrust with Europe.
Great, the socialists are in charge. Big difference is they are watching Google and Apple now, not Microsoft. that's per a quote from the head of the AT dept., a Ms. Varney.

As for Apple and ad campaigns. Their "They come in colors" campaign in the 90s using of course a classic Rolling Stones song, was considered successful. Although many have stated that if MS had pulled the plug on MS Office for Mac at that very low point, they would have lost their enterprise customers and collapsed. Game over.
There are other reasons Apple succeed when they did, because of licensing MS software, such as Applesoft basic that came burned in on the Apple II series.

I think the Apple ads are a smear campaign. It started in 1996 or so when Steve Jobs spent an hour of WWDC on Vista bashing, bringing out engineers to talk about how Vista was awful and the like. He knew Apple's only chance was to not allow another generation of MS Windows go out as usual. It was pure luck for Apple that the driver fiasco occurred, but a great OS was born then and now Windows 7 is a great OS with security beyond OS X for certain and even beyond Linux.

As for the AT case against MS. They did pull the browser out, the OS didn't work and the DOJ ordered them to put it back.
The reason they only got major oversight (you realize they've had a lot of software products shelved because the DOJ would not allow them to go out since 1999, right?)
But there was no real crime that was covered by the Sherman Act. The judge assigned, who ended up not being fit for the bench and the appellate court saying he should have recused himself immediately after reporting huge bias against MS to the press during the trial...now there is a good Federal Judge. NOT.
But the appellate court found like the DOJ had many times before that the crime was not as severe as the remedies Jackson had intended on using and overturned most all of it.
The appellate court, being the higher court did the right thing.
There was never a case to begin with really until Jackson created the x86 only PC market, which excluded Apple and Sun and apparently IBM somehow??
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I'd love to hear it, xuniL_z.
AzuMao 22nd Feb 2010
I've heard some MS apologists downplay the insecurities of Windows, but you actually have some kind of reason to claim that the situation has completely reversed and Windows is now more secure than other OSs? I'm all ears.
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Windows 7 security.
xuniL_z 23rd Feb 2010
The defenses in depth approach has been very successful.
Windows 7 has much better anti memory corruption and anti-exploit features in general.
OS X is quite secure in it's unix underpinnings and full posix compliance lends to a more secure system. Linux is partially posix compliant. but in today's environment that is not necessarily all that helpful.
Sandboxing doesn't equate to secure, and is just another layer of defense.

All in all, Windows 7 has the more technologically sophisticated security to face the security challenges of this millenium.
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@xuniL_z
914four 23rd Feb 2010
"It started in 1996 or so when Steve Jobs spent an hour of WWDC on Vista bashing, bringing out engineers to talk about how Vista was awful and the like."

Funny, I beta tested various versions of Windows and NT up to W2k in the late 90ies and never got the Vista beta until late 2005. I wonder how Jobs got his that far back?
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@xuniL_z So Windows 7 has something more secure than..
AzuMao 23rd Feb 2010
..SELinux?

Or do you mean it has a bunch of weak defenses that when added up together supposedly amount to more?

Details please.
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@914four He used Apple's Time Machine, duh!
AzuMao 23rd Feb 2010
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9144
xuniL_z 23rd Feb 2010
As much as I don't feel smileys and so forth need to be used a lot, you really should have used one to acknowledge your joke on my obvious mistake.
good catch though, you were paying attention.
Actually wasn't that the year SJ came back. He was probably complaining about Windows 95 at some various forum, so I it may have been partially correct as it stood.
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Azumao.....about SELinux
xuniL_z 24th Feb 2010
SELinux was a NSA project.

NSA assisted Microsoft with Windows 7 security and windows already had some of the concepts added to Linux via the SE program.

So what next?
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Key word..
AzuMao 24th Feb 2010
.."some".
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Another few key words: already and before
xuniL_z 26th Feb 2010
In other words, Windows had enhanced security built in before NSA got involved, measures which Linux did not have before the NSA projects to enhance it's security.
So my statement of "some", was obviously before NSA involvement and now Windows 7 is as secure, and probably moreso than Linux based systems that implement the NSA security.

Good try at spinning what I said though.
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Such as?
AzuMao 26th Feb 2010
There's not really much else to do against vague, generalized, abstract claims.

You still haven't answered my original request for details.

Is it that you're just making this all up, and therefor incapable of providing any?
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What I think is funny...
Cobra7fac 22nd Feb 2010
When a company does try to compete with Microsoft, they are copied, bought out, or crushed. then buried in legal red tape. Two wrongs don't make a right...Yet, the public forgets (again and again) the moral indiscretions of Microsoft and go right back to dumping their money into Windows OS

Everyone acts as if MS is the worst and only evil company out there. Lets take a quick look at some past companies.

-Automotive, the big American 3 pushing out tons of auto makers in the early 20th century. After all almost all cars look the same now and the differences are mostly just looks and preference.

-Airlines, remember the major price wars in the 80's? The big airlines dropped prices so low and took financial hits to run the smaller independent airlines out of business. Then went running to the government asking for money because they were loosing so much (late 80's early 90's if I recall).

