Slashdot Mirror
Free Software Mag Interviews Sys-Con Publisher
NW writes "Tony Mobily, editor of the Free Software Magazine recently interviewed Fuat Kircaali, founder and publisher of Sys-Con Media. The interview revolves around the recent controversy surrounding the article written by Maureen O'Gara attacking Pamela Jones of GrokLaw."
hahahahah
My child, it is a pleasure to lend you some of my wisdom
Unless a hot Vulcan in heat comes over to my house to crush my pelvis during exhuberant sex, I've seen the last anything Star Trek.
How the fuck are MY rights affected by this stupid controversy?
Seriously, do the editors have any concept of what rights really are.
In the event of such a conspiracy, I today announce my new cut-rate prices of my credibility.
For $20, I will state in any highly moderated slashdot comment that Groklaw may not be entirely correct and all sides of the issue must be looked at.
For $40, I will embed subliminal messages into comments stating that Groklaw is evil and SCO is good.
For $80, I will crapflood articles with SCO propaganda.
and for $699, I will state that I too have purchased linux liscences for my company so we don't have to worry about the legal liabilities and also, Groklaw sucks.
All Prices USD, effective date 13 Friday 2005.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
If I am elected President, I will submit a bill to Congress outlawing Maureen O'Gara!
I'm John Kerry, and I approve this message.
I'm sorry if the article offended you nuts.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
In Korea, only old people call a Slashdotting a cyber attack.
An opinion piece is something that lists the name of her mother (not PJ) and also gives a street address along with pictures of the outside of where she lives? Get real.
O'Gara's piece was an attempt at a smear job by painting PJ as a crazy elderly Jehovah's Witness. Those in the SCO camp/pro-SCO people must be incredibly desperate to be resorting to tactics like that.
If somebody published an article with names and addresses of my family members, as well as a description of my car and the inside of my apartment, I would certainly interpret that as a threat, just like the old "We know where you live!" cliche. In fact, I would attempt to have the author and publisher charged with a hate crime, since I am in a bi-racial marriage, which people have been killed for in the past! There is a thin line between free speech and threatening speech; Moron O'Gara crossed it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Read the interview. I think this man is either underqualified for the job of CEO of a media enterprise, or is pretending to be.
/. effect):
Either that, or he's purely in the business-as-in-corporate side of things and not the business-as-in-journalism side of things. If that's the case, he shouldn't have been asked to approve O'Gara's ("I decided to publish the article"), or anyone else's works, that job should go to people with editorial responsibilities.
Here's my "favorite" example of confusing statements:
In one part, speaking of Pamela Jones being a blogger not a reporter, he says "The reporter's job is to report news." In another, speaking about O'Gara's hack job, he says "I decided to publish the article. It was published because it was an accurate news story." Are you as confused as I was?
My least-favorite part, if true and I sincerely hope he's mistaken (I think he's confusing a DOS attack with the
"The reason why we decided to pull it [O'Gara's hack job] was that when the content, style and the language of the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers, a denial-of-service attack was launched against our entire company, interfering with all of our publications and all of our readers."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is really chilling and scary how people can bully others into submission over one opinion piece.
What MOG did was not an opinion piece; it was, in fact, illegal. PJ is, by her own words, considering her legal options right now, but nobody has the right to a) trespass in another person's home (as MOG all but admits she did in her article, commenting on how the interior of PJ's home looks, noting she was not home at the time), b) list the addresses and telephone numbers of relatives, and c) slander another person publicly with unverified information.
I note that you're an anonymous coward so you obviously do not want us to know who you are. I wonder why?
What MOG did was beyond sleazy; it was illegal, journalistically unethical and personally immoral, and if she was silenced for that, she has nobody to blame but herself.
From reading the article, apparently it's not the complaints from the readers, nor the complaints from the advertisers which prompted him to pull the articles. The only reason he pulled the article is the DDOS attacks. He still doesn't seem to understand what he did wrong.
To paraphrase..."There was nothing ethically or morally wrong with the story. It was factual. However, many of our idiot readers.....errr..customers, got their panties in a was about it. I see no problem publishing personal attacks against people, including their physical address and making fun of their religion, but I'll be damned if some of our readers aren't prudes."
This guy is absolutely classless. I think I'll pass on anything put out by them in the future.
Am I the only one who thinks that DOS'ing someone's website is crummy and ILLEGAL ? Yeah, I read O'Gara's story, and yeah she wrote some pretty unprofessional, rude, and possibly illegal things, but the hackers trashed LinuxWorld, which only posted the story. In TFA the interview-ee says that its a NATIONALLY-syndicated column, so, even if somone were to DOS a site, why not DOS HER website?
That's the noise of any public goodwill earned by Sys-Con deciding to stand for journalistic integrity, being undone by the Sys-Con CEO's big mouth
North Koreans can't withstand Slashdotting, as they rely on carrier pigeons for connectivity, and the military has orders to shoot pigeons on sight.
South Koreans with their multi-deca-megabit-per-second connections to their homes have no such problems.
Given that, why plaster the address and pictures of a potentially innocent party across the Internet?
What about the mother? She's not a party to Groklaw in any way, she's not a blogger, a reporter, or anything, yet her address and pictures of her house ended up in the "article".
I'm sorry - I see nothing ethical here.
There is an entire community of persons directly or indirectly harmed by Ms. O'Gara's ceaseless and frequently slanderous public relations work for big business. By accusing this community of people of hacking/terrorizing him into pulling Ms. O'Gara's pieces, it's worse than if he'd just left the articles up in the first place.
The CEO is content to run a "tabloid trash" type of website, where reporters can harass and intimidate people. That answers everything.
Here's the Letter to Readers by LinuxWorld detailing the standards of journalism that O'Gara contravened.
Among them stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, or social status.
Well its rather simple. To an inexperienced sys admin a slashdotting looks identical to a DDoS.
People should keep in mind that Mr. Kircaali really doesn't have the option of fully admitting and apologizing for anything. That would just open up him and his company to a giant lawsuit.
He has to forcefully deny any wrongdoing to remove the possibility that at a later trial, a lawyer could just just hand the apology/admission to a jury and say "Here's the evidence, he admitted to it, please make them give PJ $1 (holds pinky to lip) MILLION dollars"
There's just something so cathartic about that.
Oh, wait, Forbes is still printing Daniel Lyons. Never mind.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
If I was responsible for the DDOS attacks (I'm not), and had stopped them because they stopped publishing O'Gara, then I'd start the DDOS right back up if I read that.
