Post by EzekielPost by RubenPost by EzekielPost by RubenThe standards for broken is different for windows that GNU systems.
Better a broken GNU system then a working Vista system.
Yeah, sure. A linux machine with no sound, no video and frequent lock-ups
is real sweet.
Paul, you post that over and over again as well. But that doesn't
descibe on of the machines my 6 kids and I use. My kids are using
them for everything from juke boxes, TV sets, and recording studios.
I guess my kids aren't as stupid as your broken MS box where the DRM
keys have been revoked.
Of course. You're a linux "advocate" so of course everything works
perfectly and you get 14 hours of battery life on your laptop too.
Post by RubenBTW Paul, that company your working for is also to the MPAA's payroll.
And what company would that be. I'm sure that you're not talking out of
your ass and making stuff up. Because you have proof... right?
No, I'm not making it up. I was furtunate enough to actually meet you by
happenstans last week and I'll be exposing things soon enough. I'm just
giving you a chance to save face and I'm considering if I want to put
posters up around Gorilla Coffee, where we met exposing you to your
neighbors.
I'm not your average joe. Some would consider me a bit nutty, but my
means at these kinds of games is most often effective.
Meanwhile, Paul, let me wet your appetite for some of the foundation of
MS paid trolling in year past, and give you a chance to expose your real
identity on your own before I blow your meal ticket in this unethical
endevor on your part. Of course, if you want you can sue me for libel.
That would also expose your operation under the legal discovery process
that would follow and your employer would frown on that a great deal.
The bottom line is that until you identify yourself, no amount of
factual conversation has any value.
Here is an apetiser from years past.
September, 1996
SLIME (sly mmm) 1. Spin, Lies, and Insults by Microsoft Employees. The
extension of Microsoft's corporate ethic to online community.
One place that's been SLIME'd is Canopus, the forum on CompuServe that
had become my regular online habitat. At one time it was a bastion of
independent thought, consisting of contrary but industry-wise regulars
who were never afraid to criticize the powerhouses in the industry, be
they IBM or Microsoft or anybody else. Will Zachmann, the WizOp,
sought to keep it from becoming simply another fluff PR site for
anybody, regardless of their affiliation.
He requests only has been that those with an industry affiliation make
it known in their posts. It is a call for polite, ethical behavior, so
that readers of the messages can be aware of the potential for bias
towards one's own. Forum participants are widely known for challenging
the crap that passes for "knowledge" elsewhere.
The participation of Phil Payne, industry analyst with Sievers
Consulting, added not only an international flavor but an
authoritative voice with an amazing archive of Canopian messages. Just
the fact that he had the archives, and would produce messages from
one, two, or three years ago when needed to support a point or defrock
a scam kept the signal-to-noise level much higher than normally found
in cyberspace.
In most online haunts, supporters and users of niche products like
OS/2, Mac, or whatever, are drowned out by jeering proponents of
Windows. Canopus used to be a refuge from that sort of crap. Stress
the was. Canopus today is a far different place than it was when I
first started hanging my hat there in '92.
I think the change began about the time Win95 debuted. For one thing,
honest debate and sincere conversation began to decline with the
arrival of Arnold Krueger. Whatever it is that brought him to Canopus,
or keeps him there, it is definitely not honest discourse. Arnold is a
one-man propaganda machine, boosting Win95 and dis'ing everything
else. He is the kind of guy who belongs in one of the
comp.os.___.advocacy newsgroups. And no where else. Since the first
day he arrived, his message has been simply this: Win95 is it, if you
don't use it you are stupid, if you computer won't run it, it's a
piece of crap.
Pointing out fallacies in his arguments or contradictions in his
statements or outright lies in his messages does no good at all. He
has admitted that he is there only for one reason: to bring grief to
those he calls "Warpies." What's worse is that he has become the most
prolific poster in forum. Even when you recognize him for what he is
(he is also the most twitted participant in forum history), he is
still a huge negative presence that drives people away. Will Zachmann
and I have opined openly that his real mission may be to do exactly
that. Since Krueger's arrival, other changes for the worse have taken
place. When you look at all of them in perspective, Will Zachmann's
public departure from the OS/2 camp and his swim back towards
Microsoft don't seem to come as much of a surprise.
Another big negative for those seeking a refuge from the Windows Uber
Alles mentality is the attitude and behavior of Bruce Biermann, who is
both a Microsoft employee and one of Will's forum sysops. The change
in his online behavior is dramatic. In my column on the forum
(Canopian Embrace, Tech-Connected, April, 1995) I commented about the
wonderful trio of sysops Will had gathered, including MS employee
Bruce Biermann. His behavior recently hasn't earned him any such
accolades.
