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Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs"
An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post earlier today revealing that Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again revealing that Apple's lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied 'we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don't deal.' A third post gives details of Apple's lawyers' next response, going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has calmed down a bit.
to boil a few of those kinds of attorneys in oil, just as a warning to others.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Apple seems on a crazy roll, after the SinkThekrit mess. BTW, Dan Lyons is incredibly funny. Check out his Google appearance via UTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rLpxX9vqr5c
I don't get why Apple bothers with this. If they bribe this guy to shut down, they have to bribe the next guy who startsup a blog about apple secrets, and the next guy, and the next guy. Do they think these people have super powers and once they're gone, their secrets are safe?
apple seems WORSE than other companies when it comes to this legal bullshit
thats enough for me to say NO to future purchase of any apple products!
It could just be a satirical fiction based around the ThinkSecret situation.
Aren't US Banks and financial institutions legally obligated to protect your private information such as the terms of your mortgage and the details of your bank and investment accounts?
I'm just glad that Apple isn't a big secretive powerful corporation that threatens to sue small people, pushes DRM, or anything evil like that.
I'm sure someone is going to mod me for flamebait, but I never understand the people who insist Apple is the greatest company of the fan of the planet when there is plenty of proof that Apple is a corporation (for better or worse) on par with most corporations.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'm always confused by Apple on matters like this; a lot of these people are key in building & maintaining hype in Apple products. If Apple (apple legal?) had their way, it seems like there'd be... well... Apple.com and a few keynotes every year as the only way people would learn details of (and think of?) new products.
I'm a big Apple fan & I love their approach of using/contributing to open source software where it makes sense to improve their products - but their marketing and PR people seem at odds with their engineering attitude (especially with their solution-oriented attitude recently with iPhone, Apple TV compared to their key skill as a superb platform (NB. this point was blatantly stolen from Wil Shipley's blog)). I know PR people think about things completely differently from engineers but you'd think that was a company attitude, not just with the people making the magic
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
From the article: ...he feels it is his duty to inform me that Apple's lawyers have identified at least three posts in my archive that they "deem to be actionable."
Since when was parody actionable?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I do believe you've not only described the results of paying off people who blackmail others but have also given us a new business model to pursue...
TIme to start up an "Apple Secretz" blog.
Regardless, what Apple is doing is not very bright in my opinion. Parody is still fairly well protected despite the best efforts of big business/government to remove that protection and it says FAKE right in the title...
"Bah!" - Dogbert
One from the real Steve Jobs: Joel said...
RSJ just responded to my email, saying, "I think this is a joke."
I'm a bit annoyed by this, since I was defending you, and now look something of a fool. And another who had mailed the same: Diogenes said...
I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, and actually got a response.
Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course)
I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.
Steve
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html
On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:
What, praytell, are you talking about?
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.
Gary Baldwin The amazing part to me here is that Steve Jobs is replying to mails in person. With a short delay, at a Christmas-y time like December 22nd...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I really do hope this is a joke, Apple doesn't have much to gain pulling a stunt like this...
Sue them for invasion of privacy and illegally obtaining private information.
Some of the info they got can't be had without a court order.
Maybe throw in threatning the guy too. See if you can get some laywers a little jailtime.
Here's an idea, what if all us Slashdetters each start a Fake Steve Jobs blog...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Link is not as advertized.
Oh go away you fucking link spamming myminicity troll!
It is.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Apple has gotten a free ride in a lot of ways. Much of what they do is so slick, it obfuscates the heavy-handed control they strive for.
But Apple loves their lawyers and relishes their litigation. And I predict that soon they will go too far, and when they do they will experience a backlash that makes Sony hate seem like mild annoyance. The greater the love lost, the greater the hate that remains.
Indeed... as you read his other posts in recent days he goes into the ThinkSecret takedown and how he thinks it is BS. This could easily be his way of fucking with Apple over what a lot of people see as total BS in the ThinkSecret 'settlement'
-nick
"This is followed by a recommendation that I retain an attorney to represent me. And then, I swear to friggin God, there's a list of my assets with an estimated value for each and I suppose the implied threat that I stand to lose them. Yet Microsoft is the Antichrist and Apple is the good guy. *Bangs head against wall yet again*
Out of the numerous suits Apple has made against bloggers, how many have they won? I can already pull up one that they lost: http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/01/29/apple.pays.legal.fees
I dunno about that story you linked. From reading it, it looks just as likely that the apple laywer is trying to discredit the fake Steve Jobs.