If slashdot was in fact the supposed "DDOS" he spoke of, could slashdot sue him for slander?
Of course, the moment it leaves your brain its no longer a "thought" crime.
The purpose of "hate crime" laws should be simply to establish motive. Turning a "sorry, I didn't mean to burn that cross in your yard" case into a "damn, I shoula tied you to it!" case.
Yes, there is one residence listed, but lets not stoop to the level he expects at least a few among this community to lower them selves to.
That said, when he does say that his phone rings off the wall, we may wonder how many of those calls are from the other camp, trying to put the OSS comunity in a bad light. There would be no way for us to prove it either way.
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127.0.0.1 linux.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 linuxbusinessweek.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 mxdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 pbdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 symbian.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 weblogic.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 webservices.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 websphere.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 wireless.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.tv
127.0.0.1 xml.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.linuxworld.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.com
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-- Anais Nin
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
I think their servers are capable of withstanding a slashdotting, as they've been listed in numerous articles before this. In order to bring down a site with that kind of infrastructure, it's got to be a deliberate attack.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I've eagerly read this interview but as I've devoured the words it seemed to me Mr. Kircaali was becoming aggressive in his answers. Up to a point where he finally complained about his media company being DoSsed. He did put emphasis on the fact they've had experienced the biggest cyber attack in history of any media company (which, I would like to remind you, sounds like SCO words in the past).
This raised a question in my mind - what this interview was for? He did not seem to really care about the case nor he did not really excuse himself to have allowed O'Gara's article being publish.
The questions were repetitive and they never got where the reporter wanted the interview to go. Kircaali has been evasive in his answers about the topic of interest (PJ, Groklaw, O'Gara's work, etc). He was nonethelesse quite exhaustive on his report of being attacked and threatening emails sent to his customers.
It just leaves me on the feeling he is upset because he's losing a great deal of money. Someone should remind him that he decided to publish O'Gara's article.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
An interesting thing about Groklaw is that if you post comments that PJ does not like you will get banned without even knowing it. You will see the comments, but no one else. Kind of a slimy thing to do, really. Sort of a LACK of jurnalistic integrety maybe???
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My email ("A problem with your advertising + SYS-CON Media website") was quoted in that interview. I'd like to set the record straight on what Fuat Kircaali discussed with me. I sent out email to SYS-CON advertisers, questioning them if they knew about the article. A few hours later I received a call from him. First he was yelling at me "I want to speak with the chairman of $MYEMPLOYER" Then he started threatening to sue me. It was only then that I said I he could easily discuss this with my lawyer. Only after his verbal tirade continued, did I choose to end the conversation with him. His claim that people "needed legal counsel" is a joke. He was threatening to sue people, they no doubt replied "speak to my lawyer". Mr Kircaali treated me in a manner which I find unbecoming of a CEO / publisher. He also did not know the definition of slander/defamation either. Another legal newb attempting to intimidate people. gg.
in the immortal words of Fuat Kircaali:
...
"The reason why we decided to pull it [O'Gara's hack job] was that when the content, style and the language of the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers, a denial-of-service attack was launched against our entire company, interfering with all of our publications and all of our readers."
Leaving aside the incredible moral blindness of missing what was wrong with the O'Gara article, this guy admits he is willing to dump "entertaining" and "accurate" reporters because of a DOS attack. Nice guy to work for
What a piece of work is Fuat Kircaali.
I hate hate.
Maureen O'Gara carelessly tossed the accusation that there was some Identity Theft going on, with PJ as:
A) The Victim
B) A willing accomplice
C) Herself, but not really Pamela Jones
D) All of the above, more wild accusations to come in our next mogwash piece.
Completely apart of the deliberate slurs and slants, criminal accusations make for straightforward Defamation cases.
Mr. Kirkaali says that PJ should not fear thieves, but seems blissully unaware that his own jourmalist accused Pamela Jones to be a thief, and published it on-line.
Maybe he need someone to explain Remedial Ethics 101 to him.
60 Minutes does this kind of thing all the time. It's not illegal. Its not even immoral journalism, if there's a story there.
OGara tried to figure out if there was an IBM-PJ connection, failed and published a fluff piece about PJ's car anyway. That's just crap journalism and a shitty thing to do.
As for PJ, her little internet soapbox made here a "public figure" and now she learns this has real world consequences. She basically started this nasty bitchfight with OGara, no suprise that someone bothered figuring out where she lived. (Just as groklawers did with McBride's home address and phone number.)
So the publisher admits that he pulled the article not because it was ethical, but because he was being DOSed. So they first lack the ethics to realize that publishing someone's home address and the address of their elderly mother is wrong, then bend over when attacked. That's shameful. This publisher has shown that he fundamentally does not get it. I strongly support his first amendment right to publish that article, but he's still a sleazebag. I'll be avoiding the entire SysCon family of magazines as I can't trust them to do good journalism.
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So is this the new trick, if you're in a situation where you kind of look like the bad guy and you're trying to deflect attention, just claim somebody DDOSed you?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I used to disagree with "hate crime" laws but then I realized their point. Yes, most people don't commit violent crime because they love their victim. But that's not the point.
The purpose of Federal hate crime legislation is to give the Federal government authority to go in and investigate should the local enforcement NOT do his/her job because said prosecutor, police and justice agrees with the crime because they too hold those prejudices. There are places where a crime against blacks or gays might not be thought of as a biggie and swept under the rug. In most cases, I wouldn't like encroachment of federal power, but it IS a human rights issue and at this point, the local justice system would be broken so someone needs to step in.
I presume he's talking about sys-con's advertisers. This is not journalism in the fourth-estate sense; it is simply another cynical business model. Do what it takes to deliver up the eyeballs to the advertisers.
In this respect, I can't see why O'Gara was let go -- presumably it's because she indirectly caused what they think are DoS attacks, and you can't @#$$% with the revenue stream.
I picture Ned Beatty here. Anyone with me?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Personally, I'll believe it as and when I see the logs. There are plenty of people out there with both the means and the inclination to launch a DoS attack against syscon. I very much doubt that any significant number of them take Groklaw seriously.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
There's also the part calling it "news".
How, precisely, was ANY part of that "news" or even relevant to ANYTHING to do with the SCO story?
Obviously, this guy hasn't been following along, and has made this decision for monetary reasons.
However, I still hope to clue him in, and would hope that people would be less hostile towards him, but rather do their best to help him to learn what was so upsetting about the piece.
