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LinuxWorld Editorial Machinations
James Turner writes "The editors of LinuxWorld Magazine have been fighting a quiet war with the publishers (Sys-Con Media) for half a year, trying to get hack-journalist Maureen O'Gara purged from their site. Well, with O'Gara's recent vile attack on Pamela Jones (which I won't give any more free publicity by linking to), enough is finally enough.
In my latest blog, I've basically told Sys-Con that it's either her or me. I suspect, given the amount of page views O'Gara's tripe brings to the Sys-Con sites, that they'll choose her." James isn't the only one either.
Although journalism should be an unbiased thing, journalists are still part of a buisness whose incentive it is to make profit. Supply and demand. So do we blame the sensationalist writer, or the thousands of sheep reading the articles and demanding more. How are such articles from O'Gara tolerated in a trade mag like this. You would think the linux community would be more educated and less susceptible to this type of journalism, then again noting the anonymous cowards on slashdot, i take that back...
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Did someone say cat fight?
http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/read/83267.ht m
;)
I don't wish to publicise this to be honest, but people should read this and see just kind of trash is being referred to in the article.
I don't see how this could even be considered journalism to be quite honest - and i'm NOT just talking about Slashdot!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Why is it that common people always use the word hack in a negative sense? If you mean to say that she lacks ability, why not just say inept, unprofessional, clueless or some similar word?
You're "telling" your employers that you're quitting via a blog? And you're a "senior editor"? Wow. When my employees are ready to leave, they tell me face to face, as opposed to writing it on some virtual diary that nobody reads. Doesn't seem to be a very effective way of communicating your point... something you should know if you're a "senior editor". If they *do* read your blog and take you seriously, I hope for your sake that you have another job lined up.
I don't respond to AC's.
I haven't been following this particular soap opera. Since the submitter is unwilling to share O'Gara's article with us, could somebody else post a link?
I'd like to read both sides of the story and decide for myself what/who is right or wrong, thank you very much.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...to have another job lined up first before this sort of "line in the sand" comment to your employer. Of course this being the net, you and your other disgruntled editors can just start your own zine pretty easily.
Got fulltext? Link is nuked, and I'd rather not give them my ad revenue.
Its a techy site. I bet the owners spend more time reading slashdot than reading their mail.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Can be found in this article.
Apparently the Dictionary Search extension for Firefox, when you do a context menu search on the word 'hack', gives you this page:
2 0o'gara
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=maureen%
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
I've picked up and flipped through LinuxWorld magazine on several occasions. On all occasions I put it back right where I found it. LinuxWorld Magazine looks like yet-another journal trying to capitalize on the Linux hype. With a writer like Maureen O'Gara still on the payroll, their fragile credibility crumbles. James, if there's anywhere that will have you, run with a quickness to it.
My memory may be failing me, but if I recall correctly, wasn't there an issue about LinuxWorld displaying advertisements for Microsoft products, or more specifically the infamous Microsoft Get the Facts campaign, promoting Windows Server System 2003 as a better alternative to the leader of the Linux enterprise distributions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux? (Whether or not this is true is not the issue, and is another discussion for another thread.) As I say, I am not sure if I recall the event correctly.
bah
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
...on the front page of Slashdot?
A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.
304 North Central Avenue, Hardsdale, NY[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.
See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.
Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.
[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]
But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."
He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."
She was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where she was.
She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.
Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.
Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten spooked again because "people were getting hurt around [my] stories" and had lighted out for Canada.
[Photo: May 7, 2005 2:24 PM - 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut. Mom's house, where PJ's car was last seen on this driveway.]
Odd, the subject of my stories - or any
I am amazed that Sys-Con would continue to allow Maureen O'Gara to write. They must be desperate for the controversy that her articles cause, because I really see no value in them after reading a couple of them this morning. The worst article , and the one in question, tries to paint quite the negative picture of Pamela Jones' sanity and lifestyle. Instead it leaves me questioning O'Gara's ethics and sanity. Quite the smear campaign on the part of O'Gara.
So, Pamela Jones could perhaps be a 61-year old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a not so nice apartment. What does that have to do with anything? O'Gara finishes the article hinting that perhaps it is all stolen identity, though she didn't present a news story that would lead you to that conclusion.
I spent the first 23 years of my life as a Jehovah's Witness. I do not believe I am scarred in anyway because of it. If anything, I think I have a lot more respect for my fellow human beings and in general have a deep desire to be a good person. Sure the methodology of learning about the religion is a bit like brainwashing, but they have their religious beliefs like most religions. They just are more strict about the belief and the punishment if one does constantly violates them. If you are going to have faith, I think most religious people would appreciate the JW's strictness.
Did the religion make me paranoid? No. Does it take a lot of your time? Yes, but if you are going to devote your life to being religious then it probably should take a lot of time. Personally I appreciated science too much to put so much faith in religion. I still believe that if any religion has it right though, it is probably the JW's. They read the bible and do what it says. They refuse to pick up arms against another human, they punish sinners through disfellowshipping (total cut off until they have repented of their sins), and they make worship the primary thing in their life not allowing anything else to come first. There are obviously more devoted JW's than others, but that is true of any religion.
So, after reading the crap that passes for journalism from O'Gara, I personally can't wait to see her unemployed. Perhaps she can go get a job at the National Inquirer.
Because of what I've heard about OGara I'm boycoting Linux World in favour of other Linux magazines. If O'Gara leaves and Linux World makes a turn for better, I promise they'll get at least one more subscriber.
Thanks James! We really need to draw the line somewhere and have values that we're not willing to let go.
Eat any good marine iguanas today?
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Both Microsoft and EV1 Servers (the guys that paid SCO and tried to backtrack after the user forums exploded) are advertised on the front page. LinuxWorld has always been the premier sellout. Its nice to see someone finally having a ethical epiphany, but its just a BIT late. Hopefully none of the editors whom support MS advetising will get picked up by Linux Journal.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I have a feeling we're about to learn every detail of Maureen O'Gara's personal life. Including the results of her latest gynecological exam. With photos. No, make that live video.
Brilliant, Maureen. (Not.)
It's been down since somewhere around 2am.
--
BMO
First, thanks for doing that, I assume you showered afterward.
Second, this actually a very good thing. Previously, whenever people would claim she wasn't professional, it sounded mildly of whining and an ad hominem attack intended to discredit the reporter. Even though the claims were probably true.
Now, one need only point to this article, which is absolute filth, and clearly betrays something substantially beyond bias.
It seems likely that Maureen O'Gara (or someone) employed a private detective to investigate Pamela Jones. The article shows that quite a lot of information was obtained from the super of PJ's apartment building.
Perhaps someone should have a gentle word with this individual not to be quite so open when discussing the affairs of the tenants. After all, a portion of their rent money is used to employ him, and I'm reasonably certain that no part of his job description includes making private details about his (indirect) employers available to anyone who just happens to turn up and asks him politely. However, if he was paid for his information, he really should be terminated.
From MOG's description of PJ's apartment, I'm wondering if the super even let someone look around.
smells like... a flamewar
Maybe O'Gara should write a nice article about connection of one of Slashdot reader's signature (the one that says something about "set a man on fire") and this brutal murder?
So I just read the article (thanks previous poster for the link). I can't believe that Sys-Con would publish this trash. What sort of lowlife reporter is O'Gara, that she would stoop to ripping up someone like that in an article? There isn't a single thing about linux in there, it's all about Pamela Jones' personal living arrangements (with her home address!) and her religious leanings. There is no story there at all.
I think if I read this article on the site without looking at the other articles I might have though I was reading some of the lowest form of tabloid.
WTF has O'Gara being a money grabbing slimeball got to do with her being "liberal" or otherwise? What has any of this got to do with Abu Gharab? Or your apparent xenophobia? This is about journalistic ethics and personal decency. She is not being criticized for reporting her opinion, she's being criticized for publishing a personal attack complete with personal details and even a home address!
Newspapers would be very boring indeed if all they contained were hard facts. Some informed opinion is what turns a dry list of times & events into something worth reading, and worth thinking about.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Thanks for the reply, I was somewhat unsure about this as it seemed rather dodgy that a site called LinuxWorld would display Microsoft advertisements. Not really surprising is it, considering that they have sellout "journalists" such as Maureen O'Gara on their team. Who next, Laura DiDio? They'll be as subtle as the Daily Mirror supporting Labour.
WHAS Radio (and Clear Channel Entertainment) fired John Ziegler a few years ago because of similar personal attacks against a fellow "personality".
Up until that point, his talk-show was the highest rated program in the market, and he was getting a pass on a lot of his attitute because he did bring in the advertising money.
But he also went too far, and ultimately got punished for it.
So, here's how we help get rid of Ms. O'Gara:
Check the local bookstores and supermarket magazine racks. For any company that carries this magazine - write them a letter of COMPLAIN about Ms. O'Gara.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Mindless self promotion of self...My book/magazine collection of fireplace ready burnables are ready for the toss.
Find the website's advertisers and let them know that you are disappointed that they have chosen to sponsor the website's content, and that you won't be buying any of their products. Done politely, with a CC to the website operators, and often enough, you might get the reaction you want.
There's a corollary to that as well. If you want to help encourage content, and there's a website that publishes content you like, buy from the website's sponsors, and let them know why you're buying from them.
You just have to vote with your dollars and let them know that's what you're doing. Obviously, you could end up with some conflicts in that regard (Microsoft advertising on Slashdot, for instance), or you might decide that an advertiser's politics doesn't necessarily warrant your purchasing their products if their competitors have superior stuff. That said, if I were running a business, and paying money on advertising, and I found out that the reputation of the company I'm advertising with is benefitting or soiling my own, it'll make me re-evaluate my relationship with that company, either by sending them more money if it makes me look good, or cutting them off if it makes me look bad.
Large corps do this all the time. Why do you think Bill Maher's show got cancelled? No reason it can't work on the smaller scale.
Some people here appear to be assuming that there is some truth in the O'Gara article. It seems much more likely that everything in it originated in her imagination.
