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Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud
A few days ago, we ran word of a report alleging that Windows 7 consumed more memory than it should, based on a report from Devil Mountain Software; a followup post linked to Ars Technica's robust deconstruction of that claim. Now the story gets weird: Fred Flowers writes The original story quoted the company's CTO, Craig Barth on the issue. Now, InfoWorld editor in chief Eric Knorr has still more to add. From Knorr's blog at InfoWorld.com: 'On Friday, Feb. 19, we discovered that one of our contributors, Randall C. Kennedy, had been misrepresenting himself to other media organizations as Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software (aka exo.performance.network), in interviews for a number of stories regarding Windows and other Microsoft software topics. ... There is no Craig Barth.' Knorr's post goes on to say that Kennedy has been fired from his blogging gig at InfoWorld over this 'serious breach of trust,' and that his blog will be removed."
Even with all the real things you can slam Microsoft for, some people feel the need to make things up. Reminds me of that pre-Vista paper by that (I think) NZ guy that was full of stuff that even then people who had the RC knew to be false. Sensational things get page views I guess.
?
I wonder what his motivation for lying like about it was.
from what it looks like. Rather, it was about the identity of the blogger. It looks like he was a paid blogger for InfoWorld and a Windows performance analyst at the same time, and wrote the Windows memory consumption post under a pseudonym without disclosing the relationship to InfoWorld. It doesn't mean the memory consumption article's contents are faked or wrong. Its conclusions are disputed, but that's a a separate issue. The issue is disclosure of its authorship.
... just had a memory problem of his own?
Was he also CEO of Jukt Micronics?
ZDNet, an InfoWorld competitor, was about to go public with an exposé on Randall C. Kennedy and Devil Mountain Software, but InfoWorld actually beat it to the punch by disclosing the matter itself.
InfoWorld's editor in chief, Eric Knorr, should be commended for dealing this matter quickly and decisively when he discovered Mr. Kennedy's deception. At the same time, he should think very carefully about the series of decisions that led to this outcome.
Randall C. Kennedy was an InfoWorld blogger known for his outrageous, inflammatory posts. Often these posts appeared to disregard the facts, overinflate the issues, or otherwise ignore the tenets of basic journalism in favor of sensationalism and manufactured furor. Doubtless InfoWorld appreciated the traffic such posts drove to its site. What it should have realized, however, was that beyond contributing to InfoWorld's success, Mr. Kennedy had a personal incentive for generating that traffic: promoting his own company, Devil Mountain Software. With that as his motive, he had far less incentive to consider InfoWorld's journalistic integrity when crafting his blog posts. Preserving that integrity was the job of InfoWorld's editorial staff. They failed to do so.
Compounding the issue is InfoWorld's decision to partner with Mr. Kennedy on the "Windows Sentinel" project, InfoWorld's in-house branded version of Devil Mountain Software's exo.performance.network Windows monitoring product. The original post announcing Windows Sentinel is currently hidden behind a password, but the Google cache clearly shows that InfoWorld was aware that Mr. Kennedy was behind Devil Mountain Software all along:
Today, I'm happy to announce the beta version of InfoWorld Windows Sentinel, a joint project with the exo.performance.network founded by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Randall C. Kennedy. ... According to Randall, the main point is "to develop a more concise picture of the Windows computing landscape.
InfoWorld's editorial staff should have seen that allowing a contributor to use InfoWorld's brand to promote his own company's products and/or services constituted a conflict of interest at best, and at worst, a serious breach of InfoWorld's responsibility to provide truthful, unbiased reporting to its readers.
InfoWorld needs to think very carefully about how to proceed in future if it hopes to recover its integrity after this incident. In an age where publications are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their power to drive revenue, it is more important than ever that editors take a stand for the paramount importance of high-quality, thorough, accurate reporting and editorials, untainted by financial interests or the pursuit of personal gain. InfoWorld stumbled by continuing to support Randall C. Kennedy when it should have, at the very least, questioned his judgment. It can and must do better.
I upgraded from XP to Windows 7 and I like it. Everything seems to install/load/work a lot faster. It was pretty cool for $120 that I got both 32 and 64-bit versions.