As for the denials, well, actually they shouldn't be talking about this at all, but instead be talking with a lawyer. It's not good if they don't understand why the piece is so chilling.
If that "tabloid trash" ends up getting back to their advertisers, they aren't content to run with it. This is like ringing the doorbell and running... they get off by publishing something like this, but when it offends the public sensibilities they retreat as fast as possible.
I'm glad that they canned MOG, but talk about a lack of balls... the damage was already done. They were just tired of being called jackasses, and thought that pulling the article would stop it.
Jackasses.
Well, that's just sweet. But what does it have to do with anything?
But MOG doesn't appear in print. Her articles are posted on your web site.
So what does anything about "print" have to do with this story?
Still, not in print so why are you talking about this?
Hey! I can write this "note" and try to turn it into a free ad for my wonderful magazine.
Yep. If I ever need to find PJ's mom, I'll know the site that provides that "valuable service".
Yep. Linux Journal certainly wouldn't publish that, even on its web site. Nor any other technical publication.
Did I mention the part about turning this into a free ad?
Thanks for having me on the show, did I mention my new web site? Can I do a quick plug for it?
I'm real sure I mentioned the free ad time. Right?
End your note? You haven't even gotten to the subject.
Give us the gold and you make the rules.
This was not a single article. Read the past ones. You'll see an ongoing stream of hatred.
But those were okay to put on your sites.
Hmmmm..... You might need to check this page then - http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/read/49228.ht m?CFID=39636&CFTOKEN=75BBE516-14D5-139B-BC4011A448 3558B3
Yep, Linux Business News on the sys-con.com site. And if I may post some of the hate there:
So, PJ is "mysterious".
Maybe it stands for "Pam Jones".
People open the Mormon door all the time on /, and Groklaw. Darl McBride's home address has also been published in these fora. Basically PJ is the figurehead for a group of very nasty fanboys, just keeping enough distance so she can feel wronged when someone turns it around on her.
...and nothing else. He printed the article because he was getting paid to do so. He pulled it only when he thought he was losing money by not doing so.
Any other noises he's making are just BS.
No, not quite, 60 Minutes doesn't turn around and say at 110 something street, you will find this. That's the boundary that got crossed, if they said "In this apartment block in downtown Missouri" or whatever it was, that wouldn't be going to far. To publish the information on the internet of someone who obviously wanted to keep their personal life out of what they do professionaly, that's the step too far.
Also the information was unverified. The whole thing to me sounds like a smear story, no matter which way you look at it.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
You're obviously not Pamela Jones.
Your rights are not affected in the least, as long as you don't point out bad behaviour of an unscrupulous company, such as SCO, in a public forum. You don't have to worry about a Maureen O'Gara character coming after you and posting your private address and phone number on a very public website that may or may not be affiliated with said unscrupulous company.
In other words: as long as you watch what you say, your freedom of speech is not affected in the least.
Well that makes sense, surely everyone else would be too embarrassed to call themselves an "i-technology magazine publisher".
I suppose it could be worse, they could be an "i-technology e-magazine net-publisher".
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You can add Gender and Physical Appearance
Although MOG concedes she never met Pamela Jones (neither PJ of Groklaw or the Hartsdale's Pamela Jones), she calls her an "harridan".
They don't say 110 Something Street nowdays, but 15 years ago they would park right in someone's front yard and tell you exactly where it was.
It was a smear story. However, (hypothetically) if O'Gara had found IBM pay stubs all over PJ's desk, then it would have been legitimate journalism. Therefore stalking her house was a legitimate journalistic tactic.
Who is Fuat Kircaali?
By Maureen O'Gara
Friday May 13, 2005 - A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive asswipe who allegedly publishes the Sys-Con family of bird cage liners.
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.
Fuat Abdi Kircaali is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel $2.2 million mansion in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 3001 NE 36th Street in Lighthouse Point, Florida. Lighthouse Point is in Broward County and Broward County is spam-scam country.
See, even though Kircaali treats Linux "magazines" like they were Kleenex and publishes hit-pieces regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this home address and - wouldn't you know it but - he cosigned for the $1.76 million adjustable rate mortgage with his apparent live-in girlfriend and Senior Vice President of advertising, Carmen Gonzalez.
Fuat and Carmen have lived in this little piece of property since February, 2003.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous Florida McMansion. It's practically a self-contained village where spammers launch billions of V1-a'6rA emails upon the world from their garage, porn directors fuck the mouths off of white trash girls and people know each other's business.
But Washington Mutual didn't know much about Fuat when they gave him a mortgage except that he had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, and liked yachts. Oh yes, and fucking his Senior Vice President of Advertising.
He was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where he was.
He had up and disappeared one day, and the yacht skipper was worried about him. He said his son, Fuat Abdi Gonzalez Jr. had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some Linux zealots that "nobody knew," as the webmaster described them, had tried to DoS his website 5 times while he was gone - the SCO license he had had installed on his site - something nobody else in the internet seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the server.
FUCKING HIS SR. VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVERTISING.
TO BE CONTINUED.
I'm sure it had a LOT more hits on it than her other articles.
Tsk, tsk. It was not a DoS, Fuat, and it was not an attack. It was a DDoS, and the result of your publishing an article that many people tried to read simultaniously, an occurance commonly refered to as a "slashdotting". You're a publisher. Isn't this the kind of attention you wanted?
Here I was ready to give Sys-Con the benefit of the doubt since they fire MOG but fuck it! This interview only proves that they aren't sorry, they do NOT see the err of MOGs ways.
If MOGs story WERE legitimate and they fired MOG not because of her story but because of it's unpopularity then that too would be mucho unethical.
Throw Sys-Con and it's publications into your meat/cyber space equivalent of a kill file.
Oops, what am I thinking? it was a DoS too, just not an attack.
Sorry to inform you, but nobody gives a flying fuck about Mareeen O'Gara or SysCon except Pamala Jones and her thralls. (As evidenced about the 100s of groklaw articles published about those noname losers.)
Yeah, dude. Obviously.
And a lot of those fuckos feel seriously wronged and may not have one's normal moral boundries in place.
I suppose you'd like us to adopt the moral compass of an anonymous poster with a chip on their shoulder? Way to go, champ.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
How about the group that DDOSed SCO? Or are we still in denial about that happening?
Again, I'll believe it when I see the logs. Until then, I'll treat it the same way as I do SCO's magical disappearing code in linux.
Sorry to inform you, but nobody gives a flying fuck about Mareeen O'Gara or SysCon except Pamala Jones and her thralls.
