Inventing the news revisited: Millennium rumors touted as fact

According to several beta testers who have contacted me personally, the technical beta for Millennium--the next version of Consumer Windows, the follow-up to Windows 98 Second Edition--has begun. But if you spend any time browsing the Web looking for news about Millennium, you're going to run into rumors and opinion that are touted as "fact." Unfortunately, there's a lot of baloney floating around out there.

Let's take a look at some of it.

On the "Beta News" Web site, for example, Nate Mook provides the following factoids about Millennium:

It's all very interesting. Too bad none of the previous statements are true. Here's the real deal:

Don't believe me? Well, even Microsoft has denounced this report, saying that it contains numerous factual inaccuracies. "It's just not that far along yet," a Microsoft representative said, referring to Mook's comments.

The moral behind this, of course, is that you need to take any "news" you read on the Internet with a grain of salt. And yes, I'd include WinInfo in that list. The difference here, of course, is that I try to be clear about the line between opinion and fact. And I always admit when I'm wrong, because this is all about accuracy and fair reporting, not one-upmanship. Until I hear differently, most of the "reporting" that I've seen about Millennium on the Web has been simple conjecture, nothing more.

Sites like Beta news are popular because, let's face it, they'll print anything about beta Windows releases. But Beta News, like many other Web sites, has no special "insider" information about Windows: They simply get their info from the single most uninformed source on the planet, Microsoft's beta testers. As anyone who's tested software for Microsoft will tell you, these people are the last to know about the real information, which they often read about in PC Week or whatever before hearing "officially" from Microsoft.

--Pau