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Dvorak on the LinuxWorld Fracas
An anonymous reader writes "John C. Dvorak has entered the fray, offering his opinion on the O'Gara LinuxWorld flap. From the article: '...the Linux community is slowly evolving into a state of mob rule, with the cheerleaders being paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga.' "
Nice troll. Where is that quote in the article? Crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga MY ASS!
*smashes keyboard in half*
And I don't want to take your stupid little javascript survey either, damn I need a smoke.
Okay, yeah, I think I see your point here, John:
We should be more understanding towards useless "journalism" and media flamebaiting, because without those practices you might actually have to come up with something insightful or worthwhile every week to fill out your column and earn page hits. Hey, I can see where you're coming from -- that'd take legwork, insight and generally staying on top of the industry. I imagine that's hard work, and trust me: I'm right there with you on the "I don't like hard work" page.
BTW, congrats on getting your flamebait article on the front page of Slashdot. It's good to know that *some* "journalists" are still able to use (a) and (b) successfully to drum up (c). It's gotta be a good feeling to walk into your boss's office at review time and wave around yet another spike in ad impressions courtesy of the Slashdot crowd -- I hope you're appreciative enough to include Zonk on your Christmas card list!
Anyhow, hope preparing your standard self-righteous indignation column for when (d) inevitably rolls around is going well. Aw, who am I kidding, I know you're an old pro -- I'm sure you were already writing that one when you handed in this last article to your editor.
A little trolling, and two columns done and in the bank. Must be a nice life.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
As it is, all pending Dvorak story submissions should be entitled:
Opinions are like assholes - no one wants a whiff of Dvorak's.
Here's the deal John:
1. There were many reasonable people offended by O'Gara and her attempts to intimidate Jones. And that's what you have to call it, because if you're trying to find out if someone's a stooge for IBM (Dvorak suggests this is all O'Gara was trying to do), you're not making your case by publishing the address of their mother.
2. Calling for a journalist to be disciplined, up and including being fired, for a clearly inaccurate and evil piece of journalism is not, in any way, "nutty" or indicative of "mob rule". To lump those who have done so with those on the fringes making death threats is to lump all christians with anti-abortionist murderers of doctors, or all muslims concerned about the US presence in the Middle East with Osama Bin Laden.
It's really that simple. Something did something clearly wrong to many of us, so many of us publicly expressed our disappointment. Some did so angrily, some didn't.
It's the height of paranoid fanaticism (and yes, I use the word paranoid quite justifiably):
to lump together a diverse group of people with differing opinions and charge them with some conspiracy to attack you.That's assuming you're not trolling for webpage hits. I assume the editors were by posting this article.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I also believe that O'Gara was merely being controversial.
Publishing someones phone number and address, and even their mother's address, goes way beyond being controversial. It's a privacy violation.
From the article:
Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. But in today's world of the so easily offended, she's apparently let go instead, and things calm down as the hissy fit subsides.
This is the key, right here. It's actually slightly shocking that he let himself shine through so clearly in this paragraph. Dvorak is actually just upset because, y'know, that's his schtick. Generating readership by making inflammatory and offensive articles? That's pure Dvorak. It strikes fear into his black little heart to see someone get fired for doing exactly what he does, so he lashes out at it.
Who needs to be right when you can be controversial?
Random and weird software I've written.
Dvorak: "In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership."
Earning another medal then, John?
And there's only one thing wrong with that logic.
It's complete bollocks.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
He got one thing right...
First let's get a few things straight. All of O'Gara's assertions are nutty.
Some of them go way beyond nutty. Dvorak acknowledges that O'Gara tracked down and photographed PJ's home and PJ's mother's home and posted pics in her column
But rather than point out the problem with this type of "journalism", he praises it.
Oh, brother. In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. But in today's world of the so easily offended, she's apparently let go instead, and things calm down as the hissy fit subsides.
Right, thank god we have PC Magazine to sustain the flame of responsible journalism. What an asshole.
Dvorak is not really a crackpot leftover. He's apparently become an authoritarian, which is quite a bad thing. Originally he came up with an efficient solution to a problem created in an arbitrary manner, and he saw it fade into obscurity.
WTF are you talking about?
He's just a journalist. He's been writing basically the same column since at least the 80s.
You aren't confusing him with August Dvorak of the eponymous keyboard are you?
That would be pretty damn funny.
Why do people confuse articles with editorials? He's not reporting news, he's voicing his opinion.
