Bonum Certa Men Certa

Unmasking “hAl”, Pro-OOXML Fighter

Anonymity is not fair in Microsoft's age of "technical evangelists"

ONE of the leading forces behind a pseudo-grassroots push for OOXML is a mysterious character known as "hAl". This character was responsible also for smearing the names of those who spoke truth about OOXML, including myself. We wrote about this character before, but we have just obtained some information about hAl, which was sent to us anonymously. It was found on a special week, on which Google opened its archives, and there it was, in Google's cache, a homepage from hAl, from the year 2000. This matches some of the information that we already have (the name "Albert" and city/country of residence). From the page:



Here is some more information about myself:

Albert Zonneveld

Born on 16-may-'69 in Heemskerk, The Netherlands I live in Castricum at the Dutch coasts about 15 miles northwest from Amsterdam.

(Route) <= http://free.lokatienet.nl/freemap.asp?postcode=1901ej&zoom=4

My hobbies are:

* Badminton * Reading books (They do still exist), mainly SF and Adventure * Playing board/card games, because I enjoy the company more than I do my computer * Playing united games by mail, the kind that is still delivered door to door. * A friendly game of snooker And last but not least... drinking BEER.

Favorites:

* URL: < still looking for a good one > * Book: Ringworld by Larry Niven * Writer: Robert A Heinlein * Beer: Westmalle Triple * Game: 1830 * Computer game: Nethack (Seen the spectacular graphics??!!)

a.zonneveld@tip.nl


At that time he was employed at PinkRoccade, a large Dutch ICT-service-company, working, mostly, for government.

Our source claims that he is writing a lot on the Dutch Web site webwereld.nl, which is owned by the Microsoft-paid analysts at IDC.

To merely give away the identity of someone who smears another would only be fair. One's identity is not a smear; it's information and it's publicly accessible.

Here he is posting under his full name (also here) and discrediting a Red Hat employee along with "The Wraith" and Microsoft's Doug Mahugh. He also commented on Miguel de Icaza's blog when de Icaza's said that "The EU Prosecutors are Wrong [about Microsoft]." It's always fascinating to see a vice president from Novell defending Microsoft from those 'zealots' in the European Commission.

"The Norwegian [OOXML] affair was a scandal and we are still pursuing it. We haven’t given up hope of changing the vote back to No, and we hope people who experienced similar travesties in other countries will do the same."

--Steve Pepper



flickr:2400865918

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