Slashdot Mirror
Tales From Behind Microsoft's Firewall
lizzyben writes "CIOinsight.com is hosting an interview with Robert Scoble on life after Microsoft. 'By blogging for the world's largest software company, Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world and became an industry celebrity in the process.' He talks about MS culture, senior management and the benefits of blogging from inside the belly of the software beast." More from the article: "We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, 'What's going on?' And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."
Is anyone else thinking 'gee, maybe contacting people who are writing that they hate Microsoft aren't exactly feeling BETTER that they got contacted about it too?' Just remember, Big Brother IS watching and is scouring the net for you - whew, I'm glad they cleared that up to make me feel better!
If only they would confine their bullshit to their own blogs. They are famous for astroturfing other sites too. One of the earliest recorded attacks is Steve Barkto against OS/2. A famous and court proved case is the attack on DRDOS, where they made sure Win3.1 would not run on DRDOS and then spammed compuserve message groups with posts that blamed DRDOS. The pattern is repeated again and again with various permutations. Hiring a firm to fake letters to Congress, the Apple Switcher, and so on and so forth.
Of course their apologists swarm here too. There's always someone out there promoting M$ junk as "teh best evar" and we can be sure they are using every available trick to game Slashdot's moderation system. While I can't be sure some M$ PR firm is behind it, I am sure that there's at least one person dedicating a significant amount of their life harassing me personally. Here are just a few of the accounts they have set up or purchased:
Thier effort goes beyond the usual fanboy stuff. For about a year the attacks have been personal and nasty, as all Microsoft's name calling generally is. They even took the attack to my local LUG, which promptly dismissed their efforts. All this over a Slashdot user? Clearly, Microsoft is running scared.
Bruce Perens warned us the attack would come. As they noted in their 1998 Halloween document, free software is not a company they can destroy, it's a community they must destroy. How else can they do that but massively spam every free software group in existence?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've seen a lot of attention from you too, dedazo and expect more now after outing your other sock puppet accounts. Eight of your last eleven posts have been dedicated to harassing twitter. Don't you have anything better to do?
All with the same talking points and language as the other troll accounts. Fuck off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.