It's sometimes easy to check if someone is a corporate shill designed to discredit people or not. For example on Slashdot or HN, you can check their comment history. When you do that for Apple or Linux 'extremists' you always find them commenting normally in other discussions and even going in-depth into the ones that they're passionate about, i.e Apple or Linux discussions. If you think that those threats of violence were paid for by MS, I think you're being paranoid.