M$ Caught Astroturfing at Robert Pogson

“The multi-billion-dollar astroturf campaign for Vista 8 and Microsoft’s UEFI-encumbered hardware are both failing, but for new hardware with UEFI there are still issues”

via Vista 8 Endorsements Are Fake, Microsoft Decided to Break Rather Than Make | Techrights.

Don’t you just love it? M$ has so little confidence in the quality and success in the market of their product even with a monopoly on retail shelf-space in many places that it feels the need pay rich/popular people handsomely to promote “8″ whether or not those people even use the product…
Wikipedia:
“Astroturfing refers to political, advertising or public relations campaigns that are designed to mask the sponsors of the message to give the appearance of coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant. Astroturfing is intended to give the statements the credibility of an independent entity by withholding information about the source’s financial connection. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.”

I have run on real Astroturf. It’s not as good as the real thing. Too much bounce…

Meanwhile, I use Debian GNU/Linux. It’s the greatest OS on the planet and no one had to pay me to write this. I run it on many PCs in my home and even on my router. I ran it on hundreds of PCs in many schools over the last 15 years and found it reduced costs: maintenance, malware, performance and it will run on anything.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.