It's barely possible that she investigated a Pamela Jones: the wrong one.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
See, in a democracy (or even in a republic), when the government violates the law, the people need to know so they can decide whether it's time to change governments. When an individual criminal violates the law...well, it's still news, but it doesn't have the same level of import and urgency.
A boycott!
When did slashdot become a format for spewing daytime drama that contains nothing pertinent between two people nobody knows. Sure, I enjoy highschoolishness just as much person... which is to say, not at all... but when I want this kind of drama, I can tune into Days of Our Lives.
I don't see why anyone would hire James Turner in any web related project when his 'company' website rapes every rule in the book.
Wow, struck a nerve there, I see.
There's no tinfoil, you dumb cocksucker. This isn't about a conspiracy. At least use the right aphorism.
Morally repugnant acts undertaken in front of the world by soldiers who are supposed to be carrying out the democratic will of the American people, in breach of international law - and the question of how and when they will be held account for those actions - seem like they add up to a pretty big news story to me. Bigger than the fact that there are individual evil people in the world who individually do evil things and they sometimes get caught and punished for doing so. Reporting on specific incidents of domestic crime should not generally be the stuff of frontpage NYT news, because it isn't world-changing.
The fact that, to you, the immigration status of a murderer (or an accused murderer - I'm not familiar with the case, so have no idea if a verdict has been handed down) seems to be of greater import than their mental state, or possibly even guilt, leads me to suspect that you believe that this appalling individual act should have been reported more widely to draw attention to what you maybe perceive as a wider problem with illegal immigrants. Sadly, that simply suggests you have a fundamental problem figuring out what facts are relevant, and makes me glad that it's not you in charge of editorial policy on a major international newspaper.
Apparently, no one has realized yet that Maureen O'Gara is actually Jeff Gannon/Gucket in a dress.
It's worth noting that when I finally got the article, the advertisers for that story that popped up were Sybase, MedAbiliti, Yahoo hotjobs, and (drum roll...) Microsoft, who actually had TWO ads for Windows Server System.
Feel free to direct rage appropriately. I left out Microsoft because they probably don't care what we think anyway, and also yahoo because for the life of me I couldn't get their customer service contact info...
How do we know there really is a Maureen O'Gara either? Maybe she's a victim of identity theft too! After all, I followed that linky from the yahoo people search, keyed them in, gave them my credit card, and they gave me this address. I went there and asked if they knew a Maureen O'Gara, and was told that she was a Mormon, or her descendents would baptize her as one. Being a Mormon, even one in the future, is a full-time job. Pretty nice digs though.
from http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20050507193419581&title=&type=article&pid=311460 #c311509
PJ's take lets move on:
Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 08 2005 @ 10:45 AM EDT
I agree. The person who originally suggested you all
go and look used a Long Island, NY, IP address, and
guess where you-know-who lives?
If we make the above assumption, we may deduce that
this was done for one of the following reasons:
1. to get you guys mad so you would act like "extremists" so
MOG and the mob can attack you again;
2. to get me mad so I sue her for slander, thus revealing
where I really live;
3. to set me up for the next "suicide" -- over my
"distress"
over "losing" my privacy. I have had some, including one
ex SCO employee, suggest this latter scenario as being
plausible. It seems not everyone in Utah thinks the
"suicides" were suicides.
Just in case 3 is true, let me state for the record that I
couldn't care less what MOG thinks of me, even if what
she wrote were true. I also don't care what anyone else
thinks. I'm proud of who I am and the choices I've made
in my life. I don't even care if Groklaw came to an end
tomorrow. I have no ambition, never have, didn't do
Groklaw to become famous or rich, so I truly don't
care. I would never commit suicide over anything, because
I think it's wrong, and I surely wouldn't over anything MOG
wrote, for I hold her in the deepest disdain, when I'm not
laughing at her.
Sorry, I mistook the MedAbiliti portion as an ad. See? One reason to read articles in full, even if they enrage you...
Sorry again...
mods, please can you nuke the copies of the article posted with addresses and phone numbers.
From the Google cache of the original page:http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:t5F0lsD5UW sJ:jdj.sys-con.com/read/83267.htm+read/83267.htm&h l=en&lr=&client=firefox&strip=1
Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net?
Pamela Is A 61-Year-Old Jehovah's Witness Who Lives In A Shabby Genteel Garden Apartment In Hartsdale, New York
By: Maureen O'Gara
May 7, 2005 09:15 PM
A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot. [address removed], NY[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - [address removed], New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at [address removed], New York. [removed] is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.
See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.
Pamela has lived in apartment [removed] for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - [address removed], New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]
But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."
He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."
She was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where she was.
She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut. Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to [address removed], Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.
Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela
...not LinuxWorld Magazine, in which case isn't the Title of this thread misleading?
Agreed, and it's definitely working. I don't even know him, but if I was running a company in his line of business I'd bump his resume' near the top based on that alone.
Taking a principled stand against O'Gara's over-the-top shill work and credibility that rivals only the Weekly World News, I've wondered just why the heck LinuxWorld hasn't dumped her years ago.
Number of hits, you say? That's eating your seed corn. Short term hits at the expense of long term credibility isn't a good survival strategy in today's flood of Web-based alternatives.
CONTACT US
SYS-CON Media
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Departments: Customer Service
Phone: 1-888-303-5282
Fax: 201-782-9600
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Phone: 201-802-3066
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Toll Free: 888-303-5282
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It's quite simple: Darl McBride and SCOX hired a PI, which then fed O'Gara. You just have to listen to that last bizarro-phone conference with SCOX to see that this is no paranoid delusion.
Watch as Linux World staff go head on in a death defying grudge match. . .
Comparing O'Gara trash vs. PJ's response is probably the best meta-summary of the whole debacle.
This is another G2 news outlet. If you don't want to put money in MOG's pocket avoid this site.
Slashdot publishes a story damaging the reputation, the credibility of LinuxWorld. Seems completely natural: the story seems credible, and Slashdot competes with LinuxWorld for audience. But it happens pretty rarely, even in "new media" like news websites.
We hear how publishers compete for audience - the basic mechanism that's supposed to keep publishers "honest", rather than form a media cartel selling the party line, and ignoring the truth. But how often do we see one publisher selling the dirty laundry about the competition, like in this story? We get sniping by Fox at CBS' Dan Rather, especially once Rather's gone (and can't defend himself). But do we get CBS coverage of Fox's Florida affiliate, fighting for its license after a fired producer accuses it of faking news?
--
make install -not war
I see you were modded down. I want to take this opportunity to say: You are a jackass, you deserved it, and if you think you were right, please gargle with gasoline. We could do with less retards like you. Although, if you like, feel free to move to Iran, Pakistan, or Israel. Those places seem to love ideologue nutjob retards like yourself.
You might as well have, you retarded failure of 'it'.
Linuxtoday editor thinks so
6 OPBZ
Editor's Note: Screed Attempts to Silence Voice Against SCO
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/200505090092
If you did, maybe you'd've noticed that it was submitted by a senior editor from Linux Journal, itself, EXPLICITLY SO IT COULD BE WIDELY SEEN.
Or was that perhaps too subtle for you?
Go back to bed; it's Monday, and you're obviously tired.
The article begins:
So, I wonder where she got the idea to "attack the person, not the argument".
A real gem is later:
Sentence fragments aside and obligatory "pot calling the kettle" comments aside, some "opinions" are back by evidence, at which point they become "arguments". Others remain merely the flatulence of mind.
Seriously guys, if someone's writing crap like that, she's clearly on a payroll. If you pretend to some sort of journalistic integrity, you don't work with them. The outcome of this can only be Mr. Turner's resignation; this is like the bouncer of a tittie bar writing the manager, threatening to quit because the girls are prostitutes. Who do you think is profiting from the arrangement?
Yes, they do have their own version of the bible, but I was impressed to note that much of their literature cites many different translations. They also are actively encouraged to seek out other viewpoints and Bible translations -- they even publish a bible translation that is "their" version with annotations on where major translations differ, and why the translators chose that particular phrasing. In this way, they are really no different than Catholics, who also have "their" version of the bible.
Their worldview might be a little odd, but it isn't like it's a result of just making crap up: there is evidence of a fair amount of scholarly work behind their decisions.
I knew most of the smear on the Internet was bunk the moment I told a JW (now a friend) that I was pagan and they went "Oh! I've always been curious about the neo-pagan movement." We had a great conversation, and at no time did they try to convert me. This seems to be the more common experience (at least for me) than the common representation.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
His blog has more than enough information regarding this situation. If you had not been too busy being an idiot, you may have realized that. If you really don't care, skip it and don't post - oh wait, you do.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
They were working for the government, therefore they were the government.
What a hurtful thing to do, posting the full text with the same address information that violated privacy of not only PJ but family members too, assuming O'Gara got the details right (and if she got it wrong, then some poor strangers are being harrassed right now for no reason). What possible reason could you give to justify this act? To post this invasive information is despicable.
Plain and simple, she should be kept. She and the other ilke out there are actually helping Linux more than just about anybody except for MS. They write wild lies that are then shown to be just that. MOG, SCO, IDG, Gartner, Enderle, Dvorack, Balmer, Gates, etc. keep losing credibility each and ever time they write/talk something to please MS. Groklaw, and the Linux community go up in stature every time they tell the truth (as opposed to using FUD against FUD which normal companies do).
But if I were sys-con, I would move MOG off of LinuxWorld though so as to not taint the others. They should create a publication devoted to MOG and her type. MS will refer to it. Later when it is worthless, MOG and the publication can just be dropped.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think it's worth mentioning here that the copyright system punishes and rewards in such a way that that promotes hype over substance. I think it's unfair to "blame society", while at the same time holding this system of punishment and reward in place. In a copyright society, it is always the information that turns the most heads that gets the most money, where in a non copyright world the information that has the most value is rewarded the most.
Of cource I know people would say, well Linux Journal is copyrighted too, to which I would respond - most people who are subscribing would do so as a sign of support for the authors and not because they are the cheaper that the competitors. Besides, I don't know of anything in that publication that couldn't be gotten online anyhow, but people still support it.
