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Maureen O'Gara No Longer Welcome at LinuxWorld
flood6 writes "On the heels of yesterday's article about unrest at LinuxWorld, editor James Turner is reporting in his blog that Sys-Con Media has decided to purge Maureen O'Gara from the print and online publications." From the post: "Sys-con Media listened to what I and my fellow editors, their advertisers and the readership was saying, and made the correct decision. Maureen O'Gara's bylined material will no longer appear anywhere in the Sys-con universe of sites or publications. We have received this commitment in writing from Fuat Kircaali, the publisher." PJ at Groklaw also has commentary on this development.
That's sort of like kicking Michael the hell out of Slashdot.
I mean she thought she was doing sco a favor, (paid shill?)
Didn't another SCO henchmen - Jeff Merkey - already tell us the personal details of PJ? This MOG person's account doesn't seem to fit the picture Merkey painted.
It's not surprising, really, since MO'G's last article on Pamela Jones so clearly overstepped the bounds of decent, public interest journalist.
Incidentally, was I the only person who felt that insinuating that PJ's religion was wacko was particularly ironic, given that Maureen's paymasters at SCO were based in Utah, home of the not-exactly-christian-orthodox Church of the Latter Day Saints.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Shouldn't the editors and slashdotters here who scream censorship at every turn be unhappy about this decision.
This is a clear cut case of censoring someone simply for their opinions. Instead of arguing O'Gara's writings, they are purging here instead.
This reminds of of how communist USSR and China would just "erase" those who would defer from the leadership.
I don't like O'Gara but I wouldn't want here censored either. The way to fight speech you don't like is to fight back with more speech, not to silence them.
Don't you miss the good old days of ESR, RMS and Bruce Perens at each other's throats all the time? This Groklaw / Maureen O'Hara / Rob Something / Laura Something stuff is such a pale imitation. At least Darl McBride was an interesting villain, but he seems to have left the field while the rest of them keep pretending anyone still cares.
It only took them two years. I'm sure they kept her so long because of immense ad revenue generated by all the angry OSS supporters who felt the need to read every offensive article.
We've all known that MOG is a pathetic shill for a long time. Why did it take so long for the publisher to figure this out?
I am happy to see that Fuat Kircaali & the Linuxworld editors are standing up for quality journalism. I am looking forward to reading future articles there.
Nah Nah Nah Nah,
Hey Hey Hey
GOODBYE!
And please don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
The Army reading list
Was Maureen O'Gara REALLY pro-SCO or just being destructively sensationalistic?
Why did a magazine called LinuxWorld continue to print garbage by someone who is so obviously anti-Linux?
by sys-con imho. they have repeatedly shown themselves to be anti-linux and they are only doing this because of the pressure [and potential legal issues].
they are most certainly not acting because it was the right thing to do.
sum.zero
...before their server melts.
Sys-Con has decided to listen to its editors, who took a very courageous stand, its readers and advertisers and will no longer publish any of Maureen O'Gara's writings. Here is the story, from James Turner, Senior Editor of LinuxWorld, who, together with Dee-Ann LeBlanc, forced the issue by announcing Sys-Con would have to choose between them and O'Gara:
The good news is, the right thing happened in the end. Sys-con Media listened to what I and my fellow editors, their advertisers and the readership was saying, and made the correct decision. Maureen O'Gara's bylined material will no longer appear anywhere in the Sys-con universe of sites or publications. We have received this commitment in writing from Fuat Kircaali, the publisher. Checking around the web sites this morning, I can see that her material is already almost entirely gone, I assume the remainder will dribble out over the next few days. Now we can return to producing a world-class web site and print magazine, with the kind of editorial control that we think is critical. You showed your support for our position, I hope you'll be equally kind to us with your readership.
My faith in the human race is restored. I do thank all those who took such a stand, publicly and privately. It means so much to me to know that there is still a line, an ethical line, and some things that we agree we ought never to do to a fellow human. Sometimes, covering the SCO saga, you can start to wonder what has happened to the human race. SCO's fundamental problem is, they never see that line until they have crossed it. Then they wonder why they are failing as a company and in their litigation.
By the way, we found out how many comments we can have before the software sinks, on the last story. It seems 1,181 is our natural limit, so please don't add any more comments to that story. We are holding on by our fingertips, while MathFox works his wonders. It's never happened before. Remember when we had to move away from Radio Userland because we were having too many comments for the software? Well, again we have so many comments the software is groaning. Here, we can make the necessary changes to be able to grow right where we stand. Your outpouring of support made a difference. I fell asleep with a smile on my face, believe it or not. I had no idea so many people cared so much about Groklaw and about me. I thank you all very much. I'll remember yesterday all the days of my life.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Ok, the summary didn't make it clear to those of us who don't RTFA. Who is she, why isn't she welcome and why do we care? Thanks.
... although it was a terrible unethical article (and I really felt for PJ yesterday), isn't getting rid of MOG a bit like sacking Ronald McDonald? Who are we all going to laugh at?
I'm vaguely familiar with the name, and I recognize her as someone with something to do with the SCO story, but it was frustrating to read the article and still not really understand what the problem was. I mean, I *know* in a general sense, that she wrote articles that were favorable to SCO's position, and I'm sure that this development follows from that, but there's not much in the article that would bring someone up to speed, which makes it poor journalism.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
To support groklaw, I would love to have a yellow wristband that says GrokLaw on one side, and Anoymous on the other. Just so I could spot other GL'ers and /.'ers and smile ...
How bout it Taco? Would be a great way to support yourself and GL!
'n good riddance
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Censorship is when the government bans publication under threat of arrest and imprisonment.
She was basically fired.
Get it straight.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
What is reprehensible and really hard to stomach is that she stooped to such lows as attacking Ms. Jones privacy.
Reminds me of the methods of a science fiction space opera nut cult.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The "yesterday's article about unrest at LinuxWorld" link in the Related Links sidebar points to http://linux.slashdot.org/__SLASHLINK__
I understand the consequences of this error are grave.
Isn't it terrible to see such a competent, scrupulous, free thinking journalist loose her job? Where will I turn now to get well funded, independend reporting on Linux?
:-(
I think I'll have to cry now.
And I don't have much more than a clue. Can you or someone give a brief summary of what has been happening so those of us that never heard of her before yesterday know what is going on?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Shouldn't there be an official apology and counterstatement on the main pages of all SysCon sites which published the story? And how about personal apologies by Fuat Kircaali to PJ, maybe even some sort of compensation?
"Proves" should be "prove". "Patches" is plural.
anncoucne new VP in charge of PR Maureen O'Gara!! ta-da! ill be here all week, try the veel...
Eeeek, sorry.
While they may be purging your main articles written for them, further down the page they have link after link to MOG's articles on LinuxGram.
I would be more interested in seeing a public apology rather than just taking immediate damage control and going for the cheap (yet obvious) solution.
I don't drink because I have to, I drink to stop the voices in my head!
Always out to keep the Scottish Man down.
O'Gara, dug your hole deep, now lets see you get out of it.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Ding, dong, the witch is dead
Which old witch? The wicked witch!
Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
It's not a question of if she'll show up again, but when. There's too much at stake for the other side to allow such a willing tool to go unused.
My bet that she starts her own blog. That way she can have a platform to expound on her quirky worldview, without these pesky editor types watching over her shoulder.
Or she may choose a new pseudo'nym and start writing about life in White Plains, Westchester, and anyplace north of the East River and east of Long Island Sound. She seems really fascinated by that area. O'bsessed, you might say.
sigs, as if you care.
SCO and its minions can never again complain about Linux "zealots", not without being laughed right off the stage, because compared to them and their tactics, it's clear now who are the pros at intimidation and terror.
Darl McBride and Laura DiDio have complained bitterly about receiving nasty email and late-night phone calls. That's kid's stuff by comparison. Without commenting on the latest O'Gara article's contents, because I am considering legal action and can't comment directly at this time, think about this: Have Linux "zealots" ever put up personal info on how to find Darl McBride's mother, with pictures of her home and the number on her mailbox so any stalker can find her readily? That was O'Gara's intent. Has anyone published who DiDio calls from her landline phone? Can you imagine the press conference SCO would hold, and what names they would call the FOSS community, if anything like that happened?
Who are the "extremists" now? The "cyberterrorists"? The violators of the law and of all things decent? Who are the enablers of stalking and violence?
But the big picture is this: it's official now, not just a guess, that my readers simply don't care who I am or what I am. They really don't. Groklaw isn't about me, and my work stands on its own. Anyway, they know me by now as a person, because in my writing they see my inner person, how my brain works, my heart, my ethics. We're old friends by now, and you always stand by an old, true friend. That is exactly what has happened.
Groklaw is exactly what I told you from day one, a blog written by a paralegal who became a journalist. I do it myself. All by myself. Well. Me and the entire worldwide FOSS community. All the rest is just their paranoid ravings and imaginings. Literally thousands of members and readers contribute to Groklaw, and millions read what we present.
You know why? In part, because I never take the low road. Really. That's the secret to Groklaw's success. It's a place on the Internet where we can speak to each other as adults, in a civil atmosphere, without meanness or ad hominem attacks and work together with a common purpose, regardless of our varied backgrounds and preferences in other areas. Politics is off topic. So is religion. And so are insults. I don't even let comments remain if they attack people like Maureen O'Gara. I once wrote an article to ask people not to attack her verbally, when others did so on another website. (In that article I wrote that she was a good journalist. I take that part back. I tend to be too kind.)
I have been flooded with emails of support and donations. I'd say whatever the dark side's intent, it has boomeranged. And I also want to thank everyone for all the words of support and the donations. I will try to write to you all personally in time, but I couldn't wait to tell you how touched I am by the overwhelming number of good wishes. Thank you. It means everything to me that you responded as you have and have seen through this latest and most foul attempt at intimidation and character assassination. Did you notice? They only attack me as a person. What does that tell you about the integrity of Groklaw that they were forced to stoop to that?
On a personal note: I've heard from several who are seriously warning me that they think SCO is setting me up so that they can arrange my "suicide". You know, like Val Kreidel allegedly was so overwhelmed by what was printed about her by Maureen O'Gara and others that she ended it all?
I have no experience in such things, so I can't evaluate their warnings, but I have taken note that three persons on the SCOX Yahoo Finance board, one known to be a SCO supporter if not an insider, have already predicted my suicide, two of them since this article.
So I feel I should say this, just for the record, just in case, worst-case scenario: I don't believe in suicide, and I certainly don't care what Maureen O'Gara thinks about me. So if you hear about my "suicide", it isn't one. And you can take that to the bank. She has
This isn't censorship. It's removing someone from a position that they were using to slander another individual.
Would you actually argue that I have a right to call up your employer and claim you were a child molester? I mean, it's just speech...
http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/archives/2005/02 /22/the_jonesogara_feud.php
"Shouldn't the editors and slashdotters here who scream censorship at every turn be unhappy about this decision."
Nope.
"This is a clear cut case of censoring someone simply for their opinions. Instead of arguing O'Gara's writings, they are purging here instead."
Nope, O'Gara clearly broke every journalistic standard out there, so fireing her is the only right thing to do.
"This reminds of of how communist USSR and China would just "erase" those who would defer from the leadership."
Then you either live under a serious delusion about what the issues are in the matter at hand, or you'r simply trolling.
"I don't like O'Gara but I wouldn't want here censored either. The way to fight speech you don't like is to fight back with more speech, not to silence them."
Nope, the only way to fight totally unacceptable, if not criminal behaviour is to fire the journalist who is guilty of breaking the rules.
pj said she was considering her options.
whether she sues or not, there may end up being criminal activities and subsequent prosecution here...
sum.zero
Will the real PJ please stand up!
I'm PJ, I admit it so sue me.
Signed AC
Now that I think about it, how come all MY brilliant writings do not appear in sys-con's publications. Only one explanation: Censorship! Pure and simple, cruel and UnAmerican! I am ALMOST POSITIVE that the first amendment requires anyone who runs a magazine to print everything I say. How the hell did I overlook this grave injustice?!!
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Why does Slashdot, a notoriously Linux-backing site, host Microsoft ads from time to time? Oh, right ... money.
Here is the original article...where is the vitriole? I just see a bunch of facts...
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, a
THis is like the NYT reporter that was fired for just making crap up. Thats more or less what she did.
Besides it doesn't make sense for a pub. titled 'linux world' or 'linux business jornal' to have a rabidly anti-GPL anti-Open Source person on staff.
That would be akin to Microsoft hiring Richard Stallman to write about how bad proprietery software is.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
I notice she never denied any of the claims as to who she was.
Who exactly is she and why does her opinion matter so much in this case. (especially if she is not even a lawyer)
I honestly thought that the new servers at Ibiblio could handle a Slashdotting... Apologies for the disruption in service this time.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
Public Service Announcement.
You've been warned.
Hearing that Maureen will no longer publish her nonsense articles is certainly good news. But nowhere does it say she actually got sacked by sys-con.
Without evidence of the contrary , I must however assume she is still "Editor in chief" of "Linux Business Week" and thus still getting paid by sys-con.
The only thing which was made clear is that she could not publish articles authored by herself anymore.
Cheers,
Andre
I think you're overstating things. She'll still be around, shilling at linuxgram, and I'm sure we'll see her at SCOForum 2005 if there is one, holding what I can only presume will be an absolutely worthless keynote speech. And just when you thought nothing could top The Endrool...
Laura DiDio is still out there. Not quite the same brand of lunatic stalker but still laughable in an Enron kind of way.
I'm not sure that sacking someone that writes lies, and badly written ones at that, is strictly censorship, is it? I mean, did you read that last article? It was the ravings of a loon.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Amazing what a loss of advertisers can do.
But I still want to see her around. She and her kind have done more to help Linux than have hurt it. Everytime they FUD, they get called on it. MOG, Dido, Enderle, Dvorack, IDG, Gartner, etc. are losing their credibility.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. yesterday
Then you win. today
Goodbye O'Gara, you sick and twisted old hag.
