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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.
...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
Since you can't get to groklaw to find out (PJ's server is being slammed right now)
Mo'G recently wrote and published a highly vitriolic attack on PJ, including things like personal phone numbers, addresses, and the address of her mother's home.
Way off-base, and totally wrong thing to do.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Which only makes it seem much more like SCO had a hand in this. Darl McBride's personal info is published on the web and he receives harrassment (and probably insults to his Mormon faith), so he decides "it's payback time!" Problem is, there is no Linux CEO so he decides to go after PJ and do the same thing to her... but of course, PJ isn't responsible for Darl's problems, and only a truly warped mind would deem this "revenge" appropriate.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
M O'Gara's report about "Who is PJ?": Google.com text only cache. Puke!
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
http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/archives/2005/02 /22/the_jonesogara_feud.php
summary, mostly unbiased....
Groklaw = Site run by PJ. pro-linux, OSS, free software site. Particularly anti-SCO as well.
Maureen O'Gara = Journalist who is either a paid shill for SCO or just amazingly sensationalistic.
Apparently there was some mystery about exactly who PJ is and what her credentials are since Groklaw is such an influential site in the SCO/IBM case. O'Gara found out who she is, and definitely overstepped the bounds of decency by publishing street addresses for her and her son.
People were pissed, so O'Gara's articles have been pulled off some web sites. Apparently the publisher's sense of moral outrage only kicked in when facing advertising boycotts.
Tempest in a teacup, but interesting none the less.
Ms O'Gara has been publishing a series of articles on the ongoing IBM vs SCO case that were....unusual. She generally was pro-SCO, overlooked problems with the SCO case, etc, etc.
The trigger for this whole fiasco, though, was a recent article by her. It was, to be blunt, venemous, and dirty. It published details about PJ (the maintaner of Groklaw)'s home address, her mother's home address, some supposed details about her religion, and used all of this in a really nasty attempt at ad hominem to conclude that groklaw was run by crazies who wouldn't know logic if it hit them in the face.
It has, thankfully, blown up in Ms O'Gara's face, which goes to show that there is some small sliver of justice in the world.
Funny, the dictionary makes no mention of government or law. But I guess some guy posting on Slashdot knows more about the English language than people who base their entire careers around publishing books about the English language do.
I found this article helpful, as it provides some background info on who Ms. O'Gara is.
O'Gara printed what was essentially a "How to stalk Pamela Jones of Groklaw" article, complete with her address and photos of where she lives. Also included was commentary on the quality of PJ's locks, and what the inside of PJ's apartment looked like when PJ wasn't home. We don't know that it was actually PJ of Groklaw, her mother, or just some innocent bystander (judging from PJ's reaction, I'm guessing it was her mother). We do know either someone got screwed, or O'Gara enjoys making crap up for a story. Either way, she needed to get tossed.
O'Gara's a reporter who's had scoops on what SCO was planning on doing well before hand (usually screwing up some facts in the process, but still indicative of a very good inside source) The formally wacky conspiracy theories noting the unusually high suicide rate surrounding lawsuits in the Canopy Group took on an entirely new tone after this article, I assure you.
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;
}
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.
I reall think you are doing the hard working San Francisco crack whores a _huge_ injustice with this comparison.
Well, both, but what really made everyone snap was that she began stalking Pamela Jones, taking photographs of her apartment from across the street, and dedicating her column to providing personal details of her life to the public. Here is a Google cache of the original article. It's rather sick.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
There will be a notice on the LinuxWorld and LinuxBusinessWeek sites. It should be up now if not sooner.
21st-Century-Citizen
The publisher has stated she'll no longer by published on ANY sys-con site. That includes LBW. She's history!
21st-Century-Citizen
PJ has made that exact point on her latest GrowLaw post, explicitly stating that she does not believe in suicide and has been advised by law enforcement authorities to make that point publicly in advance.
I doubt O'Gara has any intention of committing suicide - vicious fucktards rarely do.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Who exactly is she. . .
.
She is a paralegal. That means the value of her legal opinion is not that of a lawyer, but in excess of the general populace.
What she would be an expert at is the gruntwork of the legal profession. Knowing the ins and outs of the "system," which, as it happens, is her role at Groklaw, because. .
. . . why does her opinion matter so much in this case.
It doesn't. O'Gara is a pure opinion piece writer. Groklaw is fact based. They publish the court records. This is PJ's area of expertise. While commentary on the record is offered legal opinion is defered to lawyers, who, oddly enough PJ is in contact with and who actually write for the site.
