"No other large companies as far as I know use their employees as attack dogs to silen[ce] dissent. It’s time for Microsoft to stop this nonsense."

--The Prickly Prince From Microsoft Strikes Again

Summary: A trip down memory lane of smear campaigns

Microsoft's smear campaigns are an issue well understood to us. There is a lot of evidence out there, e.g.

• Windows DRM: A Response to the Disinformation (Peter Gutmann)
• Life Is Complicated (Tim Bray)
• Intimidation (Pamela Jones)
• Ethics (Pamela Jones)
• A Microsoft Slur in the OOXML Saga -- Did I Tell You or Did I Tell You? (Mathew Holloway)
• Microsoft Says Worker Wrote Smear of Rival

We also wrote some posts on the subject, e.g.:

• Microsoft Smear Campaigns in India: Watch and Be Disgusted
• OOXML Defeated Easily in India; Microsoft in Hot Water in New Zealand Over Smear Campaign
• “If you Can't Deny the Truth, Run a Smear Campaign” (Updated)
• Bullying, Intimidation and Smears, Courtesy of Microsoft
• Microsoft Wants War: Starts Blatantly Attacking Critics with Cowardly Attacks via Employers
• Microsoft Launches “Get the Facts”-esque Smear Campaign Against ODF and OOXML's Critics
• Smear Campaign Against Boycott Novell (Updated)

For future reference, a reader has suggested that we add the Jackson example. The reader explains: "You'll notice that over time Microsoft people have been able to attack critics to the point that anything other than praise is a target nowadays."

Here are some of the rulings/documents from Judge Jackson:

• ms-final.pdf [PDF]



• ms-final2.pdf [PDF]



• ms-conclusions.pdf [PDF]



• ms-findings2.pdf [PDF]

"Even ten years ago," explains the reader, "Microsoft people responded to facts by attacking the messenger." He offers the following as proof:

• MS Plea: Judge Judge's Character



• Jackson exits Microsoft discrimination case

"The government is not trying to destroy Microsoft, it’s simply seeking to compel Microsoft to obey the law. It’s quite revealing that Mr. Gates equates the two."

--Government official

Microsoft's contempt for the legal system/s is a subject we'll return to later today, in reference to news.

More judges are given as examples in this context.

"Interesting," says our reader, that "this Jan 8, 2001 article referred to below is locked away in the archives"

Among the examples, in the Jan. 8 issue of The New Yorker, Jackson said Microsoft founder Bill Gates "has a Napoleonic concept of himself and his company, an arrogance that derives from power and unalloyed success, with no leavening hard experience, no reverses." He added that company executives "don't act like grown-ups!"

"Frustrating," is how the reader describes it, adding this BBC reference which says:

"[Gates] has never been accused of causing bloodshed on a scale associated with the French general [Napoleon]..."

"... until now," alleges our reader. He refers to the human damage caused by bad engineering.

“He refers to the human damage caused by bad engineering.”Finally, writes our reader, " Your articles on Windows worms in the hospitals point out that the deaths have begun. Figure each worm per hospital causes a handful of deaths, multiplied by now thousands of hospitals which are infected with Windows and multiplied again by a dozen or so Windows worms outbreaks and you quickly have casualties of not so insignificant proportion.

"We appear to have a major, ongoing industrial disaster being ignored by the militaries, defense departments, intelligence and even private insurance agencies. It Microsoft that big of a cult that normal laws and guidelines do not apply?"

Harsh words? You decide. ⬆