Several on the forum, myself included, feel that Bruce's change in
online manner centers around a very nasty online run-in with MS
booster Bill Mattox. Mattox, if you will recall, was responsible for a
Canopian term: TDNBW. TDNBW is an abbreviation for "This does not bode
well," which was Mattox's conclusion about every event that transpired
with regard to the future of OS/2. As a result of the Mattox/Biermann
dispute, Mattox tried to have Biermann fired from Microsoft, evidently
because he felt that Biermann was not active enough in promoting
and/or defending the Redmonian way.
That effort failed and Mattox began staying away from Canopus a lot
more than participating. But since then, Biermann has begun acting a
lot more like a biased MS booster than an evenhanded Canopian sysop.
He denies that Mattox incident had any influence on him, but I'm
certainly not the only observer to note the swing in attitude before
and after the Mattox incident. Biermann became arrogant and rude, much
more rude and much more often, than he had ever been before. Not only
did he become an active defender of Microsoft's business practices,
but he began to defend other MS employees who were posting in the
forum. In short, he stepped down from the high ground and began wading
through the mud.
An example: one day an IBM employee came into the forum and asked why
the message threads were handled (mangled?) in such a way as to make
it impossible to follow from beginning to end. Biermann came down so
hard on the IBM'er that he never returned. Biermann, an accountant by
the way, claimed it was ignorant to come into a forum and after only a
day or two to know more than the sysops about how to handle threads.
What he didn't know was that he was talking to a programmer
responsible for handling threads on IBM internal systems, a programmer
whose scope of knowledge about the topic towered above Biermann's like
the Shaq towers over Truman Capote. To flaunt his ignorance even
further, Biermann later speculated that the IBM'er had asked the
question only because of his (Biermann's) MSFT affiliation. A small
event, perhaps, but typical of the change in Biermann. And in the
forum.
Speaking of Biermann's MSFT affiliation, the refusal of a fellow MS
employee to include mention of that affiliation in his posts has
turned into one of the longest running, nastiest battles in forum
history. The battle itself has further reduced the value of the forum.
Richard Shupak works for Microsoft, but he refuses to identify himself
as an MS employee when he posts, this in spite of countless requests
by forum regulars and a number of direct requests from Will Zachmann
himself. He seems to enjoy flaunting his unethical behavior and
abusing the lax forum "rules."
One unfortunate reality of Microsoft's reputation for dishonesty is
that its employees can immediately gain credibility by claiming not to
be MS employees. Steve Barkto and Bill Diamond are two of the best
known examples. Of course, Shupak does admit that he is an MS employee
when he is asked directly, so it's not like he is pretending
otherwise. The point is that if people read his messages without
knowing that fact, they are not going to know it after consuming
whatever bit of spin he is putting on the current topic.
And spin he does. He is easily the most gifted liar the forum has
seen. He is not a buffoon-like bozo like Arnold Krueger who puts out
so much crap that it is laughable. No, Richard Shupak does it with
style. He mixes truth, fact, and bullshit in amounts calculated to
bring the most believability a spin-doctor can hope for. He uses
inuendo like a scalpel. Almost always his goal is to deceive.
Shupak works for Microsoft Research, and according to the information
on their Website works on RAD (rapid application development) tools.
Technically, he is very savvy and he uses double-dweebspeak to
deceive.
One example: the well-known lack of performance of Win95 on Intel's
Pentium Pro processors because of the amount of 16-bit code in Win95.
Shupak attempted (still does, actually) to convince people that 16-bit
code in Win95 is not the reason for its poor performance on the
Pentium Pro. If that were the case, he argues, OS/2 would run even
more slowly because it has even more 16-bit code in it than Win95. You
have to give Shupak credit for brass balls. His brazen lies about this
issue reveal the arrogant swagger that accompany most of his
disinformation. He genuinely seems to revel in his dishonesty the same
way he loves to flaunt the disregard for forum policy. This arrogance
runs rampant at Microsoft: from Gates down to the mailroom, they feel
they are above the law.
And look at how he packaged this crap. He went to the trouble to show
how many bytes of code exist in 16-bit chunks of OS/2 and Win95 in
order to support his argument. Remember now, Shupak works in MS
research, he is not completely stupid. He knows that the statistic he
presented is completely meaningless. The only thing that counts is how
much 16-bit code is running, not many bytes of 16-byte code exist. You
could add ten meg of 16-byte code to either operating system, and it
wouldn't influence performance on a Pentium Pro one iota, unless it
were executing.
Why does Shupak go to such bother over this point? Because the
slowdown (yes, Win95 runs slower on a Pentium Pro than on a Pentium)
is not just a black-eye for WinTel, it draws attention to the fact
that Microsoft was lying about an "all new, all 32-bit" operating
system from day one.
The magnitude of his lie is shown in the relative performance of OS/2
and Win95 on the Pentium Pro: one 32-bit OS/2 app has shown
performance increases of over 100% on the Pentium Pro. The best any
32-bit Win95 app has done is run at about the same speed. Most run
slower.
