>> I guess you learned him, Ed, by not linking to his site.

Um, I did link to his site. It’s the very first link in this column. And I did the same in the column I wrote at ZDNet.

If you’re going to pick at me, at least pick at me for something I actually did.

A little civility, guys? I guess you learned him, Ed, by not linking to his site. I don’t know who either of you are kidding here. You both have ad-supported sites that benefit, under the Google oligarchy, with additional inbound links. I typed in Paul Thurrott in Google (without quotes) and he came up as the first link. I hardly think, that if I was so inclined to idle away three hours of my life to read all this childish bickering, that I’d be miffed about having to Google someone for about 11 seconds – especially when I can do it right within my Firefox browser.

So, maybe you guys could kiss and makeup and the world of pro commentators (or as you call them – journalists) could carry on the burden of reporting on Windows. With an army of Mac and Linux fiends hot on your trail, it hardly seems you have the luxury of fireside bickering. Just my two cents worth on the overall value us faithful readers glean from stuff like this. And I’ll make the disclaimer here that I’m no puppet of Thurrott’s, and even link to you, Ed, on my blog, not Thurrott. But mostly because I just love the font you use on this site. I still can’t wrap my head around it. It’s beautiful. It truly is. I may just copy you one day soon.

Mr T has had his day. The deferential treatment he once received from the ‘community’ has long since expired. Bloggers don’t buy the Microsoft PR line quite as easily as he writes about it. You’re right about one thing – he calls up Microsoft Managers / Wagner PR – and the story is as good as written.

I said I wasn’t going to use any expletives, so I won’t. But the claim that text-based newsletters are incompatible with links is … bogus.

Somehow Brian Livingston and Fred Langa and Scot Finnie and other professionals who do their work primarily through newsletters manage to deliver text-based versions that include links. If one wants to be credible, there’s a way. If one wants to live and work in a personal echo chamber, there’s a different way.

His only true blog is his Internet Nexus, where appropriate to the format he links liberally.

Maybe when I’m as big as Thurrott I can do away with links in posts

You and I link because it’s in out nature to do so and we want to give a broad, fair picture of things, but I know of a lot of website and blog networks that do very little in the way of linking to other sites … and the reason there is almost exclusively an ad revenue issue (they want the visitors to click on an ad, not a link to another site). I know that a couple of the big blog networks have a limits on the number of links that are allowed.

In this case, I think that the reason is that Thurrott doesn’t link to you (or anyone else) is that his audience doesn’t demand it. If you have the following, you can do what you want.

Or maybe he knows how the ZDNet business model works and doesn’t want to send visitors your way…

Yep he is a stenographer.