[Locke1689]

I don't think that conflating speculation with conspiracy theories is necessarily productive. It's not like Microsoft doesn't have a track record of abandoning partners in the past[1] (e.g. Plays 4 Sure).

Conspiracy theories are just speculation too. One could argue that the US government has a history of all kinds of activities and thus many of the current conspiracies are in keeping with history. The essence of a conspiracy theory is speculation not grounded in evidence or probability.

I'm not sure that 'pulling rank' is necessarily constructive either. It just reminds me of those Slashdot threads where people with increasing smaller UIDs would reply with, "You must be new here," or "get off my lawn."

My comment was directed quite clearly at the insinuation that I was speaking on behalf of Microsoft, which I do not do.

I may have been snarky, but only because I see this quite a lot on HN -- that people are the company they work for. We're just members of this community like any other.

[ryanmolden]

This. It is unbelievable the number of times where people will say something like "I understand why you feel that way..." (if I am say arguing in favor of some MS product/decision) as if, because I work for Microsoft, I must be some non-thinking shill or purveyor of FUD. It is unfortunate because it prevents me from even wanting to participate in any conversation here involving any tech company because everything I say is apparently interpreted through the lens of my employer, because clearly people are that one-dimensional :)

[pyre]

Microsoft seems to be focused on Metro as the way forward. I don't think it's that much of a stretch that they might be pushing JavaScript to the fore-front of their development strategy while starting to side-line C#. I could draw parallels to Apple's sidelining of the Carbon API in favor of their Cocoa API. IIRC, Photoshop is still using the Carbon, even though the majority of development now is in Cocoa.

Granted, I don't follow the Microsoft development community closely, so there may be something that I'm missing out on, but I don't see it to be as 'out there' as claiming vast conspiracy theories surrounding historical events.

[contextfree]

Focusing on WinRT as the way forward != pushing Javascript to the forefront and sidelining C#

[pyre]

I didn't say that one implied the other. Just that it didn't seem as 'out there' as moon landing or holocaust deniers.

[contextfree]

Right, the "conspiracy theory" phrase is weird (what is the conspiracy supposed to be?)