[News] Many More Microsoft Shills Exposed and Listed

Roy Schestowitz

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Aug 24, 2008, 7:29:21 AM8/24/08

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Poison Pen Collection

,----[ Quote ]
| This is going to be a list of big publisher shills. Those are people who take
| their marching orders from big companies but pretend to be independent
| experts.
`----

http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959

Association for Competitive Technology

,----[ Quote ]
| The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) was a group that was founded
| in 1998 in response to the anti-trust action against Microsoft then taking
| place in the United States. (The groups websi
| The initial version of the groups website, which was first indexed in October
| 1999, stated that "as a grassroots information technology trade association,
| ACT is working to preserve the freedom to achieve, compete and innovate."
| (The group's orignial office address was 1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 500,
| Washington, DC, 20005.
| te is no longer active and the last archived version of its website dates
| from July 2007, so the group now appears to be defunct).
|
| [...]
|
| * Jonathan Zuck, Founder President 1999-2007
| * Steve DelBianco, Vice President for Public Policy 1999-2007
| * Morgan W. Reed, Vice President for Public Affairs 1999-2007
| * Mark Blafkin, Vice President for Public Affairs -2007
| * Braden Cox, Research and Policy Counsel - 2007
| * Melissa Moskal, Director of Membership -2007
| * Allison May Rosen 1999-
`----

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Association_for_Competitive_Technology

http://www.microturfs.org/

Recent:

Corn Farmers Against Google?

,----[ Quote ]
| Only if they're planting in AstroTurf
|
| [...]
|
| How do you know the organization, and the op-ed, weren't created by LawMedia
| Group at the behest of some well-funded clients? If they did their jobs
| right, you don't know.
|
| Some of them have left digital fingerprints here and there, though, says
| Declan McCullagh, in a blockbuster of a report exposing the intellectual
| whoredom offered for various important issues. Shortly after Microsoft hired
| LawMedia, for example, legislators, national agencies, and news outlets
| received pointed complaints from coalitions of farmers, rural voters, and
| geeky Latinos about how Google's advertising deal with Yahoo would wreck
| everything.
|
| [...]
|
| Don't call them a PR firm or a lobbying firm though, Law Media – which has a
| ton of lawyers working for them too—is a "public affairs firm" specializing
| in producing "remarkable coalitions" for anything one might need a coalition
| for.
`----

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/08/14/corn-farmers-against-google

SC34 meeting next week: yet another stuffed committee?

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-75107/sc34-meeting-next-week:yet-another-stuffed-committee

China's Online Persuaders

,----[ Quote ]
| China's webspace is infamous for censorship, but increasingly, public
| relations firms there are helping their clients "manage" online
| conversations. China-based firms such as Daqi, Chinese Web Union and
| CIC "charge $500 - $25,000 monthly to monitor postings and squelch negative
| information or to create positive buzz," reports BusinessWeek.
`----

http://www.prwatch.org/node/7451

Now Hiring - Astroturfer, apply at Microsoft

,----[ Quote ]
| Evidently, a "Senior Marketing Manager" has the responsibility of:
|
| * "assisting in defining and driving core marketing initiatives – most
| specifically online & offline community-building"
| * "further the dialogue on the value of the Microsoft platform to open
| source audiences"
| * "be a cornerstone for a global thought leadership website and will be
| regularly featured in industry press around the world"
| * "act as a visible external evangelist for Microsoft"
|
| Wow! That's all direct quotes from the job description. It is so blatant, I'm
| beginning to wonder if it's some kind of joke. Particularly the 'evangelist'
| line.
|
| Kind of like the famous Halloween documents, this posting really tips
| Microsoft's hand and shows us exactly what they're thinking. After all the
| smoke and mirrors over the deals with Linux distros Suse, Linspire, Xandross,
| and Turbo Linux, this shows that those distros were in fact acquired in order
| to be killed. It's not Linux that Microsoft wants, it's the customers.
`----

http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=now_hiring_astroturfer_apply_at_microsof&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft may have lost in court, but it quickly tried to win the war of
| media reaction via organisations like CompTIA, the Computing Technology
| Industry Association and ACT (the Association for Competitive Technology)
| which both intervened in court on its side.
`----