Did someone pay MOG enough to compensate for losing what little credibility she had left? I don't believe that - not because this would be "too evil" but because it would be plain stupid.
Phew. I'm seriously baffled.
MO'G, is supposedly a tech "journalist" who has been covering amongst many other subjects the SCO vs everybody story. Basically, the open source community dislikes her ( as I see it) because 1. She is obviously biased against Linux, and pro SCO. This is not an opinion, as much as fact. Simply by reading what she writes and seeing that no matter what the decision is in the court case, it is always a win for SCO, even the time the Judge in the case said that so far SCO has provided no evidence of their claims, MO'G painted it as a win for SCO because he had denied a motion they had put forth. 2. She has made rather vile accusations, and published personal information about Pamela Jones, the host of the website Growlaw (http://www.groklaw.net/) who has been providing, what I consider to be a very detailed and comprehensive site tracking every bit of the SCO vs the Linux world cases. 3. She is a hack writer. If I claimed to be a journalist, I would at least try to make sure that what I was writing was close to being correct, but it seemed that even when she could have easily gotten the correct facts, she preferred to write her own version of what happened during court appearances, even though she wasn't there.
The Growlaw site is at least truthful. Documents are retrieved, or linked from the court, volunteers go to the court sessions and write what actually occurred. MO'G wouldn't have attracted so much attention if she had at least been a little more intelligent about how she wrote her stories about the trial. I mean,lots of journalists are writing the story, and some are SCO positive, and they aren't attracting the same level of criticism that she is.
Hopefully this helps a few of the people who were unsure of who MO'G is, and if you want more information, go to the Groklaw site.
SCO, MOG et al have been trying to destroy GrokLaw for some time now. And with one bit of good news, Slashdot does the dirty work for them...
/public/vhost/g/groklaw/system/databases/mysql.cla ss.php on line 108
Warning: mysql_connect(): User groklaw has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections in
Cannnot connect to DB server
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
Oo Glurmik,
Eh slemoomig hnurxu (f*** you, too), bekekk punjuwumba gbedqe vnuludu. Porm w gwomobbix, thikkiwem!
Zem widdoo, go f*** yourselves.
Maureen
Considering what O'Gara was doing was cleary intimidation of an opposing journalist, this is a victory for free speech.
Free speech is not publishing the address of the other side's mother. If you don't understand that, you don't understand speech at all.
Right. Well I guess that'll make fairly short shrift of the concept of censorship, given the declining influence of government and the correspnding rise of corporate power.
Oh, and in regards to petty lttle things like censorship by their bosses of people like reporters, well... News organizations are mostly not government-owned, now, are they? All nice and tidy...
Linux World just lost my business.
Right. I'm sure you were a paying subscriber/advertiser on LinuxWorld, PenguinBoy.
Excellent troll, though.
I know editor is a dirty word here on slashdot, but with a supposed profesionally publication where the hell were the editors?
Don't most people expect writers to bring drafts and editors tweak before publishing? I mean did NO ONE on staff read this article before it went live? Did they just hand her a publish account and let her loose?
She sounds like scum, but there's some serious procedure problems as well that allowed this kind of work to happen.
Appears to be this piece of crap
Any way you want to read it... OGARA GO
This action brings up the question: does this put LinuxWorld in the same category as every other partisan hack? While O'Gara's latest column appears to have been over the line (the world will never be able to judge after this), is full removal of all her material necessary?
From this, I gather that claims of censorship only apply when it's someone you agree with.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
I'm glad everyone has done his or her part. I know I wrote a letter to Sys-Con; I sent it to half of the departments as well as Mr. Kircaali through their online contact pages. How many others did something similar?
The debate over whether the LDS church is Christian or not is not really appropriate for Slashdot. Suffice it to say, LDS believers think that they are, and non-LDS believers don't. The LDS church may have different beliefs that mainstream Protestant and Evangelical Christianity, but none of them are extreme or offensive. It isn't a high pressure cult, and it doesn't profess any sort of belief stranger to the outside observer than any other major world religion.
It certainly does not merit the label "wacko," and there is no way that the parent poster tossed about that term without fully knowing that he would cause offense. Mod the parent "-1, Flamebait."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I seem to have missed that part.
Does it seem possible SCO's fud-campaign-backers hired lots of people to investigate this, and clumsily MOG stumbled on the mom and Merkey (who is he anyway? another "journalist") stumbled on a different relative (perhaps a daughter)?
Wow Darl can't shoot straight.
Censorship...pure and simple.
MoG can publish her opinions as much as she wants. In any venue that she can.
She has done so. Now comes the consequences of her speech.
People are free to vote with their dollars. Vast numbers of people are free to let advertisers that they don't approve of advertising on a site that features such a hateful personal attack which is completely irrelevant to the SCO vs. The World cases. Publications, upon hearing the reaction of advertisers, are free to can MoG.
There is no censorship here. MoG is free to publish elsewhere, such as on the G2 properties which she has complete control over. Anyone wishing to support her with advertising or subscriptions is completely free to do so.
Are you saying that I must be happy and shut up about what MoG writes? Are you censoring me saying that I am not free to express my disgust to the advertisers? Who is the censor now?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Are you saying that a publisher is obliged to print anybody's articles, even when they so completely step over the line? Nobody is saying this nice lady cannot write stalker instructions, it's just that this publisher won't be helping. Private companies are permitted in most Western countries to print or not print what they like. Censorship is when the state decides what can or cannot be printed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
OK...I am back to Positive Karma. I rock. Actually, I was hurt by having bad karma. I really didn't try to piss anyone off. Ah well...life is good.
Interesting that you say this in your journal. I doubt Linux World ever had your business. In fact, looking at some of your previous posts, it appears that this a troll account.
The publisher has stated she'll no longer by published on ANY sys-con site. That includes LBW. She's history!
21st-Century-Citizen
"My world is pain!"
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
If I were P.J., I'd be filing charges on O'Gara right now. Her actions are likely sufficient to fall under 18 USC 875(c), the Interstate Stalking Punishment and Prevention Act of 1996. She traveled across state lines in an effort to violate the privacy of an individual who has quite reasonable fear for her safety. O'Gara may also be liable under New York's anti-stalking laws as well.
At the very least, I'd be filing for a restraining order by now.
Furthermore, Sys-Con was exceptionally negligent in ever allowing that sort of thing to be published. Not only is it a gross and blatant violation of journalistic ethics, but it's quite possibly opened them up to a devastating legal action.
It's beyond disgusting that something like that would ever be published - most bloggers wouldn't dream of pulling crap like that, but to have a supposedly "professional" organization allow potentially libelous and obviously private information to be disseminated is absolutely unconscionable.
Well, we still have Laura Didio and Jeff Merkey (of Murky research?) for those times we just *have* to read the truly outrageous.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
YOU FAIL IT. ('It' is not being outed as a troll.)
I don't even like George Bush, but the parent post is just lame for the sake of being lame.
Excellent troll, though.
Not really. I saw right through it. Even his name has troll fakery written all over it.
Anyone have a link to the original story? I couldn't seem to find it on Google, and everyone seems to have consistently not included the link in their stories.
