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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.

7 of 498 comments (clear)

  1. as much text as I could get... by aendeuryu · · Score: 5, Informative

    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    See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts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

  2. Re:A little background? by radish · · Score: 4, Informative
    --

    ---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"

  3. PJ's Take - Lets Move On - Dont Feed the Monkey by WillRobinson · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:misuse of the word hack by Bill+Dimm · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why is it that common people always use the word hack in a negative sense?
    From a dictionary:
    hack writer - n : a mediocre and disdained writer

    Those silly "common people"...
  5. redacted article (no addresses) by dominux · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  6. Fair play by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    CONTACT US

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  7. SCO & private detectives behind it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linuxtoday editor thinks so

    Editor's Note: Screed Attempts to Silence Voice Against SCO
    http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2005050900926 OPBZ