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Daniel Lyons of Forbes Admits Being Snowed by SCO
certain death writes "Daniel Lyons of Forbes Magazine has admitted to being snowed by SCO, regarding their lawsuit over Linux and SCO code. He specifically mentions Groklaw's role in the case, and regrets his early articles giving the company the benefit of the doubt. 'I still thought it would be foolish to predict how this lawsuit (or any lawsuit) would play out. I even wrote an article called "Revenge of the Nerds," which poked fun at the pack of amateur sleuths who were following the case on a Web site called Groklaw and who claimed to know for sure that SCO was going to lose. Turns out those amateur sleuths were right. Now some of them are writing to me asking how I'd like my crow cooked, and where I'd like it delivered. Others in that highly partisan crowd have suggested that I wanted SCO to win, and even that I was paid off by SCO or Microsoft. Of course that's not true. I've told these folks it's not true. Hasn't stopped them. The truth, as is often the case, is far less exciting than the conspiracy theorists would like to believe. It is simply this: I got it wrong. The nerds got it right.'"
It's nice to see at least some journalists out there in this day and age are willing to publicly admit when they are wrong.
Its one thing to admit your wrong. This may redeam character but not credibility. With a history of being wrong and smearing those with a different view, he sets a precedent as being an unreliable news source and despite whatever appologies are given - a liability to Forbes as a trustworthy news source. He would have to work to regain credibility with people checking the facts against what he said. It would be easier to just move to another source of information. If this is merely an attempt to regain face in the journalist world, it will fall flat with any critical thinker
One step further, for someone writing on the technology field - it doesn't serve his purpose to put out condescending statements like "the nerds got it right".
When all else fails, try.
That's right. He's a reporter. And a reporter doesn't have to be a goddamn expert on aeronautics to report on a jet crash, or an expert on maritime engineering to report on a ship sinking. Neither does a reporter have to be a kernel programmer to report on a company claiming they were ripped off by Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel developers. In all causes, a journalist is supposed to check his sources, supposed to talk to both sides, supposed to, through the process of investigation, become something of an expert. He doesn't need to know jack-shit about fork(), but he should know something about the history of Unix. With that kind of knowledge, he would have soon enough realized that there was a con going on. SCO wasn't slick. They weren't clever at all. If some "amateur sleuths" could recognize right from the word "go" that this was a scam, then that suggests that he's just an idiot, and the question becomes what is Forbes doing paying idiots?
The apology comes to late. If this guy, and his fellow SCO-whores had been doing their jobs, investor money might have been saved and a stock scam might have been prevented. All it would have required was making some phone calls to guys like Linus to get the scoop.
This guy, and all his cohorts, are shameful embarassments. They should be fired, not given kudos because, after the fucking company they were giving editorial blowjobs to has crashed and burned, they're shamed into admitting how stupid they were.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"If I've learned anything from recent Presidential elections, changing your opinions due to new information is a sign of weakness. One must make a choice and ride it all the way down."
At the time of this posting, you've been modded +5, Funny. The sad part, though, is that what you say is absolutely true, and not just of American politics. It's certainly true up here in Canada, as well. If a politician sticks to his guns no matter what new information comes out, then they're seen as being decisive. If they change their minds, they're weak, wishy-washy, and clearly not leadership material.
Voters are, by and large, stupid.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I'm sorry, but Lyons' portrayal of himself as an ordinary Joe who made a reasonable evaluation of the case which just happened to be wrong because SCO was keeping its deception so well-hidden is just plain wrong. There was at least one red flag which Lyons has no excuse for not catching.
That red flag was when SCO presented their excuse for not showing anyone (except under draconian NDAs) what the alleged copyright infringement actually consisted of. They didn't want that information getting to the Linux crew, they said, because that would allow them to remove the offending code.
That there is all you need to know to call "BS". It is your obligation to notify someone you suspect of infringing your copyright of just how you think they are infringing your copyright so that they can remedy the wrong. You cannot say "I would rather let them continue to infringe my copyright so I can soak them for more damages"; despite what SCO might have you believe, that is not the purpose of copyright law. As for the idea that the offending code would be scrubbed from the record in order to hide the evidence of past infringement, again, that's BS. If there was copied code in the kernel, as SCO assured us there was, SCO could have downloaded copies of the kernel twice a day to have a historical record of the violation.
Lyons still refers to "amateur sleuths" as though he's some kind of professional. What sort of "professional" doesn't investigate the most glaring contradiction between what someone claims they want and what they're actually trying to arrange?
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
The problem is that they operate in a political realm where there are no objective assessments, where if you lose but spin it right, you win. So they campaign and make decisions based on propaganda. But then they make some real decision with real consequences (like starting a war or handling a natural disaster) and boom, reality asserts itself, and it hurts.