Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell Pays Ponemon Institute, LLC, to Help Generate Fake News

Ponemon



Summary: Larry Ponemon's firm, which sells bias, helps Novell seed some favourable coverage in news sites following a paid-for 'study' and paid-for press release

THE MOVEMENT known as "sceptics" (or skeptics for the north Americans) has grown rather popular. It is associated with developing critical skills that are derived to an extent from science, encouraging people to tell apart fake news from real news and facts from fiction (including so-called 'conspiracy theories'). Here at Techrights we encourage everyone to take a critical look and remember the role of PR agencies. The PR industry in the United States alone is said to have a turnover of over one trillion dollars. It's that industry which tells unsuspecting members of the public what products are "good", what foreign policies are "good", which companies are "good", and which people are "good". Bill Gates, for example, spends over one million dollars per day on PR, i.e. telling the world how wonderful he and the Gates Foundation are. It's a really massive industry generating bias and making deliberate deception "acceptable" (because "everyone's doing it!"). It's why a lot of sociopaths happen to be affluent, even if they are not genuinely clever.



"It's a really massive industry generating bias and making deliberate deception "acceptable" (because "everyone's doing it!")."While it is rare to see companies targeting Novell (whose future is just a trademark possibly to be abandoned), these still rarely exist and the company still has those rare press releases, from Provo even (not Boston). This new one for example is based on some claims Novell paid someone to make as means of generating promotional pseudo-articles (pasted press release) and exaggerated claims that help Novell make sales. That last one says: "The average cost of compliance associated with storing unstructured data is $2.1 million per year, according to a report prepared by the Ponemon Institute for software firm Novell."

Another one repeats the same claims, which Novell merely bought. It's not real research, it is tainted.

The Ponemon Institute conducted the research for networking vendor Novell, to look at the storage, control and compliance challenges that derive from the proliferation of unstructured data such as documents, presentations and spreadsheets.


Watch this Novell propaganda spreading:

The Ponemon Institute, on behalf of networking and data management firm Novell, looked at the compliance costs of managing business data at 100 firms.


How were those 100 firms selected? Did Novell put any strings on the finding? Any incentive to tilt it in one direction or another (e.g. for future contracts)? No journalist seems to be questioning those claims, just reposting them. It's pure laziness. This is no better than PR, like like this new "Novell Customer Success Story" which is totally within Novell's control (just like the Vibe PR blitz in YouTube, as we noted before). Novell is just trying to inject its idealogy into articles as well as inject product names like "Novell Identity Manager" into articles like this one. If this is the state of today's journalism (no research, no days taken for independent audit of claims), then we are seriously in a miserable state of affairs. News just becomes surrogate for PR and here in Techrights we fought against shallow coverage about Novell, which mostly echoed Novell's PR rather than investigate. If there is something people can take away from this site, it will hopefully be critical skills. It's not just about Novell and we have decent wiki pages on this subject. These can be generalised. Had journalists done their job properly (covering, not promoting), Microsoft would not get so far with racketeering and Novell would probably avoid a treasonous deal with Microsoft.

"News of the World" is dead today, after well over a century. What a testament of our times.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
 
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025