Re: The Barkto Incident

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

In reply to Brett Glass's message sent 4/10/98 4:57 PM:

>This is one of the best accounts that's currently visible on the Web.
>But if you have access to CompuServe, you can do even better. Go to
>the CANOPUS forum, and check the data libraries. In there is a complete
>transcript of all of the Barkto-related traffic, with an introduction
>by Dave Whittle.

I've been reading "Papa" Joe Barr for some time, but I'd forgotten about 
this particular story. Barr is certainly a muckraker of the first order, 
and I enjoy reading his stuff. But can we impute from the Barkto Incident 
some sort of conspiracy of disinformation? Or just one employee carrying 
company loyalty a couple of steps too far? 

I've also been a direct "victim" of this sort of prank, but even so, I 
feel the need to be extremely careful about drawing conclusions. I have 
no doubt that the company's inbred culture enables overzealous employees 
to take matters into their own hands, but I still question whether this 
is explicit, or even implicit, company policy.

Do yesterday's revelations change these conclusions immediately? I don't 
think so. What has changed is that we now know of Microsoft management's 
intentions to adopt a comprehensive disinformation campaign. This is 
scandalous. All the other previous incidents are chump change by 
comparison.

Or perhaps I am being naive.

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   It's Microsoft versus mankind with Microsoft having 
   only a slight lead. --- Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle Corp.