While I have never considered InfoWorld the pinnacle of journalism nor anything more than a regurgitation machine, I say good for them.
It takes balls to publicly retract something like this.
However, the 'damage' to InfoWorld's 'credibility' with Mr. Kennedy as a contributor/blogger is immense. They washed their hands of him faster than a John squirting himself with hand sanitizer after a nasty romp with a meth-induced hooker.
I am somewhat mystified how Mr. Kennedy thought that spreading FUD would actually help his career. Interesting tact..
According to the linked reports (both those in the summary and this one at ZDNet- http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31024) the only reporter for InfoWorld who "Barth" was quoted by was Gregg Keizer. This raises a question: Did Keizer know about this deception? And if not, how did he get contacted by Barth initially? It is possible the Keizer was deceived but some sort of answer would be nice.
Seems like the guy thought it was just a white lie.
I'd guess this guy's never done academic research. The profs in my school days would go mega fundy when it came anywhere near the notion of research integrity. They took crap on our GPAs every nown and then to make examples, and burned the notion into our heads.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
And what about Ballmer/MS saying don't use linux because they violate 200 patents? All sorts of people have asked which patents, a simple question to answer, so if they are valid it can be fixed, yet from MS..crickets. One blog post versus the head guy of Microsoft spreading stories? How much have all the various Linux companies and Linux professionals all over the planet been hurt by his statements, and by MS actions over the years?
I'm not defending this blogger at all, far from it, that was a shitty thing to do, but let's put this whole thing into some perspective. MS has been the big bully for years and years and years, they got to where they are now by some pretty questionable behavior, behavior that has not ever stopped, despite even governments getting on their case about it.
We wouldn't even be reading about this blogger if these governments had done what needed doing years ago, bust that company up, shake them up hard so they stop being so "ethically challenged".
We used to use him to cobble up sales plans. He'd do some performance reports under a pseudonym, quote these fake 3rd parties in a report, then we'd produce a whole range of sales materials quoting all these 'different' sources and the roll up.
Took the analysts about a year to figure out that it was just one guy. Which was fine because the guy was hard to handle. He was like a teenager. When we fired him, he turned into a big problem.
... because I can troll^wblog with the best of them :-)
So Slashdot posted a second hand story from another site with a (potentially) misleading headline, without checking the facts, because it would drive traffic? And now they've had a letter from a lawyer? Big surprise. I'd be proud to get banned for this post.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Hope microsoft sues him.
Keizer's personal take on the situation can be read here.
I wonder if Slashdot will follow up on the anti-adobe fake-flash-developer cant-handle-mobile-development-becuase-there-are-no-roll-overs troll that's further down? Yeah unlikely.
meep
Letter from a lawyer? What?
This space for rent.
Give it up already. Vista's a goner. Put him on the cart. Let it go man, cuz it's gone. Requiem. R.I.P. Hasta la Vista baby. Well, bye.
If you must, keep an install CD in your bedroom and take it out and fondle it on those lonely nights when you're sobbing in your beer thinking of what might have been. But for God's Sake, leave the rest of us alone about it. You're embarassing yourself. It's awkward.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Mate welcome to the 21st century, linux Without X uses more than 256 MB depending on driver load, forget X plus gnome or KDE and compiz and all the stuff it takes to look shiny like Windows.
Were you needing that memory for something else and when you did, did Windows 7 not give it up immediately?
I see these sorts of posts all the time and wonder what exactly it is that all these people want unused RAM for. I payed for it. I want it in use dammit! And unless you're on a notebook there is no reason to not have 4-8GB of RAM. Even DDR3 RAM is now less than $20 a gig. So what you're saying is no OS should use more than $5 of RAM?
That guy was behind a lot of anti-Vista FUD, especially stuff that was reported here on Slashdot.
Some samples here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/1710245
Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance
Researchers from the Devil Mountain Software group is claiming that a series of in-house benchmark tests showed that users hoping to receive a speed boost from the update will be disappointed.
"Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a "barn burner" -- dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory -- to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut. 'One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn't make a difference,' said [CTO Craig] Barth. 'SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.'"
