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On October 9, Microsoft posted a testimonial on its web site 
called "Confessions of a Mac to PC Convert." 

It was a first-person account by a "freelance writer" about how 
she had fallen in love with Windows XP. "I was up and running in 
less than one day, Girl Scout's honor," said the attractive woman 
in the photo. "There was only one problem: She doesn't exist," 
writes David Pogue. "A with-it member of Slashdot.org, the popular 
hangout for articulate nerds, happened to notice that the woman's 
picture actually came from GettyImages.com, a stock-photo agency. 

Ted Bridis, an Associated Press reporter, took it from there. 
Amazingly, he tracked authorship of the article to Valerie 
Mallinson, a public-relations woman hired by Microsoft to write 
the story." Microsoft reacted to the revelations by hinting it 
might punish Mallinson, and her PR firm tried to pretend she 
didn't work there. Microsoft also deleted the fake testimonial 
from its web site, but you can find a mirror of it here. 


[Source: New York Times, October 17, 2002]


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