Two of his readers write to Apple and get responses back implying that this must be some joke. Either that, or Apple is being damn sneaky with the PR and trying to discredit him. Since I'm not really in a tinfoil hat sort of mood, I'm going to have to lean towards joke on this one.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
did I imagine /. would be such suckers as to post this fake stuff. It's all fake, ferchrissake, to generate publicity for Forbes and FSJ and his book. Unbelievable.
They just have less power, then can do less damage. But give them a week in Microsoft shoes and you'll have a perfect MS twin whose only corporation-wise difference is the HQ in Cupertino.
As a Linux user I'd say next one will be Google.
Haven't these companies heard of an NDA that doesn't expire? International companies use them...
It sounds to me like Daniel Lyons is trying to smear Apple with this fake story. Gee, who'd have guessed? I thought Daniel Lyons would never smear someone for Microsoft. It's not like he's ever done this before. Nope, never. Oh yeah, except for all those other times with SCO.
This would be the same Dan Lyons that faked a take-down note from Apple in order to stop writing Fake Steve Jobs before his management found out about it. He didn't want his management to know because technically he was violating his contract with Forbes, but fortunately for him they didn't mind.
Not exactly a paragon of virtue himself... and not above conducting business in public when it suits him, and in private when he can get away with it.
This guy also thought SCO was a sure winner and wasn't very polite about the Linux community.
Steve is a top poster?
Very scary that the Apple lawyers listed all his assets including mortgage, kids college funds etc. with values on their last letter to him.
How can they even get this info? Aren't your financial details meant to be private, even in the US?
If I was him I'd be looking a suing Apple for threats/blackmail and also suing the investment comapnies for releasing that info to strangers. At least I'd move the money to someone else.
Apparently, the guy tried to contact EFF and was turned down (see bottom of the link) because the EFF didn't like some of his posts.
Assuming that this is true, this doesn't shed too good a light on the EFF. Isn't the EFF supposed to help bloggers that are being attacked by large corporations, regardless of what is posted on the blog and, in particular, of whether the person likes the EFF? At least, isn't that what people who donate to the EFF expect it to do?
The younger geeks don't remember why Apple lost out the 1st time around. They're the King of Control. The champion of "our way or the highway". The locked it down when no one else did, and their prices were insane.
As I've been accused of being a MS tool in the past, I will always maintain they are the lesser of three evils when compared to the other contenders that could have won out. Apple and IBM.
So while it's currently "cool" to think of Apple as the hippy-happy company. Realize they are anything but. Job's paints a pretty picture. Just realize he's going to tell you which room and which wall to hang it on. Or he won't let you buy it.
I too wrote Steve, and he emailed me the same thing: I think this is a joke. I can only imagine how many people are emailing him about this. Given his nature, I have to believe he knows that Apple's legal department and representatives aren't involved.
So, yes this being a parody does factor into it, but mainly because Mac users expect that Apple will respect the creativity of its user base and the whole industry around it.
C'mon people, think! It's the FAKE Steve Jobs blog. Did it occur to you that the stories there might be FAKE? This is satire, and you're all fools.
Guys,
Dan Lyons had me fooled, since he was not in character as FSJ, and really did sound scared. I sent an e-mail to SJ about it, expressing the concerns that any shareholder would have if this situation were true, and he replied.
He told me, quote:
I think this is a joke.
Steve
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
People believe anything. Lawyers do not send official documents via email. Lawyers need a paper trail. Large companies don't negotiate until NDA's are signed. That is not the exception, that is the rule. Lawyers follow steps; lawsuit before settlement, settlement before verdict or trial. Besides, it's a satire site...with you know...satire.
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
So, yes this being a parody does factor into it, but mainly because Mac users expect that Apple will respect the creativity of its user base and the whole industry around it. Indeed. There's no arguing that Apple is shooting itself in the foot with things like this. And frankly it's been going on too long for me to discount it as one "hand" in the company not knowing what the "other hand" is doing.
I'll continue to use Apple products because quite frankly they seem quite a few steps up from all the misc. generic/brand name PC stuff I've used over the years. This current snafu doesn't phase me really.
But if they keep doing this whole "foot shooting" thing then it's conceivable that they could end up in the iCrapper and have to produce the same horrible PC hardware as everybody else just to survive. And in my opinion that would be a damn shame and a waste of what is a pretty good company overall.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Well, they did recently make a little girl cry
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
But then buying Apple products is the same except it starts with a new house and works it's way back to the dress, car, and kitchen appliances which can only come from the same company that built the house.
I am constantly amazed with the people who flock to Apple when they do the same thing at the hardware level that Microsoft does at the software level and that is product line lock in.
