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]

Seems to me he'll gain karma :)

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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?

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

[kevcol]

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

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.

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.

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!
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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).

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.

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: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

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.

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

[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.

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

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)!

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: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

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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: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.