BoycottNovell and liabilities

I was amused this morning to see that for Dr. Roy Schestowitz from BoycottNovell (aka “TechRights”) is finding himself on the receiving end of the conflict he likes to dish out on everyone who fails to measure up to his ideological purity tests. This is a screenshot of comments made by Dr. Roy in identi.ca just a few minutes ago:

I’m not sure what’s happening in Dr. Roy’s chat room at this time, but I’m not surprised if he is being “trolled”, what with his blog being the biggest troll in all of FOSS and beyond. Sometimes you reap what you sow.

But the thing that really struck me is Dr. Roy’s apparent implication that Jono Bacon is responsible for the actions of everyone in the Ubuntu community.

I find that to be a very strange claim.

You see, BoycottNovell tends to attract the dregs of FOSS; people who have been pretty much run out of everywhere else. Case in point is his valued collaborator twitter, a notorious Slashdot troll and generally a very unpleasant person, or at least his online persona is.

Dr. Roy claims BoycottNovell is a community. He uses the royal We constantly, trying to convey the idea that somehow the ten or so people logged into his chat room (who also post the vast majority of the comments in the blog) are a team effort. This, despite the fact that no one other than him can actually post to the blog at all. Trust issues? Who knows.

But Dr. Roy has found himself in hot water before because of what his associates say and do. Witness the “Fink” debacle, for example (which is the reason I prefer to remain anonymous… no need to be “Finked” by one of Dr. Roy’s friends). Then there’s azuthian, the newest incarnation of the AstralKnight meme operating out of identi.ca.

So Dr. Roy has come up with an innovative defense mechanism: Simply claim that whatever is said by other people on his blog cannot and should not be held against him in any way, shape or form.

It’s easy to log into IRC, shout “Heil Hitler” and then log out. It would be disingenious to point to that and claim everyone at BoycottNovell is a nazi (sorry Mr. Godwin). And no one would really believe it anyway, so it’s generally pointless and stupid. It would simply play into Dr. Roy’s drama-inclined hands.

But collaborators or associates are another thing. People who have been part of the “community” for years, and are  continually used as sources of juicy (if irrelevant) quotes that help fill the daily post quota, not to mention providing entire articles for the blog (even if they are routinely attributed to “Anonymous” to avoid embarrassment). Do these people speak for BoycottNovell?

It’s hard to make a case that your IRC conversations are not to be used against you, as Dr. Roy does here, yet elsewhere we are continually invited to read the logs; for example here. There are many more examples. Indeed, some of his posts are made up of nothing more than fragments of IRC chats. And where the logs used to be posted simply as “IRC Logs”, they were recently changed to “IRC Proceedings” as part of the “TechRights” rebranding. Proceedings sounds mighty important, like something official.

So can one find Dr. Roy liable for things like these?

I doubt “agent_smithe” was planning on delivering flowers to Miguel de Icaza. And what about this:

I wish they gave [Miguel de Icaza] euthanasia

That’s another valued long-time contributor, not some troll that just appeared out of nowhere.

There are literally hundreds of example like these. Violent homophobia, comments about how all Microsoft or Novell employees should die, how it must be “sickening” to ride in the same train as them, how they should all be thrown in jail and subjected to torture.

So if Jono Bacon is responsible for the entire Ubuntu community… is it not fair then that Dr. Roy be held responsible for the actions of his community? Or does he get to have the cake and eat it as well?

 

BoycottNovell minion nymshifts again after embarassing episode

Summary: Notorious Slashdot troll and nymshifter creates yet another sockpuppet account in BoycottNovell and gets down to work for Roy Schestowitz

It was brought to my attention over the weekend that a new mysterious and rather vigorous commenter on BoycottNovell was doing the "perception management" rounds. Intrigued, I ran a few of his posts through one of my Slashdot acquaintances that have a more intimate knowledge of his posting patterns and what do you know, it seems we have a good match.

^“ And he asked him, "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many." _„

– Mark 5:9

Background, of course ¶

For those who are not familiar with this unique phenomena, William Hill started out doing some rather nasty ^[1] "advocacy" on Slashdot many years ago using the handle "twitter" (no relation to the microblogging service). Eventually the community got fed up with him, sending his two main accounts (as in you know, you gotta have two accounts) down to the karma doldrums, which he promptly blamed on "M$" and black helicopters. His response was to organize a 16+ sockpuppet shilling feast, at which he failed completely, becoming the funniest meme since "FIRST POST" on Taco's turf, and even transcending Slashdot itself. ^[2] Eventually laughed out of there (and a few other places, including the Baton Rouge LUG for posting things like these), Hill then skidded — perhaps predictably — right into the only place where he could pour his grief out and find a few like-minded extremists like him, and he's been there ever since, helping Schestowitz out with perception^[3] management.

