LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff Resigns

sachmet writes "In light of the interview with Fuat Kirccali, James Turner has announced on his blog the immediate resignation of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff." From the post: "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."

Comments

Honesty

[ninthwave]

It is nice to see some honesty and morals in the mess that journalism has become.

It is sad that it took this mess for it to be shown.

I wonder if slashdot might be hiring or its parent company might have a home for these people. Even if it is just for PR purposes.

Re:Honesty

[capt.Hij]

When Turner first acknowledged problems with the O'gara article he used some weasel words and stopped short of apologizing. I was critical of him and his staff, but now he has really stepped up to the plate and did the right thing. It will certainly be a costly action on his part, and he has shown a lot of class and integrity. I was critical of him before, but I was wrong.

Kudos to a group of people who made a difficult decision and did the right thing.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

It will certainly be a costly action on his part

It was an unpaid position, wasn't it?

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

It's worth pointing out that even though you know it's wrong, it's fundamentally against human nature to stand up to authority figures like your boss.

Milgram's experiment showed that 65% of people were willing to inflict considerable amounts of harm on somebody, even though they didn't want to, simply because an authority figure told them to.

I suspect a lot of people complaining about O'Gara's piece would not have resigned if they were in that position themselves.

Re:Honesty

[scupper]

It was an unpaid position, wasn't it?

Karma, he'll lose karma:)

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me he'll gain karma :)

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all because of the bitter battle between Maureen O'Gara of LinuxWorld and PJ of Groklaw, which recentley culminated is MOG publishing very personal details about PJ. MOG was fired and it looks like the rest have jumped in protest that the article was published in the first place.

Re:Honesty

[ninthwave]

Yes that is why an action that rises above our nature and goes for the high ground need rewarded by society or there never be an incentive to be more than sheep, when it comes to morals and ethics.

Re:Honesty

[ninthwave]

No they have had internal battle for 6 months on the nature of MOG articles, they asked with the publishing of that article for MOG to be pulled and the offices of SYS-CON pubicly distance themselves from MOG. The first part was done but the recent interview showed the Officers saw nothing wrong with the article, so the editors left.

So you wording is wrong and disregards the lesser actions taken before drastic action was threatened and then acted upon. There was dialogue and the dialogue was mostly ignored.

Re:Honesty

[ebuck]

Please don't call that an experimenet.

Milgram's test stands as a low point in the application of Psychology, but a high point in the sensationalisim of its findings.

There is not control, so there is no provability. The population was self selecting. There were problems in reproducibility, lending only labs that were able to reproduce to be published. And today, the experiment is now considered unethical preventing the acceptance of any further research on the findings.

It's about as close to an experiment in scientific terms as O'Gara's recent piece was an "article" in publishing terms.

Re:Honesty

[muszek]

Looking at it from a strictly business-wise point of view it's surprising for me to see how Fuat Kirccali acts.

It's quite clear (although it's only a hypothesis) for me that being a linux user must be somehow co-related with moral sensitivity. Ideas surrounding Open Source are filled with ethical meanings and most of linux users swim in open source world on a daily basis.

Why would a businessman who relies heavily on morally sensitive customers (yes, visitors, not advertisers, are his customers ("bring visitors and advertisers will come") supports immoral acts? Especially that this immoral act was indirectly pointed at Open Source world... that's simply stupid for me. He can't simply do what Gates does (he can repeat "IE is better" over and over and most people will believe), cuz he talks to smarter people.

Ain't it what actually happened? Thousands of people are pissed at Sys-Con...

On the other hand, I'm affraid that show-biznes' rule "there's no such thing as bad press" might work here as well - after all they got a lot of attention.

Re:Honesty

[B'Trey]

Unless you're browsing at -1, you probably won't see this post for very long because someone will mark it as a troll or flamebait. It's neither. It's an honest, straitforward opinion.

I've been using Linux since '93. I'm writting this post on Firefox running on Gentoo, with a NAT'd internet connection supplied by a Debian server. I think SCO is a sleazy company looking to steal money and momentum from the success of Linux. I am extremely grateful for what PJ has done. Her contributions to the Linux community have been invaluable. But the simple fact is that PJ stepped up and made herself a public figure in an extremely controversial case. And there is no constitutional or guaranteed right to remain anonymous.

Public figures deal with this kind of poking and prying all the time. Celebrities deal with paparazi. Politicians deal with people digging into every nook and cranny of their life. Innocent, ordinary people who are thrust into the spotlight have all sorts of private details published and pored over.

I'm no fan of O'Gara. But she's no worse than scores of other reporters out there, and to claim her story was a gross violation of journalistic ethics is a biased response. (The Google cache of her story is still available. If you haven't read it, read it yourself.) If Daryl McBride's personal information had been published (and it seems like at some point it was, although I can't find the story now), everyone would be cheering the public's "right to know." Daryl has complained about threatening letters and phone calls, and fearing attack, and we haven't leaped to his defense and insisted on his right to privacy. But since it's our ox being gored, we're all ready to go to war.

The response to this piece by many zealots has been much more unethical than the publishing of the article. I realize that the response, in particular the DOS and threatening email, is attributal to only a small minority of OSS and Linux supporters, and that many of the leaders in the field have spoken out against them. But the denial of those actions has been almost perfunctory. We should be screaming about those who smear the Linux and OSS name with illegal and unethical attacks at least at the same volume we're screaming about O'Gara and Sys-Con.

If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it. It's a part of American life. It's the obverse side of the "freedom of the press" coin. Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained? There are those reading Slashdot who do, in fact, live in such a place. Ask them which is preferable.

Re:Honesty

[tyllwin]

If PJ really is a little old lady who lives modestly, and who's a member of the Jehovah's Witness sect, there's nothing wrong with publishing that. THAT gives insight into a public figure. If the phone number listed in the article was truly obtained from an old news release, then that too would be ethical, if tasteless.

But, public figure or not, publishing people's home addresses is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Sarcastic commentary and personally identifying information about about elderly relatives is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Mocking their religious choices and age is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists.

Doing so with obvious spite is calculated to increase people's disgust.

I doubt you'll find many highly visible examples of the home addresses, phone numbers, elderly relatives, and religious affliations of the SCOX attorneys being publicized and mocked. People are justified in being angry that PJ has been subjected to that -- just as SCO's attorneys would be justified in thgeir anger if it were done to them.

Re:Honesty

[ninthwave]

It is debatable on the experiment and its controls. But people independent of Milgram hhave verified it.
And others have disputed it. It is still taught in psychology, along with Zimbardo which used Prisoners and Prison Guards to study authority and others. I would have to get my wife to post as she has the degree in psychology I just have an armchair interest in the field.

Re:Honesty

[ninthwave]

I agree with everything except publishing personal contactable information.

And I don't think there was a DoS, I think it was the slashdot effect.

Some logs would say otherwise.

Too many times have controversial issues in computing brought charges of DoS's while in reality it was just curiousity and inadequate ability to deal with the server load.

Re:Honesty

[Trailer Park Boy]

"If Daryl McBride's personal information had been published (and it seems like at some point it was, although I can't find the story now), everyone would be cheering the public's "right to know."

M'oG went to PJ's mother's home, harrassed her, and then published her address and photos of her home on the Internet. No one did anything like that to any SCOX board member, and if they had, the linux community's name would have been dragged through the mud in the media. There's only one possible reason for publishing PJ's mom's personal info, and that's "We know where you live" style intimidation, pure and simple.

Re:Honesty

[gclef]

And her mother and son? Are they public figures? How many steps away does one have to be to be considered a "private" figure? A friend? Cousin? Is it okay for my personal details to be plastered across the net because I used to be a tech for a news organization (some of my friends are reporters, after all)?

You argument is nonsense. The O'Gara story *was* a huge violation of Journalistic Ethics. Not just because of the publishing of PJ's info, but the stalking and publishing of her family's info. *That* was one of the major problems.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

If only you could spell "writing" and "Darl" properly, I might respect what you have to write. Unfortunately you're correct on the points that I read before I got too frustrated with your spelling to read further.

Who Pamela Jones is and who is paying her is important knowledge that should not be hidden from her readers. If she's going to claim to be a journalist, we the readers need to know who is paying her and we also need to know who she is. That is the basis for her credibility as a journalist. Without that information, she is just another blowhard blogger.

Re:Honesty

[ninthwave]

That would be very true if any of that information made it into the article in question.

Instead the reporter in question couldn't find anything or did not find what they wanted and just posted a Pamela Jones's mothers address.

Big difference from what you are saying.

Re:Honesty

[cahiha]

I'm no fan of O'Gara. But she's no worse than scores of other reporters out there,

Most people learn in kindergarden that "But Johnny did it, too" is not an adequate excuse for bad behavior. The ones that don't learn it are sociopaths.

If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it.

By the same token, should we accept celebrity stalking? Celebrity murders? Celebrity kidnapping? Hey, it happens when you put yourself in the spotlight, right? It's your own fault for speaking up and poking your head out.

The law and journalism actually recognize a difference between privacy rights of famous people and the rest of us. O'Gara crossed that line and should pay for it.

Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained?

You haven't been paying attention: we live in such a place and we always have. You couldn't have a free press without some constraints on it, because otherwise the journalists themselves would be subject to the same kind of abuse.

Re:Honesty

[B'Trey]

The reason I posted a link to the Google cache is so people can read for themselves and decide whether or not it was out of bounds. I think it was a bit on the sleazy side, but I don't think it was the abomination that many are claiming it to be.

I don't see that PJs religion was being mocked. It was mentioned, but I don't see merely mentioning it as mockery.

And the reason you won't find those details about the SCOX attorneys and such being published in a news story is that they're not news - the information is out there and available for anyone who cares to look. PJ choose to hide her identity. That makes people curious. And when people are curious, they're going to start digging.

Re:Honesty

[jack_csk]

But the simple fact is that PJ stepped up and made herself a public figure in an extremely controversial case. And there is no constitutional or guaranteed right to remain anonymous.

Do you know what you are talking about? Do celebrites deserve their addresses being exposed and being threatened or kidnapping?

Re:Honesty

[dgatwood]

You're right. When dealing with a normal curve of human intelligence, there is no such thing as bad press. However, when dealing with a target group that tends to be mostly on the upper part of that curve... it doesn't tend to work that way. Intelligent people tend to hold grudges against dirtbag companies....

Re:Honesty

[watzinaneihm]

I do have mod points now, but I will reply rather than mod because you brinng up a lot of points which are semi-plausible. your posting history does not indicate that you are a troll though your username is funny :-)
What you seem to be saying is this
1. paparazzis do sutff like this - not wrong in your opinion
2. paparazzis are journalists, like Maureen. So wha t maureen did is also right
3 somebody DoSed Sys-con - Wrong in your opinion
4. In you opinion this somebody is linux zealots -so linux community must be wrong

What is wrong with your arguement is this
1) Paparazzis are unethical if not illegal always. Even a paparazzi would be wrong if they photographed some public figure's mother in the privacy of their homes . In a public space, it might just be unethical
2) paparazzis are not full journalists in that they do not follow the code of conduct for journalists. Associations in most countries have a written document for this
3)"Somebody DoS'ed Sys-con" now why do you believe this? I was able to read the article yesterday about maureen getting the axe. Possibly no body ever did a DDost. It might just have been a slashdotting followed by tons of blogs linking to them
4)Even if somebody did a DDoS that itself might be a diversionary tactic by SCOx - you cannot judge before you know the details

Re:Honesty

[LarsWestergren]

[...] the simple fact is that PJ stepped up and made herself a public figure in an extremely controversial case. And there is no constitutional or guaranteed right to remain anonymous.

Public figures deal with this kind of poking and prying all the time. Celebrities deal with paparazi. Politicians deal with people digging into every nook and cranny of their life. Innocent, ordinary people who are thrust into the spotlight have all sorts of private details published and pored over.

As others before me have pointed out, there is a big difference between tabloids and reputable newspapers and magazines. I never read tabloids, I find them disgusting stupid garbage. Now, I believed Sys-con to be a company that dealt with serious journalism, but it seems I have been proven wrong. Therefore I have cancelled my subscription to Java Developer Journal.

and to claim her story was a gross violation of journalistic ethics is a biased response. (The Google cache of her story is still available. If you haven't read it, read it yourself.)

I HAVE read it, and it was a breach of journalistic ethics. If you think my opinion is biased, ask Fred Brown, co-chair of the Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Commitee:

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

If Daryl McBride's personal information had been published (and it seems like at some point it was, although I can't find the story now), everyone would be cheering the public's "right to know."

Yes it was, I have seen it posted on Slashdot by ACs on serveral occasions. Guess what, it wasn't cheered as the public's right to know, it was modded down to -1 on all occasions I saw, and people who replied and said that this was wrong tended to be modded up.

If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it. It's a part of American life. It's the obverse side of the "freedom of the press" coin. Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained?

I believe you are presenting a false dichotomy here. You essentially say: Either we are against freedom of the press and pro-censorship, or we should shut up about this case. I haven't seen one post here advocating censorship. We are expressing our own DISLIKE of these tactings, and say that we choose to not buy Sys-con products in the future. Big difference.

Apart from these things I agree with your article. Foul tactics should always be fought against. You must be careful that you don't become the thing what you hate.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the cached article as you suggest.

Jesus Christ, they are apparently trying to publish the address and physical description of all houses and cars of her and all relatives -- sounds like they are being paid by the mafia?

I've never seen such sleaze, even in the sleazy tabloids -- have you ever seen an article published giving the home address and physical description of all immediate relatives of John Ashcroft???

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

The article even, by the way, specifically noted the lock on the apartment door, and the absence of tenant.

What it really sounds like, is an incitement to theft and/or violence.

Re:Honesty

[Brandybuck]

In two words, "so what?"

Freedom of the press does NOT mean a prohibition against press criticism. No one is infringing upon Sy-Con's freedoms by bitching about the gaping absence of ethics.

Freedom of the press does NOT mean slavery for editorialists. If the senior editorial staff of LinuxWorld wish to resign, they have the freedom to do so.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

> It is debatable on the experiment and its controls. But people independent of Milgram hhave verified it.

Like they say: the plural of anecdote is not data. Scientifically speaking, the Milgram Experiment is junk. Disturbing, and perhaps indicative of the power of authority, but scientific junk. There are of course other studies to point to, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment (Abu Ghraib anyone?) and one whose name I cannot recall that created racial divisions among first-grade students using only eye color (this study obviously has serious problems as well, since it's only effective with already-homogenous populations)

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

M'oG went to PJ's mother's home, harrassed her, and then published her address and photos of her home on the Internet. No one did anything like that to any SCOX board member, and if they had, the linux community's name would have been dragged through the mud in the media.

SCO chief suffers another denial of service - on his phone.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

> I've been using Linux since '93. I'm writting this post on Firefox running on Gentoo, with a NAT'd internet connection supplied by a Debian server.

mad propz, d00d! Seriously, how much specific and deliberate effort did you go through for this setup? When a 100% Linux environment becomes the natural default that one goes to because it's just the obvious choice, lemme know.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

Ugh ... FYI: Paparazzi is a plural word already. The singular would be paparazzo ... perhaps paparazze for a woman. Go watch some Fellini, he coined the term.

Re:Honesty

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also real-world observations to back it up, unless you think Germans in the first half of the 20th century are significantly different from the rest of humanity.

But yes, I concede (as the OP) that Milgram's Experiment is scientifically lacking.

Re:Honesty

[poofyhairguy82]

I don't see that PJs religion was being mocked. It was mentioned, but I don't see merely mentioning it as mockery.

Thats because her religion wasn't directly mocked, but instead was used to make false assumptions about PJ and imply worse things about her. For example:

Now, according to one of Pamela's neighbors and fellow Jehovah's Witness, being a Jehovah's Witness is pretty much a full-time job in and of itself.

I have friend's who are Jehovah's Witness, and this is a baldface lie. Sure they spend a good deal of time working for their beliefs, but it is no "full time job" for them. The way this is written it implies that PJ is part of some cult.Also:

Witnesses also don't usually get involved in worldly affairs.

This is the worst. After it is implied that PJ is a freaky religious person, it is then implied that she is a bad Jehovah's Witness. Good ones, according to Maureen O'Gara, "don't usually get involved in worldly affairs," which implies that PJ is a bad JW because the whole reason any news organization cares about her is because she is getting involved in the worldly affair called Linux. Its a cheap shot that is hidden in wording. I study marketing all day (or what it should be called "the way to say things without actually saying them") and this is obviously some unethical stuff.

Re:Honesty

[wrecked]

This article is far more than just "sleazy". As Turner points out, regardless of the propriety of publishing PJ's private information, O'Gara was unable to verify whether she even had the right Pamela Jones, by O'Gara's own admission!
This is clearly unethical. If the Pamela Jones in O'Gara's article is the wrong one, O'Gara breached the privacy interests of a third party.

Re:Honesty

[Master of Transhuman]

Who needs the experiment?

Just look at the behavior of practically everybody you have ever heard of.

Humans are monkey-ass primates to whom pecking order are their whole lives. Period.

Re:Honesty

[HiThere]

It was an expeeriment, though not a carefully controlled one. More to the point, it merely confirmed what emperical observation of the world around us demonstrates on a daily basis, so there's no reasonable grounds for challenging it...though perhaps one might question what error bars should be used for the results.

Being unethical doesn't prevent the experiment from being replicated daily in companies around the world. One may not be quite certain of the degree of accuracy, but one can be quite certain that the general statement of the result was accurate.

