Microsoft FUD Watch

rs232 writes "Not a week goes by when Microsoft doesn't manufacture a little fear, uncertainty and doubt about something. Yesterday's financial analyst conference was full of it ... Our approach is simple: We look at who said what and why it's FUD. Lots of companies engage in FUD, and we only single out Microsoft because we're Microsoft Watch"

Re:Oh wow what a worthless site

[Wylfing]

FUD has kinda of lost all meaning

No "kinda" about it. Few people understand this term anymore. The term FUD originally indicated a specific marketing technique popularized by IBM in the 1970s and 1980s but now has been diluted to mean anything that is untrue or which has a disagreeable agenda. (I liken it to the use of "unique," which no longer means "one of a kind" but instead seems to mean "rare.")

Re:FUD?

[rbanffy]

FUD is a specific case of spin.

"Spin" is when you deliberately obfuscate or selectively reveal information in order to mislead and change the overall perceived picture. It's like "fossil-fuel consumption is good for the economy", that disregards the long-term effects of climate change on the said economy.

"FUD" is more targeted in that it aims to create doubts about your competitors and to misrepresent your ability to deal with said competition - and to manipulate the market into delaying investiments because your "next product" due "real soon now" will blow the competition away. It's like the announcement of the horrible Windows for Pen Computing (designed to hurt the emerging class of Newton and Momenta-like devices, both more functional than MS's product), when Ray Ozzie states "I believe we're the only company with the platform DNA that's necessarily to viably deliver this highly leveragable platform approach to services." ignoring both Apple and Google in a nauseatingly convoluted statement or when Ballmer says something like "Linux violates 2781.36 patents we will disclose shortly and that we may want to seek compensation for the violations" and then falls into silence never to disclose them.

Re:FUD?

[jez9999]

I'd bet that's not from a C# book. It's from a C# with .NET book, one of the 99% C# books on the market. If you just want to learn the C# language, though, I highly recommend C# Essentials [amazon.com]. It cuts out pretty much all the .NET crap that consumes 95% of those 1000+ page books, and explains clearly the C# language in a concise way, using about as much space as The C Programming Language - just my style.

For .NET, just use online MSDN documentation. Much quicker and easier that way.