He still posts to Slashdot occasionally (and trolls anonymously too), even re-activating one of the sockpuppet accounts he supposedly promised he would never use again.

Schestowitz' response to this gift from heaven was to alternatively denounce and defend and praise him, possibly unwilling to completely sever a relationship that perhaps has its advantages. ^[4]

One has to wonder what propels people like Hill into spiraling down this kind of self-destructive vicious cycle. Hill is apparently so far gone that he believes Microsoft threatens his life, he thinks riding on the same train as Microsoft employees must be "sickening", that people in Seattle are "confrontational" (because, you know, that's where Microsoft is at), recounts how he went into an Apple store to demand they make "GNU/Linux" run on their hardware, calls 11-year old kids "paytards" because they happen to use Microsoft software... Is this FOSS advocacy? Is this the kind of person the FSF wants out there making their points for them? I mean, seriously?

It's irritating that M$ perpetuates the "on line predator" myth after studies have conclusively show it's bullshit except for bullying, which M$ knows all about.

And this jewel:

... "all non-free software, regardless of quality, is immoral"

Hill is disliked even among Schestowitz' friends, some of whom he has repeatedly attacked for not being "pure" enough. ^[5] And when his shenanigans come up, he tends to get defensive — hilariously even whining when they suggest that perhaps his OCD-like use of the "M$" thing is counter-productive at best and possibly the reason his submissions to Slashdot are rarely accepted, and have to be edited when they are. In response to that Hill claims the Slashdot editors are "tamed", of all things. ^[6] He has "ignored" so many people so many times (isn't that funny?) there that eventually he'll end up talking to himself and Schestowitz.

All this predictably came to a head last October 15th, when during the course of a FLOSS Weekly program where Jono Bacon interviewed Schestowitz, the matter of massive spamming on behalf of BoycottNovell came up, along with poor twitter:

"... a guy with 16 accounts that used to troll Slashdot and hangs out on your IRC channel"

Four days later Hill comes into Schestowitz' IRC channel and lets it rip:

Hi, jono ... I saw where you called me a spammer ... Fuck you.

The rest of that conversation is bizarre at best. To quote a comment here:

Fascinating. "twitter" goes apeshit and demands an apology from Jono for Jono's not having accused him of what he already admitted to. The mind boggles.

In reality though, I believe (and this is just my opinion of course) that Hill was essentially engaging in damage control vis-a-vis being associated with Schestowitz. Eventually I suppose these things do come back to bite you in the ass.

And getting to the point ¶

So anyway, someone alerted me to this brand-new but seemingly well-informed poster on BoycottNovell that goes by the handle your_friend. According to my secret contact ^[7], the probability that Hill is behind those posts is very high. Quoting (with permission, thanks!) from the response to my email, which referred to comments I copied from here as well as this one:

    From: [edited]<[edited]@gmail.com>
    To: Verofakto Blog <vindicareg@gmail.com>
    Subject: Re: Second opinion needed
    Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:33:13 -0800

    [my snippage]

    There's no science to this, really, though maybe I just think it's easy
    because [edited] also made it look easy. The "cadence" of people's comments
    rarely change. That pattern of Halting. Phraeses. Separated. By. Periods. is
    easy enough to spot, and if you add the usual hyperbole claims [snip]
    Key phrases like "intentional waste", "non-free software", "name calling",
    "big dumb companies", "malicious" and 
    consistent misspellings like "coppies", "dissasters" [snip] and the constant 
    butchering of it's/its are usually dead givaways as long as they show up 
    consistently. That's how all his [Slashdot] sockpuppets were identified.

    [snippage]

    Here's one:

    "It is a toy at best and a malicious spy at it's worst."

    [comment is on the first link]

    It's/its as usual. You would need ideally a few more posts but I'm
    pretty sure that's [him]. Again, it's the *totality* of the thing :)

    [snip]

    ROFL, but you'll know for sure when he slips up and actually types "M$" inst
    ead of "Microsoft". He used to do that with new socks and eventually he
    would give it up. I think he feels personally diminished somehow whenever he 
    uses the correct name.