I think you misinterpreted me (my fault). When I said "There are plenty of people out there with both the means and the inclination to launch a DoS attack against syscon" I was referring to your common or garden script kiddie, as opposed to anyone with an emotional involvement with the case. Sorry, I should have worded that more clearly. I'd agree with you that pretty much the only people who care what Maureen O'Gara is saying are those she does a hatchet job on.
And a lot of those fuckos feel seriously wronged and may not have one's normal moral boundries in place.
My personal experience of the groklaw crowd is that, on average, they're noticeably more moral than, for example, the slashdot crowd. There's a far higher signal to noise ratio and considerably less obscenity and trolling. Certainly there's less chance of a groklawer doing anything nastier to MOG than sending her an annoyed letter. This is just my opinion, so your mileage may vary.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
This guy running Syscon seems a bit like a tabloid journalist. I get a feeling that the interviewer just came out of the interview feeling like he had a bucket of snot poured on him.
This sig no verb.
I don't think anyone is really after O'Gara for trying to find PJ and have a face-to-face with her. The article (have you read the article?) is just crap, though, with lots of ad-hominem attacks, speculation, innuendo and addresses of people who may or may not be PJ and no real information of any kind. It reads like something an 8th grader would write after they got told off on-line.
horse's ass
Pronunciation: 'hor-s&z-
Function: noun
often vulgar : a stupid or incompetent person : BLOCKHEAD
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quit trolling /. and get back to the unemployment office before you lose your place in line
"Church" is the editorial department. The head of an editorial department is the editor-in-chief.
"State" is the publishing side. This is where all the marketing, advertising, sales type stuff happens. The head of the publishing side of the business is the publisher. Typically the publisher does not get a direct say in what goes into the magazine. He can object, but what the editor-in-chief says goes. In a well-run operation, the publisher might get a lot of say in what goes on the front cover of a magazine (because you can consider the cover a marketing vehicle as much as it is an editorial one) but that's about where it ends.
The role of CEO is trickier. Doubtless this is a business position. Probably the role of the CEO has more to do with preserving a brand identity for the book through its editorial content. The CEO is probably not all that involved in the day-to-day operations of choosing which articles to publish and which not to publish. He probably does get some say in the matter, though; so, if there's a problem, he probably goes and yells at the editor-in-chief at 4pm on a Friday afternoon and everybody needs to bust ass over the weekend to fix things.
Anyway -- in a well-run publishing outfit that has not compromised its journalistic integrity, the "church" and "state" sides are separate (which is why people tend to call them that). And to tell you the truth, I have no reason to believe this isn't how it is at Sys-Con.
When O'Gara's article was published, who raised the stink? The editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld. Sounds good so far; it's his job to meddle in content. But how did it get published in the first place? Because the editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld doesn't have oversight over it. If O'Gara's content was published as part of a normal publishing structure, perhaps he would. But apparently, according to what Mr. Kircaali says, it is Maureen O'Gara who has oversight over what she publishes. Sys-Con merely "syndicates" it, meaning she basically gets a rubber stamp from Kircaali and nobody even bothers to read it. And I quote:
So, to Mr. Kircaali: You're quick to put down blogs, but how is what Ms. O'Gara does any different, if there's no editorial oversight? If nobody's her boss, nobody decided what she should or should not write about, nobody has oversight over her storiesI think the reason this guy's answers come off so terribly is that he's really not used to being in a position to defend editorial content. He's a business guy. He gets content, he syndicates it on the Web. Certain content goes out without the backing of an editorial department or the oversight of any staff editors? Great! All the cheaper. Well, now it's come to bite him in the ass and he really doesn't know what to say about it, except that he wishes it would all go away and he could go back to running his business.
Breakfast served all day!
I don't find Fuat Kircaali's ethics acceptable and I'll be continuing to inform his advertisers of my strong opinion.
Just to make it clear since you aren't following: The published story was shite. Looking in her windows with her landlord and talking to her mother was perfectly fine.
Read the interview. I think this man is either underqualified for the job of CEO of a media enterprise, or is pretending to be.
He's also underqualified for the job of "proud American citizen", which he claims to be:
If you were a proud American citizen, you'd know that the First Amendment is a restriction on the actions Congress can take, you utter fucking moron. What, you think Congress is behind the DDOS?
I'd like to know what he thinks was factual or news. O'Gara herself admits she doesn't know if the person she found was actually the Groklaw founder or not, and there seems to be precisely zero newsworthy information in there.
Anyone else finds it funny how he keeps going on about the DDOS as if it's "the worst EVAR!"
An opinion piece is something that lists the name of her mother (not PJ) and also gives a street address along with pictures of the outside of where she lives?
On top of that he says he found "nothing unethical" about the article. How could you ever trust a publication with an editor like that?
I will be checking my all of magazines for any reference to "Fuat Kircaali" or "Sys-Con Media" and not purchasing anything of the sort.
I'll do it for double those prices!
you had me at #!
That's OK because they make special computers for ugly people now (look for the Linux brandname at walmart).
PJ has her own pointers regarding what O'Gara did over here. Her side doesn't line up with Kircaali's statement - and under the circumstances, I'd believe her first.
This sig no verb.
He himself said he has no problem with peoples personal details being published!
Here is the phone number for G2 Computer Intelligence, 516 XXX-7025. Most unknown emails go to spam boxes these days, at least in my case.
Uh-huh. And how many phone calls get shunted to an "answering (see the irony in that adjective?) machine" where you have to know the exact code in order to speak with a human being?
We've gotten so good at avoiding real communication and providing pseudo-communication that it's pissing people off.
The preceding has been a pre-programmed response from [insert name here]. If you would like to speak to me personally, press 0 on your phone...wait...maybe there will be a beep...hold on...NOW.
[...]
Sorry, your message length has exceeded the maximum allowable. Please call back and try again and thank you for calling!!! [dial tone]
He points out that the story was removed, not because it was unethical, intrusive, and mean-spirited, but because SYS-CON was subjected to DOS attacks. Whoever did those DOS attacks, SHAME ON YOU! Most of the world that doesn't read this interview will think the publisher pulled the articles for the right reasons (the reasons mentioned above and the fact that the article has nothing to do with Linux).
In my opinion, until this guy recants the idiocy he spews in this article (or leaves the company), Sys-Con should continue to be boycotted.
Oh yes, I can see that he's a bastion of high standards as far as Journalism goes.
Personally, I found his comments unbelieveable. One would think his goal would be to try to re-establish some sort of credibility with his readers. All he's accomplished is to drive people away.
