It is the Marketers fault!

While reading my daily doses of irrelevant information on Slashdot today, I saw that “…The UK Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints that Microsoft misled consumers by running advertisements claiming Linux is 10 times more expensive than Windows…” While they did not lied, they forgot to mention that the “independent research” used as a reference Linux running on an expensive Mainframe and Windows running on a common PC. That does not surprises me.

What really surprises me is that blame is being dumped on the marketing company and not on Microsoft. The guy that wrote the very first comment said (among other things), "…Not intended to be a flamebait, it’s not just a Microsoft problem - all marketing people are evil. Perhaps we should enact the death penalty for marketing droids?" And I beg to differ. No marketing campaign kicks on its own, without the approval of the company paying for it. Perhaps marketers suggested the low blow, but it was Microsoft ultimate decision to execute the punch.

Many others on Slashdot also blame the marketing company instead of pointing fingers at the root of the issue. And that makes me wonder… how many wolves (Microsoft followers) on sheep clothing frequently read and comment on Slashdot?