She doesn't write for LinuxWorld, she writes for another Sys-Con magizine. I suppose the fact that RMS, Carmack (at times), Bill Gates (in the beginging) and Romero all were "dirty hippies" with unkempt hair and stained Tees wouldn't begin to tlk sense into you? Suppose "book by it's cover" doesn't mean anything either?
I used to purchase a number of journals off the shelf just to check their content, quality, etc. The best were then turned into subscriptions. However, it was my distinct impression that Linux World was just along for the ride for the cash. Their staff writers that did not even know the meaning of free software. In their reviews of products they equated free with no cost.
Perhaps a year ago - I was quite surprised to even find them still publishing, though they seemed a bit higher quality than previously I still have no urge to read their content. This incident just confirms my gut estimation of those backing the publication: I am glad they got minimal support from me.
Hmm. Whichever side of the argument you come from, that article was shameful rubbish. It's the kind of thing that even a freshman gossip magazine would baulk at publishing (and I know, I edited one once). I've no problem with righteous vitriol against opponents, but was just grubby stalking.
P.
PJ's writing does tend to have a bit of that paranoic edge, though.. as this post shows.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Maureen O'Gara is really Darl McBride in drag. Ever see the two of them togather? Of course not. Just take a close look at a bio pic of "Maureen O'Gara" with the fright wig and makeup that resembles bozo the clown. Then take a close look at McBride and imagine him with the same wig and lipstick applied with a paint roller. It is no accident that whenever he promises some outlandish crap will surface, that "Ms. O'Gara" is the one who delivers it. Darl could just save a bunch of time by placing the wig and makeup on his butt. Then when O'Gara was to suddenly appear all he would have to do is drop trou....
If people really want to see O'Gara gone, they should contact the companies that advertise in Sys Con Media publications, and let them know that you will not read any Sys Con Media publications while O'Gara is writing for them. If you contact Sys Con Media directly, they'll be overjoyed at the amount of free publicity that's being generated. If enough people contact the advertisers and let them know that the situation is unacceptable, they'll pull their ads. It's pretty hard to run a magazine with no advertising revenue.
I met her at the Operon launch. I don't remember it at all, but Magee assures me that I did. I wonder if she was really that unimpressive, or I had the good sense to supress the memory.
-Charlie
Warning
non-groupthink opinion detected. Mod Down.
Don't give them the hits. Above is a text copy of the info, read that instead.
-Charlie
Link to the offending article... (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Talk about mods on crack. What the fuck? Chicane-UK didn't write the article. He's just linking to it. Why is he getting punished for it? Are we countering O'Gara's ingnorance with ignorance of our own? Some of us like to inform ourselves on newsworthy items, you know. Never mind that I personally knew nothing about the article before this Slashdot article, which of course asks us to condemn O'Gara before we even have a chance to know what she's said. Having read it, I know she's a twit, but some of us don't just go around blindly accepting what we're told like sheep.
Hopefully this'll get corrected in meta-moderation.
I didn't see any news or any actual conclusions in the article, just a "TO BE CONTINUED..." which doesn't mean anything to me except, "THERE IS NOTHING OF SUBSTANCE HERE." Based on the author's record, I don't even expect to trust the information as presented.
So, I had to figure out what the author MEANT by posting such a non-news article. I believe we must take this article as a request by Maureen O'Gara to have her personal information, with photos, and background posted in a similar style on the Internet and in print.
Fun for everyone!
Of course, I am not usually one to condone such low-brow behavior. However, the author of the article is really asking for it; not just mentioning such information in passing, but rather making it the entire fabric of the article.
Bonus points: Give the same consideration to the SYS-CON folks who paid her to do this!
She should go to Fox News. Good place for her
it appears that Maureen O'Gara would be more qualified; after all, PJ hasn't published MOG's home address and that of her mother. Perhaps MOG's miffed that PJ has torpedoed virtually every article she's written. So, now it's gotten personal.
I stopped looking at LW's web site long ago specifically because of MOG's poorly researched pieces and her bitter style. Why they allowed her to publish details of a journalist's personal life when it's entirely possible that there really were threats to that journalist's life is beyond me. Now, of course, if anything does happen to the woman (PJ or not) whose mother lives at that Connecticut address the cops there will certainly have something to say to MOG. And lawyers will be involved. What if publication of those addresses led to someone being killed?
PJ's articles stand on their own merit without regard to the age, gender, religion and lifestyle of the writer. MOG just can't stand it that she is constantly upstaged by someone who shows her to the world for the twit she is.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
And you know this how?
One of the issues with this story is that it had the Bush admin investigating and reporting it. There was no independent team investigating this. To make matters worse, It was the military and the DOJ that looked into this. The same Military and DOJ who 2 years stated that torture is permissible.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
To be fair, it would seem that EV1 actually paid SCO for something else, and SCO just sorta tacked on the Linux licenses so they can say "Look, they licensed it!"
Why?
Two before. Three After.
Lets do a 30 day boycott of any advertisers that fall within five pages of an article written by Ms. O'Gara.
Imagine the chaos this would cause....
Yea, I'll advertise in your magazine as long as I'm not within five pages of that woman!
Note to idiot moderators: Parent is actually a copy of O'Gara's article and is Informative. It's not parent's opinion. Get your heads out of your asses and stop modding parent as flamebait/overrated.
...is too polite a term to apply to MOG's nasty, mean-spirited, hateful, spiteful personal attack. I'm utterly flabbergasted that MOG would stoop to this. Her "article" is nothing more than vendetta-driven screed intended to cause harm. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, though: because O'Gara can't assail Groklaw's message on its merits, all she has left to do is either shut up or attack the messenger. She would have done better to shut up.
Their goal is to sell ads.
/. readers, she is doing what she is paid to do.
She brings in page hits.
The page hits ratchet up the ad hits.
So, if she publishes an article that gets 1 million hits from
If you want to change that, talk to the advertisers. Don't bother with the publisher.
It's a strong word, but the word is "libel." Slander's spoken.
Haida Manga
I am upset. If you write quite a bit, you learn a rule: you must never, ever write when you are upset. In such a state, clarity simply goes and what you thought was a masterpiece in truth was in fact... a pile of incomprehensible, misspelled crap.
I am going to do it anyway. I shall add a disclaimer: I am going to publish this article "as is" - no spell check, no Dave guard which turns my atrocious English into... well, English.
I am deeply upset and saddened by O'Gara's article on Pamela Jones at GrokLaw. To the point that I am absolutely speechless. I mean it. I don't know what to say.
I don't share O'Gara's ways nor approach. She seem to hate Groklaw, and the secrecy around this web site. Hatred is not a nice nor constructive feeling; it doesn't help anybody, and in fact it often goes against you (as it's going against Maureen right now); unfortunately, we all experience it and we all act out our anger sometimes.
This "pill" is here for two reason. The first one, is to ask you to... to forgive Maureen O'Gara. What she did was vile; but it was out of frustration and anger. She is a human being; she has made a great mistake; and she will pay for it. I ask you to forgive her because she is unforgivable, and it is right now that we all have to take out the best of ourselves and feel that even the unforgivable is... well, forgivable.
The second, more important reason why I am writing this (dangerously) unedited "pill", is to ask the question: why is Maureen's article unforgivable? I asked this to myself. In a way, you can even see where she is coming from: there is this wonderful site which is helping the demolition of SCO's absurd case, and it seems unlikely that a single individual could possibly run it all on her own. It is also true that if Groklaw were run by a bunch of IBM's lawyers, well, it would loose at least some of its credibility. I think I have reasons to believe that this is exactly what Maureen wanted to find out. Again, then: why is Maureen's article unforgivable?
Because there is a chance (and for a lot of us that's a fat chance) that Groklaw is run by a wonderful 40 or 60 year old woman or man who is a Christian or a Jehovah's Witness or a Buddhist, who believes in what she does to the point that she is willing to put herself in a dangerous position by doing so. Yes, I said dangerous, and I mean dangerous. There is a (big) chance that Pamela is in fact a woman who lives her everyday life, has a job, does what she has to do, and runs Groklaw thanks to the support of the whole Free Software and Open Source Community.
This paragraph is for you, Maureen: if that were the case, Maureen, you hurt somebody beyond belief. You hurt somebody so much, that I can only hope you will never, ever find out quite how mad the damage was. Because if you did find out, you would never be able to forgive yourself.
Well, that's a big weight out of my chest. But I am not quite finished yet. I want to talk about myself for a minute.
I am an ex-cracker born in Italy and living in Australia. When I was 18 and 19, I cracked quite a few computers and nearly went to jail for it. My phones were tapped, and only an amazing series of coincidences saved me. I didn't go through a trial, but a lot of people around me did. I never destroyed a system, but I did read files I should have read. If one day I made somebody very powerful really angry, I can see how they would be able to dig in my past and find all sorts of things that I would find "embarrassing" at least, compromising at worst. They could pick on my past as a cracker, on my religion (I am a Buddhist), on the way I live my life (I don't shop and yet I am not stingy), or on another million things.
Maureen, this is another paragraph for you. I am sure you haven't been a cracker, but if I were to look very, very thoroughly into your l
Gee, can you point me to the democratic (or at least claims to be) government that hired this illegal immigrant to perform these atrocities?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Publisher: Maureen O'Gara ogara@g2news.com
516-759-7025 EXT. 109; Fax: 516 759-7028
Subscriptions: Rhett Hall rhett@g2news.com
516-759-7025; Fax: 516 759-7028
Europe : Simon Thompson : simon@g2news.com
+44 (0) 1 280 820 560; Fax: +44 (0) 1 280 820 554 Buckingham, UK
But that's ok. I'm not basing this off of anything in O'Gara's story, because I'm not going to read it, but PJ does enough to make herself look bad on her own website. Her tone is often just on the edge of snide and unprofessional. She is extremely partisan.
But she keeps publishing true shit. O'Gara can trash talk as long as she likes (I think Jehova's Witnesses are idiots too.) but that won't change whether PJ is providing timely factual information. Sure, she might be completely batty. Doesn't matter. She's batty and she's still more on top of it than Ms. O'Gara. Show us that she's a habitual liar (like... O'Gara) and then maybe she'll get less credit. Don't care if she's a religious nut.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Probably half the time here at slashdot.org I'm seeing Microsoft ads. "Join the Gatekeeper Test" is showing right now. So no, I don't think Microsoft adverts necessarily represent the opinion of a site.
