{"id":93805,"date":"2016-07-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=93805"},"modified":"2019-03-13T11:03:52","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T18:03:52","slug":"20160705-00","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20160705-00\/?p=93805","title":{"rendered":"Observing the bizarre rumor mill from the other side"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember being nonplussed<\/a> upon reading news reports that some Windows feature or other was a sure thing, despite a lack of actual, y’know, official confirmation. The one that sticks with me is the claim that there would be a 128-bit version of Windows 8<\/a>. The source for this information was a remark in somebody’s LinkedIn profile, which I’m sure is completely reliable, because nobody lies in their LinkedIn profile. <\/p>\n

One group<\/a> claims to have lined up an exclusive interview with the elusive Robert Morgan<\/a>, although the interview never appears to have taken place. <\/p>\n

Not only was the profile fake, it was fakified by the people who “discovered” it<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Another example is the article 8 things you need to know about Windows 8<\/a>, which says “But there are some things we do know.” And then a few paragraphs later, they admit that everything they know is from job ads and LinkedIn profiles, so y’know, totally reliable. <\/p>\n

And then there’s this article<\/a>, which is 100% speculation. “I’m thinking if such an announcement happens, it’ll be Silverlight for the iPhone.” The basis for this claim is a tweet from somebody guessing that Steve Ballmer will announce Silverlight for iPhone at the WWDC Keynote, which is double-speculation, since Ballmer’s purported appearance was itself just wild speculation (that turned out to be false<\/a>). After considering the feasibility of such an announcement the article ends, “What do you think? Could the rumors be true?” <\/p>\n

I have to admit, I really admire that. The article makes up a rumor, and then asks, “Is it true?” Hey, here’s an idea: “No it isn’t, because you just made it up.” <\/p>\n

Today is P. T. Barnum’s birthday. Or at least the day people claim<\/i> to be his birthday. <\/p>\n

Bonus reading<\/b>: How I Fooled the Internet into Thinking This Fake Sony Nexus Was Real<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Make it up, and then ask if it’s true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-93805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Make it up, and then ask if it’s true.<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}