I'm not sure what his goal was with his comments and attitude, but clearly it wasn't to improve relations with the Linux community, or to come across as an unbiased source for information.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
>>We do not make decisions on behalf of Ms. O'Gara. I'm not her boss.
I don't know much about publishing. But, I thought that controlling content was indeed the responsibility of the editor?
If I were the editor, and I saw content that included publishing the address, and photos, of the home of PJ's elderly monther; I don't think I'd publish the story. That is the responsibility of an editor, isn't it?
Also, why does a tech publisher want to publish the address of a blogger's elderly mother? How is that related to technology?
How about similar articles detailing the homes, relatives, friends, etc, of Fuat Kircaali and M'Gara?
At this point it seems only fair. After all he just said he thought there was no ethical problem with it.
Err, where was the stereotype? She simply reported these details, but I didn't see any commentary.
Besides, PJ has reported plenty of times that the SCO execs were Mormons. What does that say about her "standards of journalism"?
So how does a wildly distributed collective of people work out when they've reached a consensus? If there was a Linux corporation they could publicly say that sys-con are turkeys and not to be listened to. What would it take for the open source community to be able to issue such a statement without stepping on toes?
A complete withdrawal of credibility would be far better than a slashdotting, or DDOS, as a slashdotign may appear to a turkey.
I... can't... believe this fucknut.
If he can't see what's wrong, and give a REAL apology. He is saying "Sorry, but I don't see what was wrong." Screw him and all his crappy ad-ridden pseudo-news site.
OMFG that irritates me.
PS: Glad I found a use for OMFG!
Reporting that someone named Pamela Jones is (probably) a Jehovah Witness is factual, but irrelevant.
In her very last paragraph, her conclusion, Maureen O'Gara states that BECAUSE PJ has JW witness books in her(?) car, she cannot possibly be the real Groklaw.Net Webmistress.
Now how's that for a religious stereotype ? Can a Catholic be a competent Web author? What about an Eckankar follower ?
In fact, her faith is irrelevant, and MOG is WRONG trying to make it relevant. I shouldn't have to explain it to you ?
[alas, to many, the answer is yes, but I digress
Did you look behind the couch? When I lose something, that's where I usually first look.
Though I wonder if you've really lost them -- after all, the First Amendment says that `Congress shall pass no law' ... and while this has generally been interpeted as meaning that the Government shall pass no law abridging your freedom of speech, in this case, I see no law having been passed. So what are you complaining about when you ask about your First Amendment Rights?
Hers seem to be perfectly functional as well. Did she lose hers too? Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press. You own your press, and so you have freedom of press, and you used it. What's the problem?As for the story you posted, what did you think the response would be? I'm not talking about the DoS attacks, but just the general reaction from the more `moderate' people? Did you think that people would appreciate knowing who PJ was? Was that news?
As far as the DoS attacks go, call the FBI. You should be able to assign a large dollar figure to the damage being caused, and so the FBI will probably take your complaint seriously. Nail the bastards! Seriously. I don't approve of what you've done, but you've already given yourself enough problems -- we don't need criminals adding to them with DoS attacks.
As for the rest of the world (the people who are saying that you made a poor decision, in varying degrees of articulateness), well, you made your bed -- now lie in it. I don't feel sorry for you. You may have had every right to post the story (or maybe not -- it sort of looked like a threat. But I'll leave that to the lawyers) -- but the bad will you've just gained with a signifigant portion of the community can't be a good thing.
There is no "Medabiliti press release dated April 14, 2003."
Mediabiliti Press Releases
Was this bit in MOG's article fabricated?
Not only does he not apologize, he approves of everything MOG wrote, and says they only pulled it for practical reasons, not ethical reasons. Disgusting. Have these people no sense of decency at all?
That is great that someone modded the parent insightful.
He doesn't understand what he did wrong when he published the article, and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he doesn't yet realize what he did wrong in the interview.
I can't imagine anyone with even a shred of a clue, when giving an interview that is almost certain to be linked to by slashdot, giving blanket permision like he did:
*Wince* What was he thinking?--MarkusQ
P.S. For the record, if I ever get interviewed and slashdot gets hold of it, I want all of you yahoos to stay the heck away from my house. My number is not listed and I will not pose for photos with you.
You missed the best part: MOG toss around a *criminal* accusation.
... TO BE CONTINUED.
Its no different than if she accused Pamela Jones of being an accomplice in drug smuggling, or baby-stealing.
You cannot make criminal accusations lightly, unless you're ready to back them up.
You never print or publish such half-accusations.
MOG proof of PJ's theft is
Slander, Libel & Willful Defamation. Next Case.
If you actually go through PJ's posts, she is generally very careful to insist that religious stereotyping be eschewed. Other Groklaw members and ACs have indeed debated whether Mormonism had any role, but the general consensus has been to argue that attitude down.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I thought that violation of a person's human rights was covered under a seperate federal law. A hate crime is a crime that has more victims than a regular crime because it intimidates a whole community of people. In a similar way, an act of terrorism is not just a murder - it has effects beyond the immediate victim.
*sigh*
He just doesn't get it. He thinks "Me Media! Me almighty journalist! Me do what I like! Me No apologize but call YOU moron! Worship Media!"
We think "God, what a idiot."
and they wonder why we don't trust them?
Who Is Pamela Jones?
By Maureen O'Gara
Friday May 6, 2005 - A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka PJ, doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.
See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.
Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.
But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."
He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."
She was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where she was.
She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.
Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.
Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten spooked again because "people were getting hurt around [my] stories" and had lighted out for Canada.
Odd, the subject of my stories - or any stories - never came up during our brief interview. I was just looking for Pamela.
That left Pamela's son, Nicolas Richards, who, as it happens, had been in the software business in Manhattan until - why, my goodness - things seem to have come a cropper right around the time Groklaw came into existence.
Nick and his ma were apparently involved together in Medabiliti Inc, an ISV, because one Pamela Jones with a Westches
First off, I'm not a lawyer. That said, I've read more than a few legal codes. In most jurisdictions for which I've read the trespassing laws, a person has to be informed that they aren't welcome before criminal trespassing can be considered to have occurred. Hence, the popularity of ``no trespassing'' signs which inform all comers that they are not welcome. A verbal message of ``don't come around here no more'' will also do the trick in many places.
The bottom line, in many places (perhaps most places) you can legally waltz into someone else's house uninvited (provided the door is unlocked), sit down on the couch and watch television unless (1) the house owner asks you to leave or (2) there is a posted sign proclaiming that trespassing is not allowed.
