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Allchin admits Win2001 code leak after Web slagfest

Why can't you guys just be nice to each other?

The strange escape of pre-beta code for Whistler, the proposed successor to Windows 2000, earlier this week was followed up by a bizarre flurry around the Web over the last 12 hours or so. Several sites seem to have seized on an apparent Microsoft claim that the whole thing was a fraud, and then retreated with their tails between their legs when Jim Allchin, no less, came out with his hands up and admitted it was real. This morning UK time there doesn't seem to be a whole lot left of whatever it was they said, but a victorious and vindicated Byron Hinson of ActiveWin, which along with BetaNews broke the story, told The Register that several sites "had started to state that the Whistler leak we posted about was faked". Nate Mook of BetaNews, however, emailed MS OS supremo Allchin who confirmed that it wasn't, and claimed that InfoWorld had misquoted him as saying he thought it was a "press ruse". We at The Register marvel at the venom levels prevalent in certain parts of the Web, and confess ourselves entirely baffled by anybody, even briefly, believing the leak was a fake. The key proof that is wasn't is that the claimed content was so dull - if you're going to make something up, you're going to make it exciting, right? This is what Microsoft spinmeisters do when they're leaking slideware about operating systems that don't exist yet (eg. Millennium, as leaked getting on for a year ago). But enough of that. Unless there's a misattribution on the ActiWin site, the "press ruse" misquote seems to have made it onto CNet as well, although if so, it's gone again by this morning. In his reply to Mook's email Allchin says that "we heard it was out there and when we went searching for it we couldn't find it". He claims that rather than him saying it was a press ruse, he'd said that "a person who had searched for it concluded it might be a press ruse, but I said that it didn't seem likely because the build number was so exact and we did make such a build. I said I just didn't know". In his earlier email to Allchin, Mook had admitted having received an unsolicited copy of Whistler build 2211.1 anonymously last week, and said he'd subsequently found it was "spread very widely across the net". Mook says he's agin this kind thing, and adds: "I will help do whatever you need me to do to assist in tracking down who is pirating this release." ® Related Story Code leak 'ships' Win2001 a year early See Also ActiveWin BetaNews

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