It's fucking stupid. How the hell does this get a score 4 for funny?
and yes, I am a dick.
click me
I've read a few of these "advertisers are what matters" comments now, and while you're correct to an extent, I think you're looking at this a bit too cynically. Advertisers are quite often the only source of revenue for magazines, particularly trade magazines. But don't kid yourself. Nobody thinks they can print 72 pages of ads and get away with it.
One way that trade magazines stay afloat is that they offer advertisers the value proposition of having a carefully targeted readership. If you're selling consulting services around MySQL and you advertise in LinuxWorld, you can safely assume that you're reaching an audience with a much higher likelihood of being receptive to your message than if you were advertising in the Daily Mirror. That's not just an assumption advertisers make -- it's a fact that's aggressively promoted by the sales force of any trade magazine.
If your magazine is losing readers, however, or even perceived as losing readers, rest assured that the advertisers will realize it even before your CEO does. This kind of bad publicity isn't worth it for any magazine, even if some evil corporate brain behind LinuxWorld had a secret agenda to destroy Linux. You can't push a secret agenda if you go out of business, and it sounds like the salespeople at Sys-Con wisely saw that this was the way this was heading if the bad press lasted much longer or got much more inflated.
Breakfast served all day!
There is a big difference between anti-Linux opinions and personal attacks. Personal attacks can get you sued; getting rid of somebody that is very likely to involve your company in expensive litigation is only smart business. PJ can sue, write up her own documents, and not even pay filing fees since she has no income. However, any company she sues faces thosands in legal fees just to file a response, and if they file a response, they automatically lose. Sacking Moron O'Gara is just good risk management, not censorship.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Just my $0.02
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No braces.....
OK, now it works.....
Isn't "gara" hebrew for shit?
Apologies if it ain't, can't remember where I heard it from.
So, if Moron O'Gara wrote an opinion piece advocating shooting the president, would sacking her still be censorship? I'm sorry, but publishing personal attacks on people and incitement to harrassment constitutes a HUGE liability for a company, and I'm sure Sys-Con's lawyers would have advised them to sever all ties.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Censorship is something a government does. Private companies can opt to not publish anything they wish.
Breakfast served all day!
i said that whether pj sues or not, there may well be criminal charges [eg tresspassing, stalking].
i don't think pj considers the attack by mog to be simply petty. this is part of a large-scale stock manipulation and fraud in which two people have already commited "suicide."
sum.zero
SO who's next, Enderle or Dildio?
Calling the Mormons not "christian-orthodox" is not the same as saying they are not Christian. Considering that they are a minority with significantly different views than the majority of Christians, I think it's quite appropriate.
Nor were they called "wacko", that was a reference to MoG's attitude towards the Jehovah's Witnesses, who are also not exactly "christian-orthodox". I don't think gowen was endorsing the term being used against either religion.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
nuff said .... lame lame lame lame. lameness filter. parent is pretty damn lame too....
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 P
...such an personel attack
It is threathening the personel life of a person whom is "merely" practising free speech.
I think you are confusing anti-Linux criticism with "smear campaign against an individual". I could freaking care less about anti-whatever opinions... everyone has opinions and can pretty well spout them off at will. I'm sure this isn't the death knell for doubters, criticism and FUD. In fact, it would be a bad thing if it was: the Linux crowd if *fueled* by every off in left field wacko who overstates the "communist conspiracy" or other hyperbole. Gets the blood pumping. More reasoned criticism is also a good thing as it identifies weaknesses and allows them to be exposed, attacked and resolved.
This was neither. This was a personal attack run by an angry, bitter woman against another woman. Not seeing what there is to *support* in that behaviour.
Sig under construction since 1998.
From the G2 website, and the "help wanted" link. It's obvious she isn't qualified, on the basis of intelligence, accuracy and wit.
.
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Ah, yes, the thrill of the old-fashioned "yellow press" of the Hearst newspapers, where no muck was too deep to rake and no fact important enough to check.
That's what I said. Your like is to the Yahoo SCOX message board. So how come you get a 5 and I get a 1?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Differences between LinuxWorld and George Bush:
If Maureen O'Gara actually caught up to PJ, put a hood over her head, and hooked her up to electrical wires, LinuxWorld would have fired her. George Bush would have given her a cabinet position.
LinuxWorld doesn't care one way or another about the unsubstantiated claims in O'Gara's articles. Bush, if he read them, would declare that they were a slam dunk case against Groklaw and would immediately invade Syria to deal with the issue.
LinuxWorld, when seeing the harm these articles are doing to their image, decide to try to stop the articles. If Bush's image were harmed by these articles, he would stage a bunch of fake "town hall meetings" where pre-scripted shills would be able to ask him questions about why he isn't doing more to stop Groklaw (at the taxpayer's expense, of course)
LinuxWorld, when considering how O'Gara's articles could lead to PJ getting physically harmed, was disgusted. Bush would imitate PJ pleading for her life: "Please, Ms. O'Gara, don't kill me!" and then he'd laugh. (if you don't understand this reference, it refers to Bush imitating the pleas of a woman he was responsible for killing several years ago, before he was President)
I'm sure there's more.
This was mentioned on the Yahoo Finance SCOX boards - take a look at the trading volume for SCOX today: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=1d It's 3:31 EST and 725 shares traded so far today. 725. That's it. If you look at the trading volume for the past 5 days, the volume is probably 10k to 30k shares per day: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SCOX&t=5d but today...725. So evidently, somebody is too busy today to buy and sell SCO shares.
I just now read that article she wrote. I think it's the first thing by her I've ever read. Someone copied it into a comment on slashdot.
She really reminds me of the gossip columnists in a Howard Hawks comedy of the 30's or 40's. It's weird how she takes you back.
Those were fun films, but I had assumed the somewhat stock characters were a parodies. I guess there ARE people who talk/write like that.
But I'd expect her to write for a paper called _The Tattler_.
There's a difference between having a pro-SCO, anti-Linux opinion and simply spouting SCO's FUD. O'Gara or anyone else is welcome, IMO, to say: "I think SCO actually has a legitimate complaint against IBM, and here's why..." That's quite different from the poorly researched, poorly reasoned crap that O'Gara has been writing for the last year or two. Her articles so closely match the tall tales that McBride and Stowell have been telling that one can only conclude that she's a big part of the SCO PR team.
Why? That's wat to counter to being a dick. I'm just going to sit here and wallow in my dickness. Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick Dick
click me
Umm, IBM Vermont is not in Burlington. It is in Essex Jct and Williston, although Williston just mean they are on the other side of the river. Most of the engineering and testing is done on the Williston side with the main fab being on the Essex Jct side.
IBM also employs 8,000 people directly in it's Vermont plant and another 6,000 to 7,000 via contract for support services which range from custodial to water treatment, to construction crews, to grounds keepers.
This once small town has boomed into a upper middle class suburb that exists solely for the purpose of housing IBM employees. I lived there for a while and can say that IBM was revered for what it did for the economic development of the town via taxes. It was hated for the environmental damage it did. There is no aquatic life in the river for a 1 mile stretch after is passes through the IBM plant.