I'm also unaware how actionable listing contact information for relatives is. If the information is public, I can't imagine how doing so could be illegal.
Which leaves slander. There might be a case for that. Or one for defamation of character.
oops, I cannot click the link above, I just added th e 127.0.0.1 listed in a previous post. :)
MOG could have looked through a window. Sleazy I agree, but you're jumping to conclusions when you claim MOG trespassed.
The only phone number in MOG's "story" was one that was published in a Medabiliti press release from 2003. I see no evidence that the number MOG did publish was a relative's number.
The MOG article is getting harder to find; it is effectively being deleted from the Internet. However here is a google cache copy. The only phone number in the article is 914-761-7423. If you google for that number you can find it in another google cache. The second cached copy is a press release submitted by Medabiliti to PR Newswire.
What MOG did was despicable - there's no doubt about that - but let's not start falsifying what she did. The facts condemn MOG enough as it is without having to make things up.
First off, I'm not a lawyer. That said, I've read more than a few legal codes. In most jurisdictions for which I've read the trespassing laws, a person has to be informed that they aren't welcome before criminal trespassing can be considered to have occurred. Hence, the popularity of ``no trespassing'' signs which inform all comers that they are not welcome. A verbal message of ``don't come around here no more'' will also do the trick in many places. The bottom line, in many places (perhaps most places) you can legally waltz into someone else's house uninvited (provided the door is unlocked), sit down on the couch and watch television unless (1) the house owner asks you to leave or (2) there is a posted sign proclaiming that trespassing is not allowed. I'm also unaware how actionable listing contact information for relatives is. If the information is public, I can't imagine how doing so could be illegal. Which leaves slander. There might be a case for that. Or one for defamation of character.
These online SYS-CON rags must not be getting much traffic. The geek comunity has been avoiding SYS-CON for a while now.
For a brief while it looked like SYS-CON was doing the right thing so we all had a look see. They could not handle the traffic. They have no idea how much traffice they could have if they did the right thing on a regular basis.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
For a moment there, I thought you were talking about the people rioting in Afghanistan because someone told them that someone at Gitmo flushed a Koran down the toilet.
My friend's bother knows the guy who saw the other guy flushing it. Seriously.
Apologies for the misunderstanding, fine sir.
Looks like a few of the LinuxWorld editors saw the interview, and you can bet that they aren't happy. Here, here, and here.
To quote Fuat Kircaali, CEO of Sys-Con:
What does ethics have anything to do with professional reporting and journalism?
What indeed. And people wonder why so many CEOs are going on trial.
This notion that being a "journalist" justifies invasions of privacy of all kinds against all kinds of people may be the straw that breaks the camel's back for most Americans, and results in reigning in press abuses. One can only hope. For my part, while I don't normally approve of DoS attacks, in this case, they were probably the only effective sanction for bad corporate behavior.
Contrasting to the reactions of the zealots here to the release of PJ's info, I doubt he gives a flying fuck that you found easily obtained public information.
Shotgun mouthwash plz.
James Turner
Senior Editor
LinuxWorld Magazine
What's chilling is O'gara. It took awhile to put my finger on it, but O'gara was writing a message, not any kind of article. Think about it; there was no news value, no "facts" stated concretely, and no effort whatsoever to reach any interested reader on either side of the SCO debate. ...and accidents happen all the time. See,PJ, if I can find you, so can anyone -- especially now."
Now THAT'S chilling.
O'gara didn't write this to readers. She wrote this directly to PJ, intending to shake her up by instilling an uneasy sense of fear not only for herself, but FOR HER FAMILY. "Watch your step, PJ. You'd never forgive yourself if someone close to you got hurt. It's a dangerous world, with serial killers and all.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
LinuxWorld Editor James Turner weighs in late, and thickens the plot.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
There is real fear in the publishing industry among bloggers. And it is quite understandable.....they are an unknown that threaten anything from taking down the entire industry to exposing them as liars. So given the fear, I can see how even honest reporters might subconciously look for the evil side of blogs......
Qxe4
His entire remarks demonstrate it to anyone who can read.
I suspect he's bullshitting about the DoS attack, as well. While I had problems accessing Linux Business News (and by the way, they send you an email every time another response is made to the article you post to, and they offer an opt-out link - which doesn't work!), I neither saw nor heard of any DoS attack on them.
His response is the classic human primate response of claiming to be completely blameless and on the side of "right" when caught doing something stupid and unethical and getting problems because of it.
It is now justified to boycott the entire organization until HIS ass is kicked to the curb along with MoGTroll's. I'm sure he has investors (not to mention advertisers) who would be unhappy to see him be responsible for lost revenue due to being an asshole.
AND notice he didn't explain anything about how Sys-Con was running ads for OSS companies on LBN without the OSS companies even KNOWING their ads were running on LBN, let alone next to these sorts of anti-OSS articles.
A little inflating advertising clicks program - sounds exactly like something this asshole would be part of.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"Our mission is to support the Open Source community by giving them the strongest voice and sharing information about their accomplishments in a truthful and positive way. We also strive to cover the shortcomings or problems we see with Linux and Open Source from an objective point of view."
NONE of which has anything to do with Maureen O'Gara who is an SCO shill and a deliberate opponent of OSS.
More importantly, Sys-Con is run by an asshole who is now attacking OSS people as criminal wackos who caused his company to go down "for three days" from a DoS attack.
Meanwhile he has not explained how it is that some OSS companies were NOT AWARE that their ads were being run on LBN, let alone next to anti-OSS articles from O'Gara. I suspect some probing will find this guy is inflating his advertising hits by running ads on his sites without the knowledge of his advertisers.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"We ran a story entitled "Who is Pamela Jones?" The facts in the story were accurate. There was nothing in the story we thought factually, professionally, ethically or legally wrong." This attempt to save face is going to cost him.
Check this out! Apparently the editors got fed up.
I'm not sure there WAS any "attack". Did anybody hear about such a thing before this interview? Especially since he claims it was the "biggest DoS attack" ANY media company has suffered?
It sounds to me like this guy was claiming such in order to use the same "OSS people are wackos" claim that Laura DiDio AND MoG used.
Which is very suspicious. It tends to make me think he's part and parcel of the same SCO-loving crew since he uses the exact same tactics.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
This was very unfortunate. I was glad to be offered a free subscription for Java Developer Journal just a day ago. I accepted, but after reading this interview I sent a polite mail asking to cancelling it.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The Other Shoe Drops
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld Magazine Announce Resignations
MONTVALE, New Jersey, May 14th, 2005 --- The entire senior editorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine has today announced that they will be leaving the magazine, effective immediately.