More importantly, if that is indeed him, he is now engaged in arguing with people who are defending themselves from attacks by Schestowitz, a pattern that has been seen many times before.

I loathe nymshifters! ¶

The question here, I think, would be whether or not this is being done with some kind of blessing by Schestowitz. I find it hard to believe that he would pay so much attention to certain accounts that are troublesome to him and must be monitored and eliminated, yet he would manage to completely miss this new and mysterious one. Is there an agreement whereby Hill adopts yet another identity now that he's managed to insult pretty much everyone in sight and embarrass Schestowitz? And if that's the case then why is he even allowed to post?

I'm not counting on Schestowitz to respond to this of course, that's not the point. But perhaps someone among his crowd of regulars can bring up the topic and ask if, since he has the IP address and email for that account, Hill, twitter and your_friend are the same person. I could even go into a formal corpus comparison between Hill's known accounts and this fresh new identity if need be.

Because, after all, Schestowitz has claimed time and time again that these "nymshifters" have damaged him beyond repair... wouldn't it make sense to apply the same moral standards to his crew?  §

 

^“ I loathe people who have multiple accounts. It's cheating. _„

– 2008-10-17

^“ Nymshifters are not worth attention _„

– 2009-06-05

Notes ¶

1. ^{^} See also this. There are thousands more like those.
2. ^{^} See this or this for example. There are a few more on that SockDisclosure article.
3. ^{^} Comment by "Will Hill", look at the URL he used.
4. ^{^} Not only in the sticky Uriah Heep sense, but collaboration-wise as well: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Here for example we see some of his wisdom quoted, as here and here. Schestowitz even delegates some of the clever GIMP'ing to his pal.
5. ^{^} It's a long and boring read, but see the threads here, here, here, here, here and many, many others. The overriding theme in all these is if you suggest that GNU/Linux and free software and Richard Stallman are anything other than perfect, you must be employed by Microsoft and you should burn.
6. ^{^} In an amusing twist, Schestowitz quotes Hill's musings on IRC liberally in this article, yet also manages to replace all the instances of "M$" with "Microsoft". Should one assume then that Schestowitz has also been tamed?
7. ^{^} God, I'm so funny (see crossed-out text there).

What a wacky web we weave

This is a list of people associated in some way or another with BoycottNovell. Collectively called – quite tongue in cheek – BoycottBoys. The purpose here is to have a centralized place that folks can refer to when they encounter these seemingly independently tireless advocates that magically appear pushing a specific line whenever certain topics are being discussed on the internet. Disclosure is important. I figure as important as it is with them, and seeing how much they don’t practice it, a decent reference was in order.

Handle:	_Hicham_
Aliases:
Websites:
Real name:
Status:	Active
	Has not been observed to be active outside of their IRC channel, at least not with that handle. He’s a rather disturbing individual. [1]

Handle:	twitter
Aliases:	14+ known, although those seem to have been used only on Slashdot so far.
Websites:	http://www.hillnotes.net/ http://slashdot.org/~twitter
Real name:	William H. Hill
Status:	Active
	Not to be confused with the website.

Handle:	oiaohm
Aliases:
Websites:	http://oiaohm.blogspot.com/
Real name:	Peter Dolding [^]
Status:	Active
	Has not been observed to be active outside of their IRC channel. Probably the most level-headed of the cadre.

Handle:	trmanco
Aliases:
Websites:	http://trmanco.com/
Real name:	Tony Manco
Status:	Active

Handle:	Balrog
Aliases:
Websites:
Real name:
Status:	Active
	Has not been observed to be active outside of their IRC channel. Regularly quoted on articles.

Handle:	balzac
Aliases:
Websites:	http://www.disruptech.com/
Real name:	Paul Gaskin [^]
Status:	Comes and goes
	Provides poetic quotes, claims to have a rather active social life, got banned from Fedora and Ubuntu IRC channels for “minor things”. Says RedHat is just another company run by greedy hacks. Actually doesn’t like RH that much at all.

Handle:	neighborlee
Aliases:
Websites:	http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=3941 http://www.heartseed.org/
Real name:
Status:	Active
	Very active in the Ubuntu community, where he claimed to have been “censored” because he was prevented from disrupting discussions about Mono and maintainers closed “bugs” he filed demanding for its removal. See this for more information. Spirited defense of poor neighborlee was in a way the catalyst for the Mark Fink episode. Lulz.