A few other odd pieces of trivia are that the original fab was in Williston. It was moved after a chemical spill. The EPS told IBM that if so much as a bottle of IPA was leaked into the contaminated ground they would be required to remove the earth under the buildings and dispose of it as toxic waste.
IBM decided to instead move the fab.
That particular plant is the foundry for most Nortel equipment as well. The layoffs that happened there about 5 years ago were because Nortel canceled over 60 million in contracts in a weekend.
So don't pretend to know about IBM Vermont. At least get your facts straight before you troll. IBM is more then a company for many it is a way of life. There was a time when having a job with IBM meant having a job for life. That time has passed but the attitude of IBM as a provider has not and influences peoples opinions in everyday life.
She is not a "public figure" - she posts on a blog. You can read her opinions and the court documents she helpfully provides, and decide whether or not you agree with her.
If you are only willing to agree with someone when you know who they are, that's fine and I'm not so much calling you out on that, but all that really means is that you shouldn't be reading her blog.
What is this, 1984?
To pull that last article is fine. It was a wretched piece of journalism that should never have seen the light of day.
But now these enlightened folk are removing all of MO'G. Her articles were good enough for them for years - only now does she suddenly become unacceptable. Will they also return the advertising dollars her articles brought in?
What a cowardly act on the part of LinuxWorld. It reminds me of communist leaders being air-brushed from official photographs after they've been purged. In *real* journalism, once something is published, it's published.
It's true, he looks like Wally Wick. Well, that's what I've heard!
click me
Reeta Skeeter. Anyone else had that association?
Now LinuxWorld will protect us from any anti-Linux opinions.
Gee, "peter", you're quite the dumb-ass, aren't you? I mean, I know it's pretty tough to be able to tell the difference between one author's articles and, as you put it, "any" anti-Linux opinions, but you could at least try a little thought before posting, couldn't you?
WTF are you smoking mods?
I don't consider this censorship.
The way I see it, they are removing all her craptactular articles from circulation because of her lack of journalistic integrity.
With this latest article (which I can't in hell understand why SysCon even published) MOG has basically revealed for all the world to see, what an evil, stupid, bitch she is.
Enderle, Dido, IDG, Gartner, Yankee, and of course, MS (tough one there). On the side with little swipes are Sun and Dvorack.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maureen O'Gara's bylined material will no longer appear anywhere in the Sys-con universe of sites or publications.
That's a pretty damn narrow promise. It says they will never put her name on another article again. Why not just say they will never publish an article by her again? Because they want to continue publishing her under other names, and allow her to stay on as an editor.
I have to admit, I came into this knowing nothing, and still know nothing... but come on, that line alone is sophistry at its most transparent. Plenty of words, promising nothing of substance.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
If I were P.J., I'd be filing charges on O'Gara right now. Her actions are likely sufficient to fall under 18 USC 8mumpf 76536gzork(section c-subsection 25), the Interstate Stalking Harassment Punishment Abduction Annoyance and Prevention Act of 1996 Part 2.
Oh, give me a break...I didn't see a IANAL disclaimer, so I sure hope you actually know what you're talking about.
MoG simply wrote an investigative piece on a noteworthy individual. That is still allowed in this country, right?
A shadowy, pseudo-anonymous figure runs a web site that draws huge numbers of fanatics for a "righteous" cause, and as part of the coverage calls out individuals (execs, analysts, and journalists) who disagree with their position so that they can be attacked in writing at every opportunity to post comments to public forums, letters to the editor etc. Being one of those targets, MoG decided to find out a little more about who was behind the attacks. As the saying goes, never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Do the math.
one less female in their lives...
I'd say that the most likely reason Sys-con dumped O'Hara because of liability concerns. Writing an article like that about anyone is an invitation for a lawsuit. Writing it about someone who runs a legal blog and who can probably call on a tremendous amount of pro-bono legal help is just plain stupid.
You drive untill the SMOG test is up, then do all things to get it passed, and if you fail, demand $ from state(in california)get it fixed and if you still fail, dump it or sell it in Nevada! So MOG failed the SMOG test, I hope she'd clean up her engines, sensors and what nots now.
During the last SCO conference call, Darl McBride claimed that SCO had hired "investigators" to stalk PJ. Given Maureen O'Gara's history of "in-depth reporting" when she in fact was only recycling a SCO press release, it was probably really the work of SCO's folks. When it comes to intelligence, she would hire a tutor for a urine test.
>
The term "born yesterday" come to mind on this commnent.
What diff does it make? IF she was the head of IBM PR the documents and references would still be the same.
(I've edited the addresses and some names from the story)
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 XXXXX, 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. XXX XXXXX XXXXX Avenue, XXXXX, NY
[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - XXX XXXXX XXXXX Avenue, XXXXX, 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 XXX XXXXX XXXXX Avenue in XXXXX, New York. XXXXX 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 XX 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 XX XXXXX XXXXX in XXXXX, Connecticut, XX miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray 'XXs Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara XXXX XXXXX, 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 - XXX XXXXX XXXXX in XXXXX, Connecticut.
We just took down his servers remember?
according to the now fired one. Groklaw is one big IBM love-fest and anyone who can't see that has already drank the kool-aid. We all like free stuff, including OS's. It's fun. But to side with the Death Star so easily creeps me a bit.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
While I'm glad that such a (seemingly) bad journalist has been kicked, there's a couple problems...
By removing all her articles from LBN, they are in effect doing history revision. If I want to see just what she wrote to decide for myself how bad she was, I can't do that. They're removing evidence from public view.
Also, we're seeing nice double standards of the Open Source community: When someone we don't like publish personal details on someone we do like, it's stalking. But when someone we do like do the same to someone we don't like (e.g. spammers), it's a strike for freedom. It doesn't matter if they've done good or bad, publishing personal details like that is stalking.
Still trying to find the article that this whole thing is about while I can, but LBN is rather slow. Not readily seen at her page on LBN.
-Lars
Best post ever on Slashdot, and its posted by an AC.
Never underestimate the power of geeks in large numbers.
Seems to be true.
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Why didn't they just put a huge editors note in front of every article that she did that said something like?
"This reporter was fired for deliberatly printing a persons home phone numbers, other families phone numbers and other unacceptable information. The editors further wish to point out that they disagree with a number of opions expressed in the followings article(s)."?
Wouldn't something like this be far more effective?
Here's a link to the google cache of Maureen O'Gara's "Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net?"
Speak truth to power.
At 2AM (UK time) I emailed every contact (~25) listed on the advertising page of sys-con media.
It reminds me that "all that is required for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing."
I pleased that this time I managed to make the effort.
Felix_the_Mac
Where does religion fit into this? What's PJ's religion and why is that supposedly a big deal?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Damnit. That's the second time that's happened this month. :(
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Read it for yourself at: this google cache, or at any of these pages.
Intresting, but I'm sure if you took all the odd things about anyone you could make them seem like a freak.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What does it mean to be "christian-orthodox?" Can you be "linux-orthodox?" "FOSS-orthodox?" "Capitalist-orthodox?"
My computer runs an OS that is not-exactly-Linux. But then, it's a not-exactly-Intel computer. I not-exactly-bought it from not-exactly-Dell.