The value and accuracy of the material at Groklaw can largely be judged by the fact that SCO and O'Gara choose to attack PJ on a personal level, rather than than attacking the validity of the material and opinions available at Groklaw.
Such is always the tactic of the irrationally vicious. Same crap as saying that if you don't approve of attacking Poland you're for terrorism and and against God and the Homeland.
You always know that someone is full of shit when they start resorting to this sort of thing.
Next thing you know they'll start implying that PJ's lying because her dog looks funny, whether she has a dog or not.
O'Gara and her ilk can say any lies they like, because they are speaking "opinion." PJ can't, because she is speaking the court record.
KFG
Correction, she was not fired. Nowhere in the article does it say she was fired.
They simply said her articles would not appear on any of their sites. She still remains Editor-in-Chief there though...
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.
Well, I'd call that a pretty subjective and ill-informed judgement. Trying to keep away from the flamebait and encourage civil discourse, I'm aware of a lot of people who consider the LDS practice of post-mortem "baptism" at least odd, and some people were mightily offended when it was found that they were applying it to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Of course, if we want to visit the historical files, then the LDS's history of polygamy and "blood atonement" (murdering the sinner, commonly for adultery, but sometimes just for leaving the church or challenging the leadership or being in the wrong place at the wrong time) would make a lovely flamefest. The modern LDS formally repudiated "blood atonement" in 1978, but major splinter sects still advocate it.
But yes, it's pretty far afield for slashdot, and most individual Mormons are "good folk".
Bounded on four sides by Geary Street (top), Market Street and the Civic Center (bottom), Van Ness Avenue (left), and Powell Street (right).
Currently called "Little Saigon" as most of the population is now Vietnamese.
Actually, most of the hookers are found up around Larkin and Post just above the Tenderloin. Wander around there at two in the morning to see what I mean.
And, yes, many of them are Asian transsexuals - and believe me, most of those you cannot tell the difference - especially in the dark.
Just be careful you don't wander onto Polk Street, aka "Polk Gulch" which is next to Van Ness on the left side. That's gay chickenhawk country.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
She was the editor. And 'journalist'.
I am pro-lifechoice.
"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."
Anyone else feel that this post is just as as bad? Welcome to the muck and the mire. You are now exactly what you claim to hate.
Frankly if a member of the LDS church did okay such an insult it would be a violation of one of the Articles Of Faith. This one to be exact.
11 We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may
BTW a good number of Linux uses and developers are LDS. Novell is based in Utah after all. Not only that but BYU is very Linux friendly.
Here is the a page on using the BYUTV.org streams with Linux. http://www.byutv.org/streaming/linux.asp
And here is a link to the BYU users group. http://uug.byu.edu/links.php
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
there has apparently been a clarification; there will be no more articles by O'Gara, period.
see here.
For the love of all that is holy, don't link to the real article. Blindly questing for page hits is what got us in this mess to begin with.
Google cache, text only.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Follow the link: yesterday's article about unrest at LinuxWorld to get to this: Also from yesterday's post is this little informative tidbit from this link: James isn't the only one either , which takes you to Dee-Ann LeBlanc: Linux at Work and at Play
Sites don't just become popular like that. There was much more than "A couple of mentions around the web" about groklaw. It is a very nice, very informative site about a lawsuit that interests a lot of people.
>SCO's problems are always reported as crippling
>flaws, IBM's problems are "setbacks". It's a very
>nice PR job
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are not just trolling:
You don't need public relations to make people hate SCO. Everybody hated SCO even before groklaw started.
On the other hand, you need someone like MOG, to get a few people like you believe that SCO actually has something.
An example:
Not a long time ago the Judge (after many,many requests from SCO, of course) ordered IBM to produce all "non-public contributions to linux" they made.
See, there are no "non-public contributions to linux". It is not possible. What you are going to do, hack into kernel.org and plant the code when everybody is looking the other way?
Still MOG paints this as a major setback and a slap in the hand for IBM, while Groklaw obviously does not.
Naturally in a few months SCO and MOG will be like "IBM STILL HASN'T PRODUCED THAT LINUXCODE THOSE BASTARDS". If she still has a job that is...
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Yeah, but everybody gets tired, eventually, of correcting the same mistaken views. Especially when they're voiced from a position of ignorance but phrased like they have the weight of authority behind them. 'RTFB' was a pretty fair retort.