Re:Honesty

[Master of Transhuman]

"But the simple fact is that PJ stepped up and made herself a public figure in an extremely controversial case. And there is no constitutional or guaranteed right to remain anonymous.:

Which is TOTALLY irrelevant to the issue in this case.

Your reframing the actual issue to be this crap proves you're an idiot.

The actual issue is that MoG was repeatedly demonstrated by PJ to be an SCO shill - or at the very least an incompetent journalist. MoG then proved this by spending a ridiculous amount of effort trying to "prove" who PJ was (as if it mattered in ANY respect at all) and then proceeded to hurl insults ("harridan") and snide remarks about PJ's living conditions and status and mental state in the process - all under the guise of "trade industry journalism".

In case you haven't seen it, Turner published an email from a journalism ethics organization which completely agreed that MoG's actions were totally beyond the pale.

Get a fucking clue.

Re:Honesty

[HiThere]

Perhaps sufficient funding is arriving from some other source to offset any negative and localized negative publicity?

There's no proof, but that would be consistent with the observed behavior.

Since I find it difficult to presume that a successful businessman could be blind to the risks he is exposing his company to, other explanations elude me.

Re:Honesty

[Master of Transhuman]

PJ's articles stand on their own merits. It is TOTALLY irrelevant who she is (although if she is NOT a paralegal, her legal procedure comments would be much less persuasive.)

As for who is paying her, if anyone, that is totally irrelevant as well. It is NOT totally irrelevant for MoG given that she has revealed inside contacts with SCO, access to information she could not have had without such contacts, and a willingness to inflate the importance of that information for SCO's benefit. All of PJ's stuff is procured from either the court records, people who witnessed court events, and the commentary of the GrokLaw community.

Finally, NO information about PJ's income source or ANY influence on GrokLaw by anyone was established in MoG's article, despite the snide reference to PJ living near to an IBM facility.

What WAS revealed is that MoG gained access to PJ's cell phone logs, which is definitely a violation of privacy and possibly illegal as well.

Re:Honesty

[Alsee]

I wonder if slashdot might be hiring

It's not like Slashdot would have any position for these guys. They're editors.

-

Re:Honesty

[Jetson]

they asked with the publishing of that article for MOG to be pulled and the offices of SYS-CON pubicly distance themselves from MOG. The first part was done but the recent interview showed the Officers saw nothing wrong with the article

What's really interesting is that in the interview Fuat Kircaali says that the O'Gara article was pulled solely on account of the DoS attack and not because of any ethical concerns over the content or style of the article, but as of yesterday the LBN website has a top-banner apology saying that they pulled the article because of ethical concerns. Was he lying then, or is he lying now?

Re:Honesty

[B'Trey]

PJ's articles stand on their own merits. It is TOTALLY irrelevant who she is (although if she is NOT a paralegal, her legal procedure comments would be much less persuasive.)

As for who is paying her, if anyone, that is totally irrelevant as well.

So next time there's a study published which claims that Microsoft has a lower TCO than Linux and it's revealed that the study was paid for by Microsoft, I trust you'll be on here posting that it's irrelevant who paid for the study, and that it stands totally on its own merit.

Re:Honesty

[B'Trey]

I'm no fan of O'Gara. But she's no worse than scores of other reporters out there,

Most people learn in kindergarden that "But Johnny did it, too" is not an adequate excuse for bad behavior. The ones that don't learn it are sociopaths.

You're absolutely correct that the fact that it's common journalistic practice doesn't make it right. Fortunately, that wasn't the point that I was making. The argument that Sys-Con should refuse to run O'Gara's argument is predicated upon the assumption that her articles are particularly egregious. If that isn't the case, and I don't believe it is, then the ill will focused at Sys-Con is misplaced.

By the same token, should we accept celebrity stalking? Celebrity murders? Celebrity kidnapping? Hey, it happens when you put yourself in the spotlight, right? It's your own fault for speaking up and poking your head out.

The law and journalism actually recognize a difference between privacy rights of famous people and the rest of us. O'Gara crossed that line and should pay for it.

Stalking, murder and kidnapping are all crimes, regardless of whether the victim is a celebrity or a random stranger. Publishing addresses and/or phone numbers is not. Those things are matters of public record. If you feel that O'Gara broke a law, feel free to point out which law it was.

You haven't been paying attention: we live in such a place and we always have. You couldn't have a free press without some constraints on it, because otherwise the journalists themselves would be subject to the same kind of abuse.

I suspect you're talking about self-imposed constraints, not legal ones. Legal constraints are concerned with libel and such. If you feel that O'Gara violated those laws, feel free to specify exactly where and how.

Re:Honesty

[LinuxLuver]

Hoesty and integrity do tend to come from individuals, while corporations remain the primary engine driving corruption. Sys-con is no different to any corporation that has forgotten the reason any job needs doing or any product needed making......and instead sees these as as a way to generate revenue and profit. I make my own beer, bake my own bread and grow al ot of my own food now because I no longer trust the folks who make these things to do it properly, safely and to a high standard. They have proven that if they can make more money by derading the product just *little*....they will do it. Over time, those little degradations add up...and the product is no longer worth buying. Over a bit more time, all their competitors do the same thig and NO ONE is selling anyting worth buying...at which point you either drop your own standards - or make it yourself. I have chosen the latter for many staple items. It works for me and I know the thing will be as good as I can make.

Re:Honesty

[mstone]

But the simple fact is that PJ stepped up and made herself a public figure in an extremely controversial case.

I think if you check the definitions, the term "Limited Purpose Public Figure" is more appropriate. A public figure is a famous person about whom the public has a broad, general interest. A limited purpose public figure is someone who makes themselves visible in a specific issue, for purposes of influencing the outcome of that issue.

Both types have to prove actual malice in order to win a defamation case, but where a PF's whole life is up for grabs, a LPPF is only 'public' regarding things that are relevant to the issue in question. Think of it as requirements for admissibility of information in court: For a PF, any statement about them at all is admissible. For a LPPF, only statements about issues where they've 'pushed themselves forward' are admissible.

So.. the questions we have to consider are: "How much of PJ's personal life is relevant to the SCO -v- IBM case?" and "How much of her personal life has PJ 'pushed into the spotlight' on Groklaw?"

Personally, I think the answers are, "damn little," and "damn little," respectively.

Yes, knowing whether PJ accepts money or other compensation from IBM is relevant to this issue. No, her personal appearance, apartment number, the opinion of her landlord, and the contents of her car's back seat are not.

It's also important to note that PJ doesn't stonewall the press completely. She does communicate with people, and she does do interviews. She just prefers not to do them face to face. It's not a question of whether the press can get information from her at all, it's a question of what means of communication they're allowed to use.

Even public figures have the right to refuse to give interviews to specific individuals, at specific times, and by specific means.

In this case, O'Gara published information that, to the best of my knowledge has never been 'pushed into the spotlight' by PJ. In fact, it would be easy to make a case that PJ has made specific efforts to keep that information out of the spotlight. The information does not strike me as relevant to SCO -v- IBM in any noticable way. Nor do I see how approaching PJ face to face could convey any information about SCO -v- IBM that O'Gara couldn't get some other way.

The sole possible justification for face to face contact is to resolve the (IMO artificial) issue of whether PJ "actually exists." And by that standard, O'Gara's approach failed miserably. She didn't establish any meaningful connection between the woman whose privacy she invaded and the person who runs Groklaw. She claimed to be looking for PJ, but pretty much abandoned that approach as soon as she got near the door. Instead, she switched over to taking PJ's existence for granted, and spent the rest of the article listing potentially prejudicial details about the 'PJ' she 'found', and indulging in no small measure of 'we know where you live' style intimidation.

Re:Honesty

[cahiha]

The argument that Sys-Con should refuse to run O'Gara's argument is predicated upon the assumption that her articles are particularly egregious.

No, it is not predicated on that. It is my opinion, apparently shared by many others, that Sys-Con should refuse to run articles that violate journalistic ethics, period. If they don't, I hold them responsible for ethical violations, which means complaining about them and not buying their product anymore.

Your response suggests that you seem to think that if enough people do something, it's OK, and that if it's not illegal, then it must be OK. Thanks for showing us all so clearly what kind of person you are.

Re:Honesty

[surprise_audit]

I still think it's doubtful that MoG even found the correct PJ. A Google search a couple of minutes ago showed:

1. a number of entries about Groklaw
2. a link to a list of speeches by Pamela Jones Harbour (an FTC Commissioner)
3. an ASCII Resume Sample that may not even relate to a real person, let alone PJ
4. a link to an Australian craft site that shows Pamela Jones publishes cross stitch and needlepoint designs.
5. Pamela Jones, nutrition consultant, in Tring, Hertfordshire, England
6. Pamela Jones, photographer, in Florida
7. Pamela Jones, cruise reviewer.

That's just on the first couple of pages...

And then there's three PJ's listed on IMDB:

1. Pamela Jones, actress
2. Pamela Jones, post audio assistant
3. Pamela Jones, craft service assistant

God, that girl's busy... No wonder she doesn't have time for interviews...

Kidding aside, I agree with you - it's a huge violation of ethics, and not just because she supposedly tracked down PJ's mom and brother. I don't think MoG did a credible job of tracking down the PJ of Groklaw fame, and if not, she's published damaging statements about people completely unrelated to the real PJ.

Re:Honesty

[Master of Transhuman]

Not the same thing at all.

PJ's stuff is drawn from publicly available documents. Anybody can make their own assessment.

MS's studies are set up by MS, then executed by an "independent" testing company solely to cover the fact that MS set up the test.

Re:Honesty

[B'Trey]

Your response suggests that you seem to think that if enough people do something, it's OK, and that if it's not illegal, then it must be OK. Thanks for showing us all so clearly what kind of person you are.

How appropriate in a post concerning journalistic integrity, and one where O'Gara has been slammed for "snide comments" and "personal attacks." It's so nice to know that her detractors would never stoop to that sort of thing.

No, it is not predicated on that. It is my opinion, apparently shared by many others, that Sys-Con should refuse to run articles that violate journalistic ethics, period.

Who defines journalistic ethics? It's my position that it's defined by the industry itself. If it's behavior typically found in the press, it's hard to claim that it's a violation of journalistic ethics. It may very well be a violation of what you think journalistic ethics SHOULD be, but that's an entirely different argument.

Re:Honesty

[Paul Crowley]

Have you read "Obedience to Authority"? The experiment was designed to test the role of authority in obedience. The control, therefore, was a similar experimental setup in which the person insisting that the controls be turned up was *not* an authority figure, but a fellow subject.

Though Milgram's experiment would not be repeated today for ethical reasons, that doesn't make it scientifically unsound.

Re:Honesty

[mink]

It requires some actual reading and thinking, but if you look, you will see a previous /. article about ethics in journalism involving the editors in question. They posted a document that is considered in the journalist community the guide to ethical behavior as a journal. I cant see how there is any ambiguity to confusion. It's clearly a violation of the documented ethics of journalism.

The entire senior staff resigns

[WebHostingGuy]

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

uhhh....

[ellem]

what happened? I just got here and ... what happened?

Re:uhhh....

[cranos]

Long story short, well known anti-FOSS journalist posted article that was seriously devoid of journalistic ethics as well as attacking the maitainer of the Groklaw blog.

Editorial staff demanded article be withdrawn by the publishers other wise they would walk. Article was pulled as well as all other articles by original author.

Head of publishing company gives interview basically saying the only reason he pulled the articles was due to a threat of a DoS attack. Otherwise he sounds very much like he supports original author in her attack on Groklaws maintainer.

Senior Editors get pissed at latest example of publisher not getting concepts such as ethics or integrity and decide to show him what they mean.

Re:uhhh....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the recap.

Re:uhhh....

[Anonymous Writer]

I'm assuming from the other posts that the unethical journalist you're referring to Maureen O'Gara. I'm still confused though- is this her or is this her? And don't say the ugly one, because that doesn't help.

Good to see some people have integrity

[Anonymous Coward]

It is unfortunate that this had to happen but it is also unfortunate that many of the media owners seem to have lost their integrity.

I applaud the integrity of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff and wish them the best. Hopefully they will be picked up by a publisher that does respect journalistic integrity and just plain human decency.

Re:Good to see some people have integrity

[ebuck]

I applaud the editors who quit, thier integrity will assist them wherever they go.

However, they should have never needed to quit. Editorial review is something that is normally done BEFORE an article is published. If Sys-con and its sister rags hadn't established channels allowing O'Gara to publish without editorial review, Sys-con wouldn't be in this situation.

Given that their jobs and their role in the company was made optional, I imagine that they were not having a good time whenever articles bypassed thier review.

Fundamental problem with OS advocates...

[bigtallmofo]

We regret that Sys-Con Media has been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate under.

How do you expect companies to make obscene amounts of money with you holding on to your morals like this?

I'll

[Anonymous Coward]

...con your sys!

award winning linux workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh, i remember a company i worked for around the time kernel 2.4 came out that had purchased an award from them for an 'award winning linux workstation' that didnt exist yet. my bosses came to me and said, here: design an award winning linux workstation we can sell quickly because the orders are already coming in. they even got a plaque to put on their wall and everything about their 'award winning linux workstation' which didnt exist yet. honestly i wonder how much of that crap went on.

Re:award winning linux workstation

[greenrd]

Bit of a giveaway name though, isn't it. I mean - SysCon Media - translates to me as "Systematically Conning people". Couldn't they be a little less obvious?

Re:award winning linux workstation

[kevcol]

Name the company. You don't work there anymore, so spill it.

Re:award winning linux workstation

[Anonymous Coward]

Coral?

Dee-Ann LeBlanc's resignation

[TimCrider]

http://dee.linuxworld.com/read/1278292.htm

We showed them

[datadriven]

... didn't we?

Is NOT having someone with our point of view in that position going to cause more problems than those that caused their resignations?

However, I applaud the editors for their integrity.

Re:We showed them

[Anonymous Coward]

Is NOT having someone with our point of view in that position going to cause more problems than those that caused their resignations?

More likely, the lack of anyone on the senior staff with a true pro-Linux perspective will cause LinuxWorld to stray even farther from the values of typical Linux users, which will eventually render LinuxWorld irrelevant.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

The strange thing about this is that the trademarks that they use (Linux Business News) etc. belong to Linus Torvalds. Effectively this means he is endorsing these magazines. What is he doing about this? Claiming that there is no need for morality in the world as usual???

This is sufficient for me to get an account here.

[Toon Moene]

These people are so obnoxious (violating international law and codes of ethics among journalists), there's only one way out: They should be nixed.

Toon Moene (physicist at large).

Grab your copy of the page while its there

[tomhudson]

You left out some important stuff with your cut-n-paste, so here it is:

Why is Fuat the Only Person Who Doesn't Get It

I just got home from my 25th High School reunion, so sorry if I'm coming to the game a little late on Fuat's interview in Free Software Magazine this afternoon.

A few things right off the bat. I've been supporting Sys-Con this week because I believed that this was based on, at worse, a misjudgement on the part of Fuat Kircaali in approving the publication of Maureen O'Gara's original article. It is becoming clear that Mr. Kircaali does not understand or value the basic ethical standards respected by the mainstream publishing industry. I wrote earlier today to the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, who's code of ethics I've quoted before in this space. I included a copy of the original O'Gara article. Here is the response:

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

In spite of this, I have received abuse from Sys-Con staffers accusing me of treason against the company. I've also been implied to be responsible for the DDoS attacks against Sys-Con. In light of this, you can expect further developments later in the weekend.

James

Addendum: Comments from Steve and Dee-Ann

Of course now they're going to claim again that they're being DoS'd, when its only people going for a look-see ...

linuxworld.com has encountered an error!
Oops an error has occurred. We apologise for any
inconvenience this may have caused.

A report of the fault has been sent to the administrators.

Check the URL in which you used to access this page;
there may be invalid characters

Return to linuxworld.com
Thank you

linuxworld.com

Yes indeedy, Linuxword has encountered an error - Maureen O'Gara aka the MoGTroll, along with Fucaali, killed them - oh the irony (and they say web servers have no sense of humour).

Re:Grab your copy of the page while its there

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote earlier today to the Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists, who's code of ethics I've quoted before in this space.

Wow. Excellent editing skills. I can see why we're all comparing this to the New York Times.

Re:Grab your copy of the page while its there

[tomhudson]

Give the guy a break. He wrote some of this stuff at 1:30 in the morning, after finding out he had been double-crossed by the publisher.

Re:Grab your copy of the page while its there

[Anonymous Coward]

who's code of ethics I've quoted before

"whose".

Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[backslashdot]

These people who resigned because of their willingness to stand by their morals are welcome in my home any day.

If I owned a publishing house I would hire them immediately.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[Anonymous Coward]

I think FSM would be keen to hire more editors. But as very few people are supporting them (they still haven't broken even) - even though they have blown this whole issue wide open - they might not last long enough to pay anyone.

If you want ethical journalism about FS subscribe to FSM! They need the support and deserve it. Unlike any of the Sys-Con rags.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[Anonymous Coward]

If I owned a publishing house I would hire them immediately.

But you don't.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[Donny Smith]

>If I owned a publishing house I would hire them immediately.

Probably that's why you don't own a publishing house.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, I love the hypocrisy of slashdotters..

"Information wants to be free", "Stop censorship!", etc. all day

but when someone offends the usual open sores groupthink, you hypocrites WANT to censor people who don't agree with you and tell the truth.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, Troll. You are a moron. So is the grandparent poster. First, about his comment:

I think he's an asshole for having nothing to contribute but a flippant fuck-you to the original poster who was simply trying extending a pleasant thought about how he would gladly harbor and employ those people who had demonstrated honor and value above all else.