I think the parent was actually referring to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They are about as Christian as you can get. But they are a bit whacky. For instance, they go to church _every_ week.
yeah, but ....
if MOG had been a print journalist she would have been fired but all her previous articles would survive in libraries and microfiche etc.
It would not be practical (or leagel, ethical, whatever) to hunt down and remove everything she had ever written for that journal.
The situation with a web publisher is different because it is possible for them to remove the pages so that people can no longer read them. They _may_ still be online in The Wayback Machine or something similar, but for most people they are gone, they have ceased to exist.
This is not a good thing. It is revisionist, changing the historical record to show a particular angle rather than taking it as it comes.
I hope that MOG's previous articles are not withdrawn/removed/censored by sys-con. After all without bing able to see her articles how will people be able to see what a lousy 'journalist' she was?
The most recent article of course should be removed because of the personal information it purports to contain about a woman called Pamela Jones. As the The Inquirer points out there is no proof that the woman MOG's article attacks is actually the 'real' PJ.
Felix_the_Mac
This was way more OT than the parent! Mod me some more bitch. I've got Karma to burn. And besides, that was a joke making fun of the actual line as it was spoken on Comedy Central after tehy edited obscenities out of the movie he was quoting. Numbnutz.
click me
Personal experience you're speaking of? ;)
;)
"And, yes, many of them are Asian transsexuals - and believe me, most of those you cannot tell the difference - especially in the dark."
google "pam jones" IBM as400 and you will find a free-lance writer who shilled for as400(later i-series) big blue hardware for years around the turn of the century. She had an amazing knack for digging into legal-related technology stories.
tag line said:
FW: Pam Jones is a freelance writer.You can e-mail her atpamjones400@yahoo.com.
just look at all the articles on iseries...
Pam Jones explains how concern and awareness over privacy issues moves Congress and industries to enact regulations, but many companies and IS professionals are unprepared to meet the requirements...
How can a magazine expect to be taken seriously by those they pretend to serve when they knowingly publish garbage like this? Easy, they count on jellyfish to suck it up like reality TV.
I may have read a Linuxworld once or twice I can't remember. But I now know that I cannot possibly consider the magazine a viable resource should I be looking for one at some point.
1) They knowlingly published the garbage and compromised their principles in the process IMO.
2) The withdrawl statement is swiss cheese. The magazine is ultimately responsible for what they publish. No apology, no regretful withdrawl. Pathetic.
3) How can a publication which is willing to whore itself with trash be looked upon as a valid resource? It can't.
I have to conclude then, that Linuxworld is a smteaming pile of shit.
This is fascinating. I love groklaw, and read it with enthusiasm for its insight and research and yadda yadda yadda.
/. or don't you remember that?) All was in the claim of freedom this or expression that. When in the end, it was really just a big invasion of privacy.
/. directly, but the writers (and commenters) that should learn a sense of propriety. When that sense is lost, we have to deal with the bullshit fallout such as court cases and threats.... and we all lose. Yet, here we are on /. cheering the removal of the complete works of an (albeit annoying) journalist. Whether you agree with the journalist or even if she qualifies AS a journalist is akin to whether you believe SCN is a religion or not... who cares? Most here hate both, but cheer the removal of the works of one but not the other.
But does anyone notice the irony here? You're happy and congratulating yourselves for censorship. When Scientology tried to get details of OT3 removed, there were about 500,000 postings of OT3 that popped up (including here on
These addresses shouldn't have been published, and the OT3 pages should've likewise been removed.
It's not groklaw, or LBN, or
Go ahead... if you can't appreciate the irony (no matter what you think of $cientology and no matter what you think of MOG) add me to your foes list. But this is two-faced if you ask me, and frankly, I don't particularly like either of the above examples as a religion or journalist.
Purging the historical record is straight out of 1984. Who is Big Brother?
mailto://ogara@g2news.com
FWIW, I sent a (polite) comment suggesting that she seek professional help for her emotional problems.
It was simply the best advice I could think of. The article simply did not read like it had been written by an emotionally balanced person, and I fear that she is a danger to herself, and more importantly, to others.
ogara@g2news.com
I'm also a journalist (who used to be a legal secretary), so here's my $0.02.
This is a standard situation that journalists get into, and I don't think Maureen O'Gara handled it well.
Often one party will try to discredit another party (like their competitors) by supplying a journalist with derogatory information. That's one of the standard media-management tricks, and it's part of the untidy (and sometimes unfair) system of a free press.
It's also standard for a scorched-earth litigation firm to do negative research on their legal and other adversaries.
Evidently SCO investigated PJ and shared their results with Maureen O'Gara. I don't like the idea of people investigating the personal background of journalists, but we investigate them so you could say that turnabout is fair play.
Evidently O'Gara took SCO's information a little farther, and personally visited PJ's address of record. It is standard for journalists to go to somebody's house, which is sometimes justified but sometimes abusive.
When you get information like that, though, you have to remember that SCO in this case is manipulating you for their own purposes, and you have to be skeptical about it and keep it in balance.
A lot of journalists however get excited and go overboard, which is what I think O'Gara did. One of her stories repeated the claim that PJ is "Not Who She Says She Is". I read that story carefully, and that claim doesn't pan out.
Sometimes you check out a story and there's nothing there. A competent reporter would kill the story. But if they get too invested in the story, or if they've seen "All the President's Men" too many times, and they get too excited, a reporter might go ahead anyway with a bad story that the facts don't support. That's very dangerous, since it can be libelous (in addition to being unfair to your victim and misleading or untruthful to your readers).
In defense of O'Gara, and to give the devil his due, it's reasonable for SCO or anyone to want to know who this PJ is who is reporting so much negative stuff about SCO. It now seems that PJ is exactly who she said she was.
If it had turned out that PJ or a relative or associate would benefit financially from SCO's demise, the invasion of privacy would be justified and it would definitely be newsworthy. But it didn't turn out that way, so, as a competent editor would have said, there's no story, or a short story: SCO and O'Gara investigated PJ, and didn't find anything significant.
O'Gara seems to have made up for her lack of facts by filling out the story with snide personal asides that don't really mean anything.
O'Gara also disclosed a lot of personal information about PJ that serve no purpose and could be harmful. Most newspapers don't give the names of rape victims, after all. Giving the address of PJ's mother, and bringing up the totally unrelated fact that PJ is a Jehova's Witness, clearly crosses a professional line. You expect a journalist to know that without being told. If I were an editor, I'd fire a columnist who did that.
In my professional opinion, though I'm not a Linux geek, O'Gara's other stories seem to be reasonably competent. However, if somebody writes 50 good stories, and then writes one that's completely off the wall and unfairly attacks somebody and destroys the credibility of a publication, most editors wouldn't want somebody like that around.
In my professional opinion, Groklaw has some of the best journalism I've ever seen in my life. She's taken an important story that we're all interested in, and given us as much information as we can get anywhere. (There are legal newsletters which charge subscribers over $1,000 a year for similar coverage.)