Unless it's just me and Bill's trying to get me to convert...
Somebody else later on in the discussion linked to my post and was at +4 Informative last time I checked.
So long as people can read it for themselves and get informed on what O'Gara is trying to do, I don't care about the mod points. It's funny, yeah, but no big deal.
Everyone is condemning the article, and then posting it over and over as if to say, "Boy this smells terrible...here, take a whiff!"
you get modded up for saying this? the point is MOG published PRIVATE home addresses. that is an invitation for abuse regardless of who lives there.
I see someone posts about the evil government and gets a +4 Insightful. I bother to actual rebut the errors of the statement and get a -2 Offtopic?
Do we have a problem with actually holding conversations around here? (Truely amazing considering the hue and cry of government censorship that is always being moaned about around here.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Syscon has lots of advertisers. Call them, write them, and politely tell them that you find their support of Sys-Con so repugnant that you will not longer buy their products. Be polite and be firm, don't rant, don't threaten.
Make the connection that advertising on any Sys-Con related publication will lose your business. A hundred of these, and they will think twice.
I write for The Inq, and on a given story, I get ~5 letters out of 20K reads. If any advertisers get 100, they will sure as hell sit up and take notice. Spend the time, write up why you find MoG and Sys-Con so repulsive, and go from there. The more articulate you are, the more effect you will have.
Happy hunting, I have already pulled out the rolodex, and I have sent a few off to some choice individuals. If you know anyone, write them, if not, you can always look things up on the web site's contact or press info pages.
-Charlie
I am Quatermass who fairly regularly posts comments on Groklaw. I do not usually post on Slashdot, but I have a few words to say about Ms. O'Gara's article.
I do not know whether the "facts" alleged in Ms. O'Gara's article are correct or not, and whether or not she (or whoever supplied her the information) is describing the correct PJ or not.
For the sake of argument, in this post, I will assume that Ms. O'Gara is describing the correct PJ (if she did not, that makes her O'Gara's article even worse in my view).
If you boil down Ms. O'Gara's article to the essentials the "facts" alleged about PJ are this:
1. Ms. O'Gara doesn't like PJ's residence
2. Ms. O'Gara doesn't like PJ's car
3. Ms. O'Gara doesn't like the locks on PJ's apartment (Ms O'Gara then criticises PJ for these locks, but then goes on to also criticise PJ for having strange men apparently trying to break into her apartment - rather an odd and self-contradictory position don't you think?)
4. Ms. O'Gara alleges that PJ has been involved in business with her son.
5. Ms. O'Gara alleges that PJ has a fear of being stalked, and criticizes her for this (at the same time PJ tells us that PJ is being pursued if not stalked by Ms. O'Gara herself, as well as two strange men apparently trying to break into PJ's apartment - again, another odd and self-contradictory position, don't you think?)
6. Ms. O'Gara says PJ is older than Ms. O'Gara thought. (Well more fool you O'Gara, PJ never claimed to be any particular age, so who cares what O'Gara thought PJ's age was?)
7. Ms. O'Gara implies criticism of PJ's religious affiliation. (so what? Who cares what PJ's religion is)
8. Ms. O'Gara notes that PJ lives within a few miles of IBM's headquarters (without mentioning so do about a million or more other people too)
9. Ms O'Gara alleges that PJ has a brother with an expensive apartment.
10. Ms O'Gara says she questioned PJ's mother and didn't get clear answers. (So what?). I'd also point out that if PJ is 61, then PJ's mother must be in her 80s or 90s
Well, none of the above, have anything at all to do with the validity or otherwise of PJ's writing. PJ's writing stands for itself, and everybody should judge it on that basis.
The majority of the above, when striped of implied criticism are not particularly unusual - and not one is divergent with any fact that PJ has told us about herself.
The attack on PJ's age, car, religion, housing and brother, are purely gratutious personal attacks. All play to the lowest common denominator and people's prejudice. I really do not care what O'Gara thinks of PJ's car or house.
The self-contradictions in O'Gara's article abound, some of which are noted above.
I note that somebody else on Slashdot has alleged that O'Gara's information comes from SCO's private detectives seeking PJ. I do not know if this allegation is true or not.
I would note however the following:
1. In January 2003, O'Gara published an article about SCO's plans to monetize their IP allegedly in Linux. This was two months before SCO sued IBM. This was six months before SCO announced their Linux IP licensing program. This was long before SCO had made any public statements about their plans for licensing Linux, or alleged infringements in Linux. So where did O'Gara get this information from?
2. On September 18th O'Gara published an article claiming that SCO would sue IBM for a fraud claim, in Monterey, by putting SVR4 code (as opposed to SVR3 code) into AIX5L. [Maureen O'Gara misnames the UNIX versions in her article).
At the time that this was written, the only court document that mentioned fraud, and the AIX 5L was *sealed*, SCO's supplemental memorandum on discovery. This was filed with the court, without permission apparently in August, and properly filed on 13 September 2004.
We have not seen this document, but we know that it exists, because IBM's reply memo has recently been unseale
To: sales@barracudanetworks.com, press@barracudanetworks.com
Date: May 9, 2005 11:10 AM
Subject: boycott of your products due to SYS-CON
I'm writing to inform you I am engaging in a personal boycott of all your publications due to your affiliation Maureen O'Gara, who is
currently stalking the Groklaw author Pamela Jones.
O'Gara's most recent "article" consisted of personal information about Ms. Jones, including her home address and disparaging comments about
Ms. Jones' living conditions.
The article contained a number of offensive comments about the Jehovah Witnesses, under the guise of "accusing" Ms. Jones of being one.
I will not purchase any products or services from any firms who do business with SYS-CON while a paranoid, delusional pseudo journalist such as Maureen O'Gara remains on your payroll.
I am writing your advertisers to inform them of this decision, so they are aware that their use of your site for advertising purposes is
costing them business.
From: Michael Perone
To: *********
Date: May 9, 2005 11:24 AM
Subject: RE: boycott of your products due to SYS-CON
Michael Perone
Call me 650 292 1523
To: Michael Perone
Date: May 9, 2005 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: boycott of your products due to SYS-CON
I'm afraid I can't call you during the day today, as I am at work and need to keep my line available for client calls.
I have noting against Barracuda Networks aside from your advertising with a company that employs a stalker disguising herself as a journalist.
You can see a copy of the article in question at
http://www.clientservernews.com/
The above link does not contain the photographs of the home of Pamela Jones that ran in other online publications running the article.
So long as Maureen O'Gara is employed by SYS-CON, I will not purchase any products from any company that advertises on their sites or in their publications. If SYS-CON fires Maureen O'Gara or a company ceases advertising with SYS-CON sites and publications, then I would have no reason to avoid their products.
From: Michael Perone
To: ***********
Date: May 9, 2005 11:46 AM
Subject: RE: boycott of your products due to SYS-CON
We don't emplyy this person according to our records.
To: Michael Perone
Date: May 9, 2005 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: boycott of your products due to SYS-CON
I know you don't employ Maureen O'Gara, however, you advertise on web sites owned and operated by SYS-CON, who does employ her. So long as your advertisements run on SYS-CON owned sites, and Maureen O'Gara remains a SYS-CON employee, then I will not purchase your products.
This is nothing personal, I'm informing all of the companies that advertise on SYS-CON sites of the same thing.
Matthew Miller
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
My experience with Sys-Con is that they are unreliable and late, late, late. I don't expect them to change. They are still in operation after many troubled years: maybe that's to their credit, but I'm not buying anything from them anymore.
You are kind of implying that Maureen O'Gara just saw red and wrote a hate filled article.
That's incorrect, it's part of a pattern that has been going on for months.
Maureen O'Gara's articles have been filled with subtle and not so subtle digs at PJ for months and months.
For example, in another article O'Gara compared PJ to a "serial killer on the run".
Wow, I know people say VI/Emacs is a religious war; but this really is a religious war of the wierd cults!
Okay, let us assume, for one minute, that the Pamela Jones described here is a victim of identity theft.
The woman in question is clearly incapable of producing the volumes of carefully researched work on the Groklaw site, so we go to the next step: Hordes of IBM lawyers (or possibly Eric Raymond and his lawyer wife...) are behind Groklaw.
Again, we have to confront the fact that Groklaw has a lot of very solid content. That suggests solid planning by knowledgable people - and presumably a large budget.
These are competent lawyers, mind you. Would these same capable people suddenly
A. suffer a complete breakdown of sanity and steal the identity of a (possibly addled) older woman, or
B. enlist the assistance of some credible, highly competent (and probably very attractive) female paralegal who could pass at least the first couple levels of a believability check?
What would *you* (as a hypothetical group of very well-paid IBM lawyers) do?
Then why was their PR team bragging about how this would protect their customers from scary lawyers?
EV1's always been a Microsoft shill^H^H^H^H^H/strong partner showcased in MSFT PR. I bet MSFT payed EV1 just to spread the fud.
After the "bozo sues open source" story last week from O'Gara, I sent an email to SugarCRM, whose ad was running next to the story. For those not in the know, SugarCRM is an open source CRM suite that is highly regarded in the CRM market. I figured they might like to know that they were advertising in a journal that is constantly attacking open source while claiming to be about "Linux Business News".
Well, their marketing person got back to me and said they don't run ads on Linux Business News - only with Sys-con's LinuxWorld site.
So I wrote back explaining that I just checked and the ad was right there, and described the ad.
She got back to me saying that they didn't even KNOW the ad was running on that site, as they only had a contract with Sys-con to run on LinuxWorld - and she would be checking their ad rep at Sys-con about it.
So it looks like Linux Business News is running ads unbeknownst to the companies involved (either that or SugarCRM never understood their contract). I find that somewhat bizarre. Is there some business benefit to LBN running ads without the knowledge of the companies involved?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Look like we have somebody here that does not respect privacy....anyone have MOG's home address and phone number....publish it to every corner of the web.
Got Code?
