It appears that some people still have difficulties with all this new technology. Take Tom Giovanetti of the IPI, for instance.
The IPI is a group that is sponsored by (and therefore speaks along the lines of interest of) some very large US corporations, trying to make it look like those interests were also the interests of everyone else. I mentioned them before as would-be saviour of Microsoft in the EU antitrust trial, and Tom Giovanetti is their president.
It now seems that by skillfully navigating the set of tubes that is the internet, Mr Giovanetti has found a page with press pictures of me, and could not resist from pointing others to it, apparently because he thinks that having those pictures available for use by the press says something about me.
Personally, I felt I was just being lazy by trying to avoid the repeated questions for print-quality pictures for articles, conference brochures and the like. So I simple made a bunch, put them all online, and let people choose for themselves which fits their purposes best — with the upside that I won’t have to bother anymore. Tom however seems to think that this is some testimony to overexaggerated self-love. To me, that interpretation seems to say more about the interpetor than the interpretee, but be that as it may.
While it is slightly creepy that Tom seems to be missing me so much between WIPO meetings that he needs to search for pictures of me, it is truly hilarious that he would then get so confused by all those tubes that he would link to "my" blog, which is actually the blog of Karstens Gerloff, a former FSFE intern, and still an active FSFE Team member. The fact that it was for the user "gerloff" apparently was too complicated to figure out, so he assumed it must be me. Funny.
Tom: I realise that all this new technology must look very confusing to you, but I’d still appreciate if you did not misattribute statements. So just to clarify: the URL of my blog is http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/.
And no, nothing personal… see you next time at WIPO.
[update]
Roughly two hours after this blog entry went online, someone pointed out that Tom Giovanetti had silently updated the link on his blog. So it is now pointing at my blog for real. Thanks, Tom!
Allow me one final comment, though: On the internet it is extremely bad style to silently change articles or blog entries without clearly marking the changes. Most people would indeed consider it falsification.
That is why updates and changes should be clearly marked — like this one is.