The major reason Apple lost the numbers war to Microsoft is that Windows and it's related products were allowed to run on any IBM PC clone while Jobs wanted to control every aspect of the Apple and sued out of existence the very people who were trying to clone an Apple and extend the user base of Apple and Apple-like products. Microsoft doesn't really care about pirated software in third world countries as long as the computers are running Microsoft products. They have a foot hold on future sales when the dust clears from law suits and the users are socialized into thinking that Microsoft is the only product they can use. As long as it's not Linux/x386BSD/Apple they are willing to tolerate pirating because it extends the base of users of MS technologies.
While Apple may make a better product overall (remember Mac OS is FreeBSD under the covers) they will always be only a niche market because Jobs is a worse control freak than Gates. --
Too lazy to create a sig...
(1) Even Apple's lawyers don't just whip out kid's college fund numbers.
(2) The EFF would never say that.
(3) If Lyons has a contract to continue the blog, then his employer would most certainly be fielding the lawyers, because if anything were actionable, they'd be liable too. (duh) So his "I've already paid a ton for a lawyer" was another giveaway.
What's hilarious is that Real Steve Jobs (or at least someone acting on his behalf) took the time to reply to a few angry readers who emailed him.
Nice posts though. FSJ rocks.
Isn't Dan this guy. Not sure why you'd believe anything in his blog. He has a very very very long history with fud & SCO.
It would appear that no one on Slashdot has any sort of humor at all - at least the sort that read it on a Saturday night.
Many of you would do well to remember that FSJ is a parody blog, sometimes at its finest, sometimes not so much.
Those of you kneejerk types can also rest easy in the fact that because FSJ is a parody blog, it doesn't have any actual news content or any "rumors" worth suing over either.
I think Fake Steve Jobs has stepped over the line from hilarious satire to nasty slander. Libel? Whichever.
If it's a joke, which it appears to be, I think Apple would be completely justified in going after him.
I don't know that Apple lost because they "locked it down". If Apple's intent was to control all the world's computers and have to service any small company with a device and a driver of questionable stability, then, sure, they lost. But look at the two companies today . . . one is huge, incredibly rich and unwieldy with a product that people universally hate while the other is the darling of intelligent and thoughtful people everywhere. You ask, "if all these people love Apple why ain't they richer?" Simple. The majority of people in the world are not thoughtful and tasteful. McDonald's, Walmart, Dell. Case closed. Keep in mind, Jobs is a multi-billionaire . . . that's billion with a "b". Ya know, a thousand times a million? And he was pretty darned rich and beloved long before he ever sold a single Mac, so if he's crying about Gates' billions then he's a lot more shallow than I gave him credit for. I think, other than getting run out of Apple by Scully & Co, he's had a pretty good run and even getting canned turned about to be good, Pixar made him richer than Apple did, didn't it and in his spare time he created the future of the Apple OS in NeXT. What do you do in your spare time? Yes, Apple is a corporation. Anyone who thought they were a commune singing kumbaya over their circuitboards is an idiot. They're in business to make money and they do. They're something like 2nd or third most profitable company in the last decade in the US and maybe the world. Yes they're A-holes with the lawyers sometimes, but who in the corporate world isn't? It comes with the territory. And Apple's business model is based in part on its secretive nature. So while I don't like it, it's not like it affects how my iPhone docks so beautifullly with my Mac. When Jobs sells me a product I am smart enough to know what I'm getting and what I'm not getting. When GE sells me a fridge I know that changing the condenser or the coils will void the warranty. Same thing with Apple products. If I want to hack and tinker, I'll buy a PC. Not only are they more tinkerable, but tinkering is often required to get the gd things to work properly. I like appliances, they do what I expect them to do and they don't require rebooting - much. I'd be very happy if Macs booted instantly, never crashed and did everything that Apple said they would do, but then Macs are a lot closer to that ideal that Windows is and that's a quality I love. so, sue me . . . . JoeL
Shame on the lot of you. This is supposed to be a smart crowd here. Don't let your bias get to the point where you just look foolish. It's xmas, it's the weekend, but Apple lawyers are firing off quick replies that are increasingly brutal despite their previous emails all going directly public via FSJ? Come on, nerds, use your brains.
Even so, I see no reason to sympathise this guy in any way.. why should we even bother? I hope he spends a lot of money for legal fees.