-Oil, Take a look at Standard Oil on Wikipedia. Using highly effective tactics, later widely criticized, it absorbed or destroyed most of its competition in Cleveland in less than two months in 1872 and later throughout the northeastern United States.

-Software, Look at VMware. Want to talk about crooked companies? They partner up with 3rd party vendors to help sell ESX and then develop the same thing in a couple years. of course this company flies under the radar because they mostly sell to companies. Funny thing is MS/Citrix are seen as the good guys here because they give Hyper-V/XenServer away for free while VMware charges a crap load of money.

-Paintball, Look at Smartparts. Going around sueing competitors out of business and forcing others to raise prices.

-Financial, Bailout anyone?

Point of all this is, MS may be Evil, but no more evil than most corporations.
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Every time there's a knight in shining armor....
Lester Young 22nd Feb 2010
....coming to slay the MS dragon, they don't look so good up close. That contributes to Microsoft's dominance as much as anything.
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No more than Google is
Cylon Centurion 22nd Feb 2010
NT
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You're right!
Socratesfoot 23rd Feb 2010
We have several companies in the US that need to be systematically broken up to prevent what is essentially becoming a series of monopolies in every sector of the economy. It would prevent them from being too big to fail, it would create jobs, it would possibly even eliminate the constant bickering over patent law, and most of all it would send a message. The answer is not to tolerate Ms because everyone else does it too; everyone else does it because companies like MS have lowered ethical standards. We need to step in and stop the pattern.
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Awesome Retoric on the Devil himself; Microsoft!
i2fun@... 24th Feb 2010
I'm suspect of any web site that presents itself as a
crusader of good and truth yet so vehemently defends
a company that has been exposed as a diabolically run
corporation itself. With internal memos being
unearthed claiming "Embrace Extend Extinguish" as
their competitive business mode of operation!

What does that say about such great efforts put forth
by ZDNET in defense of the Devil himself?

Who then are we really to trust? Isn't the messenger
then as bad as the message?

When ZDNET finally works as hard on destroying the
myths Microsoft builds up about it's competition and
their own market dominance, only then might I take
articles like this seriously. Otherwise all ZDNET
staffers are doing is exposing their own perverted
bias! wink

So long all you perverted M$ paid staff and crew.
Socratesfoot and many of us others know who pads your
biased pockets at the expense of true unbiased
competitive journalism for the public's actual good!
grin
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Journalism vs Propaganda
John Rosengarten 24th Feb 2010
Your allegation is based on your preconceptions. You assume that Microsoft is getting special treatment by ZD and its editors because you regard them as predatory in the marketplace.

In fact, journalism is about reporting the facts: what happened, who, where, when and why.

Insofar as I have observed, ZD holds all vendors at arm's length and reports the vendor's announcements and reports, as well as doing their own testing and offering real-world usage reviews.

Given that Microsoft software is pervasive and is relied upon by millions, the editors obviously going to report the products that their users are interested in.

Why else would journals for the Mac and Linux be so unprofitable... not many buy them.

As long as Windows is running most of the world, expect honest journalists and editor to feature their projects and products.
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Windows is for playing video games.
AzuMao Updated - 24th Feb 2010
For everything else, there's Linux.

It runs most of the Internet, and even TiVos, banks (including some of the biggest banks in the world), stock markets, as well as rendering
farms (for making animated movies like Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, and others do), just to name a few.

The journalists don't make as much money reporting on it because bad news sells better than good news.

PS: If you think I'm lying, here. Read them and weep.
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@ AzuMao: You're funny...
Wolfie2K3 28th Feb 2010
Oddly enough, I manage to get a fair amount of work done with Windows 7 - as well as playing games. But mostly work. And amazingly enough - I'm not alone.

While it may be true that Linux does run on quite a few servers, your average worker bee sitting in the cube farm is likely running Windows of some flavor - XP, Vista or 7.

Linux is just NOT ready for the workplace desktop. The infrastructure for Windows - i.e. update management, Active Directory and group policies, etc... just isn't available on Linux. It might not be a big deal if you've got 5 or 10 machines in an office, but if you've got 2000... Running around to all of those computers to do an update is quite time consuming.
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In that case, Linux is the only option.
AzuMao 28th Feb 2010
With Windows, you need to run around to every computer manually updating everything one at a time.
With Linux, there are these things called package managers, which keep track of (and update) everything you have installed automatically from one location.

Even upgrades to the kernel itself.
Updating Windows to a new version, on the other hand, entails losing every setting you've ever configured and reinstalling everything completely from scratch.


There's just no comparison.
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@ AzuMao: Au Contrair...
Wolfie2K3 1st Mar 2010
Ya see, there's this tool that's been around for quite some time now - currently called Windows Server Update Services (or WSUS). It's currently on version 3, SP2 - but here's a FAQ describing the 2.0 version of the product that explains what it is and what it does:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/bb466205.aspx
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RE: Why we don't trust Devil Mountain Software (and neither should you)
makrekwe71-24353633930533196355905357153626 3rd Nov
errnyy,good post!

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