"MSFTers dust of the same FUD year in and year out. Each time it's trotted out, it's taken as the gospel truth by the media which appears to some how equate repetition with validity. That's the same crowd that can't assign appropriate weights to statements from broad industry consortium and a say-for-pay consulting firm."

--ItsSnakeOil, Digg user, 2 days ago

After posting about 14,000 comments in Digg.com I no longer take that Web site seriously. The site has changed a lot over the course of the past year. I may be the most prolific commenter there (among approximately 2 million registered users), but various abusive stalkers turned the site into a sordid chaos.

“They occupy a variety of popular sites covering technology.”It is very clear that those very same abusive characters have been doing the same thing for one decade or more, even before Digg was born and even back in the OS/2 days. Their names and monikers have remained identical and a bit of studying nets lots more evidence. They occupy a variety of popular sites covering technology. Particularly, they occupy Linux forums, which makes it a case of intrusion (also trolling). It's all simultaneous. They want influence and they systematically spread myths.

The names of the poster make it a fact, not a suspicion. They even admit this when questioned. Whether Microsoft pays these people and whether they work for Microsoft business partners is a totally separate question, so before the "paranoid" word comes up, it is worth clarifying this (more on a related subject is to come soon, but as a separate post).

The other day we mentioned a couple of Web sites, a slanderous blog and a family of recurring usernames that are used to assault ODF and praise OOXML. We may now have an update. One of these users, who for a fact runs the "ooxmlhoaxes" Web site, has posted the following link the other day.

The house inspector

robweird.wordpress.com — An amusing satirical story comparing the inspection of a house to the standardization process of OpenDocument

Submitted: 1 day 21 hr ago

Submitter: Multivac1

As you can see, this link is to a blog dedicated to personal attacks on Rob Weir, an IBM employee. It was posted by the user who runs "ooxmlhoaxes", which suggests that there is a connection, unless it is the same person.

After some bit of investigation, it turned out that hAl might not, after all, be the same person as Multivac1 or the person -- whoever it may be -- that runs the slanderous blog. They might be coordinating some things as a group, but there are separate individuals involved.

“A little quick experiment seemed to reveal that the slanderous blog might be managed by a person who works via zombies PCs or a proxy, indicating need for anonymity and obfuscation of digital traces. ”A little quick experiment seemed to reveal that the slanderous blog might be managed by a person who works via zombies PCs or a proxy, indicating need for anonymity and obfuscation of digital traces. Why be so afraid of promoting Microsoft's agenda? This sounded familiar, even without quick tests.

Attacks on ODF (or a case of defending OOXML) seem common in Slashdot, USENET and other such places especially when the poster is either anonymous and/or uses a known honeypot (as documented in sites whose purpose is to track of such IP addresses).

There are those who go by full names (pseudo-nyms are a possibility though). Examples include a person who goes by the name "Tim Smith" (or username harlowmonkeys, sometimes harlow-monkeys), seemingly a Microsoft partner in business. Included in the messages are endless personal attacks against myself, not just ODF. Seemingly from the UK (he denies this after obsessive stalking by him, which went on for months before polite warnings were sent), he keeps very active in anti-ODF and pro-OOXML in USENET and in Digg. Example from days ago:

There are some more details about personal attacks at Digg specifically in my personal blog if you are curious, as well as in some updates here, but again, BoycottNovell is not a personal site, so let's not make it so.

To Microsoft, the week of the BRM has billions of dollars in stake and -- rather questionably without a doubt -- Microsoft's survival as well, based on what some analysts seem to suggest. As the following article explains very clearly, Microsoft could lose entire nations without an ISO.

If the ISO does not approve the OOXML format, Microsoft might be forced to rethink its strategy around document formats if it wants government IT contracts

To repeat a recently-cited comment from Slashdot:

How 'Firm' Would You Stand For 20 Billion A Year?

I believe Microsoft made 5 billion in revenue from having customers worldwide locked into their proprietary office document format.

The vendor lockin from Office makes up almost half the company's yearly revenue.

Microsoft would cease to exist as we know it if the office document lockin revenue went away to an open format.

Fight? LOL! This is the type of sh*t Microsoft execs live for.

Fake grassroots efforts. Standards body subversion. Paid for media shills. Shame studies. Mysterious compatibility problems with the competition.

All in a days work.

Judge for yourself and decide how far Microsoft has been willing to go. Presented here were mainly facts. ⬆