Now, as to your comment:

What the fuck does anything in YOUR post have to do with anything I said, or anything else in this topic at all? I believe you are the one that is engaging in groupthink and hyperbole (look it up, dope). I am not being a hypocrite at all, and this has nothing to do with what the F/OSS community may think or do. Your comment is off-topic, misconstrued and complete flamebait. Where are those mod points when I need them?

In short, you are a Knee-Jerk, and the GP poster is just a plain old Jerk. Have a nice day, Troll.

Re:Ex Linuxworld editiorial staff

[HiThere]

If I remember correctly, some of these editors are national award winners. You might have some competition for their services.

and others will fill their places

[Anonymous Coward]

with whatever the management want eventually
you are forgetting the power of greed and a what a fat paycheque can do to sway opinion

there are hundreds of editor wannabes who need that ca$h right now and will do anything to get it

Re:and others will fill their places

[tomhudson]

there are hundreds of editor wannabes who need that ca$h right now and will do anything to get it

Guess you haven't been following the story. The editors were doing it for free. The only ones who were benefitting were Fucaali and the Maureen O'Gara MogTroll

Re:and others will fill their places

[Darkenole]

I agree. I'm sure that there are many graduates from the "CBS/Dan Rather School of Ethical Journalism" out there who will be willing to put time in with the "Devil".

Re:and others will fill their places

[btarval]

"you are forgetting the power of greed and a what a fat paycheque can do to sway opinion"

So who exactly is going to be reading a clearly unethical publication? Let them try and replace the staff which left. I for one will be viewing what the former Editorial staff has to say, because I respect them. I won't waste my time with SYS-CON's stuff any more. And I know I'm not alone.

In order to have greed, there has to be cash. And it seems like SYS-CON has managed to drive a lot of cash flow away.

Re:and others will fill their places

[tomhudson]

My question is (since they obviously don't "geet it"), how quickly is SYS-CON going to bring back their pet MoGTroll?

Maybe that can be the topic of a slashdot poll? I mean, wtf, even the average troll on slashdot has more integrity than the jerk-off running SYS-CON.

I guess its true - life IS like a septic tank, and the big chunks float to the top ...

Re:and others will fill their places

[Master of Transhuman]

Actually I believe that was one of the reasons Turner resigned - there is a rumor that Fuat was NOT going to adhere to the ban on MoG despite having said he would to Turner.

No surprise that your boss lies to you, but it's a good reason to get the hell out before he makes you look like a fool for believing him.

The Fuat interview clearly shows the man has absolutely no problem lying through his teeth.

The total is now 3

[VGPowerlord]

Steve Suehring has also resigned:

It is with some sadness that I've had to resign from LinuxWorld Magazine. Over the past nearly two years I've worked with a group of people with whom I've developed a great rapport and friendship. We were unpaid editors but we devoted a lot of time and energy to it nonetheless. It was a great experience for me and I look forward to other opportunities as they arise.

I may edit this post in the future and add more details.

Re:In a Linux magazine you can't say...

[Pharmboy]

You need to do a little more research. Anyone can say anything negative about Pamela at any magazine. Publishing personal information for the sole purpose of inviting stalkers is not news or commentary, its predatory and unethical.

I don't always agree with Pamela's point of view, but I don't publish mom's address to invite harm to her.

Re:In a Linux magazine you can't say...

[Anonymous Coward]

sure you can. Use well thought out arguments and support them with data. MoG can do neither.

And more...

[Arker]

Dee-Ann Blanc has posted.

This letter has already been emailed to the people involved:

Dear Fuat and SYS-CON,

I am writing this letter to tender my resignation. I have worked hard on LinuxWorld Magazine since its inception, and really don't want to walk away from it as it continues to build up a good head of steam, but given recent events I just cannot continue to be associated with SYS-CON. The complete (and public) lack of understanding of why O'Gara's maelstrom article was wrong, among other things, suggests to me that my sense of ethics is simply too divergent from SYS-CONs and there will be further heated clashes in the future.

It goes on a bit, and of course the entry before it was interesting too. One thing - despite Turners announcement that the entire senior staff was going, it appears that he may have stepped out on a limb, as several of the other editors have not, at this time, announced their resignation. Just Turner and Blanc, so far. I'm hoping to see Walker, Winslow, and Taylor follow suit soon.

Re:And more...

[ptbarnett]

One thing - despite Turners announcement that the entire senior staff was going, it appears that he may have stepped out on a limb, as several of the other editors have not, at this time, announced their resignation. Just Turner and Blanc, so far. I'm hoping to see Walker, Winslow, and Taylor follow suit soon.

I'm not sure where he stands in the pecking order, but Steve Suehring has also announced his resignation, for the same reason.

Re:And more...

[Maserati]

Well, it only gives those two people as contacts for info. That doesn't mean the other editors didn't resign, just that these two are fronting for them as a group.

Re:And more...

[Spunk]

Dee Ann claims here that they all have, though not all have made public statements.

Ten Ethical Principles

[dark-br]

If only more journalists follows principles like this we would have a better media:

1. Define a set of values
2. Tell the truth
3. Respect human dignity
4. Recognize the complexity of human nature
5. Be distrustful of unchecked power.
6. Foster a diversity of views
7. Challenge "group think."
8. Take time to listen and to think.
9. Encourage criticism and self-examination
10. Correct mistakes

Have a look at a brief description of each of them.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[VON-MAN]

Yes, and notice how "balanced reporting" is NOT one of those principles. And principle 6 number does NOT even resemble balanced reporting.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! That is not a criteria for *good* media, that is a criteria for leftist activist media.

If I am looking for enlightenment, I sure as hell won't be getting it from a journalism major.

Save your judgement for your spouse or drinking buddies. Just give me the facts.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[Anonymous Coward]

11. Expect your profits to go down with less exaggerated sensationalism to pull in the masses.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[Watts Martin]

So what you're saying, basically, is that you believe only crazy leftists want a media that's distrustful of unchecked power, encourages criticism and self-examination, and corrects mistakes? Yes, that list definitely suffers from Earnest Politically Correct Buzzword Syndrome, but the core idea of digging for facts and--as much as the phrase often irritates me--speaking truth to power is the core idea of a responsible media.

Always turn a story around: I want my reporters being willing to call bullshit on Clinton as well as Bush. Don't you, regardless of who's sitting in office? Telling us "just the facts"--in other words, just what the primary source says the facts are--without context and checking is not only what leads to most of the problems in the media that "leftists" complain about, but to not-so-left problems like CBS's memo story. Isn't the core problem with that story that they didn't encourage criticism and self-examination, didn't take the time to think, and didn't challenge "group think"?

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[NtroP]

I want my reporters being willing to call bullshit on Clinton as well as Bush.

Ah, I think this is the rub. In many other posts we keep referring to these people as journalists. I think this is the problem with the media today. Everyone wants to be a "journalist" and no one wants to be a "reporter". What's the difference? Let's look at the two words: Journal and Report. When I write a journal I am perhaps discussing factual occurrences, but usually in a heavily personal (and therefore from a potentially personally biased) viewpoint. On the other hand when I write a report, I am simply collecting, organizing and analyzing facts. I should be including in my report where I got those facts and how reliable those facts are.

I feel that there are far too many journalists in the media today. They all want to present every story in such a manner that in reenforces their personal, political and/or social world view. There always seems to be an agenda. This is true whether it's MSNBC, CNN or Fox News. We as a society have become so inured to listening to journalists, editorializing (journalizing?) that we don't even realize it any more unless we hear a journalist from "the other camp" and then we just assume that "our" journalists are just giving us the facts and that "their" journalists are heavily biased.

All-in-all, my sense is that PJ does a good job of presenting the facts (she provides publicly verifiable sources) and when she provides opinions, I can usually tell they are opinions. But then again, maybe it's just because she's a journalist in "my" camp...

You know, just give me a good old-fashioned reporter and let me figure out where I stand on an issue. I'm a big boy, I think I can handle it.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[Anonym0us Cow Herd]

If only more journalists follows principles like this.... [...list of unprofitable ethical principals deleted....]

With unprofitable principals like that, it's a good thing you didn't add...

11. Profit.


But seriously, ethics don't seem to rank as highly as profit. So maybe someone should come out with a more modern, up to date set of Ten Journalistic Principals that begins the list with profitability, and reporting what big advertisers want.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[Master of Transhuman]

And "balanced reporting" is most often used as an excuse to distort the facts to favor the side with the least truthful facts.

That's why Fox gets away with saying "fair and balanced" - "fair" means we let the false information get airplay, and "balanced" means we make sure the truth gets grayed out by the false.

There is no "fair and balanced" - there is only "correct" and "incorrect".

O'Gara's factual statements about where so-and-so is, what is physically there, etc. are (probably) mostly correct in her PJ article.

The intent most certainly is NOT correct. It was a hatchet job about irrelevancies, nothing more.

The only problem I have with the list above is the "define a set of values" - a journalist's job is to uncover facts and then discern the CONSEQUENCES of those facts and then report the facts and possible consequences in a coherent, comprehensible manner.

The discernment of consequences is where values come into play, but in many cases the values are used to distort reporting of possible consequences. This is true on both the right and the left.

Discerning consequences is an issue of using historical and scientific fact and logical inference to determine consequences - it is not an issue of "values". This is where journalists go wrong, allowing their personal prejudices to influence their reporting of consequences by selectively picking consequences that appeal to their bias.

A glass is not half empty OR half full - it is simultaneously both. And that is how it should be reported.

Re:Ten Ethical Principles

[driftingwalrus]

What about academic journals?

What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[putaro]

I respect the folks who resigned. I read Fuat's interview and just couldn't believe that anyone who is involved in any form of journalism just couldn't get what was wrong with O'Gara's article.
But what the hell *is* LinuxWorld? All the folks who resigned were apparently unpaid?? Does anyone besides Fuat make any money for their work? Why would anyone give their time for free to such a tool? I've never really looked at the site prior to this flamefest so I don't have a good feeling for what the heck it is. Was it a useful interesting magazine? If so, why wouldn't they pay their people?

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[jfruhlinger]

LinuxWorld *used* to be a Web magazine put out by an arm of IDG. I worked for that group in the late 90s-early 00s as a copy editor when it put out JavaWorld (still around), SunWorld (which became UnixInsider and then went away) and WindowsTechEdge (which flopped). It was then run by Nick Petreley, if that name means anything to you.

The San Francisco-based group was merged by our parent company into a division called "ITworld," the main site for which still exists. But then came the dot-com crash and all the west coast sites were eliminated ('cept JavaWorld). LinuxWorld was taken over briefly by IDG.net, but eventually was sold to Sys-Con. Don't know much of what happened after that...

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[mcappel]

Hi Josh,

I was the editor of LinuxWorld in the IDG.net era. IDG licensed the title and content of LinuxWorld to Sys-Con in the summer of 2003 for a period of five years.

Sys-Con's business model is interesting, or at least it was in 2003 when I spoke to the company about continuing with LinuxWorld. None of the editors for any of Sys-Con's publications or Web sites are paid. Neither are authors.

The business model of relying on volunteer editorial seems to work because a) it's cost effective if your objective is low CPM, and b) Sys-Con seems adept at finding people willing to work for exposure, c) advertisers and readers don't seem to mind that the editorial product is assembled in this manner.

I did not choose to stay with LinuxWorld when the transfer occurred.

Mark Cappel

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[jfruhlinger]

Hey Mark-

Good the hear from you -- I think we've met in the flesh once or twice.

Anyway, I didn't know that about Sys-Con's model. I think this incident illustrates a big flaw in that volunteer-editorial model: you don't have that much leverage over your people if they choose to quit in a snit.

Also, it raises an interesting question: if Maureen O'G. wasn't being paid to stalk PJ by Sys-Con, why did she do it?

jf

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[HiThere]

Reports have indicated (I don't know how authoritatively) that unlike most she *WAS* being paid. How much I have no idea... and this could be someone's fabrication, so don't put much trust in it.

If this is true, it raises some interesting questions. How to check whether it's true or not I don't know.

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[tftp]

if Maureen O'G. wasn't being paid to stalk PJ by Sys-Con, why did she do it?

Maybe because someone else paid her to do it?

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[mcappel]

...why did she do it?

Have to ask Maureen for her motivations. It's fun to speculate on what they might be. She probably has more than one reason. I've observed her work, on and off, for more than 10 years. I suspect she has experience at a tabloid newspaper. Her reportage has a strong note of commentary and chattiness that has a "inside baseball" feel to it.

Maureen is adept at creating a fuss. Her Microsoft newsletter is called "Billygram," and if that's not cheeky and designed to draw attention to itself I don't know what is. Groklaw has a loyal readership and an editor who shuns personal publicity. What better way to attract attention to herself (and potential readers of her new$letter$) than write an "expose" on Groklaw's editor?

The problem with the story is that it seems calculated to enrage Groklaw's readership. Maureen did not uncover anything that would cause Groklaw's readers to doubt the editor's veracity or motives. I mean, if Maureen had discovered that "Pamela Jones" was actually a committee of lawyers on Big Blue's retainer, then Maureen would have news of value and a story worth publishing.

However, Maureen's story is nothing more than a creepy narrative of an afternoon trying to find someone. It's not clear Maureen found the Groklaw editor's possessions, or if the windows she peeked in were of the editor's house and car or someone elses. The story is bad not only because Maureen didn't find anything relevant, it's bad because what she did find was not fact-checked and has a good chance of being wrong.

--Mark

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember Nick Petreley. He was an OS/2 guy for a while, then he turned into a Linux guy and finally he "found god" or something like that and I think he joined a cult... anyway, I do recall that name.

Re:What the hell is LinuxWorld?

[sfjoe]

...advertisers and readers don't seem to mind that the editorial product is assembled in this manner.

This reader does. The only sys-con mag I subscribe to is the Java Developer's Journal, which is a bunch of crap. Even though my employer will pay for it, I won't renew my subscription. It's a waste of tiem to read. It's nothing but a collection of marketing fluff - advertising masquerading as journalism.

Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Folks, DoS attacks are wrong. It's the cyber equivalent of burning a newspaper down. It gives the people (even if they are in the wrong) a victim status, plenty of sympathy from those who don't know about the issues, and shifts to debate to a place where you can't win. A DoS attack cannot be morally supported. If there is hate speech, or a breach of moral codes, then the way to address it is as the linuxworld editors have done, by resignation, or by legal means. IOW, you answer speech with more speech and lawful action.

Hacking is the cyber equivalent of physical war. Anonymous DoS attacks are cyber-terrorism. Someone says something you don't like, so you burn down their business. FOSS people need to help victims identify their attackers and assist, by any reasonable means available, the identification and prosecution of those responsible. Any other action just allows others to tar us all with the same brush.

In terms of debate, and the view of independant third parties, you are just handing sympathy and support to the other side. Stop it.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[ninthwave]

That is the funny part there was no DoS. There was the slashdot effect. And what is so Ironic is some people have theorised they used the MOG articles to generate page hits because the controversy attracted hits. They just attracted more hits than they could handle with that article. And they are too clueless to realise this.

I love this world it can be so funny if it wants.

Clueless IT rags just need to fade away.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, DoS attacks are wrong.

Excuse me? Do you know where you're posting? Why on Earth are you assuming the alleged DoS attacks came from readers of this site?

Stop it.

Fuck you.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[Xyrus]

I believe what they were referring to as a DoS attack was nothing more than the /. effect. The first time, anyway.

~X~

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[VON-MAN]

Who are you addressing? /.-ers don't DoS sites, they do, however, overwhelm sites by sheer number. It's called the slashdot effect, you might have heard of it...

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[Knaldgas]

"Folks, DoS attacks are wrong.

I agree, but are you implying that this is the case now? Could it be that people are just interested to see what is going on, and SYS-CON simply haven't enough bandwidth (or too slow servers, or whatever).

However, I would not recommend them to upgrade. I recon they soon will find the current capacity plentyful ;-)

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[Hymer]

Are Hackers not anonymous too ??
A hacker is like a Navy Seals operation and a DoS & DDoS are like a mass bombing (like WW2 bombing of Dresden).
..and trust me: we do not want to compare anything on the Internet with terrorism... We do not want fed's all over the place...

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[iCEBaLM]

I will belive they were DoS'd only if and when I see the logs, not one nanosecond before.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Troll?

Saying it's bad to DoS is a Troll?

I'll admit to being clueless... why is saying such a thing bad... some possibilities?

1. it is OK to DoS people we don't like.
   
2. There is no DoS Attack, so I am being duped by the bad people and spreading FUD.
   
3. It is wrong to assume that someone here is responsible
   

To 1... Well that is what my post meant. It is bad to DoS people, especially if you disagree with them. If that's controversial, then my post is even more on target than I thought.

To 2. I don't know whether they had a DoS attack or not. Some people report they did, some say no. Saying it definitely is not happening is a bit unreasonable given that a lot of people (not just Laura Didio and Darl) have complained of such things after doing things considered offensive to FOSS, so it strains credibility that they are all lying or deeply misled.

To 3. Let's see, slashdot has an audience in the millions, it is a free software advocacy site, there are reports of DoS attacks agains anti-FOSS web sites. It is pretty near 100% probability that, if anyone is launching a DOS attack, they read this site.

The only way I can understand that this is a troll is if it is un-acceptable to state that some FOSS advocates are over the top. your mod points are proving my point, folks.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[Cyno]

Any other action just allows others to tar us all with the same brush.

Then they're stereotyping. But you're writing as if you're one of them. Why stereotype people? One kid does a DoS attack and you call the whole free software community terrorists? Do you have any idea who you are talking about?