Handle:	MinceR
Aliases:
Websites:
Real name:
Status:	Active (actually seems to live on IRC)
	Seems to hate everything. Wants to run HURD but cannot.

Handle:	tacone
Aliases:
Websites:	http://www.stefanoforenza.com/
Real name:	Stefano Forenza
Status:	Active

Handle:	Goblin
Aliases:	GoblinRFD [^]
Websites:	http://openbytes.wordpress.com/
Real name:
Status:	Active
	Went trolling Neowin with some help. He “exposed” Neowin as a “Windows shill site”, which is akin to exposing fsf.org as a “Stallman shill site”, but you can’t beat investigative journalism of this caliber. Goblin is quick on the trigger but a bit slow on the uptake. He also patrols the ‘net for evil and reports back.

Handle:	ushimitsudoki
Aliases:
Websites:	http://meandubuntu.wordpress.com/ http://mono-nono.com/ http://ushimitsudoki.com/ http://www.the-source.com/
Real name:	Jason Melton [^]
Status:	Active
	Long active on IRC, he recently created mono-nono.com, which is useful because it’s proof that the desperate cry for the destruction of Mono isn’t coming from one person anymore, but rather two. Liked because it drives people “up the wall” and keeps the “UsefulIdiots” from… well, whatever. The ‘the-source’ blog is another good source of “independent” support for Schestowitz. Of course no mention that both are run by the same good buddy.

Handle:	Omar87
Aliases:	OmarSHafez
Websites:	http://omarsflosscorner.blogspot.com/ http://omarsdaydreams.blogspot.com/
Real name:	Omar Hafez
Status:	Active
	“And really, I feel so sorry for that bloke [who bought a Mac], he'll be spending his loot here and there and feeding Steve Jobs' vampiric lust for money…” [^]

Handle:	Jose_X
Aliases:
Websites:
Real name:	Jose Veloso
Status:	Active
	Jose_X can be identified by his long-winded comments, often broken up into two or more posts. Regular content contributor as well. He comments everywhere on the internet (e.g., [^] or try to read through this), pushing the same lines as BN. His motto is Victoria qui com verbo, which is Latin for “I will write stuff until you collapse and admit defeat”.

Handle:	The Mad Hatter
Aliases:
Websites:	http://crankyoldnutcase.blogspot.com/
Real name:
Status:	Active
	Pimping his blog on articles about Mono.

Handle:	ml2mst
Aliases:
Websites:	http://ml2mst.googlepages.com/ http://osgeex.blogspot.com/
Real name:	Marti van Lin
Status:	Comes and goes
	Also active on comp.os.linux.advocacy, where he fights the good fight and all that. Collaborates with “neighborlee” on bringing purity to Ubuntu. Another bizarre one.

Handle:	CyberPhoenix
Aliases:	AstralKnight/BoycottMicrosoft/DiamondWakizashi/NastyMicrosoft, etc.
Websites:	Just read this, if you’re feeling adventurous.
Real name:
Status:	Active. Very. Very. Active.

When one of the BoycottBoys has proven him/herself by feeding Schestowitz enough clever quotes for his blog posts, they receive an award. Tell me you don’t totally want one of those?

This next group are people who are keen on scratching BN's back, so to speak, and are in turn rewarded with linkage, quotes, etc. Although they do sometimes make appearances on his IRC channel, they are not "regulars" and have their own blogs or sites.

Handle:	Homer
Aliases:	[H]omer, Slated, Homer101010 (this is cute)
Websites:	http://slated.org
Real name:	Keith G. Robertson-Turner [^]
	The relationship between Slated and BN is… complicated. Worthy of being explored in detail later.

Handle:	The OpenSourcerer
Aliases:
Websites:	http://www.theopensourcerer.com/
Real name:	Alan Lord [^]
	Lord is another anti-Mono activist, which would be all well and good if it wasn’t for the fact that he shows up in discussions without proper disclosure.

Handle:	einfeldt
Aliases:
Websites:	http://christianeinfeldt.sys-con.com/ http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/
Real name:	Christian Einfeldt
	Einfeldt’s vlog (?) is regularly linked to from BN. Here he is for example on Mad Hatter’s blog doing the usual “if I don’t like what you’re saying then you must be employed by Microsoft” routine. Here he is scratching Alan Lord’s back, so to speak.