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/18/2016228.shtml
One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?
"More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/02/1418252
IE8 Beta 2 Fatter Than Firefox and XP
"Consuming twice as much RAM as Firefox and saturating the CPU with nearly six times as many execution threads, Microsoft's latest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 is in fact more demanding on your PC than Windows XP itself, research firm Devil Mountain Software found in performance tests. According to the firm, which operates a community-based testing network, IE8 Beta 2 consumed 380MB of RAM and spawned 171 concurrent threads during a multi-tab browsing test of popular Web destinations. InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy speculates that Microsoft may be designing IE8 for the multicore future. But until your machine sports four or eight discrete processing cores, IE8 will remain 'porcine,' Devil Mountain's Craig Barth says."
This space for rent.
But.... Windows 7 does seem to use too much memory, not as much as the O.P. claimed, perhaps, but more than Windows XP used. My system rapidly ramps up to the 75 to 80% level, which is a bit surprising. I installed 32-bit Windows 7, whereas I see most of the commercial offerings are the 64-bit version. The latter can utilize more than 3GB of memory, and arguably, may be happier with smaller amounts of ram than 32-bit installs.
Slashdot mods were probably like "OH GOD! FINALLY! An article saying something BAD about Windows 7! MUST. PUBLISH!"
Now they're trying to pretend he didn't exist!
I have done what I believe to be identical installations on exact same hardware and in some cases Windows 7 consumes ALL of the memory all of the time and sometimes it doesn't. It's a mystery to me. I don't know what else to say. I realize that to Microsoft problems aren't problems unless they say they are problems.... but I really think there is some kind of problem here.
GP is probably another Randall Kennedy sock puppet.
If you actually read the story in question on Slashdot, you'll see everyone point out what an idiot whoever put the story up is and explain that the whole point of memory is that you use close to 100% of it since every byte you use makes things go faster. It's been this way for years. kdawson et al's anti-MS biases get on the front page, and everyone kicks them down (unless they're justified).
Oh, what a POS!
At some point, I am going to have to "upgrade" from XP to 7, and I am not looking forward to it. Superfetch is just not practical for coexistence heavy hitter video,/graphics/sound applications.
If it weren't for Rhino3d, and a handful of games, I'd dump Windows entirely.
Linux never uses a bit of VM unless you need it.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
"original nintendo"
I'm sure that NES is what you really meant, pronounced "Any Ess". Use the right words and maybe people wouldn't get confused.
Video game are serious business, I mean this is Slashdot after all.
see these sorts of posts all the time and wonder what exactly it is that all these people want unused RAM for.
Numerical simulations, animation. I wanted to run a 256^3 sized grid reaction-diffusion simulation. That would required around 128^3 x (2 channels) x (2 grids) x (4 bytes) ~ 60 Mbytes. I try malloc and then mmap, but each were extremely slow due to the freeing up of memory (particularly system buffers). So I resorted to using the graphics card instead (you want 32 Mbytes for a single four channel 32-bit floating-point texture? Sure, no problem, here you go...)
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
UAC is quite different from su / sudo.
Windows NT has always supports the notion of "root" level (aka "Administrator") accounts and standard or limited user accounts. It has also long supported "runas" - the equivalent of sudo. The purpose of that is to allow a standard user to run a program in the context of another user, generally an Administrator, on the same desktop.
UAC, on the other hand, could be called the opposite of "sudo." Instead of running specific processes as a more privileged user, it allows an Administrator to run processes as a LESS privileged user, with varying privilege levels. Technically, Windows has also supported something like this in the past via Discretionary Access Control mechanisms and custom security tokens. UAC brings several additional pieces to the table such as: Mandatory Access Control, more direct user/system control over this behavior, and various bits of supporting infrastructure to make it both more secure (i.e. UIPI) and more compatible with existing programs (File System and Registry virtualization, for example).
UAC also allows programs such as IE and Chrome to run at below-standard privilege levels ("protected mode" or "sandbox" mode), enables secure consent prompts for elevation (more convenient and often more secure versus credential prompts which are vulnerable to spoofing attacks), and more.
So no, UAC is not a ripoff of sudo.