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
The google cache is:
. com/read/49228.htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www5.sys-con
then the LDS's history of polygamy
Jews used to practice polygamy and many muslims still do ("legally" up to 4 wives if the husband is able to financially support each of them, so none of this wife-is-another-name-for-slave business, at least in theory) and I'm pretty sure that a lot of early Christain sects had similar views. So, in a judeo-christain world, polygamy really isn't terribly extreme and offensiveness is as much in the eye of the beholder as it is in the practice itself.
Oh come on. The O'Gara article is obviously a pure vicious character assasination piece. It starts off with infantile name-calling when she calls PJ a harridan. She's obviously looked very hard for anything bad she can say about PJ and tried to take mundane little anecdotal things and use them to make PJ look like a crazy lady. Reading between the lines, it seems pretty obvious that, among other things, she conned her way into PJ's alleged mothers apartment. She tries to make the mother look like a crazy lady as well based on the fact that she wouldn't admit to Maureen that she was PJ's mother. How do you think your mother would act if some stranger came to her door asking all sorts of odd probing questions about you? Would she be completely forthcoming. She makes a ridiculous bigoted attack on PJs alleged religion. Then, she tries to paint PJ as a paranoid who has gone on the run from imaginary enemies who are out to hunt her down and get her. Considering that Maureen O'Gara was obviously out to hunt her down and "get" her and that Maureen even mentions earlier in the article that someone may have been trying to break into her apartment while she was gone, then even if it is true that PJ did skip town because she was worried about people being out to get her, she's obviously not paranoid.
As for what a 61 year old woman has to do with open source software, she is obviously of interest to Maureen O'Gara, an alleged technology reporter. The fact that the majority of people involved in open source software in one way or another are male and under 60 doesn't mean that everyone else is excluded from the club. The main characteristic of open source/free software is that everyone is welcome as long as they play nicely and share.
Finally, no matter who it is, I don't think that exposing every minute detail of anyones family to intense public scrutiny is very nice. It can sometimes have a legitimate purpose if you are exposing ties and relationships that through publically released information into a new light. For example, let's say a stock analyst gives a relatives startup which is undergoing an IPO her strongest buy rating, then that conflict of interest is best made public rather than kept secret. Or, how about the fact that Bill Gates mother was friends with some of the IBM bigwigs and may have given Micro-soft the inside track on the contract to supply an OS for the IBM pc being relevant to the question of whether or not MS succeeded purely on it's own merits? Unless there are some important ties to the whole SCO issue in his family details (like his brother Kevin being a lawyer for SCO, just as an example) then I don't think Darl McBrides personal and family information should be dragged out into public, especially not for purpose of personal harrassment. Not that Darl McBride himself seems to be above doing that sort of thing to others
The fact is, Maureen O'Gara apparantly wants to show that PJ is both a crazy lady and a shill for IBM in much the same way that many of us believe that Maureen O'Gara is a crazy lady and/or a shill for SCO/Microsoft/etc (no particular evidence that I know of that she works for SCO or MS directly, but some of her writing makes many of us believe that either that is the case or that she is just crazy). Maureen certainly doesn't succeed in showing any sort of connection to IBM. She also utterly fails to show that PJ is anything except possibly a little high strung, and she doesn't even really manage to be all that convincing of that.
Phone numbers and addresses are *not* public information. They are made public unless you object, which PJ obviously does.
PJ has repeatedly said that her identity is not to be published or pursued and that she does not wish to be a public figure.
Your privacy is to be respected and acknowledged as a law abiding citizen.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The SCO bosses are definitely LDSers, there's no question about that. Not necessarily very good LDSers, since at least some of them seem to have been siphoning off money that was earmarked to go the the church when Novell founder (and prominent LDSer) Ray Noorda dies. But Darl McB and Ralph Yarro (among others) are quite open about their church membership.
And why it's relevent is, well, duh, MOG brought up PJ's supposed membership in a mildly fringe religion to try to discredit her! Go look up the definition of "ironic" if you're still not clear on the concept.
(I should note, BTW, that PJ has been quite firm in slapping down anyone who tries to criticize the LDS church on her site. And Groklaw has several LDSers among its regulars, who no more approve of Darl and Ralph than anyone else does. Religion has not been an issue in all this until MOG brought it up.)
What are you smoking? 90% of the jobs in Westchester???? Please cite your source.
I don't think it's even close to 90%. Westchester has lots of other big employers - PepsiCo, Readers Digest, Texaco to name a few.
JoAnn
McBride's shills are starting to meet their reckoning, and soon McBride's turn will come.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.