A person who describes knowledge of programming and computer science as “a pissing match” should not then brag about having edited Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal. This is about as credible as saying you understand civil engineering because you have written about Tinker Toys.

His next biggest mistake is defend himself by insult rather than focusing on the issue. Had he done some critical thinking of his own, he’d have concluded that the only evidence he had was Microsoft’s word. That’s worthless in general and particularly for backdoors. Because he could not point to source code, he resorted to distraction by calling a 24 year old PhD student rude.

The biggest mistake is the hypocrisy of accusing Roy of having bad manners and being a poor advocate. Scoble’s very selective quoting serves to hide prior history and, of course, he was wrong. Backdoors are one of the biggest reasons to avoid non free software. All of us should value our privacy the same way we value free speech and other basic rights. People like Scoble, who work for the rich and powerful, might not think he benefits from a free society but he is mistaken. The power to listen in on private conversations is the power to identify and neutralize your economic and political opponents. A society without dissidents is one that rapidly falls into greater tyranny and economic ruin. That free software happens to work better than non free software most of the time is a trivial concern for short sighted people.

Apparently, Scoble’s job at the time did not require him to be factual or get things right. The rest of us should conclude that doing 500 Microsoft interviews without preparing for a single one will leave you worse than ignorant, it will leave you missinformed and wrong headed.

Mono serves to make GNU/Linux look bad, to tie defectors back into the M$ quagmire, and to impede use of Java. In the long term, it probably is a way make all computer users pay M$ for using the computer.