The Barkto Incident

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

I didn't know what the Barkto Incident was, but I found this mention of
it on the web.  Jamie


jihad, by Joe Barr, September, 1994
http://www.pjprimer.com/jihad.html

Rick Segal is an overt on-line Microsoft representative who is quite
active on CompuServe. If you signed onto Will Zachmann's Canopus forum
about this time last year, you would have seen him there resolutely
trying to improve Microsoft's image. Today Rick is in self-imposed exile
from Canopus following an extremely embarrassing episode which has
become known as 'The Barkto Incident.' 

Bartko was an aberration. It's hard to know if the incident was a
one-time thing or if it is symptomatic of widespread disinformation
campaigns. Here's what happened. In January of this year, a newcomer
popped up in the Canopus forum named Steve Barkto. He said he was from
Oklahoma City and had been an IBM customer for seven years. He wasted
little time before attacking IBM, Dave Whittle, and your fearless
reporter over issues we had previously discussed with Rick Segal. This
Bartko character had a writing style which was so similar to that of
Rick Segal's that it immediately caught my eye. In fact, I responded to
his first message to me by asking if he were Segal in drag. Nobody
(including myself) took my question seriously. At least not at first. 

Then one of the forum Sysop's noted that instead of calling from
Oklahoma City, where he claimed to be from, Bartko's calls were
originating from the node closest to Microsoft's headquarters in
Redmond, Washinton. This led Will Zachmann, who 'owns' the forum and is
Wizop there, to look more closely. What he found was incredible:
Barkto's account was in fact owned by Microsoft. It had been opened with
a corporate credit card belonging to Rick Segal. Will sent a letter to
the Microsoft Board of Directors demanding an investigation and
explanation, but no explanation has ever been forthcoming. An internal
Microsoft 'investigation' was conducted, headed up by Mike Maples, an MS
vice-president who ironically enough hails from Oklahoma City.
Unfortunately, it appears the investigation was little more than a
cover-up. The Barkto Incident did not escape the attention of the
Department of Justice who was winding up their five-year investigation
of MS when it occured. They flew a special team to Redmond to take
depositions on the matter just weeks before Microsoft agreed to the
Consent Decree designed to stop their predatory and anti-competitive
business practices. 

Not long after the Barkto affair, a similar incident occurred on another
forum on CompuServe. In the LANMAG forum (short for LAN Magazine), a man
named Bill Diamond showed up one day and began offering to one and all
his views on varioius networking solutions. Bill's views just happened
to be highly critical of those from IBM (especially OS/2), and from
Novell, whose turf MS is trying to crash with their NT and NTAS
products. But he was very lavish in praise for those from Microsoft.
More than a couple of the forum regulars noticed this slant to his posts
and asked him directly if he were a Microsoft employee. No, he said: he
was an independent consultant. If you're guessing that he wasn't being
entirely honest, you're right: he was a Microsoft employee. 


-- 
James Love
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
love@cptech.org | http://www.cptech.org
202.387.8030, fax 202.234.5176