So, the "story" is how a pro-SCO "journalist" digs up the phone records of someone running a different web site.
And how that "journalist" posts the address (with pictures?) of the other person's home.
And tracks down someone who may be the other person's mom.
And the police get involved.
This is a HUGE story not only for the invasion, but for the implications it carries for anyone who comes out against SCO.
I knew it. I tracked her down like 6 months ago but wasn't sure enough it was her to post it. She's a really great girl. I have a lot of respect for her.
I guess Linux is ready for grandma.
If you call Sys-Con themselves - regardless of the content they count it as just one more comment on a MOG article proving it's popularity.
If you get even one advertiser to call them and say "we're pulling our ad" They'll beg to know why and will jump to fix the problem.
echo "127.0.0.1 coldfusion.sys-con.com /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 dotnet.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 eclipse.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 issj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 itsolutions.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 jdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 linux.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 linuxbusinessweek.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 mxdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 pbdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 symbian.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 weblogic.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 webservices.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 websphere.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 wireless.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.tv
127.0.0.1 xml.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.com" >>
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
http://www.zabasearch.com/
Absolutely! Most advertisers request a minimum number of impressions for a placed AD. Putting an AD on multiple sites will increase the number of impressions.
Is SYS-Con defrauding advertisers*
* unfounded and unresearched claim (C) MOG 2005
I write to have your advice.
First. Suppose I want to create a group of publications that try to con, mislead or deceive people into which operating system they should use.
These publications will be named after the system that I DO NOT want them to use. So I would give them names such as Microsoft-Insider. Microsoft Business News. Microsoft Gram. Etc.
Thinking of names of publications is easy. Just follow the pattern.
Second. I would want to form a holding company that owns all of these collective publications.
Herein lies the problem. What to name the holding company? I am stumped.
The purpose of the publications are to CON, mislead, or deceive; about which operating SYStem to use. So I naturally thought of the name SYS-CON. But alas, I see that name is already taken. And for a similar purpose, it would seem.
Oh dear, oh dear. What name should I give to the parent holding company?
(and NO, I did not steal this from a Groklaw posting, as I just posted it there minutes ago.)
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
I went over to Sys-Con's main site and tried to contact their Editorial department using their email contact address on the page for Editorial.
I get this from ALL their email addresses:
File Not Found
Request
BlueDragon Time @ Server: 12:43:48.772 Monday, 9 May 2005
This occurs with both Firefox and IE.
Looks like the "leading Web IT company" can't handle Web email properly. Either that or they DON'T want anybody talking back to them.
Also, I note that their sites are touting this garbage from O'Gara as a "hot story", so clearly their editors are in support of O'Gara. It would probably be a waste of time to contact them, anyway.
Contact their advertisers instead. Especially since many of their advertisers may not be aware that their ads for OSS products are running next to O'Gara's articles - SugarCRM was NOT aware of that or even that their ads were running on Linux Business News as their contract was only with LinuxWorld.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
echo "127.0.0.1 www.linuxworld.com" >> /etc/hosts
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Actually I followed that particular debacle closely on their user forums, the CEO specifically paid SCO for their "Linux license", but when he got flak from his users he said he regretted it and wished he could undo the deed. Then I got bored in the whole masquerade and quit following it.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
The reason why the story of the atrocious crime was not published is different, though: it's not politically correct to write badly about illegal immigrants. Definitely not in Europe, but apparently, in the US just as well.
Sigged!
My memory may be failing me, but if I recall correctly, wasn't there an issue about LinuxWorld displaying advertisements for Microsoft products
You're probably thinking about Linux Magazine, which published some Microsoft ads and caused a stink with some of the readers. Personally, I didn't have a problem with it. If MS wants to help out Linux publications by advertizing to an audience that's not interested, it's fine with me.
is not journalism at all. it is commercial advocacy.
now that we have that cleared up, journalists , like everyone else, do have biases. however, it is their job to report objectively despite their personal bias. in other words, they have a duty to report the story accurately even if it goes against their personal bias. and no, accurately does not mean simply picking two sides and giving them equal credence as is so common these days.
what mog does is not journalism, as noted above, and any publisher that drives their periodicals with her tripe is not a news organization, but rather an entertainment tabloid or propaganda machine.
as for blame?
you can easilly frame an objective piece so that it has hooks and intrigue and whatnot. it is not necessary to abuse the process to generate revenue based on what you think your readers might like to hear.
clearly mog is has to take the responsibility for what she writes, especially if she wants to continue abusing the notion that she is a journalist. the established and verifiable facts do not correlate with mog's reporting and too often she resorts to personal insults, threats and innuendo.
sys-con clearly have to take responsibility for what they publish and have an obligation to accuracy if they are going to continue to abuse the notion that they are a news publisher. the attitudes of sys-con's owners regarding the veracity of mog [they don't feel they are responsible as they are just a "publisher"- this from an email response] and their emphasis of mog's articles despite widespread and vocal fcat correction from their own readers shows that they lack the integrity needed in a news publisher.
blaming the readers for a person or company's lack of journalistic integrity is incredibly weak. this is journalism and you really shouldn't apply market-force supply and demand arguments to discussions about it [that would be propaganda].
sum.zero
If I advertised in LBN, I would be seriously pissed at having my products linked to this sort of gutter journalism. http://www.sybase.com/linuxpromo>Sybase & Linux Networx are you listening?
Do click those links folks, the traffic at least should start them wondering what's up.
Sybase and Linux Networx, when you read this: I hope that the exposure that you've had as a result of these links more than makes up for the traffic you would miss from LBN. Please pull your advertising from LBN.
IBM, I'm guessing you don't have a choice about advertising Websphere on the LBN site, since it's through Google but don't you think it's kind of ironic to be subsidising Ms O'Gara's salary?
what mog/sys-con published was a character assassination revealing the public whereabouts of a person who has received threats against their person in the past.
this is a serious breach of ethics. linking just further disseminates the information and drives up its ranking in google.
also, there is plenty of info in tfa to find the piece if you want...
sum.zero
This site http://www.l-i-s-t.com/DataCardView.asp?TrackId=5
Maybe this would be an effective way to directly flout the FUD.
Don't bother writing to individual advertisers, until you have gone after the after networks (which show many different ads)
l ick
For example: If you go to www.google.com and look at the info on their AdWords and other advertising programs, there should be a page which has terms of service for publishers (i.e. sites like LBN) displaying their ads.
Nearly always the terms of service will include clauses forbidding show of sites that are intended to be hateful, **invasive of privacy**, violative of laws, libellous, etc.
If you find a term of service that you believe LBN violates, then write directly to Google, citing the relevant term, and why you believe LBN may violate it, and asking them to investigate to have their publisher compliance team review the situation.
Repeat as necessary for any other network ads that you find ads for on LBN. In most cases, you can tell an ad is from a network by doing View Source on the web page, and reviewing which domain the ad links to, or pulls its image from.
Some other major advertising networks (I don't know which if any LBN uses) are:
doubleclick
burst
247media
fastclick
valuec
Anybody who wants to research this properly, please post which ad networks you see on LBN, as well as which specific term of their service, you believe LBN may violate. So that others may write similar emails to these ad networks.
If, PJ is 61, as MoG believes, then MoG could infer that her mother is probably at least 80?
PJ's 80'ish year old mother is completely irrelevant to:
- SCO's losing court case
- SCO's lack of evidence
- SCO's lack of a product, service or lawsuit that anyone wants to buy
- Darl's big mouth
- Groklaw's analysis and compiled facts about SCO, et. all.
Yet MoG is happy to publish the home address and photo of a woman that MoG would have to believe to be in her 80's, who is unconnected to Groklaw or SCO, right before Mother's Day.The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
LinuxWorld should offer to fire O'Gara if their subscriptions rise by x amount in 5 days.
So the investigation ordered by the higher-ups absolves the higher-ups of blame?
Well, well, well...
Reads the same both ways:
OGARA GO
OK, for the moment let's assume it is true, that PJ is a 61 year old Jehovah's Witness.
This is bad why?
First, let's look at age. 61 years old. Generally speaking, most people in that age group are pretty stable emotionally and mentally (health issues aside). These are the people that generally do not make knee-jerk reactions just because, they will usually try to think things through. Obviously, there are exceptions to every case, but I'm speaking in generalities here. So, if PJ really is 61 years old, her life experience and age would lend credibility to her. She would not be someone who took a stand or side of an issue lightly. And, she would clearly represent a new (and growing? hopefully) segment of people recognizing the benefits of and adopting tools such as Linux and other FOSS.
Many people, even those that disagree with the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses, recognize them to be an honest group of people. If that is the case, then when PJs speaks for herself, she is saying what she believes to be true. So, when you think about it, who would you rather believe? Someone that is supposed to be Jehovah's Witness? Or someone that is known to be a shill for the right price? Which person would seem to have integrity?
I know my choice.
If anything, MOGs attempt at trashing PJ has done the exact opposite for me. I am now more inclined to believe PJ. Besides, PJ isn't afraid to post links to the sources of information she uses when she writes, so people are left to read the sources directly themselves, and form their own opinion. Again, which would seem to have integrity?
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Unless it was your personal phone number or home address, or the address of your mother, so that any nut could harrass them thanks to your lack of empathy. By the pursuit of a cold principle ("No censorship ever!") you are contributing to the harrassment of innocent parties. Way to go in showing you don't know what it means to be empathetic to a fellow human being.
It isn't hidden, you idiot. It's been posted in this thread, and the original is easily found. But every time you post the unedited version, you contribute to the abuse of innocent victims. Let's publish your home number now. After all, you wouldn't want to censor it, would you?
From http://www.g2news.com/editors.html, aka Maureen's site:
:)
She haunts the corridors of the Microsoft powerbase and gives Client Server NEWS some of its sharp edge. Famous for her confrontational style in press conferences she is single-handedly the reason why most companies in the sector have abandoned having press conferences.
Man! This woman is a bitch!
If I had been Maureen O'Gara, if I had found out this "truth" about PJ, I'd have backed away very quietly and carefully and not said a thing about what I found. It's bad enough when Darl is fuming and venting because he think some IBM front ruined his SCOsource venture with their fronted website.