Handle:	David Gerard
Aliases:	Red Drag Diva, etc.
Websites:	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard http://davidgerard.co.uk/ http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/ http://reddragdiva.co.uk/ http://slashdot.org/~David+Gerard http://notnews.today.com/
	Gerard is one of the powers that be at Wikipedia. Very active obviously there and on Slashdot, where his activities can be gently described as spamming. He’s also gets the link treatment from BN once in a while, does some back scratching and posts comments regularly.

Handle:	Robert Millan
Aliases:	robertmh
Websites:	http://robertmh.wordpress.com/
	A lesser boi, Millan likes to troll people who oppose the Jihad against Mono. Apparently a good buddy of tacone. He runs goodbye-microsoft.com, where he has a screencast that shows how to execute untrusted binaries in Windows (heh). He helpfully created a Wikipedia article for his own project as well.

This next group are “journalists” (yes, those are quotes) that are also associated with BN in a sense.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Blogger provocateur employed by ComputerWorld. Famously claimed that a Google interruption of service should be blamed on Microsoft, even going so far as to explain that a possible reason for the problem he had seen somewhere didn’t “hold water”. A day later Google confirmed what didn’t hold water. SJVN is regularly quoted on BN, and he regularly quotes Schestowitz as well – he even went so far as to claim that the alleged DoS suffered by BN was the work of Microsoft (that was received very well. Will it make the Digg front page? Stay tuned!). He’s also good at putting together amazing conspiracy theories about how he just can’t get on the Digg front page (duly parroted), possibly ignoring the fact that his self-submitted articles are simply not that interesting. Well, at least not all of them. Er, I mean at least the ones Microsoft forgot to suppress. Sometimes he confuses the BoycottBoys as well.

Sam Varghese

Varghese is another blogger link exchange for BN and occasional defender of the cause. Sometimes his tone is frighteningly similar to Schestowitz’ (others have noticed that). He also has it in for Miguel de Icaza, complete with the same constant clever suggestions that he is an agent of evil bent on smashing Freedom. The comments on his blog are a sight to behold, and routinely feature appearances by the BoycottBoys. Famously, he wrote an extremely detailed and quite unnecessary four-page rebuttal to an anti-Stallman blog post made by a Microsoft intern. This is something I’ll revisit later as well.

Carla Schroder

Manages LinuxToday.com. Schroder is actually rather balanced in what she does, so perhaps she is more deserving of the journalism tag than others. I include her here because she links to BN often, and vice versa. Still, LinuxToday is really just a link aggregator on any given day. Schroder has written books about Linux and seems to be a generally nice person and honest FOSS advocate.

And finally, a list of minor contributors and lesser hanger-ons, some of whom are inactive but should be mentioned just in case someone runs into them outside of BN.