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/17/reaction_microsoft_verdict/

Microsoft Pays $200 for Mentioning Its Tools

,----[ Quote ]
| If you're a professor and you mention Microsoft programming tools in a
| scholarly presentation -- in fact, even if you just use the tools --
| Microsoft will send you a check for $200.
`----

http://chronicle.com/data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-33.dir/33a03001.htm

The Best Enthusiasm Money Can Buy

,----[ Quote ]
| We might think that spending several hundreds of millions of dollars every
| year on commercial speech would be just about enough to allow any company
| to "tell its story" to the public. But we would not be Microsoft, who the Los
| Angeles Times revealed was gearing up a multi-million dollar public relations
| campaign which included planting ersatz letters to the editor in major
| national newspapers. The goal: to create the appearance, if not the reality,
| of "grassroots" support for the company.
|
| "Spontaneous" testimonials penned by hired guns may not be an entirely novel
| idea in the surreal world of public relations, but Microsoft's response to
| having been caught in the act of committing such a crass act was certainly
| uncommon. At first, the company denied their intentions to actually implement
| such a plan. Then, a few days later, company spokespersons announced a new
| spin: Microsoft has a perfect right to engage in public opinion manipulation
| campaigns, if that's what it takes to "tell its story."
|
| Now, what exactly was that story, again?
`----

http://www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/dirtytricks.shtml

Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan

,----[ Quote ]
| The stodgy old media industry has a rule that newspaper reporters, and TV
| news hosts, shouldn't trade on their public trust to endorse products.
`----

http://valleywag.com/tech/federated-media/microsoft-pays-star-writers-to-recite-slogan-271485.php
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Aug 24, 2008, 10:17:22 AM8/24/08

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On Aug 24, 7:29 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com>
wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Poison Pen Collection
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | This is going to be a list of big publisher shills. Those are people who take
> | their marching orders from big companies but pretend to be independent
> | experts.
> `----
>
> http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959
>

George Ou posts in c.o.l.a. as [H]omer.

Moshe Goldfarb.

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Aug 24, 2008, 5:58:04 PM8/24/08

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Are you sure about that?

Roy Schestowitz should add his own name to the list.

--
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Please visit The Hall of Linux Idiots:
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/

Tim Smith

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Aug 24, 2008, 7:50:08 PM8/24/08

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In article <3708098.q...@schestowitz.com>,

Roy Schestowitz <newsg...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | This is going to be a list of big publisher shills. Those are
> | people who take their marching orders from big companies but
> | pretend to be independent experts.
> `----
>
> http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959

Great source. Here's how his recent comments on slashdot have been
moderated:

0, Insightful
-1
-1
-1, Flamebait
-1
3, Interesting
-1, Troll
-1, Troll
3, Insightful
-1, Troll
-1, Offtopic
-1, Troll
-1, Troll
3, Insightful
-1, Troll
-1
-1, Troll
-1
-1, Offtopic
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1

...
>
> http://www.microturfs.org/
>

Another great source...their main criteria for listing seems to be
having publicly supported OOXML. Is you contention now that *everyone*
who has ever supported OOXML is on Microsoft's payroll?

--
--Tim Smith

cc

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Aug 24, 2008, 7:50:39 PM8/24/08

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On Aug 24, 5:58 pm, "Moshe Goldfarb." <brick_n_st...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:17:22 -0700 (PDT), cc wrote:
> > On Aug 24, 7:29 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com>
> > wrote:
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
>
> >> Poison Pen Collection
>
> >> ,----[ Quote ]
> >>| This is going to be a list of big publisher shills. Those are people who take
> >>| their marching orders from big companies but pretend to be independent
> >>| experts.
> >> `----
>
> >>http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/206959
>
> > George Ou posts in c.o.l.a. as [H]omer.
>
> Are you sure about that?

Nope, I just enjoy making things up from time to time, especially when
the topic is incredibly stupid and irrelevant to begin with, like this
one.

> Roy Schestowitz should add his own name to the list.
>

He would love the exposure.