I mean, crikey, a blog tends to require regular access to the internets! Many, if not most, blogs are updated more than once a day.

Yep. They just pop by all the time. Just to use my email.

/snark

Someone may want to double check Tman’s IP with that of Hobbs. Just a thought …

Bill made a sockpuppet. It happens ALL THE TIME on the internets. You can’t fight Occam’s Razor.

Two posts come from the same IP address, 99.9999999% of the time it’s the same person. Do you accept or reject this premise?

So you won’t explain the goldfish?

Your comments will remain here in case anyone wants to read them.

If you feel the need to reply with some personal abuse, which I feel sure you will, please be advised that I will delete it.

Kieren

Now to your “case” or lack thereof-

Let’s walk the case over to Friar Ockham’s Razor. The idea is to make the least number of assumptions. The facts are:

* Someone called Bill who was posing as a man called Steven Forrest sent emails from Bill Hobbs’ house
* Bill Hobbs has admitted to knowing this person, and to building the website where “Steven Forrest” posted his comments
* Bill Hobbs is a professional blogger who advertises his blogging services on his website
* Immediately after Bill Hobbs was named as Steven Forrest, the blog stopped

All true except for the last one. The blog died out because the owner stopped posting. As much as you would like it to be so, your diatribe supposedly exposing Bill Hobbs as Steven Forrest thus causing the blog to expire has little basis in fact.

Now my assumptions are:
* Bill Hobbs is Steven Forrest

Yes, we gathered that.

Your assumptions are:
* Bill is friends with someone else called Bill who asked him to build a blog

It’s not an assumption, it’s a fact. Bill Hobbs has done this for several people.

* This second Bill visited first Bill’s house a few times (even though the entire business transaction could be carried out online)

Had you read any of Bills responses, you would see WHY he went to Bills house to post. If I was paying someone to help me get a blog started, and they offered to have me come to their house to get show how to use the blog, I would go there. It would be easier to have this explained in person than online.

* This second Bill was allowed to send emails from Bill house when he was over there (which, incidentally, was about one year after the blog went up).

The emails were a year after the blog went up? You sure? Not that it would matter, but this may be another “fact” of yours that may need further examination.

* The second Bill decided to put an end to his blog when his friend Bill Hobbs was named as his pseudonym because he didn’t want people to find out his true identity

According to Hobbs, the blog ended because no one was reading it and it was cost prohibitive to keep it running. Again, this would apply nicely through Occams razor.

You have no evidence. You have no smoking gun, perhaps that’s why you asked that we “leave that for a minute”. If you did, you would have presented it to the court in all its glory, not this flimsy circumstantial evidence. You do not have a smoking gun. With the evidence you’ve presented, no jury would convict Hobbs of writing under Steven Forrest’s pseudonym.

Tell me more about this goldfish, because your case has no merit. Does he take it black? Sugar? Cream?

Let’s assume for a second that we are in fact in a court room where there is also a giant Ockam’s Razor (let’s leave the Smoking Gun for a second).

First of all the responses you provide don’t actually answer a single one of the questions. And you also don’t get to answer several precise questions in one vague all-encompassing blurb.

Let’s walk the case over to Friar Ockham’s Razor. The idea is to make the least number of assumptions. The facts are:

* Someone called Bill who was posing as a man called Steven Forrest sent emails from Bill Hobbs’ house
* Bill Hobbs has admitted to knowing this person, and to building the website where “Steven Forrest” posted his comments
* Bill Hobbs is a professional blogger who advertises his blogging services on his website
* Immediately after Bill Hobbs was named as Steven Forrest, the blog stopped

Now my assumptions are:
* Bill Hobbs is Steven Forrest

Your assumptions are:
* Bill is friends with someone else called Bill who asked him to build a blog
* This second Bill visited first Bill’s house a few times (even though the entire business transaction could be carried out online)
* This second Bill was allowed to send emails from Bill house when he was over there (which, incidentally, was about one year after the blog went up).
* The second Bill decided to put an end to his blog when his friend Bill Hobbs was named as his pseudonym because he didn’t want people to find out his true identity

It depends what particular fantasy court case we’re in here but if we’re working to “balance of probabilities” well then we have a guilty man.

Please actually read this response slowly before replying. I don’t have many more CSI moments left in me.

Kieren

Bill Hobbs has several friends, some of them bloggers, that have visited his house more than twice.

I would assume that there could be more than two times that “Billtwo” emailed from his house, but Bill says otherwise. I see no reason why he would lie about that. I cede the floor to Bill Hobbs for his explanation -I set up a blog for someone else who wanted to write under a pseudonym. He used my PC two times - once when I was showing him how to do things “under the hood” of Movable Type, and another when we were attempting to fix the blog’s ability to ward of comment spam by installing various plug-ins and upgrading the MT software to the latest version.

I was paid by my client to set up the blog and install its design and such - I’ve done that for several people, by the way. I was not a paid blogging shill for a corporation as the various blog posts Brittney linked to assert. I do not know the motivations of the blogger who wrote the site, but the claims that it is a corporate shill blog seem odd given that most of the content of the blog had nothing to do with that company. One of the people pushing the assertion is a reporter who admits that his motivation for making the assertion is that the blogger took issue with his coverage of that corporation.”

I would assume Bill Hobbs linked to his clients new blog as a courtesy, which would be a smart business decision.

So far you would get laughed out of any court room in the US. You say “I already know he posed as Steven Forrest for two years.” So far all you have is circumstantial evidence that if applied through Occams razor would reveal a very different story than what you are claiming.

What else ya got?

* Bill Two visited the house just twice? What were those dates? Does Bill One remember anything in particular about it - like the time of day?
* Is Bill Two absolutely sure it was only twice? There’s no other time Bill Two could have sent emails from his house?
* How long has Bill One knows Bill Two?
* How did they meet?
* Has Bill One built many blogs for people?
* How many of those people came round his house?
* How did Bill Two communicate that he wanted the blog to end?
* Did Bill Two buy the domain? Or Bill One?
* If Bill One was so uninterested in Bill Two’s content, why did he consistently link to it in the early days of Free2Innovate?

And so on. The more information there is, the more the story will unravel. But I have no interest in chasing Mr Hobbs. I already know he posed as Steven Forrest for two years. I’m just glad he stopped because Forrest’s posts were spreading misinformation by misrepresentating facts.

Kieren