More recently, Shupak returned to this topic by referring to Intel
benchmarks showing Win95 gains over 20% in performance on the Pentium
Pro. That benchmark has been openly rebuked by PC Magazine, who
pointed out how it was rigged and how you would never see that gain in
real life.
So professionally done is Shupak's spin-doctoring that many began to
openly wonder if his job at Microsoft were not to do exactly what he
was doing in Canopus: blowing smoke and dis'ing the competition.
Richard insists otherwise. Though his posts almost never venture into
any area more personal than Win95, he claims that his presence on
Canopus is strictly personal. Why then, someone asked, is he
participating with a sponsored account? That's right. This MS employee
who refuses to identify himself as such, who spins faster than a
Craftsman 1/4" drill, who never talks about anything except MS
products and their competitors, who participates in Canopus for
personal reasons, does so on an account paid for by CompuServe. Why
indeed.
When I made it known that I was going to write an article about the
behavior of MS employees online, and specifically about Shupak's, who
else but Bruce Biermann steps into the fray. Rude, bullying, using
intimidation of every kind, trying to belittle me in a number of ways,
Biermann revealed himself to be a jerk of the highest order.
Threats? How about lawsuits. For weeks he talked about it. Every time
I logged on Biermann was there with another warning that I had better
consult my attorneys, because he is and he is going to file a libel
suit. Remember now, all this talk was about a column I said was going
to write. He hadn't seen it. Nobody had seen it. He had already
decided it was libelous. When someone pointed this out to him, his
story changed. He begins revising history in the finest tradition of
Microsoft and started talking about suing me for statements made
online instead.
Clearly his intent, and Shupak's, who has happily joined in, is to
intimidate me so that I won't write the story. Just as there was a
tradition of stealth-PR work at Microsoft, attempts at intimidation of
critics also has a place in their online history. USENET posters, for
example, who posted messages from government accounts were threatened
with dire consequences if they didn't stop being critical of MS.
Biermann began to make insulting, slanderous, petty ad hominem attacks
on a daily basis. He wanted to compare financial statements between
the Dweebspeak Primer and Microsoft. Just as if the size of a bank
account, or cash flow, is a valid measure of an individual. Tell that
to Mother Theresa and the Columbian drug cartels. He refers to me as a
"dishonest reporter." He attempts to belittle me for being a
recovering alcoholic. All of this activity, the constant attempt to
discredit me by whatever means he can think of, is the most damning
indictman of his own character possible.
In the middle of all of Biermann's threats, attempts to belittle, and
other displays of his ignorance and lack of values, new facts about
Shupak's participation come to light. Acting on a tip received by
another forum participant, I checked the user logs of an OS/2 related
forum: OS2AVEN. This forum is dedicated to OS/2 vendors like OS/2
magazine. I found that Shupak visited that forum every time he visited
Canopus. From as few as three or four times a day to a dozen or more.
It is obvious looking at the times of his visits that he is using an
automated reader to visit CompuServe. For almost every visit to one
forum there is one for the other, often within seconds of each other.
Strangely enough, I found no evidence that Shupak ever posted or
received messages in OS2AVEN. He only lurked in the shadows and
downloaded message traffic. Even more curiously, when I looked in a
few other OS/2 fora, I found similar entries in the user logs for
PSPBETA, where OS/2 and OS/2 related products from IBM are the topics
of conversation. One of those would be BART, which will be a direct
competitor to the RAD tools that Shupak works on for Microsoft
Research. Again, there was no evidence that he ever sent or received
messages. But every time he appeared in the user logs for Canopus and
OS2AVEN, he visited PSPBETA as well.
For personal reasons? Right. On a sponsored account. When I asked
Shupak about this on Canopus, he continued to claim it was for
personal reasons. That was enough for Phil Payne. Resenting the fact
that his payments to CIS each month were funding the sponsored account
Shupak uses to spin in Canopus and spy on OS/2 fora, he said goodbye.
Well, like restaurants and other trendy things, haunts in cyberspace
rise and fall in popularity. Zachmann spends more time posting on the
internet lately than he does in Canopus. Who can blame him. These days
it's only a safe haven for MS spin-doctors, not for critics or
independent thinkers. Online thugs, dimly lit cyberjerks who use the
foulest imaginable language on anyone who disagrees with them, male or
female, roam free. I recently reported the foul-mouthed William Beem
to both CIS and the police for making threats. Other vermin contribute
nothing but content-free ad hominem, including one pathetic munchkin
who openly wishes me a horrible death. Me? I'm following Payne out the
door. The stench on Canopus is more than I can bear.
Post by EzekielPost by RubenAre you ready to confess your identity yet ;)
Yeah. My name is Ezekiel Strubhar and I'm amish. Since things like
computers are banned by our culture I have to sneak into the shed in
order to use mine.
Yeah that will work when they bring in electrical lines and a DSL/telco
connection to Amish country.
Ruben
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attached at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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