You were right not to buy his bullshit about being objective, and all the free stuff, personal support, valuable services, and big favors he demanded not affecting his reviews. He paved the way for other charlatan tech gatekeeper shills like Robert Scoble. You NEVER want to do or owe somebody like that a favor.

Jerry Pournelle (nee POURNE@MC) was a belligerent alcoholic and an over-entitled far-right-wing nutcase (which naturally go hand in hand), who would not only extort companies with computer hardware and software he wanted for free, but even blackmail university research labs "run by a bunch of communists" to give him all the free products and priceless personal support and services that he demanded, otherwise he would drunkenly threaten (and carry through) to publically badmouth them, not only in his Byte article and BIX, but also (in the case of the MIT-AI Lab providing him with his precious free ARPANET access in the early 80's) to his "Pentagon friends" and "reporter friends" and "even the House Armed Services Committee".

http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/pourne-smut.html

>"I find this thoroughly distasteful. If you have some authority to order me off the net, do so. If not, leave me alone." -Drunk Jerry Pournelle from his free POURNE@MIT-MC account generously provided by the MIT-AI Lab

>"I'm almost tempted to let him take his marbles and floppy disks and go home." -Glenn S Burke from GSB@MIT-MC

>"Personally, I'd just turn off his account. It's not like it's the first time, and he not only flaunts his use of our machines but stabs us in the back with grumblings about why he doesn't like this or that program of ours when he gets a chance. (Am thinking particularly of an article he wrote which condemned Lisp for reasons amounting to little more than his ignorance, but which cited Teach-Lisp in a not-friendly light... The man has learned nothing from his presence on MC and sets a bad example of what people might potentially accomplish there. I'd rather recycle his account for some bright 12-yr-old...)" -Kent Pitman from KMP@MIT-MC

>"I don't know whether you guys have read Niven and Pournelle's _Oath_of_Fealty_, but "Think of it as evolution in action." is their thinly disguised rallying cry for do-it-yourself social Darwinism. It would be so, so sweet to shove it back in his face." -John G. Aspinall from JGA@MIT-MC

>"I.e., little jerry isn't going to get my sympathy if big bad leigh klotz picks on him." -Glenn S Burk from GSB@MIT-MC

>"KLOTZ: 5'8"? POURNE: >6'4" Fuck it. Flush him." -David Vinayak Wallace from GUMBY@MIT-MC

>"It's funny this should appear in my mail to-day. I had lunch this afternoon with McCarthy, and in the course of conversation (we were discussing SF) he mentioned that someone at MC had flushed Pournelle... As for pournelle himself: He really thinks that WE are trying to annoy HIM??? Of course if he's vitriolic enough and all the obnoxious turists vanish (leaving the nice ones of course) then he may have atoned without realising it..." -David Vinayak Wallace from GUMBY@MIT-MC

>"You might consider contacting Byte about publishing some note from us to appear simultaneously with this. This is only important if pournelle is going to say what I think he is going to say (what JMC [John McCarthy] told me pournelle was claiming), which is that the reason his account was flushed was because he favors the Strategic Defense Initiative, and MC is run by a bunch of communists. This will no doubt please darpa immensely." -Patrick G. Sobalvarro from PGS@MIT-MC

>"One thing that is known about ARPA: you can be heaved off it for supporting the policies of the Department of Defense. Of course that was intended to anger me. If you have an ARPA account, please tell CSTACY that he was successful; now let us see if my Pentagon friends can upset him. Or perhaps some reporter friends. Or both., Or even the House Armed Services Committee." -Drunk Jerry Pournelle in ARPA-Exile on BIX

I wonder how many taxpayer's dollars Jerry Pournelle wasted trying to get the House Armed Services Committee to fix his IT problems.