So now it’s all out in the open: Randall C. Kennedy is pathological liar who created a fake persona in the form of one Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software. These are He is the clowns clown who claimed that Server 2008 performed substantially better than Windows Vista SP1 despite the fact that they are two editions of THE SAME OPERATING SYSTEM! Kennedy is also the fool who, after making asinine assertions about Windows Vista and Win7 thread counts on his InfoWorld blog, proceeded to embarrass himself in an online debate with Thom Holwerda (of OSNEWS.COM) that highlighted what a know-nothing blowhard he was.
However, that wasn’t enough for Randall, not by a long shot. Ever obsessed with trashing Microsoft, AND appearing to be a big shot, he actually published, via his fake company blog, a bunch of absurd statistics regarding Windows 7 memory usage. His lack of understanding about some fundamental memory counters and usage behavior in NT (and specifically Win7 with superfetch enabled) ultimately led to the discovery of one of the most unbelievable bits of tech media drama this industry has ever seen: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=31024&tag=content;wrapper .
Now, I find it odd that some in the tech press are surprised to find out that Kennedy was the defacto boss of Devil Mountain, as running Office Bench throws up lots of content with Kennedy’s bio and articles sprinkled throughout. What blew me away was hearing that Craig Barth was an invention of Randall’s mind. You have to be kidding me?!! And IDG took this long to figure this out?! It was ZDNet, a competing blog site, over the course of a few days that managed to uncover this!?
No, the real story isn’t that Randall Kennedy is an incompetent, disgraceful boob (anyone with half a clue knew this already). The REAL story is that the tech media (and even major media) outlets single sourced their information from Devil Mountain Software or Craig Barth without vetting their source AND, most importantly, providing alternative sources that could verify or debunk Kennedy’s (AKA Devil Mountain / Craig Barth’s) claims. People like Computer World’s Gregg Keizer should be ASHAMED of themselves for simply acting as a mouthpiece for Kennedy/Barth/DMS without doing ANY real investigative journalism. IDG NEVER validated Kennedy’s bio, NEVER validated the benchmark software he provided for them (as detailed in the ZDNet expose) and never validated the statements that Kennedy made.
In short, IDG and the broader media allowed one man to run a massive FUD campaign against Microsoft by parroting his statements when it served their purposes of feeding a bias or driving hits to their sites. Disgusting doesn’t go far enough in describing the conduct of IDG, InfoWorld, ComputerWorld or the rest of the tech media that allowed this to go unchecked for well over a decade.
