A story has been going around the internet (and now being rewritten) about Vista being late because 60% the code has to be rewritten. Scoble has been calling people up checking on the facts, and wants the journalist's head on a platter. Yep, this is an attempt to spread FUD. Charlie Owen explains the rest of the story, and Dave Winer put it best:
You can view the 60-percent-Vista-rewrite story as something of a software development IQ test. Anyone who believes that it's conceivable
is someone who hasn't got the most basic clue about how software
development works. It's akin to believing that all the US troops in
Iraq could come home for the weekend and then on Monday all be back in
Iraq fighting the insurgents.
It's amazing, I was there at MIX06 and saw Vista working. I have the February CTP so I can install Vista and run it myself (which I am now doing). That is horrible journalism!
I remember how damaging FUD was for the Open Source community back in the late 90's. You spend most of your time fighting it (and a good chunk of money, if you got it). It's like the mud-slinging of the political arena, only worse because there usually isn't a shread of truth. I think Scoble is right, the editor and journalist do need to be fired. And not because they trashed Microsoft, but because they aren't doing real journalism. We as bloggers (and independant journalists) shouldn't tolerate such behavior. And yes, we also need to be asking for the firing of ever other professional journalist out there that doesn't do any fact-checking and spreads FUD about Linux, Apple, Ruby on Rails, or whatever.
You got to admit, though. It is very cool that it's the blogging community that is doing the fact-finding and saying "Hey, that's not right" or "Hey, that is dead on." What a beautiful, real-life case study.