Now Darl has to admit that he got bested by a single Jehovah's Witness who had hit beat on both active neuron count and morals....
"... SYS-CON, the parent of LinuxWorld Magazine, which unfortunately pays O'Gara for her spewings even though they don't pay the editors and authors for their magazines"
If O'Gara is being paid to flame, and no one else is being paid at all, then something is really, really wrong.
Considering that people really are (or think they are) digging up details to damage her reputation, she could be forgiven if he is a bit protective of her privacy. However, her courtly restraint in this matter has already shamed the antagonists in their shrillness.
You all realize that Maureen O'Gara's newsletter used to be carried by Newsforge and Slashdot, right? When they were making money off the deal Hemos and Roblimo were all too happy to carry her stuff.
from http://www.g2news.com/editors.html
G2 Computer Intelligence, Inc.
323 Glen Cove Ave., Sea Cliff, NY 11579, FAX 516-759-7028
Tel 516-759-7025 | Toll Free 1-877-G2NEWS1(426-3971)
Subscriptions: paperboy@g2news.com Press Releases:news@g2news.com
Who are the editors of G2News Publications?
Maureen O'Gara, (Long Island, NY) ogara@g2news.com
516-759-7025 Ext. 109; FAX 516-759-7028
Maureen's resume is impressive. Prior to founding Sea Cliff, Long Island based, G2 Computer Intelligence, she was the founding editor on CMP's Computer Systems New. She opened CMP's first Silicon Valley office where she was was bureau chief. She moved to Europe, where she was Computer Systems News's first European correspondent. She has been a contributing editor to UNIX Today, Datamation, Mini-Micro News, Unigram.X and Computergram as well as being the International editor of Computer Marketing.
Since launching Client Server NEWS, she has stalked the aisles of the trade shows with a vengeance, leaving a trail of shaking, sweating VPs of many a computer company.
She haunts the corridors of the Microsoft powerbase and gives Client Server NEWS some of its sharp edge. Famous for her confrontational style in press conferences she is single-handedly the reason why most companies in the sector have abandoned having press conferences.
We don't know why more journalists don't ask questions like her. But we're glad she's on our side.
Maureen doesn't just get stories but she gets to the heart of stories, primarily on Client Server News and LinuxGram but also on The Online Reporter.
Who Is Pamela Jones?
By Maureen O'Gara
Friday May 6, 2005 - A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka PJ, doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.
See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.
Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.
But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."
He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."
She was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where she was.
She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.
Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.
Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten spooked again because "people were getting hurt around [my] stories" and had lighted out for Canada.
Odd, the subject of my stories - or any stories - never came up during our brief interview. I was just looking for Pamela.
That left Pamela's son, Nicolas Richards, who, as it happens, had been in the software business in Manhattan until - why, my goodness - things seem to have come a cropper right around the time Groklaw came into existence.
Nick and his ma were apparently involved together in Medabiliti Inc, an ISV, because one Pamela Jones with a Westches
Idiots like you would love a third world police state.
Fact of the matter is that public figures are just that.. public. They have to expect a lower standard of privacy as a result. If you don't like it, too fucking bad.
If I had a public pulpit that reached a wide audience, I could expect the same sort of things happening to me. Big deal.
Get over it, whiny cry baby.
So, I guess my question is - why are you such an asshole? Were you born that way or did you develop this condition out of bitterness or turmoil or what?
I'm an asshole because I support freedom and the 1st Amendment?
Good thinking, Adolf.
In my experience as a contibuting editor to an industry print publication, I was, at times, pressured to favor coverage for advertisers' products, over what may have actually been more newsworthy. In the face of these tests, it occurred to me, because of the longevity of data on the Internet and the speed and ease at which information is disseminated, that I had an obligation to myself and my readers to uphold a higher standard.
When my byline was attributed to an unedited press release, as opposed to an actual product review, I quit.
Think about the changing face of journalism these days: Dan Rather, Matt Gannon, Bill O'Rielly, Hunter S. Thompson, Al Franken - all of these people have provided some form of reportage and taken on considerable controversy because of it. Whether you agree with their facts, their opinions, or their methods, what really seperates one news source from another is the effect of its' reporting: did it make you question your preconceptions? Did you gain some information that you previously lacked?
I, for one am quite glad that "blogs" are now being given more journalistic weight. Why? Because it means that people are even more skeptical. People that were skeptical of big media do not blindly turn to "the little guy" based on an underdog fantasy, they consider the opinions of the blogger to be possibly suspect as well.
Ultimately, considering the efficacy of the argument and the veracity of the facts presented MOG has certianly not convinced me that PJ works for IBM - She's convinced me that she does not truly understand the Interent medium:
1. She has no remorse about putting her name on a piece of wrtiting that has the tone of a 0day web defacement or IRC taunt (minus the l337 5p34k). And surprise! Its' going to be floating around the Web for the rest of her life (and beyond).
2. Frontier justice may rear its' ugly head and expose her personal details, and she may be targeted by some kind of retribution.
3. The constraints of physical space, finance, and logic do not apply equally to all situations, as some people actually do work where from they live, and like to keep their home lives somewhat private.
Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.
Don't do that.
Moral high ground only works if you're better than the other guy.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
This Bozo the Clown look-alike has only been able to regurgitate SCO's drivel, and shows no "fact finding" ability at all. I'd bet she couldn't find that rather substantial butt of hers with both hands and a hunting dog. Given that McBride and his "Gang that couldn't sue straight" funded the private detective, it was probably another McBride brother (his other brother Darl?) who knew he found the right person because some neighbors saw this woman retrieving her newspaper while wearing "PJ's". These folks would need a tutor for a urine test.
The 1st Amendment refers to the government suppressing free speech. It does not apply to allowing stalkers to harrass innocent victims. If you post the phone number of someone, post your own, or else you are being a hypocrite.
Post your phone number and home address. Don't be a hypocrite and anonymously post some innocent victim's phone number and home address. Post your own information.
The only freedom you are supporting is the freedom to release information that will lead to harrassment. I suppose you think unlisted phone numbers are a violation of the 1st Amendment? No? They're not an illegal violation of the law of the land? Then think about what you are doing by posting this information, and how hurtful you are being to a fellow human being.
I didn't say any of those things. You think the publishing of information should be censored.
How is publishing information hurtful? Someone gonna call PJ? Oh no! Terrible! Shocking! Horrible!
Someone gonna knock on her door? OH MY GOD!
What does censorship have to do with stalking? Nothing.
Information is free to publish, what you do with it is where the law comes in. Merely publishing it is not illegal and is protected, Adolf.
If the story was just to investigate the possibility that Groklaw was an IBM front, why did it require posting phone numbers, email addresses, names of family, pictures of her house, and a conversation with her mother? I'm sorry but this was a hachet job by someone with hatred at a level that is surprisingly deep, nothing more.
What's amusing about the whole thing is that she could write such a mean article and basically say nothing bad about PJ other than she doesn't have a very nice apartment. Her age, religion, and bumper stickers are really nothing negative unless you are bigoted.
and send them an email telling them that you are and why.
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
Thanks Quartermass. Very well said. Your statements about the article also reflect my feelings. I also have to say that the phone number, address, bumper sticker, and other details were also gratuitous and seem to serve no other purpose than to make PJ uncomfortable.
Nice summary of the MOG/SCO connection too. Don't forget the bit about what she "heard" in court (when she wasn't present and that only the judge and the lawyers could hear in any case). Apparently she was quite upset for Groklaw reporting that. Maybe it has something to do with the raw hatred in the article in question.
Quartermass wrote:
1. In January 2003, O'Gara published an article about SCO's plans to monetize their IP allegedly in Linux. This was two months before SCO sued IBM. This was six months before SCO announced their Linux IP licensing program. This was long before SCO had made any public statements about their plans for licensing Linux, or alleged infringements in Linux. So where did O'Gara get this information from?
Securities laws prohibit purchases and sales of securities on the basis of material non-public information. The sales of SCOX stock by SCOX insiders over the past 2+ years have been pursuant to so-called "10b5-1 plans" -- basically, pursuant to SEC Rule 10b5-1, a purchase or sale is _not_ deemed to be on the basis of material non-public if it is made pursuant to a plan entered into before the person involved possessed material non-public information. The idea is that an executive could adopt a plan to sell his holdings over time (say, 10,000 shares per month, every month) and not have the validity of the sales questioned as a result of the subsequent acquisition of material non-public information. If you look at many of the "Form 4" documents filed by SCOX insiders, which describe sales of securities, they state that they were made pursuant 10b5-1 plans (the first I saw was a Robert C. Bench filing of March 12, 2003). I believe (though I cannot find the reference right now) that SCOX has stated that the plans were adopted in February 2003, shortly before they "discovered" the alleged IP violations and engaged the Boies lawfirm -- the lawsuit itself was announced around March 7, 2003. If MOG published information suggesting SCOX intended to embark on the IBM and related lawsuits in Jan 03, any Feb 03 10b5-1 plans would have been adopted "too late" to immunize SCOX insiders against charges that they adopted such plans while in possession of material non-public information.
So, you're of the opinion that it's just a coincidence that the abuse began after that Colonel from Military Intelligence from Cuba visited to give advice on how to get "actionable intelligence" from the Iraqis?
There is an editorial board contact number listed on the following website:
(http://www5.sys-con.com/general/contactus.htm)
It has a listing under "Departments" that looks like this:
Editorial
Phone: 201-802-3040
Fax: 201-782-9638
I am going to be calling this number and complaining about the lack of journalistic integrity by Maureen O'Gara.
I doubt it will accomplish anything.
both linked articles mention that the writers believe mog's actions are enough to prompt them to leave their current positions and that this is not a new or spur of the moment decision.
the articles also pretty clearly define that this is an argument over ethics. as for specifics re: pj, this would seem a good start without getting overly detailed: "lists all kinds of personal information about Jones including horrific nasty comments and where she lives."
re: google - only fools do not alter their behaviour based on the effects those behaviours have on the world around them [see gwb for a great example of this].
the fact remains that increasing the ranking of mog's pieces will generate more hits for them which will generate more ad revenue which will generate more mog garbage. they don't care if those eyeballs are there to look at the road-side accident or not...
also, just because information is now publically available does not mean you should go out of your way to spread it. in this case, spreading the information is simply assisting mog in her attempt to intimidate pj by "outting" her.
sum.zero
The info is at O'Gara's site, the links are all there, etc. Or do you think that people who surf slashdot don't know how to work a mouse? Patronizing bitch, aren't you?