The following statement was released by the group. "We regret that Sys-Con Media has been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
James Turner
turner@blackbear.com
603-552-2020
Dee-Ann LeBlanc
dee@renaissoft.com
(604) 898-8433
posted Saturday, 14 May 2005
I'm glad you've done the principled thing, but I still wonder: who will keep Fuat Kircaali from doing stupid things without you guys there?
Instead he chose to use his time to pick nits about whether bloggers are reporters and whether the telephone numbers which were published were business or personal.
And then he launched into a lengthy diatribe about how his websites were being DOSed by "fanatics" and how people were complaining to his advertisers.
The "DOS" was most likely just a slashdotting. I know for a fact that Groklaw suffered load related problems when the "Intimidation" and followup articles were posted. Groklaw hit some kind of resource limit on comments on the "Intimidation" article, and I was seeing PHP error messages too. If Mr Kircaali saw a much higher flow of traffic than usual, for several days afterward, that would be because he didn't pull all of the Maureen O'Gara stories off his websites, contrary to his promise. There were reports that some stories had remained and my impression is that it took a few days before they were all gone. Of course people are going to reload the site frequently during this time - those who care whether SYS-CON.COM keeps its promise, and those who care whether any Maureen O'Gara stories remain.
And as for the second horn of Mr Kircaali's contention, that people were unjustly contacting his advertisers, my understanding is that the continued presence of Maureen O'Gara at SYS-CON.COM had been an issue for 6 months and Mr Kircaali had refused to terminate her for that length of time. If something's an issue for that long, of course somebody is going to escalate it. And the advertisers are ultimately Mr Kircaali's boss.
Mr Kircaali defends the practice of running Microsoft advertisements on a Linux website by asserting the absurdity of refusing to run Microsoft advertisements on a Microsoft website. This is a straw man argument; few people would complain about seeing Microsoft advertisements on a .NET website. But Microsoft is
the enemy of Linux specifically and Free Software
in general, so it is rather disturbing that an OSS
advocacy site should run their advertisements (this
includes Slashdot).
Finally Mr Kircaali closes with some choice weasel words on the issue of privacy, an unsubtle insult to Groklaw's readers ("if the majority of Ms. Jones' readers are the same people whom we dealt with this week, now I understand better why she may want to remain anonymous") and a bit of bignoting themselves as the victim: a media company who became a victim of perhaps the biggest cyber attack in history.
My opinion is, whatever the merits of Mr Kircaali's arguments, he chose exactly the wrong way to close off the matter. I doubt he has endeared himself to anybody except Microsoft, who believe they benefit by painting Linux supporters as vigilante zealots.
Dear Mr. Linus Torvalds,
Would you be so kind as to pull Sys-Con's license to use the Linux trademark? I think other publishing companies could better represent your trademark.
Thank you,
Brandon Darbro
This sig intentionally left blank.
I wonder if this supposed Denial of Service attack was actually many Slashdot readers looking into the story and the company mentioned in the original post. Thoughts on this?
*TheDarb
This sig intentionally left blank.
Haven't seen too many since I switched to Firefox.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
I womder if he'll get it if we ask for the name and adress of his mother, including a rough description of the house she lives in.
His mum will then take remedial measures to correct her mistake....
There wasn't any stopping stupid actions with him there. Best to get out before the shit sticks to you.
James Turner, former senior editor of LinuxWorld wrote Fred Brown of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Commitee. Here is what Fred Brown wrote:
James,
I agree with you. That piece by O'Gara definitely is outside the norms of good journalism. It's bullying, insulting and harassing, and I, for
one, really don't get the point of it. That's not to say that other journalists are sometimes guilty of those sins, but that still doesn't make it
good journalism.
So I don't think you did the wrong thing in using you First Amendment rights to call for O'Gara's ouster or reprimand or whatever. The SPJ Code of
Ethics says ethical journalists should "expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media" and "abide by the same high standards to which they hold others."
Fred Brown
Co-chair, SPJ Ethics Committee
http://turner.linuxworld.com/read/1277987.htm
ALL OF THE SENIOR EDITORS OF LINUXWORLD HAVE RESIGNED!
Nobody can stand Fuat any longer. The ones who can go do something else have decided to do just that.
The sooner IDG gets its trademark back from Sys-Con the better.
Sys-Con - System of a Con.
--
BMO
There sure are some ugggly people working at Sys-Con. Getting rid of O'Gara was a step in the right direction... yet whats with such bs coverage over this crap for the past couple of days. Its like a damn geek Soap opera. I agree what she did was wrong and incomptent "journalism" but let her name fade out like the hag she is.
Troll?
Informative or Offtopic. I hope you're metamoderated to hell you 13 year old fucking newbie mod.
No on will stop FK, he owns SYS-CON. Oh, wait, you can vote with your wallet and avoid SYS-CON publications and web sites.
I would summarize Fuat Kircaali's words somewhat differently (paraphrasing):
"We stand by everything that O'Gara wrote, and it is the right of every journalist to harrass anyone they like, and the tone of their articles is of no concern as long as their facts are correct.
We removed the story because the DDoS attacks on our site were costing us money."
In other words, the only thing that swayed him were the DDoS attacks. It seems then that this is the only method of influence that he leaves open.
Hate crimes are thought crimes, pure and simple. The government has no business in our heads. If this means some joker gets off for killing a gay or black, then I guess _society_ will have to change in order for them to be prosecuted. You know, that's how we've been doing it, before hate crimes? It's taken a long time for many of those race crimes of the 60s to be prosecuted, but they're doing it.
Let's face it, hate crimes terrorize your thoughts and remove any responsibility for the culture as a whole to change its attitudes.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Why is that confusing? A reporter's job is to report the news, but reporting news doesn't mean you're a reporter. For example a policeman's job is to enforce the law, but if you or I enforce the law we are vigilantes, not policemen.
It appears, according to their blogs on the Sys-Con web site (referenced above), that the senior editors have all resigned over this interview.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Besides, the editors have resigned en masse:
> Well, how do you compare the popularity of a
> blog to the job of a reporter? A reporter is
> not a blogger. The reporter's job is to report
> news. The reporter's focus should not be on
> winning a popularity contest but on making sure
> that they are reporting the facts and the news
> accurately.