If you paid for a 1.5TB HD, would you fill it up completely when you got it?
Sure, it's not quite the same, but seriously, what is the use of filling it up with things Windows *thinks* you might use? It's a waste of HD access to preload what you don't end up using.
Disabling Superfetch on Vista/7 made my computer MUCH faster. I'm inclined to believe that disabling the rest of this preloading mumbo-jumbo -- even on other OSes like GNU/Linux -- will speed that up as well, because I only load what is needed and LEAVE MY RAM FREE TO ONLY HOLD WHAT I WANT AND NEED IT TO.
It's a damn shame this guy got canned because he dared speak the truth about this braindead approach to memory use. If I was any more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that Microsoft paid to shut him up.
AC because everyone will disagree with me just like they disagreed with this guy, and mod me down to below nothing.
Moderators don't publish/edit.
So what you're saying is no OS should use more than $5 of RAM?
I insist that it run on my 1981 vintage PC. I paid good bucks for that 64kbyte upgrade, I want to use it.
Sure am glad I have a gas guzzler. I paid for that full tank of gas I want to use it.
Tell me again why vista/win7 is supperior to XP? Just because vista/win7 consume more system resources does not mean the end user gets anything out of it.
Seems to me people are sending their money to Redmond for no good reason.
Now go ahead an tell me I'm a luddite because I don't buy everything that msft shills tell me to buy.
And unless you're on a notebook there is no reason to not have 4-8GB of RAM.
Notebooks have been outselling desktops for a few years now. Desktops are now the minority of computers. Also, 4+ GB of RAM isn't possible under windows unless A: running a 64 bit variant, and B: your system provider hasn't cheaped out and has actually updated the BIOS to support it. Considering how useless Vista 64 was, that essentially limits you to computers designed recently and bought in the last year. (or any OSX or Linux variant for a long time now, but that's another argument).
The 4GB RAM ceiling hasn't been smashed for that long. It will take time to adopt.
The ______ Agenda
Do not critizise Vista 7 *cough* Windows 7 or Microsoft will eat your soul, get you fired and send lawyers at you.
HTTP/1.1 400
XP was just very passive with it. More or less, when you quit an app in XP it treated the RAM similar to HD space: It marked it as free, but didn't remove any data. If you subsequently loaded the same app and the data was still there, it was much faster since it wasn't read back from disk. Now none of this showed up in the RAM meter in XP, it showed the memory as free, not noting that some of it was a cache.
In Vista and 7, this process is more obvious, and aggressive. For one, it'll tell you about the cache. It tells you the total RAM, RAM allocated, RAM used for cached, RAM available for use to programs, and RAM currently unused. So you can see a system with only 500MB of RAM "free" but 6.5GB "available". That just means that there is 500MB of RAM for which Windows has found no use at all at this point, but there is 6.5GB total it could give to programs, should it be needed. Also, they are more intelligent about what goes in RAM, watching which programs are loaded frequently and having part or all of those ready to go, rather than just what was run last.
Vista was a little less clear about RAM availability and more aggressive with caching than 7, but the basic operation is the same.
As long as it can run Putty, I am perfectly fine with whatever junk they decide to produce.
Got Code?
This didn't raise any red flags for anyone? If that doesn't sound like a shill I'm not sure what does.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
Sure am glad I have a gas guzzler. I paid for that full tank of gas I want to use it.
Wow. An ill-thought car analogy on /. Thought I'd never see the day.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Combine this with the fact that the guy is already very comfortable using a pseudonym then I heartily recommend him for the post of Slashdot editor!
Here is my recount:
Last Saturday I finally upgraded my PC. Nothing too fancy - i3, decent MSI motherboard, 4 gigs good OCZ memory and quite decent ATI 5770. Windows 7 Home Premium 64 OEM version. And to test the whole thing on the gaming side - GTA 4.
I was prepared for nightmares and long, painful hours with both the OS and the game. To my surprise the hours were long, but not really frustrating. True, some programs which I always used, like Outlook Express, were not supported anymore and had to be replaced with something else (took the Thunderbolt). True, I had to read lots of articles about compatibility of hardware/drivers with Win7. Even simple things like the gaming mouse needed a whole new approach to make it work. It took me 13 hours in total in an average and careful pace. Along the way I purchased a few other programs, like A 120% and a couple of puzzle-type games for the wife.