You say its the cyber equivelent of terrorists, burning down newspapers, and declaring war. First off cyber refers to cybernetics, not the internet. Second, terrorism, wars and arsen kill, injure and put people in real physical danger. Hacking and DoS attacks do not. And hacking is very different than DoS. Hacking involves breaking into computers. DoS simply refuses those computers network bandwidth.

I may not agree with the children who throw tantrums and DoS businesses they don't like, but I certainly wouldn't feel any sympathy for LinuxWorld after reading their unethical propaganda.

Re:Free Software Terrorists... DoS attacks.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

One kid does a DoS attack and you call the whole free software community terrorists? .... I may not agree with the children who throw tantrums and DoS businesses they don't like,

We agree. You've restated what I was trying to get across. That FOSS people, 99% of them, do not support DoS attacks and the like, but the other 1% give the rest of us (I am including myself in that group) a bad name.

Maybe it didn't come across that way, but it was meant to address directly to the one kid. I would have thought people who did not do it would understand that I didn't mean them. Apparently not.

as to use of the term cyber... somebody tell wikipedia, because they've got it wrong here: Cyber is a prefix stemming from cybernetics and loosely meaning through the use of a computer. See Cyberspace, Cybersex. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber ) , here, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-terrorism ), here, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace ) here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking ) and... well you get the picture.

Second, terrorism, wars and arsen kill, injure and put people in real physical danger. Hacking and DoS attacks do not. And hacking is very different than DoS. Hacking involves breaking into computers. DoS simply refuses those computers network bandwidth.

So you are saying that property damage is no big deal. so if you make sure everyone is out of the building before you burn down a printing press makes it OK. If these DoS attacks are for real, then they are costing this company real money. How about uttering a death threat over the phone... doesn't actually hurt anyone... sound OK? How about just putting a burning cross on the front lawn? breaking a few windows (google cristalnacht.) Nobody 'got hurt' in any of those events, so they're OK, right? I respectfully disagree completely with your reasoning.

Regardless of whether it is right or wrong, An arab guy named... oh.. Shaheed (very common name, unfortunately, it happens to mean 'Martyr') walks in for a job interview. You are telling me that thoughts of terrorists are not going to cross your mind? I don't want the term FOSS even vaguely associated with nasty hackers. Look what happenned to the word 'hacker.' You cannot really use it any more. I would like to be able to promote free and open source software without people worrying that I am an utter nutbar. You think that what some random kid does doesn't matter. I think that when they do it in the name of FOSS, it does matter. I don't like it when people supposedly on our side are handing the other-side ammunition.

These people are about as useful to FOSS advocacy as Lyndon Larouche is to the US democratic party. ( http://larouchein2004.net/ ... http://www.publiceye.org/larouche/ ) The 'one kid who does a DOS attack' stands in complete opposition to the values of open source: open discussion and cooperation, reliance on facts rather than marketing or legal constraint, meritocracy.

I certainly wouldn't feel any sympathy for LinuxWorld after reading their unethical propaganda. Agreed. I don't have any sympathy for them. We need to keep the focus on their unethical behaviour, not create a side-show where they can garner sympathy and deflect the issue by giving them the opportunity to characterise us as nut cases.

Free speech is not about letting people you agree with say their piece. It is about letting people you violently disagree with say theirs.

Admiration...

[SiChemist]

James Turner, Dee-Ann LeBlanc, Steve Suehring, I just wanted to express my sincere admiration for your fine example of journalistic integrity.

I want you to know that whatever publication snaps you up, I'm buying a subscription (or subscriptions)!

Re:Admiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the sycophantic crap. These people are not journalists, they're "editors" in the vein of CmdrTaco and michael.

Their "jobs" consisted of refreshing a webpage, pressing some buttons, and clicking "Ok."

I hate to trivialize their work, but it's not exactly pulitzer material.

Re:Admiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you but you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. In fact, I just now looked up the word 'wrong' in the dictionary and it said "See AC poster of crap post #12529119"

These people were the SENIOR EDITORS of the LinuxWorld _PRINT_ magazine. They have, collectively, many years of experience working in the print media.

You are, at best, one who can't be bothered with simply reading the material before posting an opinion. At worst, you are a clueless, trolling moron.

So, instead of admonishing people to "Cut the sycophantic crap." I think you, on the other hand, should suck it up and just FOAD.

Re:Admiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are not "Real" print editors. They are unpaid volunteers who write so badly that no one would hire them at real editorial jobs. All you have to do is read some LW articles to see how poor the writing quality is.

LWM is nowhere near the quality of eWeek. Their online mag is nowhere near the quality of NewsForge or cNet. LinuxWorld sucks. I'm glad the editors are such wonderful, moral people and all, but they need to learn how to write if they want to stay in the business.

Re:Admiration...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're not paid editors. The other poster is correct in that they're consultants using LinuxWorld as a vehicle to promote their services. And none of them have any experience whatsoever in editing print publications.

What they did is to be applauded. But they're not running the place -- Mark Hinkle, who actually is being paid as an editor, did not quit.

Re:Admiration...

[HiThere]

That -1 Troll moderation may have some merit (someone might be fooled), but I think a +5 hilarious would also be justified.

"But dear, I've simply *GOT* to subscribe to Hustler to express my political support for Linux!"

ROTFLMAO

Re:Admiration...

[Zontar The Mindless]

> I hate to trivialize their work...

I guess that's easy enough to do when you're unaware of what work they've actually done, eh?

I don't know about the other two, but Dee-Ann LeBlanc is a recognised tech writer with several books to her credit, including Linux for Dummies and the Linux System Administration Black Book, both of which have been rated pretty highly.

It means we can ignore syscon

[Lifewish]

We can just block the whole of sys-con's output from our computers without catching the apparently very nice people at LinuxWorld in the crossfire.

Re:It means we can ignore syscon

[datadriven]

Right, but my point was about all the PHBs that read sys-con publications. What's to say that the editorial positions will not be filled by Microsoft shills, or others who are not sympathetic to the FOSS cause.

Re:It means we can ignore syscon

[Anonymous Coward]

Though the people with integrity weren't able to stop the problem, so it's as good for them to go before the shit sticks to them.

Re:It means we can ignore syscon

[HiThere]

Sorry. Lots of people read the Enquirer, too. Can't help what they choose to believe. At least now we'll be able to correctly ASSERT that their sources of information are on the level of the Enquirer. (I leave to you imagination the wisdom of such a course.)

unpaid editors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why go through the trauma of dealing with a duplicitous idiot like Fuat if you're not even getting paid? It's bad enough dealing with cretins like this when they're actually putting food on your table, but to do it for free?!?!

Glad to see you guys will be finding a more suitable outlet for your work. For what it's worth, I'm proud of you and hope to follow in your footsteps soon.

(posting anonymously because I DO get food on my table indirectly from SysCon)

Re:unpaid editors?

[HiThere]

Hope you can find a better job soon.

It's a case of female jealousy.

[Futurepower(R)]

This is the offending article: Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net? [Google Cache]

Everything in the article is entirely irrelevant. The article appears to be a good example of the hostility women aim at each other when they are jealous. Pamela Jones of GrokLaw is a far more well-known writer than Maureen O'Gara.

Certainly the article should not have been published.

Re:It's a case of female jealousy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, pray tell, did the parent get modded up to +4 for this comment? They added absolutely nothing to the discussion, save the insinuation that the whole problem was due to the gender of the participants. The poster provided no evidence to back up this strange claim, save that they are both female.

Re:It's a case of female jealousy.

[Master of Transhuman]

I assume he got modded up because he included a link to the article.

In any event, his comment on women seems to apply to O'Gara unless you assume she really is nothing but an SCO shill - in which case she might not really have been emotional about it.

Clearly her article is emotionally vindictive in every sense of the word - and this IS exactly how a lot of women react to criticism from other women.

Leave the PC feminist crap at home. It doesn't apply here.

The Proper Way to Respond to such things

[ZPO]

I find it highly ironic that a company such as Sys-con denigrates blogs as "not real journalism" while posting a link to start a blog on their home page.

The proper way to respond is to vote with your dollars.

1 - If you currently subscribe to a Sys-Con publication, cancel the subscription. Don't do this via email or a web form. Do it via a published toll-free number (this drives their telco costs)

2 - Check the advertisers list. If you've got a receipt for a purchase from a competitor laying around, send the advertising department of the Sys-con advertiser a POLITE and business-like letter. In that letter state that the broad facts of the case and that due to their continued support of Sys-con you've decided to make your purchases elsewhere.

Avoid the temptation to threaten fire brimstone, retribution, or DoS attacks. Such tactics are not in the best interests of anyone concerned. The LW senior editorial staff left via the moral high-road. Please ensure that any community reaction joins them there.

Re:The Proper Way to Respond to such things

[HexaByte]

Don't just unsuscribe if you have a subscription, unsuscribe _even_if_you_don't_ have one.

You think it will drive them crazy finding you and deleting you (on the phone, of course) when you exist in their records, what about if you don't?

YOU: I'd like to unsuscribe to your publication because of the M. O. article it published.

OPERATOR: What's your name and address?

YOU: Bob Baker, 123 Main, Anytown, USA

OPERATOR: I don't have a listing under that name, sir.

YOU: OH! Check under my Wife's name, Betty Baker.

OPERATOR: There's no listing under that name either, sir!

YOU: Well that's just screwed up! I don't want you people to get away with not refunding my money for the rest of the suscription! Let me talk to your supervisor!

OPERATOR: I'll connect you.

SUPERVISOR: Mr Baker, we have no record of you in our system.

YOU: What? Maybe you ought to get M.O. on the case. She can seem to find anybody's information out! ...and so on, for as long as you can keep them on the phone.....

Of course, then you'll have to try it again under a different name and address!

At least then they'll know that even non-suscribers don't like what they did.

LInuxworld doesn't like Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if others already noticed this, but I only just now figured it out. The link to the blog entry came up as a blank page to me. When I tried to view the source, there actually was none: the web server had sent no data. At first I just blew it off as a network gliltch and went to reading peoples comments. But then I wondered "what if I change my user agent string?" I told Konqueror to identify itself as MSIE 6.0 and - hey presto - the page loaded!

A website called "linuxworld.com" is coded to refuse to serve pages to a Linux specific web browser. If anyone needs yet another reason to ignore linuxworld, there it is.

Re:LInuxworld doesn't like Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... no sacrifice on my side. I ignored them before (or better to say I was ignorant of it) and will continue to do so. No value in there. Really.

Re:LInuxworld doesn't like Konqueror

[VON-MAN]

No, i tried some other identification profiles and they all worked (some borked the site to a minor degree). It's probably just that the java scripting in the sites does not recognize the "Konqueror" string.

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking of who is endorsing who, here are the people to complain to and/or boycott. This is to save you from having to go to the sys-con site yourself. More will be added as I (or you) find them.

First letter capitalised for easy sorting. Alphabetical order. Product advertised where mentioned. No links to avoid giving further adverts.

Please be polite and clear when contacting, not angry. Please only do so where you have a real existing or potential business relationship with the company which you are able to cut off or otherwise influence. Please remember that these companies may have already cut off contacts with sys-con and simply their adverts have not yet been removed.

Arkeia / Enterprise Backup Software
Barracuda Networks / Spam Firewalls
Chrystal reports (XI)
Embedded Systems / PDA Sync Software
Forum Systems / XML security of some kind
Fusion Ware / Integration Server
Google (ads by google)
IT program management / office best practices
Infitech / X5 NAS
Jboss (JEEE application server)
Microsoft
Netop remote control
Networld Interop / conference
Oracle
Oracle technology network
Parasoft automated software error prevention(tm)
Quadbase
Qualcomm / Qcamera (SymbianDJ)
Quest software / Jprobe suite
Sleepycat software / Berkley DB Java Edition
Sun / Java Studio Creator
Sybase
Tenable / Network Security
TruePosition / Location based services
Wily technology
XSL Maker / XSL IDE

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[Teancum]

Linus Torvalds basically trademarked the name "Linux" as a way to keep others from doing it instead. This way Linus can control what and how the name "Linux" is used, and more importantly, make sure that some legal idiot doesn't get ahold of the trademark and hold the entire F/OSS community hostage (like SCO) because they got to the USPTO first with the trademark registration.

Linus has publicly stated that he doesn't mind the community use of the term. Magazines and journals (both dead-tree and on-line) using the name Linux were around even before the trademark was formally registered, and this use of the term is generally acceptable. Just don't speak for the Linux development community unless you really are a major contributor to the kernel and what you are saying is generally acceptable by the community (like, sure, we use the GPL for our software, etc.).

If you were to start a business that had the name Linux in it, or used Linux beyond a passing reference (such as creating a new distro that has the name Linux somewhere in the distro's name), it would be a good idea to track down Linus' e-mail address and drop him a line asking him for permission to use the name Linux, even if it is only a matter of courtesy. He'll probably grant it as well, especially if you are nice about it. Linus is not a big company that is jealously guarding its trademarks.

We are all hypocrites

[capt.Hij]

uhmmm... it seems that many of us here are quite eager committ the same sin and out people explicitly. I've prepared an equivalent statement below only using aliases to protect the people involved:

"Selma and Patty Simpson have resigned from their positions at the Springfield Linux Gazette. They sited differences between themselves and their boss, Mr. C.M. Burns. When Burns was asked about an article written by Side Show Bob which identified local nuicance Bart Simpson, Burns was quoted as saying, "Excellent." Ironically, Side Show Bob's article and the resulting attention has only served to promote Bart Simpson as an icon well beyond the confines of our dear Springfield."

Re:We are all hypocrites

[tomhudson]

Wouldn't your paraphrase be more accurate if, instead of having Burns reply "Excellent", he went "Look - a flaming Wookie"? Look at the facts:

1. The "apology" that wasn't
2. The attempts by the editors behind the scenes (long before they took a public stand) to have something done about the MogTroll and her irresponsible "journalism"

So what were they (the editors) supposed to do? Bend over, stay silent, and continue being "enablers?" I don't think so.

Re:We are all hypocrites

[Anonymous Coward]

Selma and Patty Bouvier.

Re:We are all hypocrites

[HiThere]

If they publish the contacts, then they are giving permission for that information to be made available.

Doing this with permission is quite different from doing it without permission (e.g., it allows them to choose which phone number to publicise).

Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

did you consider it probably was no real DoS attack, but just a case of major slashdotting? It caused much stir, and everyone wanted to check the offending article himself. Not every time a server goes down it is caused by DDoS...

Wouldn't matter much anyway

[Gordonjcp]

So even if a dodgy character *did* register Linux as a trademark, and claim trademark infringement, how difficult would it be to change?

:%s/Linux/Fuckyoux/g

Not too difficult, I suspect.

Re:Wouldn't matter much anyway

[Teancum]

Actually, it would be quite difficult. There is already a fairly established base of companies that have used the name Linux in part of their name, and quite a few books and other uses of the name Linux that it would have been a major headache to get all of them changed to another name or term. Just the legal costs alone of changing all of those established business names, as well as all of the derived trademarks (like Redhat Linux) would have been a challenge to modify. It is not like you can do a character string change to all computers on the internet, printed boxes, fixed media (like CD-ROMs), and billboards.

When Linus first sent out Linux 0.1 back elsewhen, I agree that it would have been trivial to change the name. That is no longer the case, and hasn't been for several years.

There was quite a bit of discussion about this a few years ago (when Linus went through the legal motions to get the trademark formally registered in both the EU and the USA). Like I said, it was to avert a major legal mess if it weren't done, rather than ignore the issue. The Linux community really has grown to the size that legal issues have become a major point of contention, and this is something that all people in the computer industry should pay attention to at some point... or any other group or organization once it gets to a certain size (or rocking the boat politically).

Re:Wouldn't matter much anyway

[SA Stevens]

The first commercial publisher of a Linux distro on CD-ROM, Yggdrasil, specifically called it LGX, a non-Linux name. I strongly felt at the time that they were trying to name it something they owned. Also, they were more in the 'GNU' spirit than most subsequent Linux distros, in that LGX stands for Linux-Gnu-Xwindow, something that spread the credit for Linux-based OSes far wider and more fairly than most others have since.

Re:Wouldn't matter much anyway

[HiThere]

If LGX had caught one, it would have been an acceptable alternative to Linux (though I can imagine the arguments about how to pronounce it!), but GNU/Linux isn't such an acceptable alternative. It's longer, it takes longer to say, slashes do strange things to search engines, etc.

Also Zipf's law indicates that frequently used terms will tend to become shorter.

Much as I approve of Stahlman, I can't accept GNU/Linux as a decent choice. We want something slightly easier to say than Windows, not more difficult. Slightly shorter, not longer.

Re:Wouldn't matter much anyway

[SA Stevens]

Stallman originally proprosed Lignux, which would have been no longer than Linux itself. And putting gnu smack in the middle of the name would be appropriate.

Re:Wouldn't matter much anyway

[HiThere]

That would probably have been an ok choice, though somehow the word feels quite funny on the tongue. Sort of slippery, and vaguely obscene. This would probably wear away quickly, but it *is* a bar to the terms initial acceptance.

To bad LinuxWorld doesnt get it...

[WillRobinson]

Instead of viewers going to see whats happening and declaring a /.ing a DOS attack, they could have held up some some integrity, and they would be saying BUY MORE SERVER'S NOW! and jumping with joy over the exposure.

Do we care?

[bavodr]

Do we really care about all this? If there is an online magazine that wastes time with these childish fights and childish actions, I am only happy they made it easy for me, easy to judge that anything these guys write or say is not worth reading or listening to.

