We wrote here before about smears, libel and personal attacks that come from Microsoft Munchkins [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Here is an example from several hours ago where libelous accusation got directed at and used against me. It's not unusual, but you deserve to see what tactics are being used.

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So which one of the voices in your head gave you the information Roy Schestowitz?

BTW just on the chance that you might have contributed something, which is highly doubtful, I've taken the liberty of emailing the UK Standards Body Lawyers with information all about you. Everything from your self castration experiments to your odd sexual preferences. It's all in Google. Gotta seed and index you know.....

This should be a lot of fun.

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These are all lies of course.

Among the responses to this Munchkin (Gary M. Stewart), who has been doing this for over 10 years under literally hundreds of fake names:

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Oh, and what "self castration experiments" or "deviant sexual practices" has roy posted about?

YOU might have posted them in roy's name. But we know for a fact you DIDN'T. It was you or one of your cronies who did that and you damned well know it.

GOD you're scum. Lowest for of life. Post inflamitory stuff about someone IN their name, and then constantly drag it up later to attack them as if they themselves posted it.

You, are an utter cunt.

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Apologies for the language above, but you can hopefully see just how rude and repellent it's intended to seem. Some people want this man to be sent to prison. The aspiration here is to associate people and forums with negative things (thus distracting or driving people away). The same characters are, for a proven fact, doing the same thing in Digg, Slashdot, ZDNet and a few other sites that are open for participation. At the moment, Groklaw gets 'infected' by them as well (SCO employees caught and Microsoft marketers too, beyond just suspicion). Intimidation through peers and employers is not unusual either.

For context and background about this: Unknown pseudonyms posted via Web proxies various things 'on my behalf', under my name. They then cite themselves (or a fake voice with my name next to it) in various Web sites. They still send this libel to people, in order to be used as a weapon. This has gone on for years and this leads to friction sometimes.

There are some other interesting things to note nowadays. Corruption by Microsoft, for example, may have been rebutted by false allegations about IBM corruption ('manufactured' at the right time by Microsoft). At the moment, serious technical deficiencies in OOXML, including Office 2007 non-compliance, is rebutted by Alex Brown who is lying about ODF just as Noooxml.org predicted. Tim Bray was right when he said two weeks ago that the OOXML standardisation attempt has been “brutal and corrupt."⬆

"Ideally, use of the competing technology becomes associated with mental deficiency, as in, "he believes in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and OS/2." Just keep rubbing it in, via the press, analysts, newsgroups, whatever. Make the complete failure of the competition's technology part of the mythology of the computer industry. We want to place selection pressure on those companies and individuals that show a genetic weakness for competitors' technologies, to make the industry increasingly resistant to such unhealthy strains, over time."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]