So on the next day I said to myself - let's see how the GTA will run! Everything on the PC is fresh, proper, updated to max. and 100% legal. It took ages to install the GTA and then I was confronted with all the DRM things. Got a bit nervous (first time in this world of online registering , online clubs and communities, designated servers, Win Live and so on..) but eventually all was well. Refused to register anywhere where I had the choice to refuse. The game runs smoothly. It is beautiful. I adore it. All other programs are also as fast as the Stig.
If this experience continues to be like this I will soften my attitude to the industry considerably. However, I wonder to what degree am I lucky? Many people in my situation are reporting problems - with the game or with the OS. I do not think they are all running cracked software and experiencing the anti-piracy traps. What will happen if the online support for the game is cancelled in the future? I am one of those middle aged gamers that plays a good game for years. Hell, my first session on the GTA lasted for 5 hours (ahhh, Sundays) and I did not attempt a single mission, just drove around listening to the radio. I can do this for months, it relaxes me! No time these days for quantity so I emphasize on quality in my gaming and like to re-play excellent games many times. We will see. For now the future seems a bit less dark (if Oblivion works well under Win7 it will get even brighter).
BTW, all the above does not mean that I am consenting with any spying/control attempts via my hardware and software. Not at all! I wonder how much more they know about me now via this modern software? And boy, all this agreements and installations of verification software - everywhere there are links and readmes where you are supposed to learn about how well yor privacy is protected and at the same time the language is so ambiguous that immediately arises suspicion. Probably its a lot of bull.
And I still hate the fact that old hardware is almost impossible to fix/replace if you have limited time and knowledge. What to do now with the old machine - its either the MB or the CPU but I have no way in determining which one is the culprit. OK I am stupid then, but why there is no one out there that can help (for money, of course). It was a perfect P4/1gig/6600GT XP machine with very expensive components (still did not last long enough for the money I paid!). And another frustration - the modern ATI seems to struggle on CRT monitor - the fonts appear different across the screen. I know everyone has LCD these days, but hey, this is 21'' Sony Trinitron - it is still very good screen! But I think the repair/reuse strategy is gone in every industry these days, which is ridiculous considering all the hot air that is blown around about saving the planet. OK, its good to have new, power saving MB/CPU combo, thanks, but I could do infinitely better by using the old PC for a few more years. I could do it. No rush to replace - after all Morrowind ran smoothly on it!
"Available memory" can be utilized by the OS if the need arises, so the most accurate measure of "free" RAM is to add together "free memory" and "available memory".
They were under NDA, not permitted to perform & publish comparison benchmarks? Was that where they were?
All it takes is one person to say "nah this guy's talking bullshit", with a link to a repeatable benchmark which shows he's talking balls...
Y'know... like science... or engineering... instead of fashion.
[1] Why don't I do this? Cos I don't give a shit about Microsoft products. Perhaps that's the other reason nobody called bullshit, nobody gives a shit.
Deleted
At work we have a lot of issues using Autocad when loading large files in 32-bit. I can confirm that Windows 7 leaves less RAM for applications than Vista and XP.
There is no Craig Barth. And we've been always been in war with Eurasia.
http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/when-microsoft-attacks-again.html
And his response. He'll get some sympathy to many people hate M$ to look at facts, kinda like the global warming people.
M$ paid alot of money to put this guy into a corner where he looks like he misrepresented the facts, and by doing so, made this whole issue go away. /. a while back their benchmarks had been tainted with misrepresentation, but I forget which post it was, maybe vista associated???
It would be nice to see if someone else that M$ could not corrupt, like Google,
could test this very same thing, and give us an unbiased review as if it was just a regular company putting out a product
and not some massive corporation with its tentacles everywhere, paying off everybody, and setting up fake benchmarks.
I read on
If you paid for a 1.5TB HD, would you fill it up completely when you got it?