Exactly, Mr. Fuat. And that's why we go to Groklaw, and not one of your outlets.
Toon Moene (physicist at large)
Don't you mean a shilling effect?
The chilling and scary message was the one OGara sent, not the response by the public. The public's response was based on the feeling: if they did it to PJ, they can do that to us.
> The purpose of Federal hate crime legislation is to give the Federal government authority
If you stop right there, you're perfectly correct. I am by no means a "states-rights" fan, which is usually just a cover for bigotry, but federal hate crimes legislation is nothing more than a power grab in an attempt to federalize as many crimes as possible.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Again, I'll believe it when I see the logs.
So you're still in denial. Or should I pull up emacs and generate the 'logs' you speak of? (iow- wtf would make a 'log' believeable to you?)
No such thing as "human rights". That concept is neo-stalinist, gunpoint blather. Actually, RIGHTS are culturally dependent behaviors supported by (that particular ) citizenry. What free-men do! OTOH those supporting "human rights" are stalinist thugs and deserve treatment accordingly ...
Wrong. As soon as you publish something as news, then you are a reporter. There is no such thing as a "reporter's" badge or a reporter's license. The only difference between being a amateur or professional reporter is if you get a paycheck out of it. Any formal requirement, such as a "Reporer's Licence" would be a inherent violation of your First Amendment rights.
If PJ was not claiming to be a reporter, then you might have a leg to stand on. Unfortunately, you didn't take the 5-10 seconds to check the groklaw website and mission statement. To quote:
"For example a policeman's job is to enforce the law, but if you or I enforce the law we are vigilantes, not policemen."
Wrong again. Enforcing the law, inlcuding making citizen's arrest is not vigilantism.
Two strikes. Care for a third?
Well done! Be sure to keep us informed of where you go next so we can give them our page impressions :)
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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[Emphasis mine]
This has nothing to do with journalistic integrity. Don't try to confuse the issue of whether or not it's OK to hunt someone down and publish personal information about them and their relatives with whether or not you can write whatever you want on someone else's private website, even after they've told you they won't tolerate certain behavior and reserve the right to ban/delete accounts/comments.
Perhaps. He claims their sites were offline much of 3 days or so. I didn't go to any of their sites so I don't know.
However, it's not really as beyond the realm of reason as you seem to think. Recall that there were some monster DoS's against SCO, which even Eric Raymond foudn confirmation of by taking to the actual attacker.
Even though i'm open source friendly, I have no problem believing this happened.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Maybe you'll believe Eric Raymond when he verified that it actually happened.
6 NWCYLL
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/200308250102
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I don't know what publications SYS-CON owns?
instead corporate counsel tells them not to admit anything and a legal broughaha ensues.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
No, not quite, 60 Minutes doesn't turn around and say at 110 something street, you will find this. That's the boundary that got crossed
Seriously, some of the addresses read like friggin yahoo driving directions!
Nick and his wife Andrea live in fancier digs than his ma on East 76th Street off First Avenue
From the linked article:
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at (address removed but was full in article) in Hartsdale, New York.
Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least,
Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to (address removed, but was full), Connecticut, 24 miles away
The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik (her mom),
Nick and his ma were apparently involved together in Medabiliti Inc, an ISV, because one Pamela Jones with a Westchester phone number (phone number removed) and a Medabiliti e-mail (e-mail removed)
Nick and his wife Andrea live in fancier digs than his ma on (full address removed)
judge for yourself...
I've read posts by PJ where she defines "trolling" as basically anything she disagrees with. She actually stated "We don't want our beliefs challenged here".
And the groklaw forums are full of personal attacks and illegal suggestions (even if in jest).
Thanks for the link - I honestly hadn't come across that snippet before. That does add a lot of credence to SCO's claims.
/" cited as the supposed DoS attack (enough to swamp a small host, but certainly not enough to be construed as definitely malicious).
Currently the evidence in the case of Sys-con seems to be a little less convincing - I've seen 5 IPs running "wget -r
Sorry for taking so long to reply.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
While I agree that i've not seen any evidence to support the claim of DoS yet, I just wouldn't put it past anyone. People get emotional over things and often run off and do things that are not well advised.
The fact is, all it takes is for one hothead with the skill and resources to do something like this, and we're all aware that many of us geeks tend to have less than stellar emotional maturity at times (as any trip through the kernel mailing list will tell you).
Maybe it never happened, maybe it did, maybe it was exagerated, maybe it was something misinterpreted... the point is, I'm not going to dismiss the possibility of it happening, only question the facts supporting it.
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Ya, someone in the world is planning for a massive damage of life and property, maybe us in the open source community should be more open-mind to that as well, huh?
Provide a link to the comment "We don't want our beliefs challenged here."
Come on, back it up.
Ahem.... Darls phone number and address was posted HERE before it was on Groklaw.
4 ,39115983,00.htm
In fact it was posted there as a link from here.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,200006174
Idiot.
Problem is hate crime legislation is not limited to the federal level. States have them as well.
And there is nothing stopping the federal government from adopting a law which makes a federal law the backup if the state or local enforcement does (and will) fail and which does not invoke hate crime standards.
oh yeah.. cause the federal gov't loves blacks and gays
Open Source Java DAO Generator
The problem with hate crimes laws is that it marginalizes non "hate" crimes.
Why is a racially motivated assult and battery any worse, criminally, than a "regular" one? The black person who gets victimized becuase of her race is not any worse off than if it was another black person who beat her. The punishment should fit the crime, not the motivation.
Another little known fact about hate crimes is that it is seldomly if never used in cases of black on white crime where there is clear racial motivation or jew on non-jew crime. It simply is not politically correct to apply the hate crimes laws here.
Hate crimes laws are clearly against the letter and spirit of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause, but obviously our political climate will not support such an interpretation in the courts.
A hate crime is a crime that has more victims than a regular crime because it intimidates a whole community of people. In a similar way, an act of terrorism is not just a murder - it has effects beyond the immediate victim.
Thats stupid thinking.
If someone in your neighborhood gets violently beaten during a burglary, would there not be quite a bit intimidation beyond the victim, whether or not there was any sort of racial, religious, or homophobic bias involved?
If a person is directly intimidating a community (e.g. by saying "all jews will be killed"), then that is covered under existing law.
The problem with these hate crimes laws is that it makes non-bias crimes less significant. When you become the victim of a crime, race doesn't matter. You have been victimized. The motive or reasoning behind the crime is rather irrelevant by the time you get mugged, raped, beaten, kidnapped, or robbed.