There is a large amount of sites on the internet that do have integrity and where the persons involved have enough maturity to write about Linux, about open source and about technology without bothering with sys-con like stupidity.

I salute the Editorial Staff

[btarval]

After those statements by Kirccali yesterday, I was seriously wondering how anyone with any credibiity whatsoever could still be associated with SYS-CON. Which was hard, because there are some good folks there; and it was really sad to see this spill over and tarnish their reputations.

All I can say now is that I salute those who have resigned. There are some things more important than money, and one of them is being able to look yourself in the mirror each morning, squarely in the eye.

It is so refreshing to see that there are people with integrity around, especially with all the sleezy CEO's who seem to get so much press.

I don't know where the Senior Editors are going now. But whereever it is, I want to know so that I can start reading their publications.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, slightly inaccurate in facts (he didn't trade mark it, he had an existing fraudulent registration transferred to him) and more inaccurate in tone. Linus has said that you can use it for writing about Linux. He hasn't said that hate publications are okay (and that's what publishing people's home addresses in this way amounts to). More importantly, even if he thinks he had mistakenly said they are okay, he can also withdraw that permission since he has no contractual obligation to these magazines. This is a simple practical situation where he can make a clear decision.

Avoiding the issue and just ignoring this would be his choice and that choice would speak clearly about him.

Just looking at there page...

[drxenos]

I don't read LinuxWorld, but was just at their site. There were no less than three frontpage ads for MS Windows, and the article "Microsoft Windows costs less and outperforms Linux." Now, unlike a lot Slashdots, I'm not an MS-basher (though it can be hard sometimes!), but I would assume if I want to a Linux news site, I would see them activity pushing Windows.

Re:Just looking at there page...

[Short Circuit]

Microsoft has For a while now, Microsoft has been taking out a large number of ads in venues where people follow Linux. You'll see a lot of them on Slashdot, for instance. I even get them in my Linux Magazine and Linux Journal subscriptions.

It's targeted advertisement.

Re:Just looking at there page...

[drxenos]

I never even noticed!

Re:Just looking at there page...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because LinuxWorld is a linux-bashing site. The name is just there to fool you and provide some semblance of cover for their bashing.

Re:Just looking at there page...

[jack_csk]

Are you serious that there is any Microsoft ad in Linux Journal? I am a subscriber but I never see a Microsoft ad in Linux Journal, in addition to the commitment stated by Don Marti.

Re:Just looking at there page...

[Short Circuit]

I think so. I'd have to look through the last couple issues again to be sure.

I know I have a Windows Services for Unix CD that came with either LM or LJ, but I don't remember which.

Men of principle....

[Proudrooster]

It's still good to see there are men of principle around. Even though it may cost them in the short-term, they did the right thing and can lie down with a clear conscience at night.

Hurrah for journalistic integrity

[Almost-Retired]

Let me join the throngs congratulating you on your choice to distance yourselves from SYS-CON.

I read that interview last night, and came away very disappointed. This guy is so in love with the word media that the meaning of the word journalism simply is not grokked in his vocabulary. I even added to the blog entries there indicating that I still felt he owed PJ a very public apology.

But I fear 2 other things now. first, that he will find other people to fill the vacancies, and two, they will not be so dedicated to the truth.

I was even picking it up from the newstand occasionally, when I hit one in my travels that carried it, but that will be no more.

--
Cheers, Gene

Re:Hurrah for journalistic integrity

[starfishsystems]

But I fear 2 other things now. first, that he will find other people to fill the vacancies, and two, they will not be so dedicated to the truth.

Imagine a whole publication operating to the ethical standards of Maureen O'Hara. Who would read it? I think it makes a great place to collect all the badness so that it can be more easily ignored.

I remember the words of Arlo Guthrie: "We thought that one big pile [of garbage] was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down."

Re:Hurrah for journalistic integrity

[Almost-Retired]

I remember the words of Arlo Guthrie: "We thought that one big pile [of garbage] was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down."

Chuckle, gawd its been years and years since I heard that one.

So I too remember, along with some stuff of his that was used in Easy Rider and Alices Restaurant. I guess that does date me a bit, but at 70, I no longer mind being called an old fart, cause now I are one.

Arlo (& Woody too) left their mark on society back when I was proudly a part of it. To me, then and now, the influence they had was always for the betterment of things, even if it did occasionally cause somebodies cherrios to taste a little funny.

--
Cheers, Gene

Re:Hurrah for journalistic integrity

[HiThere]

LinuxWorld the print publication is separate from LinuxWorld the web site. You can probably still pick up the magazine with a clear conscience...as long as they are legally permitted to use their own name.

Re:Hurrah for journalistic integrity

[Almost-Retired]

TBT I haven't checked the masthead of the magazine, perhaps I should when I dig that one out of my luggage from a recent trip..

I wonder who does own the name "LinuxWorld". It sure strikes me as exactly what that jerk would do if he could.

But I'm reminded of a variation on a theme I first heard 60 some years ago, that 'time wounds all heels' & he certainly fits the definition.

--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Nope, It's Just the Slashdot Effect

[Prototerm]

I had the same trouble this morning with Firefox. Refreshed a couple of times, and the links worked. Even IE6 didn't work at first. Double trouble here, since Groklaw also is linking to the Sys-Con site. Digg.com will probably be next to hammer them.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[gmack]

Actually Linus didn't actually trademark the name. It was given to him in a settlement with someone who trademarked it and tried to hold the entire community hostage back in 1997.

SCO wasn't the first company to make money at the expense of the Linux community.

Maybe not really a DDoS attack

[imroy]

I bet they're not really suffering a DDoS attack. With the news that the editors were removing MOG's articles from the site, I'm sure many are trying to get copies as some sort of "evidence". I know a few people on Groklaw were trying to do so. Maybe some are even just spidering the whole site(s). Add to that all the normal page views of people checking out the controversial article (regular slashdot effect), and you have some serious load on the server(s).

Mind your words please?

[nietsch]

And I think I speak for everyone with an IQ above 90 (that leaves out Terri Schavo and maybe you) that that tone is not the way to do it right.
You are evil as wel if you stoop to their low level.
I can understand that you are upset, but that should be no reason to celebrate agression.

Down the rabbit hole...

[bhima]

Or More specifically my take on the goings on.

I think this whole situation has been brewing for quite some time because honestly why would MOG care at all about some blogger? I think this began when SCO sued IBM et. all in an attempt to stop the fall in their stock price and in an apparently vain attempt to get IBM to buy SCO's IP for a vastly inflated price. However the free software community in general and Groklaw specifically did something that has never been done before: They exposed the inconsistencies between SCO"s public statements, like the "I have the offending code in my Briefcase" comment the German VP came up with, They exposed the money trail (and hence motives) between Microsoft, Baystar and SCO. So the plan that the SCO upper management had (become Microsoft's Anti-Linux temporary shrill, while cashing out on an obviously failing stock) was essentially foiled. All the paid "journalists" in the world couldn't prevent the truth from keeping SCO's stock where it belonged, in the barrel. So all these folks that thought they'd cash out did not. No wonder Groklaw has garnered considerable animosity!

I'd like to see just where Sys-con gets their advertising dollars from. Because I have to believe there is a money trail straight from those who benefit from either an artificially high SCO stock price or uncertainty in the Linux marketplace to those 'journalists' who peddle this cheap FUD.

So in summary I think we owe all of these folks a little bit of our time and we should do what we do best. Contact advertisers and tell them what's going on, and why we tell dozens of people a day not to buy their products. To me contacting government officials has been demonstrated to be useless and unmitigated harassment of advertisers shows to yield the best results

Re:Down the rabbit hole...

[Mister Transistor]

Either that, or MOG was just pissed her SCO stock is in the shitter ;)

Re:Down the rabbit hole...

[Fox_1]

There are still too many people who made money off of the series of lies designed to drive sco stock up. The whole thing was disgusting to watch from the beginning to now, at least the stock finally tanked when the industry actually started to clue in that sco was lying, but damn it that kinda market manipulation makes me sick.

why 'they' are doing this:

[nietsch]

When you see a case where the defense has no case... then, what is the tactic
that the lawyers try?

- If you can't attack the message.

- Then, attack the messenger!

This is what the other side is doing now. It is even to the point where the
parent corporation of the publication(s) in question seems to be anti-FOSS. You
can not run or hide from the truth. Actions speak louder than words. The
publication of this article was an action. I don't believe that even a
retraction will undo the damage.

The next question is this... how deep does the conspiracy against Linux go if
supposedly pro-Linux publications are allowing themselves to be a tool to attack
PJ?

This is a low, low, low day in the history of all corporate entities that are
somehow related to this article. Who in management would approve of this tact?

2 motives exist that result in corporate actions like this. Business or
personal. At this point, if it was a business related action. Then, someone
made the wrong choice and the only choice is to resign with what little dignity
you have left. If this writting was personal, then the parties involved need to
step back and do the right thing (resign)! ...a total absence of class!
How much lower can they go?

The parent is a troll

[pieterh]

1. "Free software terrorists"? You are calling people who write free software "terrorists" because a site got slashdotted?

2. "Stop it"? Where the heck do you get off patronising the readers of this site in this way?

If you wrote your comment seriously then you are both misled (there was no DDoS attack) and silly (using terms like "terrorist").

If you wrote your comment to astro-turf then you should be aware that the readers of this site, while often petty, react rather sharply to people who try to influence them.

And you just made my foe's list. Congratulations.

Re:The parent is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

there was no DDoS attack)

And how exactly do you know this? No offense, but there are ways to ascertain whether you're undergoing a DDoS attack, and you're some asshat sitting hundreds of miles away from the Sys-con servers.

Re:The parent is a troll

[pieterh]

If there is a DDoS attack the first thing one does is to try to understand what is going on, so that one can work around it. The second thing one does is go to the authorities with a formal complaint.

I'd have expected to see either a brief technical explanation of what the "DDoS" was, rather than a vague accusation against unknown hooligans supposedly in cahoots with PJ, and secondly, this backed up by a formal complaint to the FBI.

Lacking either of these, the accusation is worthless and must be taken as an attempt to lay blame for an attack that has not demonstrably happened at the feet of unknown assailants in order to either divert the discussion from the issue at hand, or to win sympathy, or to imply guilt by association ("cui bono").

None of these are unusual tactics, but neither are they convincing.

Lastly, the sys-con web site was most definitely not under DDoS during the last few days, as many people who visited it - including myself - can attest.

Spreading lies is bad enough. Believing and repeating them is downright stupid.

Re:The parent is a troll

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

A very small proportion of FOSS supporters who engage in harassment both real and cyber nature, just like 99.whatever% of muslims are not terrorists. The tiny fraction will have an influence because they engage in un-acceptable behaviour.

It may or may not be true in this case, but you have to admit that it would not be very surprising if it was, as it is a consistent complaint of media people that when a story critical of FOSS is published, they get, almost literally, tarred and feathered. Now you are going to say that those are all 'bad' people. Sure, they are on the other side, but there is ample evidence that folks have indeed DDoS'd SCO, and phone Darl to utter death threats, and the like. This is a recurring theme. I find it hard to believe they are all making it up. It isn't credible. You don't like what he is doing? Agreed, neither do I.

Disagreement is fine, pointing out that columnists are clueless by pointing to fallacies and inconsistencies or logical errors is perfectly fair game. Comparing source code to demonstrate a lack of copyright infringement is absolutely fabulous. Abuse, making death threats and DDoS attack, as the SCO folks, Laura Didio, and countless others have complained of, does not help us.. The probability that someone who reads this site is responsible for those things pretty darn close to 1. So asking them to stop it, is perhaps patronizing for 999,999 people out of a million. How do you get to the 1 ?

I am neither an astroturfer, nor a troll. That my comment was modded as such is a very, very, mild version of the same logic. folks say something you don't like: call them a troll. As for trying to influence people... ummm... I had some vague impression that slashdot is an open source advocacy site. Isn't the whole point to influence people? If people are hurting the cause by very poor forms of advocacy, it is our job to call them on it. They they won't come out into the open and take responsibility for their actions, so no other means are available.

Re:The parent is a troll

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That my comment was modded as such is a very, very, mild version of the same logic. folks say something you don't like: call them a troll.

You got modded "troll" because of the way you expressed your opinion. Should you say "Assuming DDOS actually occured.." and "Those of /. readers who engage in such tactics.." or "The minority of FOSS members.." or used some similiar qualifier, your point might have been vaild. Instead, your diatribe read as if it were addressed to all FOSS community members, indirectly equating us all to "cyber terrorists". Furthermore, your assumption of "probability" of a pre-meditated DDOS being launched by some members of the FOSS community being near 1 is patronizing and in actuality, given the wide interest in this story combined with prolific linking to its source, quite baseless. Taking the self-serving word of the community's foe at its face value while issuing patronizing decrees to us is not likely to produce an "Insightful" ranking.

Re:The parent is a troll

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Ever heard of poetic license? It was just phrased in such a way to grab attention, not piss people off. The DoS'ers (all one or two of them should they exist) are culpable and should feel as such.

The part that was addressed to all slashdotters was not to show any support to anyone who would engage in DoS attacks. If we stand by and say "They deserve it, get 'em!", we are culpable as a group.

It is not patronizing to assume an american footbal fan would watch the superbowl. It is not patronizing to assume a FOSS freak who launches a DoS attack would read a slashdot thread about his target.

Re:The parent is a troll

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Ever heard of poetic license? It was just phrased in such a way to grab attention, not piss people off.

In that case your post misfired ... as did mine, it seems.

way to stand up for your beliefs

[Anonymous Coward]

"(posting anonymously because I DO get food on my table indirectly from SysCon)"

Boy, it takes bravery to post anonymously at /. and take a shot at an employer.

You're a midget compared to Turner and Dee-Anne.

Re:way to stand up for your beliefs

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that make you?

Re:ok so who was it!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't keep us in suspence. We have to know!!

O'Gara, Newsforge and Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

well known anti-FOSS journalist

You do realize she used to work for Newsforge, right? A sister publication of /.? She was good enough for Slashdot and Newsforge then.

Re:O'Gara, Newsforge and Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

She's not a bad journalist or writer, but the tone of her articles was too low-brow (especially for those who didn't agree with them) and the attack against PJ in her last one would have gotten her dumped from anywhere. You might disagree and point to the fact that there's plenty of /.ers and bloggers who have been just as poisonous when writing about O'Gara, but the difference is they aren't writing as journalists. Web articles obviously fall under a kind of grey area but the circulation size, and most importantly the selling of advertising, would define them as a medium. A medium that wants the respect of readers can't get personal unless the target is so big that they seem removed from the realm of mortals (politcos, celebs, very rich).

Re:O'Gara, Newsforge and Slashdot

[Master of Transhuman]

Uh, how is that an endorsement of her ethics?

Or brains.

good for them

[suezz]

I really do appreciate thier integrity on the issue

now as a customer I will be doing the same - I have been on call all week so I have been in another world and haven't seen the article -

but this fuat seems like a worm - I will be sending my letter and cancellation of the sysadmin magazine explaining that if they don't drop the other worm o'gram from their publication whatever I will be canceling my subscription and I want my money back.

Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

If you REALLY want to make a statement fellow /.er immediately cancel your Sys-Con subscriptions. Then go a step further to discourage others from wasting their money on Sys-Con publications.

After all these folks who resigned are geeks of high knowledge and high moral fiber who are making the ultimate sacrifice for OUR community and on behalf of one our most important members. They are standing up for what's right. They are standing up for Groklaw. We need to stand up for them.

They gave up their jobs for reasons the right reasons. If there is a time to hit Sys-Con where it hurts it's now and financially.

It's not just about standing up for our own, it's also about letting these folks know that the /. community is behind them 100% and will not stand for this lightly.

There's a special place in heaven for PJ and the LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff.

Re:Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the dork section?

Re:Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[Daniel Phillips]

If you REALLY want to make a statement fellow /.er immediately cancel your Sys-Con subscriptions.

I tried for a period of a several years to get one of my email addresses off a Sys-Con Linux-related spam list. The url provided for unsubscription simply did not work, and I now believe that was unintentional. The Sys Con spams are now procmailed.

Re:Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make sure you don't visit SysCon sites, at least with Linux browsers, with this script, which you'll need to snip out and run as root

#!/bin/bash
# from a suggestion by jjb
# http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200505141 04521978
#
loc=127.0.0.1
cat >>/etc/hosts NoThanksSysCon
$loc coldfusion.sys-con.com
$loc dotnet.sys-con.com
$loc eclipse.sys-con.com
$loc issj.sys-con.com
$loc itsolutions.sys-con.com
$loc jdj.sys-con.com
$loc linux.sys-con.com
$loc linuxbusinessweek.sys-con.com
$loc mxdj.sys-con.com
$loc pbdj.sys-con.com
$loc symbian.sys-con.com
$loc weblogic.sys-con.com
$loc webservices.sys-con.com
$loc websphere.sys-con.com
$loc wireless.sys-con.com
$loc www.sys-con.tv
$loc xml.sys-con.com
$loc www.linuxworld.com
$loc www.sys-con.com
NoThanksSysCon

Re:Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn the filters!
In the line beginning with cat, there should be two
less than symbols before the word NoThanksSysCon in order to make the 'Here document' work. This isn't the right place to publish scripts :(

Re:Now is the critical time for /.ers support

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't just hurt Sys-Con, unite and follow up until they collapse.

Am I imagining things?

[EdMcMan]

I thought I recall seeing an article about Linuxworld getting rid of that bad editor/writer in question (O'Gram). Or did they get rid of her and they still want to leave?

Re:Am I imagining things?