Apples to oranges. You use HD space for permanent storage. You use RAM for temporary storage. Unused RAM is wasted. Unused HD space is not— at least in the short term. In the long term, unused HD space is wasted.
what is the use of filling it up with things Windows *thinks* you might use?
It's more useful than not filling it up with anything at all. If Windows guesses correctly just once, then overall system performance is improved over the alternative of not pre-caching anything.
I only load what is needed and LEAVE MY RAM FREE TO ONLY HOLD WHAT I WANT AND NEED IT TO
No offense, but you're an idiot if you think you can manage your memory better than the OS can. What is it with geeks who refuse to let computers do things for them, instead wanting to manually manage everything themselves? Seriously, do you think your computer slows down just because there's data in RAM? I hate to break it to you, but there's always data in RAM. All of it. Even if it's just zeros, it's still data. Why not fill it with potentially useful data?
It's a damn shame this guy got canned because he dared speak the truth about this braindead approach to memory use. If I was any more of a conspiracy theorist, I'd say that Microsoft paid to shut him up.
Sweet merciful crap. Just shut up now.
AC because everyone will disagree with me just like they disagreed with this guy, and mod me down to below nothing.
I have mod points right now, but I don't agree with modding people down. I'm also posting AC so my comment is at the same level as yours. You have no clue how this stuff works, just like the retard who posted the original article.
And yet you have some people constantly complaining about programs that are memory hogs which is like complaining about how your brain cell count is large.
Pfft, kids these days. Think you need 256MB!! 640k ought to be enough for anybody!
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
A distinction I failed to make in my previous post was that unlike sudo, UAC doesn't run processes as a different user at all. Instead it runs them as the same Administrator user, but in a special security context which works as if the user were not an Administrator at all.
Further, I listed several ways in which UAC is unlike sudo. MAC, UIPI, and so on...
SELinux seems to bring some aspects of Windows' security model to Linux. But I haven't researched it enough to know exactly how close it's come.
This was primarily done to enable admin scripts (among others) to function on 64-bit versions of Windows without change.
To what are you referring when you mention an equivalent to .htaccess?
Windows directory permissions are defined by ACLs (Access Control Lists) which are part of the NTFS file system. In Vista or later, this includes a Mandatory Access Control entry called an "integrity level" - defining which level of trust a process must have in order to access this file or directory.
Aside from ACLs, there should be nothing preventing you from accessing a folder.
Kennedy has posted his side of the story here: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/when-microsoft-attacks-again.html "Apologize? For what? Using a pen name when dealing with an overzealous reporter? Because that't the extend of the "deception" that everyone is so excited about. The company itself exists, has real clients and is profitable. Nothing they can say will change that or other facts, like: * We have nearly 24,000 users at xpnet.com. * We collect and analyze over 230 million system metrics records and over 13 billion process metrics records every week. * We publish our findings and make all of our resources freely available to the IT industry. People want to skewer me because they don't agree with my point of view. Microsoft wants to skewer me because I hurt sales. IDG wants to skewer me to cover their asses - because, as I pointed out to ZDNet/CNet, they knew about the Craig Barth ruse all along. And they did nothing. If anyone needs to apologize, it's IDG - but not for the reasons they've stated. It was their hunger for page views that ultimately drove them to turn a blind eye. Me? I just used a pseudonym in a few email exchanges and during a a couple of phone calls. The rest is all BS and posturing, and they (IDG & ZDNet) know it. RCK"
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As much crap as people are shoveling, at least the Office benchmark macro tool they were providing was free and basically did what it was meant to. How many free benchmarking tools are there left now, that don't require diving through archive.org, sleazy psuedo-software.com clones, and the soft white underbelly of the chinese academic internet?
Thousands, if not millions of articles were posted about the "horrors" of vista. I used it myself and deployed it at the business I work at with... ZERO ISSUES! So yeah, I'm not even remotely surprised that things posted about Windows 7 are fake if 99% of the hate against Vista took 5 minutes to tweak.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
This is just shattering my whole world view. Today it may be The National InfoQuirer putting out mud-raking stories full of bogus information. But I fear for tomorrow. Who knows, we might even see pillars of objectivity such as kdawson approving stories with the same level of journalistic integrity.
Scary times...