OPEN BYTES – cave quid dicis, quando, et cui.

Ghostmike is an MS supporter. He likes Linux though, as long as its Novell providing it.

This lord of the shills is a little late, Id like to say I been busy reading up on the latest happenings in the world of IT.  Id like to say that Ive been highlighting the benefits of open source to a community.  Truth is, I havent and if you read yesterdays entry you will probably have a good idea of where my time has been spent recent.

I admit it.  I am a WOW adict.  Ive said before Ive no problems with proprietary software providing it is value for money, and since that is the case for World of Warcraft, I support it fully.  Unfortunately its been to the detriment of this blog (however I hope the Wine feature will give some Windows WOW fans the incentive to try Linux)

It was by blind luck (or Santa arriving early) that I was presented (IMO) with an example of what many of us have read about on the net.  We’ve all heard about the alleged practices Microsoft employs in order to push its products onto people.  Now there are many different views on this and I think the Xfiles ethos of “Trust no-one” is best employed when seeking to make a hardware/software decision.  One thing is for certain, there are people on the net who’s financial interest rest on selling you things.

Right, moving on.  Firstly id like you to take a look at Microsoft Watch (on the thread linked here)

Read it?  Now Im most interested in the posts of ghostmike.  Notice his typing style?  Notice after asking “the question” he returns with the handle @goblin posts a pro MS message, then returns again under Ghostmike agreeing with it and trying to imply I said it.  Now we’ve all talked about “fudging facts” before, and to me this is an excellent example.

Next Ghostmike (our MS supporter) then makes an admition, he uses linux!!! But hang on, suprise, suprise its…….SUSE!  To me, this pro-MS poster has confirmed what many say on the internet, that being SUSE (and Novell) are “MS approved”  (IMO)

So for this week Ghostmike who posts on Microsoft Watch wins our Lord of the Shills, welldone Mike (who after calling me gobby, I believe is from the UK).

Merry Xmas Ghostmike, I hope your future shilling meets with better results and I hope my advice was of help to you.

To everyone else, WordPress has done an excellent job of filtering out spam in the comments.  I dont believe Ive ever once had to delete a comment from an article.  WordPress also (unlike other blogging sites eh Andre?) lets, if you wish to review the spam and also says which particular entries it is aimed at.

Over the last week, there has been a massive amount of spam which WordPress  has stopped and guess which post it was aimed at?  The “VISTA is loved! We’ve got it all wrong”.  No other articles have been hit, not that it matters as I havent had to do anything, but it is certainly interesting that only one particular entry on my blog gets hit.  I am sure its all just a coincidence. Thank you WordPress (Akismet) for being so effective.

All the best.

Goblin[RFD]

Welcome to the second installment of Lord of The Shills.

For those that dont know its the weekly award for the most shameless (and often downright dishonest) pro-MS comments.  Before we continue, I would like everyone to take a moment and thank our lovable shillers for making this award possible.  Without them, Lord of the Shills wouldnt exist.

Next week, we will be focusing on other sites.  Microsoft Watch used to be the home of a decent MS shiller, but since anti-ms feeling there is so strong, I believe they’ve migrated to more gullable pastures.  I also wanted Andre to win an award.  He puts alot of effort into his work, and its only right he gets the credit he deserves for tirelessly fighting the MS corner.

I have received a number of shilling quotes on my email, which I am very thankful for, however please in future can everyone who sends them in, include links to the site that they are posted on!

So without further ado, lets move on to the comments, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did quoting them.

“Vista introduced huge improvements to how users kept their personal data secure.” Andre Da Costa 25/11/08 Andre’s Blog

“it’s clear that people still don’t get what Vista was all about.” EnricoG 03/12/08 Microsoft Watch

“Another thing is that I think Goblin is an idiot. At least, he is a shiller for Linux. I don’t care that he is doing it for free. That is his problem.” 3/12/08 Microsoft Watch

Now the next one was certainly a hot contender for Lord of the Shills, how many times can Andre put the words “Windows Live” into the same sentence without it being completely unreadable?  Answer: This many:

“I must say, search results in the new Windows Live Hotmail is exceptional. I like how they have also separated the Search fields for Windows Live Search from Windows Live Hotmail. Some good stuff is happening. Maybe I do need to take a second look at Windows Live Search.” Andre Da Costa 4/12/08 Microsoft Watch

Its a difficult one this week, so much goodness, only one award.  I think though the winning comment has to be Andre’s for the “Vista introduced huge improvements to how users kept their personal data secure.” and now we will proceed to examine that claim and find out what the important people (yourselves) say about Vista security.  Here are the links, but before that, congratulations to Andre for being this weeks winner.:

Heres some historic issues with the Vista platform, that shows some of the “great improvements Vista has over XP”

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/microsoft_vista.html

http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2007/02/vista-security-model-big-joke.html

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070206/more-vista-exploits/

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1206811,00.html

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Vista-Exploit-Surfaces-on-Russian-Hacker-Site/

http://blog.mastermaq.ca/2007/02/06/windows-vista-exploits-exposed/

http://www.secgeeks.com/dowd_and_sotirov_s_vista_exploit_talk_is_the_talk_of_the_town.html

Enjoy, as always Shilling comments welcome.

Right, we’ve got a new section for the Openbytes site.

Lord of the shills is going to be an award given to the best Microsoft Shilling comments I see on my travels around the world wide web.  So without further ado lets get onto laughing at some of the classics Im posting today (be warned though, these comments contain words of extreme ignorance and downright false information):

“Windows Vista is loved, its only those living in an IT bubble like you that are complaining Joe.” by: Andre Da Costa 02/12/2008 on Microsoft Watch

“I can’t wait till windows 7 comes along with “Touch Screen” capabilities, put that together with speech recognition and pretty soon there won’t be a situation like there is now.” by: Neil 02/12/2008 on Microsoft Watch

“I am a programmer and I tried to install Linux one time and gave up… good luck to all those people I have to instruct where to type in a URL or where the “Start” button is.” by: Ron 28/11/2008 on Microsoft Watch

Buy Vista! Its what Vicky Pollard would use!

Oh and save the best for last, here is a person who Im sure most people will agree is of awesome intellect.  They are called Teddy and want to make a comment about Vista (please stay with them, they get technical at times!: (Their speaking style is quite unique and reminds me of a sketch from Little Britain.  Maybe Vicky Pollard is using Vista?

“I like vista, coz it’s stable and secure(and thus I can’t change back using XP..), u will find none or less blue screen on it(both mine & my client), someone always say it comsume big resources, but the big resouces behind is the secure and stable OS, and the HW price is low, so I dont think it cause problem(surely running XP on the same HW seem faster but pls be reminded that the OS “qualility is DIFFERENT!”), so I hope more ppl is going to use vista in coming year!” By: Teddy 1/12/2008 on Microsoft Watch

So I think for today Teddy wins the Lord of the Shills title, although to suggest Microsoft would want to pay them to post in this manner would be insane, or would it?  Maybe Microsofts new plan is to appeal to the “yoof” of today?  Maybe we will see Ballmer hanging out on street corners wearing a hooded top?

Anyway, I digress, well done Teddy!