[kerrle]

You could always actually read the statements from the (former) editors. They make their reasons pretty clear.

Re:Am I imagining things?

[EdMcMan]

Where would I find that?

Details on LinuxWorld DoS

[swsuehr]

As an editor (now former editor) for LinuxWorld, I've been attempting to get details of the DoS against Sys-Con all week and bring them to our readers. Just yesterday I received those details and was working on a story about the DoS to appear in LinuxWorld. Since I don't think the story will be appearing there, it's now here. From TFA: "There is still some doubt over whether the DoS attacks against Sys-Con actually existed or whether they were the result of 'The Slashdot Effect' for lack of a better term. I believe the DoS attacks did exist. I too was initially skeptical but based on e-mail correspondence I now believe them to have happened." More in my blog.

Re:Details on LinuxWorld DoS

[whitis]

Given that you say you only have access to five lines of the log data, your assesment of the situation is suspect. You need a lot more data to determine if wget is being used malevalently.

Oh, and wget retreiving the same page can be caused by a number of things besides being used as a DOS attack. Suppose, for example, there is a persistent network error (such as ICMP filtering breaking path MTU discovery). That will cause wget to retry the transfer many times. Or perhaps (based on the Konquerer problems reported earlier) wget was getting some sort of "Temporary Error: browser not recognized" from the server. An error in a script intended to perform some other function such as mirroring can degenerate into fetching the same page. Someone might have even written a script to download your home page at regular intervals with the intent of seeing exactly what changes were made exactly when. The wgets might have had the same IP address but not even come from the same machine if the IP address turns out to be a cache on a large network. The cache could even use wget as its retreival mechanism. Or, more likely, is used by a web to email gateway (of the old fashioned sort that allows email only users to retrieve web pages) or a cell phone gateway. Sometimes wget is also used to get messages into web logs after mail to webmaster bounces. while /bin/true; do wget -O /dev/null http://www.example.com/your_site_is_handicapped_in accessable.html ; sleep 1; done Which has the amusing effect that when they look at the weekly/monthly web logs, the #1 ranked page on the site is a criticism. Waste of bandwidth, yes, but hardly a DoS attack - rather a retaliation to the webmaster's denial of service through incomptence. Also, sometimes manual wget users load the same page more than once when testing commands such as "wget -O - http://www.example.com/ | fgrep -i HREF | sed ..." while writing a script to extract urls from a site. Or, it could be that there were a grand total of five uses of wget and that your ignoramous publisher didn't know what wget was, googled on it and DoS and found that some crude DoS scripts use wget and was oblivious to its legitimate uses. So, 5 lines in the log show a tool that is occasionally used for DoS attacks but usually used for other things and he concludes that is proof of an attack. Kitchen knives are occassionally used to commit murder, therefore existence of kitchen knives is proof of intent to murder.

I also find the eudora=autourl very odd. Looks like the web link was being distributed by email and got corrupted. Some SPAM filters may filter email by checking the spammyness of any linked-to web sites. wget could be used for the retrieval portion. In that case, the wgets would just indicate that people were bitching about your site by email.

Not to mention the fact that your publisher was a horses ass. After claiming there was a DoS attack (which he described as something like the most massive DoS attack against a publisher in history), he may have been to embarassed to admit otherwise and may have fabricated a few records as "evidence". If he had given you the complete web log five days earlier, I might be more inclined to believe it. But saying, in essence, "on the basis of five whole lines from a web log provided to me by someone who has just proved he is ethically impaired, I conclude that there is some truth to the claims" just doesn't wash. Not that it would take much to convince me that someone launched a trivial DoS attack.

Kudo's for resigning, though. Good luck finding a new gig. Maybe even one that pays.

Re:Details on LinuxWorld DoS

[swsuehr]

Well, based on what I've seen internally and the reaction by the *technical* people at the publisher, I believe that a DoS did in fact occur. I'm in complete agreement with you and everyone else who says that there are many reasons why wget might be used. However, in my experience this just doesn't smell like one of those reasons. There are simply too many requests for the same URL (/) over and over and over again.

I've shared as much information as I can. I don't know that they'll give me more information now that I've resigned but I've asked specifically for it anyway. More logs and more information would've been nice, yes.

My point with the blog entry was to highlight that the DoS was not *just* a Slashdotting and there were other factors that contributed to it, namely the wgets that I saw. Was it a bad DoS? I don't think so, there's nothing that I saw to indicate that. But something more than just a Slashdotting appeared to occur.

Re:Speaking of journalistic standards

[greenrd]

Why is the webmaster of groklaw entitled to more privacy than, say, Jeff Gannon, the Runaway Bride, Robert Bork, the Runaway Bride, Gary Hart, or Linda Tripp?

Well, we can have a debate about that, but what's not debatable was that the offending MoG article was totally over the line. It included spurious details about this woman's aged mother, and her religion, and calling her an "elusive harridan". What possible relevance do those things have to the content of Groklaw?

Relevance

[porkchop_d_clown]

The relevance is in the near certainty that most of the people who are attacking O'Gara also heartily endorsed the outting and humiliation of Gannon.

Here's a related concept: privacy no longer exists. Get over it. Our choices are either pretend we have privacy and be subject to random exposure and to surveillance by the powerful, or to recognize the truth and ensure a level playing field for everyone.

Re:Relevance

[tyllwin]

Yes, well, when PJ is allowed into the White House without proper security checks for weeks on end because of her political affiliations, and when she's hand-picked to pose as a "reporter" so that she can ask softball questions of the president of the United States, her personal details will be a bit more relevant.

Are you pushing the Republican line at every slight opportunity, do you honestly not see the difference, or are you just trolling?

Re:Relevance

[Anonymous Coward]

"Privacy no longer exists"? Shit, I used to knock on Americans all the time but now I just feel sorry for them.

That was a pitiful attempt at a troll.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Here's a better one:

Please explain to me why the aforementioned people have fewer rights than Pamela Jones.

Re:That was a pitiful attempt at a troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't. But no journalist attempted to
a) describe their interior of their homes,
b) harass their mother,
c) watch their house and describe the people coming in and out,
d) describe their religion and due to their image in the public mind attempt to insinuate that they belong to a "nutty cult", and
e) pass this stalking/harssament/personal attack as a "column" upholding all journalistic integrity.

Re:Speaking of journalistic standards

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an unethical bastard, I'd post his phone number (which was easy enough to find). However, I'm not an unethical bastard.

stupid definition of DDoS

[Anonymous Coward]

So the definition of a DDoS relies on reporting the incident to the FBI? Really? That seems a rather arbitrary definition.

Well, we can both play that game. By MY definition, anyone posting to /. under the name of pieterh is an asshat.

Congrats! By definition, you're an asshat!

Re:stupid definition of DDoS

[Anonymous Coward]

You can misquote and insult me all you like. It does not change the situation.

From Wikipedia:

"The investigative process should begin immediately after the DoS attack begins. There will be multiple phone calls, call backs, emails, pages and faxes between the victim organization, one's provider and others involved. It is a time consuming process, so the process should begin immediately. It has taken some very large networks with plenty of resources several hours to halt a DDoS."

Even a small site will do some investigation. I'd expect to see at least a summary of this to back-up what is a very serious allegation.

I'd expect to see some explanation of what had been done to stop the DDoS.

I'd expect to see more than the same facile accusations that every bully boy seems to throw out when the spotlight hits him. "But I've been DDoSed!!! Those damn free software terrorists!!!"

Oh, and posting as AC is pretty sad.

Re:stupid definition of DDoS

[pieterh]

Oh, and posting as AC is pretty sad. ... :-) He says, clicking on "Post Anonymously" by accident. ROTFL.

I wouldn't take their word for anything just now.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite convinced that they *have* been hacked / DoS'd / DDoS'd.

I could presume to account for much of it via the Slashdot effect (which is NOT an attack, though it may "feel" like one to sites that cannot cope), but no hard conclusions can be come to without logfiles, or at least details of the attack, which do not appear to be forthcoming.

Also, note that he blamed whoever went about talking to their advertisers. I note that this is both a legitimate avenue for concerned readers to complain, as well as a big concern for advertisers--would YOU want your company's ad next to a piece which is, basically, cyber stalking, in that it posted a the address and phone number of some poor, elderly woman COMPLETELY unrelated to any story about SCO for all the world to see?

Disgusting. This guy must've taken a cue from SCO in how to handle PR. If he'd have kept his damn mouth shut (something I should think ANY sensible lawyer would have told him to), they wouldn't even be in this mess right now.

Bleh.

At least I don't think they'll take MoG back. Their advertisers won't let them, and I'll have to be SURE to complain via them if they so much as think of publishing MoG again.

not all the editors resigned

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Hinkle, who actually draws a salary as editor in chief, has not resigned.

Turner is to be applauded, but he's being disengenuous here: the "senior" editors were unpaid writers who used LinuxWorld as a venue to promote their consulting services. The _real_ staff -- the ones who draw a paycheck -- did not leave.

Two steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider resigning, but also starting something else up.

Unfair comparison

[Mr. Underbridge]

I'm no fan of O'Gara. But she's no worse than scores of other reporters out there, and to claim her story was a gross violation of journalistic ethics is a biased response.

Well, you seem to be mixing tabloid and news journalism in your examples. Maureen claims to be an actual journalist, not a Papparazza. If she were to get a job with the National Enquirer and publish pictures of PJ next to Bigfoot, OK, fine. But the key is that most certainly isn't journalism.

But this was getting passed as real journalism along with material that actually is real journalism on LW. What Marueen did is NOT journalism. It was a personal attack. It wasn't professional. For instance, you won't see anything like that in the NYT or WSJ. For someone who claims to be a journalist, that was reprehensible.

The response to this piece by many zealots has been much more unethical than the publishing of the article. I realize that the response, in particular the DOS and threatening email, is attributal to only a small minority of OSS and Linux supporters, and that many of the leaders in the field have spoken out against them. But the denial of those actions has been almost perfunctory. We should be screaming about those who smear the Linux and OSS name with illegal and unethical attacks at least at the same volume we're screaming about O'Gara and Sys-Con.

That's not unethical, it's flat illegal. Not to split hairs, but I don't see it as unethical because the people doing it don't claim to have a code of ethics. To me, revenge in kind isn't necessarily unfair. I agree it's a bad idea because the OSS community is fighting an uphill PR battle anyway, and fighting it against someone with a media outlet isn't smart. But to continue my prior point, that ain't journalism either.

If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it. It's a part of American life. It's the obverse side of the "freedom of the press" coin. Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained? There are those reading Slashdot who do, in fact, live in such a place. Ask them which is preferable.

Again, ethics vs. law. I don't think anyone's calling for overturning of the 1st Amendment. People are criticizing Maureen, not the law. What Maureen did wasn't illegal. It was certainly unethical as a journalist, though not as the hack Paparazza that she is.

I basically get what you're trying to say, but I think you can be objective and still be nauseated by what she did as someone who claims to be a journalist. Thankfully, she finally made it much easier to discredit her, which to me made that article a bonehead move on her part.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

What Marueen did is NOT journalism. It was a personal attack. It wasn't professional. For instance, you won't see anything like that in the NYT or WSJ.

You either don't read the WSJ or you turn a blind eye to the hatchet jobs they do on anyone who doesn't agree with their ideology. They even go as far as defending treason when it fits their views. So don't pretend this crap isn't prevalent...

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you seem to be mixing tabloid and news journalism in your examples. Maureen claims to be an actual journalist, not a Papparazza. If she were to get a job with the National Enquirer and publish pictures of PJ next to Bigfoot, OK, fine. But the key is that most certainly isn't journalism.

Then why was CNN running "Is Jennifer pregnant??" articles last week.

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's not unethical, it's flat illegal. Not to split hairs, but I don't see it as unethical because the people doing it don't claim to have a code of ethics."

Unethical is unethical is unethical. You might just as well say, "I don't see it as illegal because the people doing it don't claim to have a code of legality."

In other words: ethics and law are different things, but both exist. If you adopt total relativism in ethics, inevitably it carries over to law, sort of, and you then have to justify the war criminals who were "just following orders", and have all sort of other unpleasant consequences.

Re:Unfair comparison

[frank_adrian314159]

If she were to get a job with the National Enquirer and publish pictures of PJ next to Bigfoot, OK, fine.

You have your tabloids mixed up. The Enquirer no longer does Bigfoot photos. If we PJ put next to J Lo or even Wil Wheaton, they might publish the picture - but not Bigfoot. What you were searching for was the Weekly World News, still the home of the politician-endorsing space alien, Bat Boy, and other denizens of the amazing world in which we live.

I've seen others make this mistake, too. I hope it doesn't continue. Imagine the disappointment of someone wanting to read about Bat Boy, buying the Enquirer by mistake and only finding John Travolta and Tom Cruise. It would be tragic.

Re:Unfair comparison

[dgatwood]

Because the major news outlets lost all journalistic integrity somewhere around 1994.

No, seriously. It was when they started trotting out stories about blow-jobs in the oval office. That was the day I stopped caring what the major news outlets had to say about ANYTHING. You can actually get more accurate and balanced reporting from the Daily Show, which is really rather sad.

And don't even get me started on Fox News....

Re:Unfair comparison

[hawk]

buying the Enquirer by mistake and only finding John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

Wow. I hadn't even realized they were dating!

Maybe they'll make a movie together, and I can miss both at once!

:)

hawk

Re:Unfair comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, "frank", as our local expert I guess we'll have to take your word for it. Please let us know if your daily tabloid reading turns up anything else of interest.

Re:Unfair comparison

[sconeu]

Because the major news outlets lost all journalistic integrity somewhere around 1994.

Try 1974. Everyone wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.

Re:Unfair comparison

[mrt68]

Try 1974. Everyone wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.

If I understand you correctly, you are equating electoral fraud with a blow job. Is that correct?

Re:Unfair comparison

[sconeu]

No, I'm saying that post-Watergate, the press wanted to *be* the story instead of just reporting it.

Re:Unfair comparison

[mrt68]

Oh. I agree.

Turn the tables

[Aggrav8d]

As I understand it MOG published the addresses of PJ and PJ's family in what is generally interpreted as a hostile attack.

I suggest we turn the tables by sending PJ and PJ's relatives candies, flowers, thank you cards, and plush toys. The ones they don't want they can give to good will.

Re:Turn the tables

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that's a great idea. Someone setup a paypal/somethingorother/defense fund. And we buy them a bunch of flowers!

Re:Men of principle?

[Trailer Park Boy]

Dee-Ann LeBlanc is a woman.

Re:Speaking of journalistic standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be too much to ask that someone exactly explain what the controversy was that drove them to resign?

Can't read more than the headlines, eh?

If nothing else, at least your user name appears to be accurate.

Suering and Turner say there was a DDoS

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.braingia.org/webnotes/

Hmm. The guys who RESIGNED from LinuxWorld say there was a DDoS.

Gee, you think they'd know more about it than some asshat quoting wikipedia?

Oh, and posting as AC is pretty sad.

Coming from an AC that's rich.

Re:Suering and Turner say there was a DDoS

[pieterh]

What he describes are a series of as many as five "wget" commands along with the Slahdot effect. Wget is a standard Linux tool for downloading a web site. It is hardly a standard or even potent DDoS tool... more likely it is either a regular "web leech" copying the entire site for off-line review...

I've seen real organised DDoS attacks and comparing this to one of those is just a sick joke.

Allow me to quote you some of the pertinent statements from Suering's page:

"it certainly doesn't appear that logical steps were taken to mitigate the attacks."

"the total of five lines of logs that I received"

"...the biggest cyber attack in history any media company was ever subject to!"

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[Anonymous Coward]

You are supposed to register your use of the Linux trademark here:

http://www.linuxmark.org/

Cost is between $300 and $600.

I don't know how many people bother with this however because the Linux trademark has never been actively enforced.

Put up or shut up buddy

[crawling_chaos]

Hmm, an anonymous accusation of an illegal act with no backup and it gets modded up. And we criticize Syscon's ethics? If they're in the sewer of journalistic ethics (and they are), then this post is in the composting heap at the treatment plant.

Name some names.

Re:Put up or shut up buddy

[HiThere]

Why do you say that accusing an unnamed company of what probably ISN'T an illegal act (though a highly sleazy one) is on a par with Sys-con? It would be more on a par if he had named someone he didn't like.

That he's appearantly assuming that such behaviors are common is a bit disconcerting... but it serves as fair warning to investigate the awards that any company may use to justify it value.

If he believes that the deed was instigated by some particular manager who no longer works for the company, it is much better ethics to refuse to name the company. If he isn't certain that it was at the manager's instigation, it's best not to give his name, either.

It's frustrating to not know who he's talking about, but it's probably better ethically.

Re:Put up or shut up buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

While what he described was extremely sleazy, as far as I can see it was not actually illegal.

He spams, too

[catman]

On friday, May 13, I got an unsolicited message at my work address, signed by the owner of sys-con telling me I was eligible for a free subscription to some magazine. It also told me I was currently subscribed to his mailing list as xxxx@blahxx.com
and "follow this link to unsubscribe". Yeah, right-

I'll take you up on that bet....

[Anonymous Coward]

Two of the guys quitting LinuxWorld in protest believe there's a DDoS:

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149489&c id=12529258

Only in the minds of slashdot readers is there a slashdot effect. In the corporate world it passed away a long time ago.

Re:I'll take you up on that bet....

[imroy]

You'll take me up on the bet, yet you post as an AC? Right. And post a link to supposed evidence to back up your claim. But when I view the comment, there's another person replying, raising similar doubts to mine about the editor's claims . And on top of that, he quotes a part of the editor's blog saying that the sys-con servers had previously been hit by the slashdot effect, resulting in their web sites being "unavailable or severely degraded". The slashdot effect is alive and well!
I stand by my original assertion.

