In the end, it doesn’t really matter if “Fred” is an employee or a wifi freeloader — if you will notice, he also posted in a similar tone last month. My take-away is that he is not legit. I’ll gladly post a correction if that turns out not to be the case.

Pete, I appreciate your thoughtful feedback and I am glad you find some of the content here useful. What I am trying to accomplish does require a balance. I intend to write more on this point in the future, but I need to leave it at that for now — something really big is happening tomorrow.

You have some excellent info on this blog, but you need to seriously consider how your obvious bias and negative attitude affect others perceptions of your expertise.

But for the constructive and helpful guidance you do provide on this blog, you have my sincere thanks.

“So yeah, it could have been somebody jumping on the MSFT wifi. But it’s not very likely”

You say that based on ________?

To be very clear – I have no idea if the poster was MSFT or not.

Frankly, I don’t even care. I don’t work in the virtualization space and only came here because this was a popular twitter meme and I wanted to see what the big “Microsoft tries deception, gets caught” headline was all about.

Here’s what I do know: most, not all – and I have no clue about NC – non-Redmond MSFT offices in the US exist for one reason: sales.

Guess what sales offices have in them constantly: customers.

Go to the MSFT office in NYC on the Avenue of the Americas (next to Radio City Music Hall).

Guess what you’re likely to see there?

Customers.

Lots of them (probably more customers than MSFT employees).

Skepticism is fine, but objectivity is a great thing to.

I have, however, never seen a Bigfoot and I don’t think they exist.

Chuck

So yeah, it could have been somebody jumping on the MSFT wifi. But it’s not very likely, and readers should treat the comment with an appropriate level of skepticism until there are successful SCVMM 2008 customers managing mixed Hyper-V & ESX production environments. I’m sure we’ll see actual published case studies from MSFT about them. I’ll go even further out on a limb and say these customers will be easier to find than Bigfoot, although I’m personally skeptical there will be many of them soon.

Dude, if you’re a MS hater or a fanboy for some other vendor and you permit that to affect your objectivity you damage your credibility and the credibility of the very position to articulate.

MSFT says they value MVPs because they are independent, credible, recognized experts. MVPs aren’t lap dogs. I was there when Balmer asked MVPs to raise their hands if they used various search engines. Very few hands went up for Live, derisive laughs were heard for Yahoo, and nearly EVERY hand went up for Google – including mine.

I’m not saying your assumption is incorrect. I’m just saying as a former MVP I have used MSFT wifi in so many MSFT offices around the world that I know for a fact that Microsoft is generous to its visitors and allows them use of their wifi (at user group meetings, Code Camps, etc). Value objectivity is all I’m suggesting.

It is an entire town.