As I said below, there is a better way. Don't bitch at MoG or Sys-Con, that will only inflame their semi-masochistic sense of persecution. Instead, write their advertisers.
If 100 people write polite letters to the sys-con advertisers politely, and I do mean politely, informing them that their support of Sys-Con, MoG and others is costing them your business, it will hit Sys-Con where it hurts.
I write for The Inq, I know how the game is played. If you want attention, polite and cogent letters that hit them in the wallet are the only things that work.
Flaming them only hurts your cause, clicking on them brings them more money. It is pretty obvious that they are out for hits at any cost, that is how their bills are paid. Cut that out and you end the games, play into it, and it gets worse.
If you notice, there is nothing on Groklaw about it, that would be playing the game MoG wants you to play. Don't feed the trolls, cut off their food instead.
I personally wrote several people I know about it, and lets see what becomes of it. Do the same. If someone wants to make a list of Sys-Con advertisers and post it below, great. If you want to hunt down that and contact info, better still. You can find the contact info on most vendor's web pages under contact us or press links. Be polite and firm, and tell them their wallets are at risk. Have fun also.
-Charlie
1-888-303-5282
as seen on http://www5.sys-con.com/general/contactus.htm
your characterization of the articles does not correspond with the text i read.
they specifically raise issue with their publisher over the ethics of mog's writing and that rather than making rash decisions, they have been attempting to work this out with sys-con.
this is the professional way to deal with things.
now that they realize that the discussion is futile, they are publicly saying why they are making the decisions they are.
it is also clearly stated, as i quoted previously, that amongst the information published was the assumed identity and home address of pj. this is a clear attempt at the intimidation of another journalist.
i fully expect there will be legal action before this is played out.
sum.zero
..because this one's going to be an all night soaparama.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Oddly, though it may be an incorrect interpretation, given the context you often here 'hack' used in, one might think that it has to do with the hatchet job said writer does on the underlying story.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
It was published though. I certainly read about it, as did the poster above. But it didn't seem as shocking as a government-run facility in another country being used for disgusting abuse of foreign nationals.
Sorry.
I also fail to see where the link to the perpetrator's migration status is, here. There's plenty of citizens of any given country raping, murdering and maiming each other on any given day without having to tack their naturalisation status on the front of their description. That only acts to make the article MORE SHOCKING to a certain group of retardates, some of whom seem to have accounts on Slashdot.
that is the funniest thing i've read in days.
I just want to know, did you write this off the top of your head, or do you have a blank template with spaces for name & company? If not, you should make one up and host it because that was hilarious.
P.S. A big FU to the tards who modded this overrated.
P.S. A big FU to the tards who modded this overrated.[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It looks to me like PJ has a solid case for libel and invasion of privacy. I hope she wins enough damages from MOG and Linux World to put them both out of business for this shameless attack. I really hope that she manages to show that Yarrow or McBride are behind it.
I read those previous pieces maureen wrote about PJ and I found them quite odd indeed, seemed sorta viscious in a way. I will admit I missed the details on this one though, although I skimmed both links quickly, I was also doing some other stuff at the same time. That doesn't take away from what I said though, the employment paid versus free, he's still working for them, ie, that makes his boss his employer. I wish him well, either linuxworld gets real with their employees (paid or otherwise), or like I said, he and the other editors can go off and start their own e-zine, free or otherwise, their choice.
BTW, been in the same predicament a few times myself. Worked as a free unpaid moderator for ed yourdon and gary north,on their web boards pre y2k, eventually quit both places from lack of support from "my employer". Comes a time you look at the hours you put in versus "payback" that is valuable to you and you make a decision, simple as that. People work for a variety of reasons, money is just one of them. Right now my meatspace "dayjob" pays me very little, despite being way more than "full time" in conventional hours, but the side benefits make it worthwhile to me. My cyber job pays the internet and phone and a little hardware. Different strokes and all.
Well, he's anonymous, but from the writing style and thorough detail, I'd say that this is certainly sounds like Quatermass from Groklaw.
It occurs to me that if O'Gara really is a sock puppet for SCO, that would certainly explain the venom toward PJ and Groklaw in her articles...
So PJ is a 61 year old Jehovas Witness with an iffy car and poor interior decorating skills.
1 45744287#comments
SO
FUCKING
WHAT?
Pardon the use of strong language but this has really got me annoyed. Perhaps that is what Maureen is after. Maybe she WANTS us to get pissed off at her so that someone does something stupid that can be used as evidence that the Open Source Movement consists of spotty teenage thugs.
At this moment in time that sound preferable to being a religious bigot. Criticising someone based on their religion is wrong. Criticising someone based on their age is wrong. Printing personal details on someone as part of a "news" story without their permission is not only wrong but it verges on intimidation.
Yes Maureen - you look like a small minded bigot. An idiot of the highest order. It does not matter one jot whether Pamela Jones is a 61 year old Jehovas Witness as this does not change anything that has been written on Groklaw. Fact are facts Maureen - as you would understand if you really were a journalist and not just a third-rate hack.
PJ could be a Jewish black guy called Bob with poor personal hygiene and it STILL wouldn't change a thing that has been written on Groklaw (other than making the red dress comments a bit creepy).
Hopefully people will not stoop to giving you a taste of your own medicine such as posting your personal details, telephone number, photos of your house.
Even if you deserve it.
So to wrap this up:
Maureen - FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.
You'd better hope that the idea of Karma and re-incarnation is wrong otherwise you could be spending the next couple of lives as a dung beetle.
But then again - would we notice the difference?
More importantly, go here and read this:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050509
Here is another one : JBoss (http://www.sys-con.tv/read/77512.htm). JBoss is the most famous open source J2EE server. Someone (with a better written English than me) could contact them and explain who they are doing business with.
... who's gonna start investigating O'Gara? Accusing PJ of not being who she says she is? I think a little digging in O'Gara's background is likely to show that O'Gara's guilty of her own accusation.
How shocked was I when I saw an ad by JBoss on the article site pointing to http://rollitout.jboss.com/jdj/
I suggest you write to their PR person at jboss@schwartz-pr.com and remind that they paying for articles that redicule JBoss's business model.
I read the the offending article.
Offending is the word. I do not believe I have read such an apalling piece of work by a journalist in my life. This is just a vitrolic attack. I do not understand how this can be justified on any terms.
The first sentence is:
"A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit"
Harridan? Even from the first sentence we are seeing attacks on her personally. How this can even be called news is quite beyond me. This is a hatchet job.
meh
Anyone seen any?
I've seen many volumes of MoG diatribes, though.
It's a shame that you also repeated the telephone number too... The 'story' (for want of a better word) also carried pictures of her house, the road she lived on, and her Parents home too. I'm glad you cut those out :-)
From Maureen O'Gara's own words, it sounds like she has been stalking PJ, and I don't think being a journalist makes that ok. I also don't think it is ok to publish the address of someone who has already received death threats, and of all their relatives. (Funny, when PJ complains about harrasment, she is called "paranoid", but when Darl McBride complains about harrassment, he is just standing up for his rights!). I think it is high time for Pamela Jones to get a restraining order against this unbalanced woman who by her own words obviously has a vendetta against her.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What strikes me the most about Maureen O'Gara's smear job was how much she jumped on the "Jehovah's Witness" thing. I don't like to think of myself as intolerant, but I admit to having some prejudice against JWs.
I've read through a few issues of the Watchtower, and had decided that the only people who could find it interesting are people who want their opinions spoon-fed to them by an authority figure. So until now, for me, finding out that someone is a practicing Jehovah's Witness would have been an effective means of diminishing my respect for that person. Until now.
PJ has shown what kind of person she is through intelligent analysis, tireless research, and candid admissions of even the most minor error (of which there have been very few from what I've seen). She has demonstrated unimpeachable integrity, pursuing the facts wherever they might lead.
I find it amusing that my reaction was the opposite of what Maureen O'Gara intended. Instead of lessening my respect for PJ, Maureen's allegations (whether or not they are true) have made me realize the wrongness of my prejudice towards Jehovah's Witnesses.
I am grateful to have been reminded that one should judge people by getting to know them instead of by the categories they seem to fit. At least MOG's abandonment of integrity and common sense had one tiny positive effect. I'm sorry that this contribution to my education had to come at PJ's expense.
Best wishes, PJ.
include $sig;
1;
just a simple addition to the host file...
:D :D
linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com 127.0.0.1
Then nothing from that site
Great Idea,
perfect way to hide the rubbish
I'm sure that the SEC and IBM among others would probably spot it there. Besides, it will tweak O'Gara and she certainly has asked for it.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I know how hard it is to stand up to principles, when the easier course would be to just let things go on the way have have been going. I salute you for your moral courage in doing the right thing. If the world was populated with people of your moral character then the entire world would be a better place to live in.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It is hard to stand up for what is right, when we are in a comfortable place that we like. I know how hard it can be to put yourself forward like this in the face of wrong. It takes bravery, courage and determination. If the world was populated entirely with people such as yourself then it would be a better place.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Actually this is not a TROLL. I had the same thought and emailed the article to a friend of mine who IS a LAWYER (been practicing law in Dallas for 25 years). He read the article and where he wanted to throw up, his opinion was that it was NOT actionable.
Tom
Check my posting & submission history--I'm quite familiar with Groklaw. Quartermass has long posted to GL and has been a constant source of good information.
So you're quite right; I'm sure that's him because he posted essentially the same information over on GL, and I've read all that information on GL prior to this.
Even if it wasn't, it's more substantiated evidence that SCO doesn't play by the rules (as anyone who saw those SCO shenanigans in the most recently unsealed filings already knows). Not to mention the incident recorded in my journal from one of the early GL stories where SCO tried to defame protesters...
