Microsoft's fake community websites and Q&A, Episode Two

[Fleet Command]

Hello, Earthlings! 😊

On 28 May 2023, Neowin reported that Blizzard's so-called Q&A session was fake. I commented, "What an utterly Microsoft kind of behavior! It's no wonder Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard. After all, birds of a feather flock together. A little context: Microsoft has been staging fake Q&A and community websites since at least 2000." In the wake of that comment, several of you asked for (or, should I say, insisted on seeing) evidence. Thus, this thread was born.

In the previous episode, I introduced you to people whose claim of being Microsoft's "independent advisors" didn't match their hands-on knowledge. To wit, one of them claimed to be "an installation specialist" and bore the Microsoft-issued badges of "moderator" and "MVP," but showed the technical expertise of a malfunctioning version of ChatGPT. Our supervisor, Nick H., likened this person to "an expert from Microsoft [who phoned] me the other day because they had noticed that my computer was riddled with viruses...I had fun with him!"

Today, we take a look at a fake interview.

Episode 2: Fake interviews!

The fake interview

On 25 June 2019, Microsoft published an interview entitled "Windows 10 Enterprise vs. Windows 10 Pro," with two "Technology Solutions Professionals specializing in Windows deployments," Nick Moseley and Shawn Porter.

When this so-called "interview" went live, commenters butchered it.

• All three commenters mentioned that the interview doesn't discuss its topic. It doesn't mention any of Windows 10 features.
• User "wroot"  slammed the whole article as the work of one PR person.
• User "MasterMysterious" mentioned a typographical omission that couldn't have happened in an interview.

I've noticed that the article contains the phrase "and/or," a meaningless construct that only appears in writing, mostly in legal texts. In addition, it contains nothing technical or otherwise worth reading.

Genuine interviews

In the past, Microsoft has also held genuine interviews—or at least, more believable ones. Here is an interview whose subject is interviewing: "One Dev Question - What was your first interview like for Microsoft?"

[binaryzero]

You must be really bored... You were burned over a week ago, ###### sake get over it, no one cares. 🤦‍♂️

The full title of the article is "Windows 10 Enterprise vs. Windows 10 Pro: Modern management considerations for your organization".

You missed the point of the article; it's not to discuss technical differences between the SKUs. The point is how you could approach the topic of which SKU to purchase, specifically from a management perspective. I.e. how do you persuade\convince management that the cost is justified, what are the overall benefits of having the Enterprise SKU and why would you pick it over the Pro SKU, what it means to use the Enterprise SKU in the long run, etc.. It's an article providing insight from field engineers.

The people replying to the article are wearing their engineering\technical hat (the same one you're wearing). I saw your previous post, the questions you asked are difficult to answer without looking at what you've done to your system, basically... pebkac problems.

"Anyway, I reverted the entire Windows partition to the one backed up on 21 March 2020. It seems the problem went away." - Pebkac.
"I replaced my "winre.wim" file with a fresh copy from the Windows 10 20H1 ISO, provided by Microsoft. It works properly now." - Pebkac.
"The culprit was none other than... Comodo Internet Security 12.2.2. This version seems to be incompatible with Windows 10 version 20H1. As long as it was installed, any adding or changing network adaptors took a very long time." - Pebkac.

lol.

[Fleet Command]

On 05/06/2023 at 16:37, binaryzero said:

You must be really bored... You were burned over a week ago, ###### sake get over it, no one cares. 🤦‍♂️

The full title of the article is "Windows 10 Enterprise vs. Windows 10 Pro: Modern management considerations for your organization".

You missed the point of the article; it's not to discuss technical differences between the SKUs. The point is how you could approach the topic of which SKU to purchase, specifically from a management perspective. I.e. how do you persuade\convince management that the cost is justified, what are the overall benefits of having the Enterprise SKU and why would you pick it over the Pro SKU, what it means to use the Enterprise SKU in the long run, etc.. It's an article providing insight from field engineers.

The people replying to the article are wearing their engineering\technical hat (the same one you're wearing). I saw your previous post, the questions you asked are difficult to answer without looking at what you've done to your system, basically... pebkac problems.

"Anyway, I reverted the entire Windows partition to the one backed up on 21 March 2020. It seems the problem went away." - Pebkac.
"I replaced my "winre.wim" file with a fresh copy from the Windows 10 20H1 ISO, provided by Microsoft. It works properly now." - Pebkac.
"The culprit was none other than... Comodo Internet Security 12.2.2. This version seems to be incompatible with Windows 10 version 20H1. As long as it was installed, any adding or changing network adaptors took a very long time." - Pebkac.

lol.

Well, thank you! I'm more motivated than ever to write the next part. I'm impressed. You cared enough to pull all the tricks in the book, including ridicule ("LOL" ), expressing disappointment ("🤦‍♂️"), insulting ("######"), some semblances of technical comments, and saying nobody cares. I appreciate your care. And now I have a better understanding of how Sayan Sen feels when I comment on his grammatical or technical mistakes. By the way, he's around the corner, taking his revenge. 😊

[lnmnky]

And/or is used in conversation... This isn't a smoking gun like they think. 

[Fleet Command]

On 06/06/2023 at 01:09, lunamonkey said:

And/or is used in conversation... This isn't a smoking gun like they think. 

Prove it.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

On 06/06/2023 at 09:09, lunamonkey said:

And/or is used in conversation... This isn't a smoking gun like they think. 

 

On 06/06/2023 at 09:22, Fleet Command said:

Prove it.

I know that I have used it in a conversation before...

[Fleet Command]

On 06/06/2023 at 02:10, Nick H. said:

I know that I have used it in a conversation before...

Well, if you say so. And while I suspect you don't use it very often, I can concede this minor point. Nevertheless, the fake "interview" has far too many implausible points, especially compared to the more genuine-looking ones I linked. Feel free to make your conclusion.