Eruaran	Shilly con carne.
NeonFloss	Seems to be associated with this site (probably NSFW). Active on Reddit and Digg (a few people have ended up on BN via Digg)
DaemonFC	Also went by DaemonXP and DaemonMVD for a while. Used to go by TheAlmightyCthulhu on the Ubuntu forums. Kicked out of IRC, inactive. Interesting story I’ll revisit later. This is the guy that broke the story about the FoxConn motherboards allegedly screwing up Linux, which made the rounds last year. This is his blog.
saulgoode	Doesn’t seem to get on IRC, but shows up to make comments regularly.
tessier	Tracy Reed [^]. Used to be just a regular, but now his company hosts the domain after the “denial of service attack” they suffered and couldn’t resolve with the old shared host.
seller_liar	Mystery man. Probably Portuguese and possibly associated with trmanco and/or Rui Seabra. He helps distros find reasons to remove Mono and so on.
wallclimber	Apparently helps with transliteration of PDFs from the Comes vs. Microsoft material.
wispygalaxy	Another Digg transplant. She shills^w helps out with perception management.
PetoKraus	Seems to be affiliated with the FSF and/or Phoronix. Inactive for a while now.
kentma	Mark Kent. Also active on comp.os.linux.lunacy^Wadvocacy. Interesting relationship here too, probably worth exploring. Kent provides Schestowitz’ internet access using resources owned by the University of Manchester.
libervisco	Used to be very active on IRC, but later disappeared. Apparently became disillusioned with the whole thing. This is recent and bears repeating: “… I'm still trying to think of ways how to politely say what my problem with BN is, but it's too long so I think I'd sum it up with this: BN is a place you go to if you need more reasons to hate MS and that's the kind of crowd that it attracts, which may or may not be intentional (though it's hard to miss), but as someone who believes that the whole war with MS and the whole case for Free Software purism is one huge straw man […] and often a self contradiction, it's simply hard to take too much of it seriously […] I keep seeing people fight for the opposite of what they passionately believe they are fighting for […] and it's sometimes funny in a sad way and sometimes just frustrating [...] because I wanna tell them that, but don't know how to express it without looking like an enemy”
thenixedreport	Thomas Hoolbrook II. Relative newcomer. Seems like a nice guy actually.
Chips B Malroy	Another hunter of “M$ shills”. Seems to have found a permanent home on BN with the rest of ‘em. Surprising? You bet!
Ed Lavanderi	Prolific commenter, although I’m not sure if he gets on IRC.
Lyle Howard Seave	Another prolific commenter and defender of the cause. [2]
Victor Soliz	His other nym is vexorian. Active on Slashdot as well.
aeshna23	Big fan. Really big fan. Probably knows Schestowitz in meatspace.
CoolGuy	Interestingly generic handle with a nack for appearing at times of great need to post encouraging comments that can be used to veer off topic and ignore difficult questions. Probably just a useful nym operated by one of the bois or BoycottBoy himself.
subsonica	Another minor boi.
fewa	Very active on IRC.
zoobab	Seems to be involved in ECMA, ODF and/or the slog against OOXML. Amazing coincidences!
Needs Sunlight	Prolific commenter. Probably the alter ego of MinceR or one of the other bois.

References to shilling and such are welcome. You can send me an email or something if you want. I do not want or need personal information on these people. I don’t care where they live, where they work or what color underwear they use. So please don’t even bother. I won’t publish any of that.

To preempt the reaction that this will undoubtedly garner, I’m well aware that some of these people might be “proud” of being associated with the den of paranoia. They might not think that what they do is shilling or astroturfing, they might think that their contributions are truly helping advance FOSS, or maybe they don’t care what Roy Schestowitz is saying any given day as long as they’re allowed to hang out on his IRC channel or get some links back to their blogs. That’s all well and good. I’m not trying to shame them by association, or trying to get them to sever ties or anything like that. That would be rather stupid. No, the reason this is needed is because often they’ll show up on other websites to comment about a specific topic, and simply pointing to them and saying that they are associated with BN is not enough. There needs to be a page that people can link to and say “this person is just repeating the BN talking points” or  “this person is a regular contributor over there” and so on. Beyond that, I don’t care what they do or where they do it. Just as long as it’s well understood who benefits in the end from what they’re saying or doing.

Initially I hesitated at the idea of making comments about some of these people’s activities by referencing things they say on their IRC channel and their blogs. Inevitably that can be used to claim I am “attacking people”. However, I believe that, given the proper context, these unguarded conversations are a good indicator of what people really think. It brings out the bacon, as it were. My hesitation was completely eliminated the day I posted this as I happened to notice that Schestowitz was comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi (!) and using something stupid someone said years ago (re: the “terrorists” quote by Enderle) to support whatever point he was trying to make. This is a common pattern for him. He has no qualms about collecting juicy quotes from people he dislikes and using them – often out of context – to emotionalize his hyperbole-laden arguments and drama queen panegyrics. One reaps what one sows.

Notes

[1] I do not hold Schestowitz responsible for comments like these, just to be very clear. Anyone can log in, shout “Hitler is teh best” and log out, and that would show up on the published log. It is however interesting to note what can get you kicked from his IRC channel and what doesn’t.
[2] There are many prolific commenters on that site. These are the ones that regularly appear to save the day and have an obvious bias. That doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, but the identities should be documented.

Revisions

• [2009-08-04] Removed an implied alias of ‘tacone’, as per his comment. I don’t see why he would lie about that, and the association with the Slashdot account was tenuous at best. Revised the notes about the “Goblin” person, as per this. I did notice that using a latin phrase in one’s “blog” was patented at some point and I missed the memo. I’ll revisit that later, specifically the Neowin part. His honor is safe. Added some new entries as well.
• [2009-08-06] Some tweaks here and there, additions.
• [2009-09-16] A few additions I had pending, redirect the CyberPhoenix entry to its own article.