Make a Real Difference

[mchappee]

If you want to help these people out, start writing to the advertisers of Sys-com urging them to take their business elsewhere. If they start pulling out it won't be long before a change in management occurs. Here are some of the advertisers:

Revelation Software
EV1 Servers (they don't need any more negative attention)
Software AG
Forum Systems
Skyway Software
Oracle
Altova
Sugarcrm
Mindreef

Believe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe.

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149489&c id=12529258

Re:Believe.

[iCEBaLM]

A DoS via wget? The most inefficient way to DoS a site? Yeah, I don't think so. More like people trying to mirror it.

BOYCOTT SYSCON AND ITS SPONSORS

[tannhaus]

It's been said before in little side comments and such, but I'm adding something else to it:

Don't just cancel your subscriptions to syscon publications, boycott their sponsors. Make it a liability for someone to advertise with SYSCON. Don't just alert SYSCON that you're buying from their advertiser's competiters, alert the advertisers that if they continue advertising in SYSCON publications, then you will send all your business to their competitors.

It wouldn't take much of this until the real person that should be resigning does: Fuat Kirccali

People have asked how this is different than other public figures like the runaway bride and I'll tell you how: Do you know the runaway bride's address? Do you know the addresses of her family? Would you have a reason to attack the runaway bride?

Part of ethics is determining each case on its own individual merit and issues. Pamela Jones runs a blog. The internet is famous for its anonymity. Your words stand for themselves. Even if you publish something controversial, you don't have to fear physical reprisal. If someone hunts you down, that's a stalker. There are laws to stop them. In essence, Maureen O'Gara did the work of a stalker and made the information available for those who would wish to do PJ physical harm. There was nothing newsworthy to make this necessary. There was no justification.

good thing you don't work in IT...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh. Pretty lame attempt to justify your stupidity, asshat, and avoid admitting you were 100 PERCENT WRONG.

You may want to check out remedial reading programs, as well: Seuhring did indeed say that the claims about it being the largest DDoS attack ever were far-fetched and stupid.

By the way, on his blog, James Turner also posits there was a DDoS.

Let's see: we have in-depth analysis from two guys close to the situation -- and who quit the positions in protest, so there's no reason for them to lie to make SYS-CON look better -- and we have some pathetic asshat on slashdot, throwing out analysis from his table next to the water heater in his mom's basement. Hmm.

Numbers?

[SA Stevens]

It sounds good to say 'the entire senior staff' has resigned, but I can't find mention of more than one 'senior' staffer resigning on the announcement page. Was there more than this one fellow who resigned? There are two names listed as contacts at the bottom of the announcement. Does this mean there were TWP staffers?

Re:Numbers?

[SA Stevens]

(insert TWO in place of TWP in above)

Re:Numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a third one... search postings and you'll find it.

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sending my letter to Microsoft right now!

Jones' religion

[hedrick]

Some comment has been made about Jones' religion, which appears to be Jehovah's Witness. As moderator of soc.religion.christian I try to keep informed on the major Christian and almost-Christian groups. However I will warn you that I haven't had a lot of personal contact with JW's. I wouldn't quite characterize the JW beliefs as "loopy". Their most serious theological problem is rejecting the Trinity, but that's a judgement reasonable people can disagree about. It's not the sort of science fiction that you'll see in theology that I *would* characterize as loopy. I'd say it's just wrong. The most serious objections are to the authority claimed by their central organization, and the way it has somes been exercized, e.g. in prohibiting transfusions and deemphasizing higher education, as well as discipline that is considered excessively harsh by many other Christians. But none of this is relevant to the credibility of individual JWs in matters such as legal commentary. Their overall ethics, including matters such as proper handling of the truth, are as far as I can tell the usual ones. And as a moderately high-pressure sect, their members are probably more likely than the average actually to follow the official ethics. Obviously stereotypes are misleading -- you need to judge individuals. But to the extent that the JWs create a stereotype in my mind, it is not one that would discredit the credibility of Groklaw. I wouldn't necessarily depend upon a JW's judgements on how to live my life, but I find nothing improbable about a JW being an honest and competent paralegal.

Here is the difference.

[khasim]

When MOG got the info on PJ, NONE of it showed that PJ had any special contacts or services with IBM.

With Gannon, it was shown that he had LOTS of special contacts and such with the White House.

The story wasn't about Gannon. The story was about how the White House had no problems giving special permissions to a gay hooker and allowing him to use a fake name to lob soft questions.

Now, IF MOG had turned up evidence that PJ was supported by IBM or IBM's lawyers and faked the "privacy" issue in an attempt to hide that connection, then THAT would have been the story.

But even THAT would NOT have been a reason to publish her Mom's address and pictures of her house.

Since MOG could NOT dig up the story she wanted to publish ... she published the info she had and refered to PJ as a "harridan".

If Gannon had NOT had any special priviledges from the White House and had NOT used a fake name, then publishing personal details about him would also be over the line.

Here's a related concept: privacy no longer exists. Get over it.

Don't try to hide behind that bullshit.

Our choices are either pretend we have privacy and be subject to random exposure and to surveillance by the powerful, or to recognize the truth and ensure a level playing field for everyone.

Digging into people's lives takes time and money.

There will ALWAYS be a discrepency between what the average person can spend (time and money) digging and what "the powerful" can spend.

So there will never be "a level playing field" like you believe.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[SA Stevens]

It's interesting that one of the main ways that pundits and hangers-on have gotten mileage and benefit out of Linux have been due to 'crisis' situations where 'Linux is at risk.' This goes way back. We have the 'trademark' controversey. I remember a controversey way back where Intel wanted a proprietary I/O API (may be wrong on details) that was gonna shut Linux out of server hardware. The whole SCO controversey. And there are numerous other instances.

Linux plods along, a convergent code base that just continues to grow stronger and better. But gadflies and pundits on the 'fringe' (and what else can journalists, wether pro- or anti-Linux be called?) make their grocery money by stirring the pot. Now we even have a derivative-case, where the 'crisis' is that a 'journalist' (this 'PJ') is the crisis itself, as well as one of the benfactors of the crisis.

Same as it ever was.

Milgram

[arete]

I believe there are some flaws in the experimental details.

More importantly, this is a clearcut case of finding only what you were already looking for and not looking for other options. Experimental results in psychology often don't represent the underlying truth the experimenter presents in the summary.

Personally, I think the moral of this experiment is much more likely to be

"many people are A$$holes if they think they're guaranteed to get away with it. This is much more true if they don't know the victim."

Put that way, I'm surprised it's only 65%. And it completely explains

The experiment depends heavily on the flawed assumption that "complaining about something" = "tendency to not do it" A presumption that is to me obviously not true - think about the stereotypical yelling marriage... There have been a variety of studies demonstrating that people's verbal behavior are often - even usually - far removed from their actions.

At best the experiment demonstrated that:
1) Most people are well trained to _give the appearance_ of not wanting to violate societal norms.
2) Most people will violate the norms _as_ they complain about them for _some reason_ especially if they can believably be told that consequences will be absent. Those reasons might be:
a)authority figures.
b) sadism if consequences are percieved to be absent.
c) curiosity when presented with a situation where consequences are absent.

It is completely unclear from the experiment what the impact of these various factors is.

bullshit supposition

[cahiha]

If Daryl McBride's personal information had been published (and it seems like at some point it was, although I can't find the story now), everyone would be cheering the public's "right to know."

If someone published McBride's home address in an article, that would be unethical. If it was a journalist who did it, that journalist would deserve to lose their job and be banished from the profession. The public does not have the right to know someone's home address as part of a published article. (The public does have a right to know someone's home address as part of public records, if it is available in that way, which you can go and look up for yourself.)

And what people actually feel about McBride has nothing to do with it. I wouldn't mind having his new home address be known as a shared cell in the state penitentiary. But what I or anybody else feels about McBride is irrelevant to what crosses the line of journalistic ethics.

Please correct me if I'm wrong ...

[khasim]

But, from your "blog" ... this is an example of part of the "DDoS":

127.0.0.1 - - [NN/May/2005:NN:20:44 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0"
200 49107 "-" "Wget/1.9.1" eudora="autourl"

Now, from one of my logs on my home server:

192.168.1.188 - - [01/May/2005:13:52:27 -0700] "GET /~conner/ HTTP/1.1" 200 4626
"-" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050405 Firefox/1 .0 (Ubuntu package 1.0.2)"

So ..... I'm going to guess that you've "blocked" the IP address of the machine(s) doing the wget with "127.0.0.1". But why you would do this, I don't understand.

Wouldn't your first step be to locate the machines with those IP addresses at that time and see if they were faked or not?

If they were not faked, wouldn't it make sense to see if you could contact the owners of those machines?

This may be far less than a DDoS "attack".

It may just be several people attempting to download EVERYTHING on sys-con's site. Maybe in an attempt to get the material in a local cache so it wouldn't be destroyed by sys-con.

It would only appear to be a DDoS if those addresses were assigned to machines that the owners DID NOT use to wget those files.

As you state:

My opinion is that the DoS was a combination of a few factors. First, the sites were Slashdotted twice this week. I distinctly recall conversations with Sys-Con in the past when the sites got Slashdotted and then became unavailable or severely degraded. So, in effect, a Slashdotting could hamper the performance of the Sys-Con sites anyway. Not only did the sites get Slashdotted, but other news outlets picked up on the stories as well thus generating even more traffic. Finally, the proverbial straw that broken the camel's back were the extra requests generated by the HTTP GET requests.

I believe that you're still over-using the "DoS" statement.

You should have all the info to verify those wget commands as legitimate (people archiving sys-con's site prior to a "cleansing") or an attack (machines hitting sys-con's site without their owner's knowledge).

Since the machines were already straining under the /. effect (compounded as other media sites picked up the story), the additional archiving would easily have caused the server errors that many people saw.

Just because a server cannot hold up under the demand does NOT make the demand an "attack".

Re:Please correct me if I'm wrong ...

[swsuehr]

I apologize, I thought I made it clear that I was masking some non-essential bits of information in the log examples. One of those bits was the IP address. I replaced it with localhost in the example. I didn't feel is necessary to put the real-world IP in the example.

127.0.0.1 - - [NN/May/2005:NN:20:44 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 49107 "-" "Wget/1.9.1" eudora="autourl"

As you and others have now pointed out, it could be that people were wget'ing the site for other reasons. However, that's not how it looked. All the requests that I saw were from the same IP and were all for the root / URL.

Unfortunately, I don't have all of the information. I agree that it would be nice to have more. I have what I have and now you have what I have, minus two lines of log file that are virtually the same as the three already shown.

I'll be updating the blog entry with this.

Send money to Groklaw.

[khasim]

Don't send that stuff to her relatives.

It would only give the media another circus to cover which means more of an invasion.

The WSJ has its limits

[cyberformer]

The WSJ frequently prints distortions, smears and outright lies, but these are usually confined to its opinion page. And even when it does run hatchet jobs masquerading as news, it doesn't print the home addresses and phone numbers of its targets, let alone their relatives.

Most of the tabloids are above that too. They'll often invade the privacy of a public figure, in ways that are arguably unethical, but they won't print photographs, phone numbers and addresses of celebrity's relatives.

Re:The WSJ has its limits

[Mr. Underbridge]

Most of the tabloids are above that too. They'll often invade the privacy of a public figure, in ways that are arguably unethical, but they won't print photographs, phone numbers and addresses of celebrity's relatives.

That's a good point. Since most of the tabloids have raised their standards, Maureen is well below them now.

I call troll.

[Bozdune]

Go back under your bridge. If you read Groklaw, you know that it is hardly a "blowhard blog." Rather, it is a collection of commentary and court documents on the SCO/IBM case and on other legal issues affecting the FOSS community. If you don't like the commentary, you can add to it -- thoughtful comments from any point of view are welcomed.

Furthermore, PJ has been quite forthright about who is paying her (nobody), and she's already defended herself against far more clever attacks than your silliness. The simple basis for her credibility is the fact that every commentary she posts is heavily footnoted from court documents, all of which are carefully documented and archived for posterity. If you don't agree with her commentary, you can argue from the facts, which are helpfully provided for you right on the site. There is a strong reason why Groklaw is heavily trafficked by both IBM and SCO attorneys -- and that is that it is an informational site of high value to both parties, as well as to interested observers, which you, apparently, are not.

Bottom line: PJ's identity is irrelevant, and so, my little snowflake, are you.

Re:I call troll.

[IntlHarvester]

(You present yourself as a hardliner Groklaw fanboy/girl, so perhaps it isn't worth responding, but ...)

Groklaw does indeed focus on legal commentary, but it also somewhat frequently turns into a "blowhard blog". There quite a few lengthy deconstructions of trade journal articles (not necessarily related to SCO/IBM), and often just blatant editorializing, particularly with regard to Sun Micro.

Claiming that "every commentary" is footnoted legal discussion is just plainly false, and I'm not sure why regular Growlaw readers keep insisting it is true.

I guess the attraction of Groklaw wore off for me when the word "FUD" started to get tossed around inconsequentially (particularly when the original piece seemed to be well meaning), and I started reading J Anonymous Paralegal's opinions on Sun's enterprise business strategy. Once you get out of the legal beagle realm, the identity of the commentator becomes more relevant (to me anyway).

Re:I call troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong -- PJ posts ridiculous editorials every now and then with no basis in fact. If someone in the press disagrees with her in any way, she immediately accuses them of being a Microsoft or SCO schill or supporter. PJ also regularly deletes all well-constructed posts that express dissenting opinions from hers.

PJ has few friends left in the world of online journalism because she declares war on everyone who disagrees with her -- including people like me, who were once friendly and cooperative with her. It's hard to be PJ's colleague when she pulls shit like this. She is indeed paranoid, and she is not a valid journalist; she is only a blogger that has too much individual power.

I'm posting as AC because I am an online journalist. I was once friendly with PJ until she accused me of being a Microsoft supporter for an article I wrote (it had nothing to do with MS or SCO), totally ruining any respect I had for her. She even went so far as to talk to my bosses about disciplining me or removing the article simply because she disagreed with it. I hate Microsoft and SCO, and all I do is write about free software, generally in a very positive light. But I also hate PJ. Groklaw's power is in the community, not in PJ. Its value is in legal analysis, not in publishing uneducated and often grievously inaccurate opinons of the media and related issues. If she'd STFU and just stick to legal analysis, which is what she does best, Groklaw would be a much bigger asset to the community. It was PJ attacking journalists that started the whole MOG thing, and now look what it has degenerated into. You'll see this again and again as she continues to act like a moron.

And like the grandparent poster says above, who PJ is and who is paying her are of paramount importance to her journalistic integrity. It is in the public's interest to know these things. Did MOG fuck it all up? Yes. But MOG is a lunatic, as anyone who has met her in person will attest. What she did was an illegal hatchet job. I encourage real journalists to do it the right way and tell us what we need to know.

Re:I call troll.

[Master of Transhuman]

"I'm posting as AC because I am an online journalist."

No, you're posting as AC because you're actually what AC means.

You work for Sys-Con, perhaps?

PJ has every right to comment on anything she wants to on her own blog - just as O'Gara has every right to speak any bullshit she wants to.

The difference is that PJ claims to be a blogger doing journalism vis-a-vis the legal basis of the SCO case, and MoG claims to be doing "accurate factural journalism" when in fact she is a shill for SCO.

And no, who she is is utterly irrelevant to ninety-nine percent of her articles - unless she is not in fact a paralegal, in which case her comments on legal procedure would be called into question. The fact that few commentators on GrokLaw have done so would indicate that she is in fact correct about her legal comments.

One thing I notice about so-called journalists like you (and everybody in broadcast journalism( is how thin-skinned the industry is. God forbid anybody criticize a so-called "journalist"! They all have a conniption fit. They immediately escalate it to "censorship" and "restraint of trade" and "freedom of the press." "Freedom of the press" to attack anybody they want and kowtow to anybody with the power to grant them an interview is what they mean.

Gutless punch of punks.

Re:I call troll.

[Bozdune]

Oh, please. First you agree that Groklaw "does indeed focus on legal commentary," and then you complain that not every commentary is footnoted legal discussion. Make up your mind.

My personal opinion of Groklaw is irrelevant, but here it is: PJ is a talented commentator on legal issues and has been a catalyst for the necessary and useful anti-SCO mobilization that was (and is) required to send them back to the hole they crawled out of.

PJ's other opinions are much less useful, although I am interested also in the software patent work she is doing.

As far as who she is, I couldn't care less.

Re:I call troll.

[IntlHarvester]

Make up my mind? You conceded your argument, not very politely.

Re:It's a case of female jealousy -> Sexist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point is just as valid if you replace 'jealous women' with 'jealous people'.

Why do you single out women for your criticism?

Re:Ten Ethical Principles: Forward to CBS!

[jabster42]

1. Define a set of values
2. Tell the truth
3. Respect human dignity
4. Recognize the complexity of human nature
5. Be distrustful of unchecked power.
6. Foster a diversity of views
7. Challenge "group think."
8. Take time to listen and to think.
9. Encourage criticism and self-examination
10. Correct mistakes

Someone should send this list to CBS.

-john

Now I'm really confused.

[khasim]

I apologize, I thought I made it clear that I was masking some non-essential bits of information in the log examples. One of those bits was the IP address. I replaced it with localhost in the example. I didn't feel is necessary to put the real-world IP in the example.