If I were the building owner, I'd fire the super too. You don't give out personal information like that about your tenants. If some stalker wants to shoot one of his tenants, is he going to help them find their victim?
btw for those of you who arrived late and asked what was going on
Good hit. So maybe PJ does not exist at all. Does it matter, if SCO is now dead horse?
There you are, staring at me again.
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
How's it going with the job search
So who is this person and why does everyone seem to not like her? What did she do that was so bad? I didn't see any of the things that she wrote. ever.
I have contacted the proper authorities, federal and local, in the state where I really live, and asked their advice, specifically about the warnings, and I have taken reasonable steps to protect myself, in harmony with what they counseled me. One of the things they told me to do is to tell you about the warnings I have received and put it out there in public, and so I am.
NY(PD) cops would've laughed at her and told her to get lost.
I re-read the article that got her fired. I also went back and read some of her other postings. I stand corrected when I called Linux World "Big Brother". They did the right thing by getting rid of her. Thank you to those of you who called me a troll for my original posting...you were accurate, and I earned it.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Aha! So that explains the recent worldwide drop in gay chickenhawk sightings... they're all on Polk St.
Maureen O'Gara's company, still has the article online, without the pictures.
She won't stop yet, and being fired will only make her more eager to spew hatred and private details about PJ.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I read her a couple of times and that was - I didn't think she had much to offer - and some of her reporting was not factual.
Oh, she's still publishing, it's just going to be on http://www.g2news.com/ instead. She owns that site, and only answers to her subscribers.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
On a more serious note: Thank you ever so much for all you've done. Without growing sentimental, I have appreciated your clear, concise analyses of the matters du jour regarding IBM vs SCO. I suppose it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine that some ill-informed people would have lost a lot of money if it weren't for you.
I have family who works within law, and I can imagine all the labour you've put into this (although it must have been fun to disarm the bad guys).
Thank you again - for being a beacon of decency in this world of varying morality.
her contact phone number is on her website:
Editor: Maureen O'Gara (516) 759-7025
ogara@g2news.com
G2 Computer Intelligence, Inc.
323 Glen Cove Ave., Sea Cliff, NY 11579
Tel: 516-759-7025
Fax: 516-759-7028
I don't drink because I have to, I drink to stop the voices in my head!
The works of Maureen haven't been banned, this magazine has just stopped publishing them. Maureen can, does and will continue to create her works elsewhere and anyone who wants to read them is free to do so, albeit maybe having to pay Maureen for the privilege.
I think the Scientology issues you mention are different because they involved attempts through the courts to remove material completely from the public domain.
There is a difference here and it's an important one.
Now that the SCO vs IBM case nears it final resolvement, and the heating wheel is getting tuned up at position 10, strange things seem to happen. So its not really that surprising that types like the Bill O'Reilly's and Ann Coulter's are being put into full powa play : They just start jerking the knees of the persons in question which are of most annoyance. It all reminds me again of that ice skating tragedy where Tonya Harding ordered her opponents knee caps to be jacked out :
:
....
http://clientservernews.com/
"
Who Is Pamela Jones?
By Maureen O'Gara
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.
"
Unbelievable, if anyone happens to knows PJ well, make sure the vicious O'Gara's won't get a chance to knock out PJ's knee caps.
Robert
Everyone, open your eyes! It's so obvious that the Mormon Church, Brigham Young University and the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee are behind the SCO actions!
The Mormon church is one of the world's largest genealogical information repositories; and a majority of that information sits inside an IBM S390 running a thousand instances of Linux. Personaly I think its more likely that McBride would be excommunicated from the church rather than acting in it's behalf.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Had a few errors indicating not enough child prcesses available. If your systems aren't pegged elsewhere, might try upping those limits.
Greets to PJ.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Agreed. But when the information of spammers and IP lawyers is posted, it's from publicly available sources like court records, DNS lookups and the like. Sattellite photos from public map sites is also fine.
:-)
But outright stalking is wrong. Especially when it goes toward family living at a different address. Was it even the right PJ?
If she had looked up her maildrop address in DNS, I couldn't care less.
Plus, you have to remember that guy carrying a weapon, checking into hotels under assumed names,angry with PJ, with millions of license dollars to lose. All those spammers got, IIRC, was loads of free products delivered to them. Actually, they should find those Anonymous Cowards and pay them for their service.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I feel like we are seeing the birth of a new term in Internet slang. In five months I predict a wikipedia entry, a series of "All your MOGs are belong to us" slashdot posts and something about Soviet Russia but I haven't quite worked that one out yet. I had no idea who MOG was prior to this but I have a feeling she will live in infamy as Internet slang representing the swift justice applied by the masses when one does something sleazy in the face of a techno-community. She will be the Roy Munson of Linux without the whole hot girl ending part.
How big of a fuck-stick do you feel the need to be?
You have any idea how shameful and lame it was for O'Gara to post information like that, true or not? And the best idea you can come up with is to repost it in a forum thread?
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
To quote Michael Ironside's character in "Total Recall":
About goddamn time.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush. That was a good one.
I also got a good chuckle out of the Inspector Dan Rather Mystery
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Six of the ten "Latest Articles" at sys-con.com are by Maureen O'Gara as of two minutes ago. I'm glad I long ago ad-blocked everything sys-con, but by the speed of their server it looks like they're gonna rake it in on impressions alone.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Who penned for the suit-happy SCOG
under blogging pretense;
Due to bane consequence
We'll have to wait for the Mog-Epilogue
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
probably these folks are all innocent
K =3%3A154&QV=02A8D624CEE47F42D4303203O01D117A25D278 942AF303203O07D114A25D278942A8303203O03D12F3D5D278 94294303203&SR=&F=Maureen+&L=O'Gara&T=&S=&Z=&image 1.x=0&image1.y=0
1 &Search=Search&F=m.&L=O'Gara&T=&S=
1 &Search=Search&F=&L=O'Gara&T=&S=
G =Search&sc=1
http://www.switchboard.com/bin/cgiQA.dll?MEM=1&LN
http://www.switchboard.com/bin/cgiqa.dll?SR=&MEM=
http://www.switchboard.com/bin/cgiqa.dll?SR=&MEM=
powerful when used with:
http://local.google.com/lochp?hl=en&lr=&near=&btn
- MOG is free to write whatever she wants, and have it published by anyone who agrees to her terms for doing so.
- We are free to read it, or not, as our tastes dictate
That means there is no censorship taking place.Now, here's your homework assignment: Go talk to someone who lived behind the Iron Curtain and was only able to read 'Truth' (the English translation of 'Pravda') that was approved by the Party censors, or perhaps someone who had a relative or friend that was critical of the ruling regimes of various countries, that just 'disappeared' one night. Then come in here and talk about censorship.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
It is obviously not time to let this drop yet... it seems that there are a ton of MOG article still available on sys-con. A quick look at the ones from May 9 at 4pm, and a few relevant older ones, and it seems that the feedback for those is still active.
Not what I would call an adequate removal of that trash (amazing, if you haven't read the article in question, please do so now, I'm actually a bit shocked it got published anywhere !!!)
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I tracked down the "article" mentioned and agree that such denegrating discourse should not be published. Nonetheless, I wonder if the idea of deleting every reference to an author reminds anyone of 1984.
is that censorship won in this case.