Windows over Linux == trolling.
Linux over Windows == advocacy.
Right?
And he should be careful not to paint and feather into a corner. When you mess with a bull you have to break a few eggs. Or something...
We need a leader to tell everyone we don't need a leader?
No, we don't. Why bother putting the weight of a world-wide movement onto one individual, when the thing is doing fine on its own?
I'm reminded of a story from the Book of Judges (in the Bible). Israel had been more-or-less confined to the hill country by the Philistines because they kept failing to listen to their judges, who were sort of like Linus, ESR, RMS, et al. It was a meritocracy of sorts. Israel clamored for a king, though, so they could be like the other nations. Through Samuel, they were told the king would take away their freedoms and tax them for his own purposes, but they insisted. They ended up with King Saul, a megalomaniac of, er, biblical proportions.
sigs, as if you care.
No, he's just doing what he's always done -he alludes to it right in his article. "In the olden days, O'Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership."
He writes an article for the sole purpose of upsetting a large group of people, because he knows it will generate tons of hits (that's the name of the game). In the old days, there was a word for this, Troll.
Then in a week or two he'll write another article about how offended he was by all the lunatics in whatever community he attacked previously.
Bonus points if he can incite someone to threaten him. If he gets 10,000 reasonble posts and one threat, he'll make the next article about that one threat, completely ignoring the rest.
Its a scam. And nobody does it better than Dvorak. He's not where he is because of the quality of his "journalism", its his ability to incite "hits".
Actually, I am.
I'm rather... sheepish... about this now. In fact, I wish I could delete a few posts. Why on earth would anyone listen to this guy if he wasn't the Dvorak I was thinking about?
Now I can stop reading his columns with even the shred of respect I had. Are the two related? It seems that Dvorak might be a rather rare name in the computer industry.
My little site.
Here, read this article on group dynamics and you'll understand why groups need leaders:
http://www.gmu.edu/student/csl/5stages.html
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
I'm posting anonymously for reasons that'll become blindingly obvious in about three sentences.
My employer asked me to do this. We are involved with a particular industry that is rampant with Old Fogeyism. As I tend to rant anyhow, I posted a rant on a highly visible mailing list. My boss came to me and, to my horror, prodded me to keep flaming away. Flaming customers, mind you. Not usually a good business strategy...
I had my reservations, as an old-time Troll. I couldn't see the benefit. But my boss has an understanding of business that I lack, and I've learned to trust him. So I did it. I was my usual asshole self. I put fifteen years' experience in net.flaming into a post that was factually sound and very logical, but with my inner asshole coming out like Fran Drescher's voice in a granite cathedral. (Not that you have to dig deep to find the inner asshole where I'm concerned, mind you). It was so offensive, that only the people who already agreed with me already could agree with what I said, no matter how sound my logic was.
The next day, the boss told me: Now apologize to everyone.
Since then, I can actually see the repercussions. Many of them are just ripples from other things happening off in the distance, but the effect is clear: It was a kick in the ass to an industry that needed it, and suddenly people are wondering why that asshole on the mailing list was so damned mad. They're digging deeper.
You see this with SCO. Whenever SCO says something stupid and outlandish, the Free Software community will retaliate with venom, but others will also dig deeper to see: Do they have a point, and if so, how can we prevent this? Groklaw has become useful for this very reason -- for this purpose of getting the facts straight. Linus changed how he maintained the kernel. A lot of due diligence is being done on GNU/Linux that might never have been done anyway.
The whole O'Gara situation is causing people to look and think critically about the relationship between publishers, editors and content who haven't looked at such things before.
I was surprised to see the results of my little public flamewar. I wasn't surprised that people were pissed off; I was surprised that there was a genuine positive and creative response to it. My boss was fucking brilliant.
It shows that provocative writing does have a point from time to time. It is the little ego of the industry, goading people out of their complacency. Thank God this shit is not the only motivation we have, but it does have that use.
I thought the quote in the leader to this article was offensive, but it got me RTFA, and when I RTFA, I have to admit I laughed. I am laughing at myself, a true blue anti-MS zealot, when he says about the Linux community "Too nutty even for the Mac community? We welcome you!" It hits close to home, but he's right. I -am- too nutty for the Mac community.
So I think it's a bit more useful than just a scam to draw enough eyes that advertisers are happy; columnist journalism can occasionally benefit the industry.
Although most of the time, we're just trolling assholes.