Microsoft not using Windows much on critical tasks.

[gore]

Before I post this let me point out I KNOW either Tiger Shark or someone else is going to say "Well they don't work for Microsoft anymore, so they have a reason to lie".... Well, the people I know who have worked inside Microsoft, have told me quite a few things, and you know what? It's strange how they are the exact things this article mentions.

Guess when stability matters "Leave Windows alone".

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op...8opcringe.html

Ex-Microsoft employees report Unix is all around as Bobby eats lamb alone

FORMER ORACLE NO. 2 man Ray Lane has surfaced again, and Randi took great pleasure in reading an interview with him in the local paper in which he talks about how he is taking more time for his family, including a toddler and another baby on the way.

"Ray finally realized that those 18-hour workdays were interfering with his personal and spiritual growth, Bobby," Randi said to me as she packed an overnight bag with her sweet-smelling, silky clothes.

Lane has joined venture capital company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, looking to provide his operating expertise to start-up companies and to spend more time working on his golf swing.

In the interview, Lane made it clear that his own grueling work schedule as chief operating officer of Oracle was what allowed CEO Larry Ellison to live a full personal life and still be a powerful executive.

Randi was so inspired by Lane's awakening that she decided to do a retreat weekend. She left me alone and went with some girlfriends to a llama and sheep farm to learn how to handspin yarn.

In defiance, I stocked up on some lamb chops for the weekend.

Unix in Redmond:

I was going to avoid writing about Microsoft this week, but how could I resist sharing these tidbits from ex-Microsofties? These former Microsoft employees have written in to set the record straight about what's really going on behind the scenes at a few of the software giant's subsidiaries.

When Microsoft acquired Linkexchange (now bCentral), company officials tried to get rid of Oracle databases in favor of the company's own SQL Server.

"Some of the best folks from Redmond came down to make the change, but after two or three months they gave up and switched back to Oracle on Solaris, where it remains today," this reader wrote.

Another former bCentral employee says Microsoft mentions Linux in its help-wanted ads for bCentral just to lure unsuspecting enthusiasts to come work there. The OSes in place were primarily FreeBSD, BSD/OS, and Solaris. That is, until Microsoft tried to migrate more of the systems to Windows NT and 2000.

According to this source, Microsoft had to quadruple the number of servers when it moved to its own operating systems.

For the most part, according to our ex-Microsoftie, the company's money-making Web properties are all based around Unix, with Hotmail being 99 percent FreeBSD, MSN using some Apache on Solaris, bCentral ad servers on 100 percent FreeBSD, and WebTV pretty much entirely Solaris.

"Internally when Windows 2000 was announced, people were told not to even think about using it for production because it was too unstable," says this ex-Microsoftie.

So much for mature software written by professionals. It seems that, internally, Microsoft prefers the stuff "written by college kids in their basements."

"CAN YOU HEAR ME, Bobby?" Randi asked from a crackly cell-phone connection. "I'm staying for an extra day."

I took another lamb chop out of the freezer.

Interersting to say the least. Not the first time though. Remember the "We have the way out" website? It was another attack on Unix by Microsoft. The web site was running Free BSD.

[RoadClosed]

Why wouldn't they use Unix on critical high end devices. MS can't touch it. And the market reflects that.

[Tiger Shark]

Oh come now Road.... You know that statements like that aren't going to give Gore the satisfaction he was looking for... You need to contradict him... Tell him he's wrong... help him fan the flames...

[gore]

Actually I'm kind of surprised it took you so long to reply Tiger. I was waiting for how this was not true or didn't matter. Or are you just accepting that when it comes to certain work such as super computing that Windows really can't keep up or "be used justa s well as Linux"?

[Tiger Shark]

I thought about responding... But it didn't matter that much to me... So I didn't....

[gore]

You're usually one of the frst to rush in saying "Windows can do that too".

[Tiger Shark]

and I'm usually right.... Maybe I'm just bored with the whole silly argument...

[gore]

There isn't an arguement. It's an article showing how underhanded Microsoft is. They make a web site saying they have the way out of Unix.... And that was running ON Unix... And reading this over seems to indicate it's something they do quite often.

Most companies use their own products, and one arguement Microsoft gave was that you shouldn't ever tell a customer "Well the patch is coming as soon as a 13 year old in China finishes it" which is funny because apparently they are OK with it too.

[RoadClosed]

MS is a huge company. They don't just change things for the hell of it in most cases. If hotmail was built and linux why spend the resources to completely re-write it?

Not to mention they outsource a lot of ****. They wouldn't get very far if they forced everyone to use only MS products. Just like any business. Walk into an IBM shop or others and you will find windows being used at peoples workstations. For every Unix server MS has they probably have 1000 windows servers. Their email system alone has thousands.

[gore]

They NEED 1,000 Windows Servers for every Unix server You so walked into that unless you were on my side.