I understand that part. It was the IP address I was talking about.

As you and others have now pointed out, it could be that people were wget'ing the site for other reasons. However, that's not how it looked. All the requests that I saw were from the same IP and were all for the root / URL.

Then it would NOT be a DDoS.

It sounds more like the /. effect and ONE machine trying to cache sys-con's entire site.

So it should be VERY easy to track down the machine using that IP address at that time and find out whether it was an "attack" or an attempt to cache their server.

Here's the first step: http://www.arin.net/whois/
That should be able to tell you who owns that block.

Unfortunately, I don't have all of the information. I agree that it would be nice to have more. I have what I have and now you have what I have, minus two lines of log file that are virtually the same as the three already shown.

And that's the problem. Yet in your "blog", you state:

There is still some doubt over whether the DoS attacks against Sys-Con actually existed or whether they were the result of 'The Slashdot Effect' for lack of a better term. I believe the DoS attacks did exist. I too was initially skeptical but based on e-mail correspondence I now believe them to have happened. In fact, from what I can tell the attacks were distributed, thus making this a DDoS.

Yet now you seem to be saying that the "distributed" portion was NOT the wget action you mentioned.

So, the "distributed" portion was nothing more or less than the /. effect?

Which only leaves that single IP address with the wget command. And it should be easy to determine whether that was an "attack" or an attempt to cache their site.

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Microsoft do again?

Re:Journalistic Standards

[NtroP]

Didn't Jennifer Wilbanks break the law by filing a false claim with law enforcement? Didn't she kick off a multi-state man(woman)-hunt, distressing and inconveniencing many in her family, friends and law enforcement? How much money, time and effort on the part of all those who took part in trying to locater her did she cost? We know all about her and her family because it was related to the story.

Tell me again, how does PJ's (para)-legal collection and analysis off documents relating to the SCO case have anything to do with her religion, address, phone numbers, her car, her mother? Has PJ violated the law in anything she has done? When you become a criminal you lose many rights (like the right to some of your privacy - see the police report section of your local paper). When you become a "journalist" you lose some right to privacy as well, but that does not extend to things which are not related to your role as a journalist.

Jennifer violated the law, therefore previous criminal behavior can be argued to be relevant. She and her entire family became the center of media attention over this. She ran away from her own wedding which brings in the relevance of her relationship with her fiancé (not that I give a rip, personally).

When you say "All she did was go for a walk one night three days before her wedding and not come back." you're full of shit. She got cold feet before the wedding (big deal), but instead of handling like a mature adult she claimed to have been kidnapped. That's not only despicable, it's illegal. I'd have thrown the book at her. I have no sympathy for her at all.

I feel sorry for the pain her infantile actions had on her family, friends and community. As someone who has had a family member (my son) disappear before I can tell you that it was the worst time of my life during the searching, the waiting, wondering if he was alright (he was found safe and sound, thank God). During that time all the people who volunteered to help search, all the law enforcement who were mobilized and took time away from their families to search, were affected. Jennifer didn't "just go for a walk" she tore up people's lives - and then she lied about it!

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[mph_az]

They make game consoles and mice, I think; but I'm not really sure.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[jonbryce]

He only owns the trademark in relation to operating system kernels, and possibly complete operating systems.

This does not prevent newspapers from being allowed to write about his kernel, or operating systems that use it, or other issues surrounding it, and to use the name "linux" when doing so.

A man would not use that language.

[Futurepower(R)]

Because, if you listen to that kind of thing, a man would never have used that language. A man would not use that language, because other men just don't care about those particular issues. For example, read Linux Torvald's book. He was bragging about the same things that Maureen O'Gara is using for criticism.

Re:A man would not use that language.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because, if you listen to that kind of thing, a man would never
> have used that language.

ha :). Someone needs to get out more. a *lot* more.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[snorklewacker]

> The strange thing about this is that the trademarks that they use (Linux Business News) etc. belong to Linus Torvalds. Effectively this means he is endorsing these magazines.

Not a chance. Linus is simply refusing to exert control over use of the trademark in publications, and he's probably already lost protection over that usage now. But while Kleenex cannot enforce usage of its brand name when used as a generic word, just try to start a company named Kleenex.

Linus is too busy getting real work done to care what some rag says.

Too little, too grudgingly and too late?

[Jonti]

This from Friday's http://www.linuxbusinessnews.com/

To Our Valued Readers: (May 13, 2005) - Our syndication arrangement with LinuxGram has recently ended after ethical questions raised by our readers in one of the stories published in last week's issue. I agree with their view on this matter; therefore I pulled the article shortly after it was published earlier this week. I apologize to our readers, to the open source community, our LinuxWorld editors, and Ms. Pamela Jones for publishing the article.
Fuat Kircaali Publisher, SYS-CON Media

Re:Too little, too grudgingly and too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Sys-CON Media was pulling MoG articles?

Tried http://www.linuxbusinessnews.com/info/search.htm?s earch=O'Gara&Search22=Search
and got, "Search has been disabled for the time being."

Google on 'Maureen O'Gara' and you see a link to:
http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/author/2390og aralinuxbusinessweek.htm

Which gives you several active links to MoG articles. Or was content just pulled from the LinuxWorld site?

--dungeness

Journalistic standards!?!?!?

[CarrionBird]

Am I in bizarro world??

Is that why everyone suddenly has a evil looking goatee??

All together now...

[GermanShorthair]

I, for one, am happy the Editorial Staff chose to all resign immediately. Such selflessness for the greater good.

Unsubscribing to all their products would help too

[phayes]

Here's the list of Sys-Con's publications according to their web site:
- IT Solutions Guide
- Information Storage & Security Journal
- JDJ
- Web Services Journal (XML Journal)
- .NET Developer's Journal
- LinuxWorld Magazine
- MX Developer's Journal
- ColdFusion Developer's Journal
- XML-Journal
- Wireless Business & Technology
- WebSphere Journal
- PowerBuilder Developer's Journal
- Eclipse Developer's Journal

Yes, yes.

[porkchop_d_clown]

It still comes down to "people I like deserve more protection than people I don't like."

Bah. You're just another hypocrite playing the double-standards game.

Turner was not responsible

[dmoen]

When Turner first acknowledged problems with the O'gara article he used some weasel words and stopped short of apologizing.

Turner was senior editor for the print edition of LinuxWorld, but he had no control over the content of the web site. As far as I know, he was never happy about seeing anti-Linux attack dog O'Gara's articles on the web site, but there was nothing he could do. I suspect that the PJ article, and Sys-con's refusal to apologize for publishing it, was the last straw.

Doug Moen

Because you don't like the facts ...

[khasim]

doesn't mean that they aren't facts.

It still comes down to "people I like deserve more protection than people I don't like."

I'm getting that impression from you.

Because people find out that the White House granted special permission to a gay hooker to attend press conferences UNDER AN ASSUMED NAME and lob easy questions ....

That's the same as publishing the address of the mother of some "harridan" you don't like.

Bah. You're just another hypocrite playing the double-standards game.

Nope. Your problem is that you're too tied up in your pro-Gannon viewpoint to see the difference.

Gannon and PJ both had their personal lives dug up and published.

Gannon had his because of the story involving the White House.

PJ had her's because MOG couldn't find any story.

*sigh* I remember the trolls we used to have back in the day. Now all we have are these wannabe trolls crying "hypocrite" as if it makes them sound mature.

Buh bye, little troll. Keep eating the food mommy gives you and one day you might grow up to be a big bad TROLL.

Re:Because you don't like the facts ...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone that hasn't been participating in this retard fight, I have to say that you seriously sound like a complete moron.

And as someone that has been reading Slashdot since Rob first started cobbling it together as a #e regular, I can assure you that there has never been anything resembling a "high standard" for trolling.

Most overused words on the wannabe-nerd Intardweb: Troll, FUD

huh?

[d34thm0nk3y]

I don't get it. I thought sys-con caved on the O'Gara thing. Why did they decide to resign?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in a followup interview, the guy who runs Sys-Con said that he saw nothing wrong with what O'Gara did, that it was ethical, moral and factually accurate, and that the only reason he caved was because the website was under a Denial of Service attack.

Basically, the guy is completely out of touch with journalism ethics and his own conscience, and even if they could ignore their ethical obligation to stand up to him (another journalist ethics thing), they can't be professionally associated with such a hack if they value their careers.

They should go work for Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if slashdot might be hiring or its parent company might have a home for these people.

Wouldn't Groklaw be the best place for them to work? After all, they have made it clear that their allegiance is to PJ...she should be pleased!

Re:CEO and liablities

[Anonymous Coward]

> That said, Faut in his position cannot possibily admit to any wrong doing, regardless of being in the right or wrong.

So, fuck him.

I, for one, am fed up with corpotate america apologists.

..but is the JW PJ, our PJ???, was:Jones' religion

[Anonymous Coward]

..and _is_ the Jehova Witness Pamela Jones a paralegal???
And it does sound 3'rd Reich style?

..for the record, "our PJ" refers to "PJ" the Groklaw founder, who _very_ wisely decided to keep a low profile,
Microsoft has spent enough on this SCOG vs IBM case to hire an army of hitmen.

..imagine how we would praise Microsoft if they sent their hitmen army as mercenaries to free North Korea instead of trying to find and kill PJ.

Mod Parent Down for BS

[Anonymous Coward]

If parent ever read /., he would note that the home phone numbers and addresses of the /. enemy de jour are FREQUENTLY posted, with people strongly encouraged to call and harass them. I'm not saying that that is a good thing, but maybe we should clean up our own act before we go ranting at others.

Re:Mod Parent Down for BS

[Trailer Park Boy]

I do agree that we have to look out for our own behavoir, but but idiots posting phone numbers on /. is not the same as a "jounalist" posting personal info about someone's mom as news.

Re:Mod Parent Down for BS

[HiThere]

Have you ever noticed anyone posting the phone numbers of the relatives of the person being attached?

Have you ever noticed anyone posting the addresses of the relatives?

Do you consider /. posters to be models of journalistic ethics?

I find your assertions both strange and flawed.

Re:Mod Parent Down for BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if we knew Darl McBride's relatives' addresses and phone numbers, we'd post them.

-- Leader of all ACs.

Re:Honesty - But what about Linus

[HiThere]

And because it has never been enforced, it probably can't be. But it's still desireable that Linus hold the trademark, as that prevents someone else abusing it to hold various groups to ransom.

I'm gonna burn for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, shoddy journalism gets rid of editors!

right to remain anonymous

[arbitraryaardvark]

And there is no constitutional or guaranteed right to remain anonymous.

A minor quibble with the grandparent post:
There is a constitutional right to remain anonymous, but it only applies to actions by government, so it doesn't fit here.
Talley v California, McIntyre v Ohio, http://majors.blogspot.com./

There is a right to privacy, balanced by first amendment public right to know, so that such cases rarely win.
Say a newspaper, without consent, publishes the address of a juvenile rape victim, the rapist sees it and goes for a 2nd helping, the newspaper might be liable. I wouldn't call that guaranteed, tho.
So the quote isn't wrong, i'm just clarifying a bit.

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list - more

[Anonymous Coward]

AppBlaster / Appliction gateway
Blog-n-play.com / blogs
DataDirect / ODBC driver
Devon IT
Enerjy / java software tools
Gartner / Security summit
Global Knowlege
Illustro / z/XML Host
Linux Networx
Monarch / Linux servers /workstations etc
Panacea / BPEL
PointBase / database
WebRenderer / Embeddable Java Browser

N o bone here

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus can only go after programs basically.
For the rest Linux is a common name, just like asperin is the name of a Bayer product and not the offical name of the stuff.

Re:Speaking of journalistic standards

[fishbowl]

"What's not debatable was that the offending MoG article was totally over the line."

"The line" itself is debatable; it's quite arbitrary. I don't like the MoG article I read, and I need no other reason than that she puts an accent grave on "crème".

So I draw "the line" there, and Pamela Jones draws it somewhere else, and a court of law considering a case of libel will have yet another place to draw "the line."

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed writing & calling these advertisers and explaining to they why your company will no longer buy their products is the best way to affect the publication.

Merely boycotting them won't have any effect, because they'll never know the reason for the decline.

Um, what?

[mcc]

This thing that we are typing into right now is not journalism. It is an internet discussion board.

I personally believe that journalists and internet discussion boards should be held to vastly different minimum standards of integrity.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that-- since this person speaks with no self accountability and no evidence for his accusations-- leaving the name of the company out would be the ethical thing to do in this case, or at least more ethical than making unbacked accusations publicly against a company.

Re:Um, what?

[crawling_chaos]

I personally believe that journalists and internet discussion boards should be held to vastly different minimum standards of integrity.

Nope. The ethical thing for anyone to do in this situation is as follows: either have enough concrete information to post the company's name and survive the ensuing legal mess, or keep your mouth shut. If you can't stand behind your words, it is utterly unethical to post the comment.

Another thing I find interesting here

[mcc]

But that we seem to be forgetting. PJ isn't so much important in this context as a figure in the SCO case. She's important because she is a competitor to Ms. O'Gara, as both are commentators and both seem to claim to be journalists and both have frequently shown up in relation to this single ongoing news story.

This perspective makes things a little more interesting. This wasn't just O'Gara attacking a public figure whose stance on the she agrees with. This was her, as a media personality and analyst, directly and personally attacking another media personality and analyst she competes with. And that, frankly, to me is a little bit weirder, like CBS News running an attack piece on Stone Cold Steve Phillips or whoever that Fox newsanchor is. Journalists sometimes naturally must report on other journalists when they become in some way relevant to the story, and PJ from Groklaw has done exactly that when relevant. But one expects journalists won't use the power made available to them through the information channels they control to, you know, find the street addresses of their competitors' parents and publish them.

Re:Another thing I find interesting here

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox News programs typically talk smack about other media organizations and people on them. Indeed, the media feasts on itself quite a bit. Think about the recent CBS scandal.

UPDATE at Free Software Magazine

[stock]

"UPDATE: Mr. Kircaali has indeed apologised to the free software/open source community, to his editors and to Ms. Jones for publishing the article on Pamela Jones. He also stated clearly that he agreed on the fact that the article did have ethical problems. See his message here. I (Tony Mobily) talked to him on the phone about this matter and yes, his apologies are genuine and he now understands the ethical issues about the article. Reading his answers (below), it is clear that his view on the matter has changed quite a lot, and that the interview doesn't portrait his current view on the episode."

Looks like Mr. Kircaali wants his editors back :)

Robert

LinuxWorld Expo?

[landley]

What does this say about LinuxWorld Expo? Is this organized by the same clueless idiot, or are they likely to change their name to something with less negative brand equity?

typical lusers

[Anonymous Coward]

instead of debate you form a lynch mob. Typical lusers. And since you are the only ones who give a toss about these

Groklaw - it made no difference to the case at all

Sys-Con - its needs your hits to pretend it can sell real businesses useless net adverts

PJ is a a secretary , not a lawyer. Same as actors are actors, not diplomats. Linux geeks are linux geeks, not unix engineers. We live in a time where the slightest excuse is being used for importance.

Sweet.

[porkchop_d_clown]

So, how does any of this connect to the other people I mentioned?

Also, I'm still waiting for you to explain where (a) you got proof that Gannon was a hooker and (b) why hookers aren't allowed to be journalists, along with a bonus of (c) some evidence that security standards were waived for Gannon or are somehow lower for the Bush administration than previous administrations.

I'm especially bemused by your implicit assertion that gays are security threats who should not be permitted to be journalists.

Implosion from within

[Intrinsic]

Sounds like someone really doesnt want Linuxworld Mag around.

relevance of sponsorship

[michaelredux]

When articles are as good, and correct, as PJ's groklaw articles, it is irrelevant for the sake of criticism who pays the author. There has been virtually no legitimate criticism of the GrokLaw articles, because the facts presented are true and fair.

Conversely, when an "independent published study" is shown to have been designed from the beginning to be severely biased and blatently unfair, then it does become very relevant who paid for that garbage to be published, and the ethical violation should not only crush the reputation of the study's authors, but also fall squarely on the sponsor who has paid the "independent" publisher for the sole purpose of attempting to distance themselves from their own lies, and the serious violation of ethics that represents.

There were a large number of outrageous biases and totally unfair elements in the "study" you are referring to, so the source of the funding became very relevant after the extreme bias had been clearly established.

In the case of Groklaw, there doesn't appear to be any legitimate criticism, so the competitor has resorted to blatent innuendo and ad-hominem attacks. Following my original logic, I would love to know who, if anybody, is paying MOG to be so obviously wrong on so many issues, year after year, and even more curious why anybody pays any attention to someone with MOG's long-standing reputation as an advocate for nonsense.

If you believe that...

[porkchop_d_clown]

you haven't been paying attention.

1. Blogs released Gannon's home address and phone.
2. Gannon's mother received harassing phone calls.
3. Robert Bork's video rental habits were published and he was, in fact, described as a religious nut.
4. And people upheld all of the above as free speech, or simply denied that it occurred.

Re:Honesty - Sys-con Advertisers list

[Rick the Red]

Merely boycotting them won't have any effect, because they'll never know the reason for the decline.

What message do you send when a few hundred slashdotters threaten to boycott them over this, and they see zero drop in sales? Don't threaten to not buy something you're not going to buy anyway.

sys-con website is shut down this morning...

[Anonymous Coward]

www.sys-con.com is shut down this morning, (May 17), you get a message saying, closed for routine maintenance of webfarm. However this is a message I've never seen at that site before. guess all the troubles are catching up with them.

-1 Flamebait, troll.

[jotaeleemeese]

What a lame reply. Honestly.