Every time I think SCO can't sink any lower, I think about what I just thought and realize I'm crazy--I'm rather sure they can.
That's okay then. So long as the abuses were being investigated and people were getting punished, journalists can ignore the story and move on. You know, that's a great idea. Woodward and Bernstein should have noted that people in the FBI were aware of the Watergate break-in and were investigating it, and shouldn't have bothered chasing down any leads they found - after all, the government had it in hand.
Or perhaps it is the very fact that the media is watching, the fact that they do report on misdeeds, that ensures that when things are done wrong (whether as a result of misguided individuals misinterpreting orders or just getting their jollies, or as a more systematic matter of policy) that the investigations which are carried out are not allowed to overlook facts, ignore issues, or reach unsustainable verdicts. Do you think the fact that breaches of international law were being conducted by US soldiers on duty in Iraq (since they involve breaches of the Geneve convention, you could even call them war crimes) is something which the US electorate, in whose name the US military operates, should not be aware of? Do you think it would have been the US military's choice to have the Abu Ghraib incidents publicised? Do you think that if journalists had not been prepared to investigate the truth of every statement on the subject issued by the US military and government, that the military would not have taken the opportunity to lie about events in the prison? If you disagree on any of these points, then you and I share a very different view on what's important, and on how bureaucracies behave when not held to account.
Bringing this back on topic, this story is about someone abusing their role as a journalist. Plenty of people seem to hold journalists in general in pretty low esteem. And there are plenty of hacks out there who spend their days redrafting press releases and calling that journalism and that sucks, it really does. But what you can't argue is that it isn't the role of journalism to scrutinise the behaviour of governments. That isn't 'liberal bias', that's doing their job. It's something more journalists should be doing.
You owe the very fact that yuou are able to debate the issues of the Abu Ghraib case with any confidence that the facts you cite may be true, to the scrutiny of the government which journalism performs.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
So the sleepy Monday caveat applies neatly to you.
It is not competition bashing competition.
It is the competition coming to its rivals for help.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mod both parents up please / no further text
Unfortuneately here in the US things like that do happen. Our system (actually the culture that tolerates it) is wacked, to say the least.
These things can be defended however, you will need some big resources to defend yourself. Then the other problem is becasue lawsuits are held in civil courts (instead of criminal) you are stuck trying to prove your inocence instead of simply disproving their claims. And of course, the biggest problem is that even when you win the case, you still lose. The trial itself becomes a slander against your career.
This kind of thing truly sucks, is completely unfair, and unfortunatly is something that has to be taken into consideration. Its never happend to me but, I do know a guy who had to suffer through this. He did nothing wrong, but had a wacko boss.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
My point was that the whole investigative process was fully underway long before the press became involved at all.
My main point was that the press actually ignored the story when CentCom first announced it. They only became interested when the photos appeared and they figured they could club Bush over the head with it during the election cycle.
I owe nothing to the "scrutiny" of the journalists. Where was that vaunted scrutiny when the other major candidate was alleged to have been less than truthful about his Viet Nam service? Oh yeah, they were hunting down forged memos from "anonymous" sources that they were placing calls to the DNC for.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Wow...I think the story discredits itself. It does nothing to discredit any of what PJ has said about herself which essentially boils down to "I am a paralegal, not a lawyer". If anything, it helps her case. By gum, she IS a paralegal!
Yawn, wake me up when you find out that PJ is really Sam Palmisano in drag, MOG....
JoAnn
Sys-Con gets money from readers very indirectly. The business model is "selling eyeballs to advertisers" not providing "news" to you. (apologies for the insult to news articles for grouping MoGs junk with them)
Do visit the page and note the ads. Then e-mail your comments on the article and what reaction it elicits in you directly to the advertiser's public relations or media relations department, indicating clearly how the article reflects on the advertiser's image.
One letter to Sys-con from an advertiser suggesting that they may no longer be interested in continuing to advertise there, that will have much more impact than a thousand complaints sent to Sys-con.
Ok, for starters, Why in god's name would anybody have a carring interest in what she looks like and where she gets the funding for her website from? It's not what she looks like or how old she is, it's what she says and how she rallies the open source community that makes the difference. How can you post somebody's phone number and address online, what happens if this person isn't the person you claim she is? Then what? And even if she is this person, who by the way, prefers anonymity so we should respect that, what does it matter how old she is or all these other things of nonsense?
I'm very upset and am posting this message in protest to Mrs. O'Gara and her stewards for her level of non-professionalism and her high level of stupidity.
Get a life
JamesG
from the LinuxBusinessNews site.
It looks like the editors were able to get the publishers to listen; she is no longer welcome at LinuxWorld.
SEO Firefox Extension
Warning: mysql_connect(): User groklaw has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections in /public/vhost/g/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108
Cannnot connect to DB server
So it looks like O'Gara has effectively silenced Groklaw for the moment at least.
Share and Enjoy!
...send care of MOG's home.
As in, where do I send all the subscriptions to 'Cat Fancy' again?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
hello sco monkey, how are you today
In a way, this article says more about O'Gara than it does about PJ. It may make public PJ's address and religion, but the fact that O'Gara would actually write something this vile says a lot about the kind of person she is.
She's not only partisan against SCO, she's also believes that any OpenSource license without a GPL-like "contagion" clause is simply a license to steal the code for commercial use. So she has big problems with a lot of proposed and new open source licenses from Sun, CA and the like.
/., and is certainly more informative than anything I've read from Maureen, Laura or the other SCO/MS minions.
Being partisan doesn't disqualify her or Groklaw as a valuable resource for information about SCO vs. the world. Groklaw is a blog/community, so the writing is editorial as well journalistic. As anyone can see from spending time on the site, PJ's take on events is definitely anti-SCO, but she always has facts to back up her statements. Maybe not all the facts (there have been a couple times when she seems to take her conclusions a step too far), but the resources are always conveniently available to read the original source documents (Open Source Law! ) and form your own opinion. The site overall, is certainly no more partisan than say...
We are the 198 proof..
Read here, here, here.
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Artifakt the Opined spake thus: Your ancestors, who had an average age at death of about 30 by the time you go back three geneerations, probably would debate whether your stress level is any higher than theirs. If you've got some who faced little stressors like World War 2, the black plague, or Atilla the Hun, they certainly would. Why do you believe otherwise?
Oddly, my Grandfather fought in the trenches in WW1, my mother lived through the Blitz and rationing in WW2. And I've been told by they and others that my life is more *continously* stressful. I was fortunate enough never to get shot at when I served in the infantry, never to have my best friends blown to bits around me like my Grandfather. But at the same time, in the period where he was not at war, life was pretty straightforward. It wasn't stress free, but it wasn't the ongoing pressure cooker of working with telecoms, dot-coms, dot-bombs, public safety applications where people's lives are on the line, on a day to day basis. Now, my other grandfather, who was a coal mining engineer and sometimes had to work double and triple shifts in the mine for a pittance probably approached the number of work hours I put in. I'm undoubtedly better compensated. But in terms of stress, I still think I have him beat. And it isn't all work stress either - for a number of other reasons, I happen to believe this. You can gainsay it, but you really don't have much data to make such a problematic judgement with.
Could it be because the media have been telling you stress is up, up, up? Could it be you feel flattered, deep inside, by the thought that you are a special breed of person who can cope with all that extra, special stress?
First, what makes you think I can cope?
Second, objective measures of stress don't require me to be listening to the media unless you are about to tell me that all stress is in ones imagination.
Part of selling more newer stuff that's still protected by copyright is giving you a false sense of what the past is like, so you won't think older books, films, and such are relevant to your faster paced, newer than new style life.
That's an interesting claim. It may even be true. Or maybe it is the fact that the world does change a bit, and some of the older stuff isn't as relevant. Now, I'm not going to gainsay Tacitus or Sun Tzu or Von Clauswitz or Sophocles. Some classic works have value that transcend the period. But a lot of merely 'old' literature (if you could call it that) isn't really that useful or applicable and some (not all, by any means) of the newly minted material is.
This may even help difuse your own better instincts. Even if you end up picking, not just Star Wars over Sophie's Choice, but Jerry Springer uncensored over both, you can fall back on the excuse that it's because your special life came with special stress levels,
Not the case of a special life. Or at least, no more special than any other. Higher stress levels than most, but that's the way life sometimes deals a varied hand to different people.
and not ever have to ask yourself "What if I'm just being mentally lazy?",
What if I am? Quite seriously, I'm not sure that industry is the most desirable of virtues, unless you're a corporate drone. Similarly, there is nothing inherently wrong with being lazy *from time to time*.
To my mind, you have to pick your battles. You have to choose when to expend your energies in this life. You have to choose where to emotionally and intellectually invest yourself. So on the occasions you do not, that seems to me both natural and not inherently problematic.
or even "What if I'm not really enjoying Spiderman 14 the way I did the first three or four?" I'm not saying you should be constantly asking yourself why you chose X over Shakespeare, but this stress arguement keeps you from ever asking why you chose a sequel over something new.
I can see where you might think that, but it is not th
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
You do realize the illegal immigrant might not have been in a position to do harm if the immigration laws of this country were enforced and this person was denied entry to the US. Further are you aware that criminal illegal aliens get free passes in many cities in the US because of sanctuary laws in those cities such as LA? Most illegal immigrants are just trying to work, but with no real enforcement of the immigration laws we are getting a lot of bad apples that are starting to really wreck the rest of the barrel.
They are competition, competing for (mostly) the same audience's attention. Of course, they cooperate to cover that audience's interests. And, in this case, they coopeted (what?) to out O'Gara. Modern media biz is a hall of mirrors, and I think we like it.
--
make install -not war
...after seeing all this, I'm now really interested in reading a deeply cynical, probing investigative article on O'Gara.
I believe they aren't formally teaching this approach in most journalism schools yet. Does she do these sorts of hit pieces for fun or profit?
Does SCO compensate her, directly or indirectly?
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
here and here.
This is the bad article[google cache] in question, and it's really quite horrifying that they allowed it to be published.
Yay me!