Whether you like what she says or not is irrelevant. You do say that O'Gara is an opinion based writer, and whether you agree with the opinion or not has no bearing on it. Whether its true or whether its false, or whether truth beats out opinion is not important.
Part of the whole freedom of speech thing means you have to be responsible enough to handle it.
And guess what maybe YOU will be censorred one day, and when that happens I will laugh!
Wanna learn about the LDS faith. don't go to xmormon.com and expect to learn anything useful. thats like going to microsoft for opinions on linux. try looking at http://www.lds.org/ do a little research into what the church believes. Go ahead, I dare you
Two people involved in this mess have already "committed suicide" under very unusual circumstances. One of them was a Canopy employee who just received 3 million in options vested immediately. The other was Ray Noorda's daughter. She supposedly shot her self in the head after winning the Norda/Canopy court case. It has also been pointed out that both were practicing Mormons, a group with a very low rate of suicide as their admission to heaven is forfeit if they take their own life.
Whether Ms. Jones has anything to fear is immaterial. As I read it, the police themselves have requested that she publicly establish that she has no intention of commiting suicide. I can think of a lot of reasons for that. If someone was stalking Ms. Jones, then a faked suicide has just been eliminated from the playbook.
-Hope
No biggie. Hey, we gave a national holiday
to a man who plagiarized his PhD. thesis. And,
the answer is... Martin Luther King
She throws out innuendos without any facts or proof. One is that the CEO of a medical software company in NY is PJ's son and that he got his job because PJ started Groklaw. There is absolutely no proof or link to this, she doesn't even explain why she thinks this guy is PJ's son (he has a different last name) other than a "technical writer" with the same name once posted an article on GrokDoc. Personally I think MO did a google search on any name associated with Groklaw or Grokdoc and found a guy with the same name that lives in NY. There's quite a leap to saying it is the same guy, and another leap to saying it is PJ's son. Even if that is the case, there is a HUGE leap saying that he got his job (which he had at least since early 2003) as a reward from IBM for PJ starting Groklaw. MO tries to draw a conclusion but the facts just aren't there to the point of the conclusion being ridiculous. That isn't journalism, that's muckraking.
SCO (and I believe myself that MO is on SCO's payroll but I can't speak to the truth of it) hates PJ and Groklaw. They blamed Groklaw for the failing of their Linux licensing initiative. All Groklaw did was put it out in the open and examine it's virtues (or lack thereof). Let's see, a company claims to own IP in Linux and wants to charge $700 per processor for a license to run it. Wait a minute, the software was already purchased from someone else, shouldn't SCO be going after the distributors? Isn't it true that the whole scheme is illegal since their code would be violating the GPL? It would be like a book writer suing anyone that went to a movie illegally based on his book for $100 because he owns the ideas. Was SCO taking crazy pills?
ogara@g2news.com Please write her and let her know how you feel about this. :-) I urge you however to show some level of restraint, because people already think we're slathering zealots as it is.
xmission (not xmormon) definitely has an not-very-fond-of-the-LDS bias, it was just a handy reference to illustrate the controversy, coming up early on Google for "blood atonement".
Wanna learn about the LDS faith. Frankly, I have excellent reference material on most religions, but 99% of it is in dead tree format, so it's not very useful for a Slashdot post.
Still over at LBN
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
All of this broke this morning. O'Gara was out of Sys-Con and all of her work was going to be purged from their servers. Well, here it is 12 hours later and not only is the front page still wall to wall with articles by O'Gara, but her author page is still up. In fact, the only thing that ISN'T up is the one particular article from last night that caused all of this bruhaha in the first place.
Don't these seem like obvious places to start sowing that salt they were promising?
It will be interesting to actually track this issue and see if Sys-Con does, indeed, rid themselves of the O'Gara nuisance. So far, it just looks like lip service.
and harrassment.
MOG published unlisted numbers, invaded PJ's home, harrassed PJ's elderly mother, published addresses and photo of the homes of PJ realitives.
Sys-con would be insane to be a party to that. BTW: the article is published on MOG's own site. So, the story wasn't "censored."
Censorship is when someone forces you to not speak or not publish something. In this case, people are taking down the articles voluntarily as a form of punishment for the party involved.
...was the name Fuat Kircaali, publisher.
Or should I say, Fuat Kircaali, publisher-slash-shape-shifter-slash-assassin? As I unsheathe my blade for battle...
What you would expect of a reputable publication is that the editors get to decide what goes into print, while those furthur up in the company get to decide who the editors are, then run other bits of the organisation. The fact that the editors had to "take a stand" to stop publishing material from this person in my opinion shows that it was a bullshit "political" appointment from above undermining their authority.
What makes him a nut is his detachment from reality as examplified by many of his past statements. What makes him a gun nut is his detachment form reality and his love of guns. Guns and psychosis are not two great tastes that go great together.
Seriously,
If all parties enter into the arragnement willingly, what is wrong with it? I could understand having a problem if someone was coerced or otherwise forced into the arrangement, but as long as all parties are of an age where they can give consent and do so of their own free will, I see no logical reason to object.
Nice Marmot
She has a constitutional right to publish anything she wants irregardless of what her employer wants, excepting libel and slander. What she does not have a right to do is use her employer's equipment to do so.
Nice Marmot
It isn't censorship; it was market issues. If you had just stuck to your embarassingly badly informed opinions, you would still be receiving a paycheck. Instead, because a simple gadfly with remarkable research skills kept blowing holes in the silly theories being floated by SCOG, you resorted to private detectives, invasion of privacy, illegal acquisition of private information (telephone records), possibly breaking and entry, and irrelevant, possibly libelous assertions in a public forum.
The MARKET - remember you WERE writing for a rag with "Linux" in the name - found it held a great distaste for your bias and your tactics. The MARKET explained to your publishers that what you would cost them monetarily could not possibly be recovered by click-throughs to your articles. Then too, losing an unpaid editorial staff might well require acquiring actual PAID talent, quickly. Besides, after that last article it was obvious that you might have a substance abuse problem, or worse, a condition that might affect the bottomline in their health insurance costs.
No, it was never about freedom of speech - you are never guaranteed an audience - just money vs. truth.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
It's usually the reserved, quiet types that are scariest when they snap.
/.'s Timothy is also the editor at Linuxworld and as usual he does not actually read submissions.
If you use konqueror and try to see what James Tuner has written, you see nothing! The page it's completely empty! You'll have to use firefox / mozilla instead.
And I thought in a Linuxworld you could use free software. Oups. My fault.
Say something against the Linux-Mind-Control-Ideology, even if a bit funny, and people mod you into oblivion. People used accuse MicrSofties of this narrow-mindedness not too long ago. Too bad people with the most negative opinions post as cowards.
I too think censorship is not the issue.
....
The editors' jobs are to make sure nothing actionable makes it into print. If MoG is indeed Editor-in-Chief, it would her job to make sure that nothing actionable makes it into print.
So the unprofessionalism would not be just in journalist as in writer, but journalist as in editor.
Hope none of the other publications under the same publisher have this issue