Dude, these are some pretty serious threats. I don't want that happening to me, so henceforth I won't say ANYTHING about Apple for fear of them chasing me down. For example, I won't tell anyone how happy I've been with Leopard. They might confiscate my house! It's a high-end cardboard box located under the Auchumpkee Creek Bridge, a very fine neighborhood and a great place to raise children. No way man, I ain't talking about any fruit company!
...yet again.
You Speak Slander or write Lines of Libel.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Riding the backs of FOSS, legal threats everywhere, closed proprietary products from hardware to consumer delivery...
They suck.
Oh, sorry, I forgot, "They are fashionable."
And the fact that my post even after an hour and a half still hasn't been modded flamebait or troll is a fair indication around here of Apple's status presently on slashdot. Right now, I don't think that they've lost enough of the status to be permanently damaged. But the reality is that when you base you're business around the fanatical devotion of your users, they can choose other systems, and that passion for macs could very well turn into a large scale vendetta if pushed too far.
Obviously I don't think that Apple is anywhere near there yet, but if they do lose their gilded status, it is going to cost them big time, where it hurts most, the stock price.
I was shocked personally, that they went with the iphone rather than taking advantage of MS' weakness to boost the numbers of macs being sold. Macs have a definite advantage of stability, largely due to the control that Apple has over the platform, there are a number of people that would love to have that sort of stability and interface design. Throwing the opportunity away on a product that would be just as popular in 6 months is absurd.
It appears, from various comments above, that this is a joke by Daniel Lyons, in very poor taste. Given how widely Slashdot is read, I think there should be a prominent clarification in the headline and story, IMMEDIATELY, that the story is dubious.
Apple does enough things that genuinely warrant criticism. Inventing a story like this, and publicising it as fact, is unconscionable.
Sim City, or any other game by Maxis is just... ugh. Why would you want to play a clone? Let alone spam this shit everywhere.
Steve Jobs is a narcissistic cunt.
It isn't libel if it's true!
...and it's not even April.
Not only has he baited those of us who read the FSJ blog, but he has also baited every Microsoft fanboy and Apple fanboy who read his blog, who don't read his blog, and now Slashdot.
If the Internet ever gave out trophies, this guy deserves at least 5. Maybe 6.
When it's such a poor parody that a reasonable person might be led to believe untrue things on its basis. If it wasn't so, then we would have, effectively, no laws against defamation; I could simply print on my blog "Daniel Lyons, also known as 'Fake Steve Jobs', was arrested today on charges of sexual deviancy and corruption of minors as he attempted to flee to Mexico" and then when the lawsuits came my way I could just simply blink innocently and say "Why ... didn't you understand that was parody?? Surely it's not my fault if the majority of people who read what I wrote did not see any reason to think I was telling other than the truth!"
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
This story is highly entertaining, but I think Fake Steve posted it about 3 months and 10 days too early.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Engadget has an interesting article about this, with some good insights into why this might simply be a publicity stunt by FSJ.
Have a look:
Fake Steve Jobs gets takedown letters from Apple... or not
Acting under the assumption that this is indeed a hoax:
I believe Fake SJ was attempting to point out how incredibly believable this scenario has become, due to Apple's declining public image. Five years ago, if someone had pulled a stunt like this, no one would have believed it. Today, people were emailing Real SJ, without any doubt that Apple would sue a satire. The absurd has become reality.
The corner of a round room
Even thought it's probably a hoax, I still feel like going out and kicking a lawyer in the balls.
Admit it: those of you who bought into it initially did so because you could totally believe lawyers doing something like that based on real stories in the past. It's not really all that unbelievable.
It is true!
I have also written four snail-mail letters to the Presidents over the years, before, during, and after the time that JCR worked at Apple. One of those times even, I was in school and showed the reply to a teacher, after which every student had to write a letter to the President.
Every letter was answered over the years. Many people assume that famous people do not care or have staffs to do these things. But have you ever asked yourself: maybe they are famous because they can do so much?
Relatively recently?
I remember back in the System 7/8 days when in a 0.0.x update they modified the CD-ROM driver to no longer work with non-apple CD ROM drives. All you had to do to "fix" it was go open the driver in ResEdit and change two bytes, but still.
Apple has always been about proprietary, closed in, locked down platforms. They've generally wanted to be Microsoft, but control the hardware too. None of this is new---nor should it be surprising.
These are obviously fake lawyers!
Whichever side burns, i'm happy. Mutual destruction is most welcome.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I still can't believe how many people believe this is real.
It's a joke, although many Slashdotters seem to want to burn a Steve Jobs effigy. Who needs to read the story when the headline and summary are so incendary?
It's not a very good joke either.
Lawyers may make some pretty asshatted decisions. But they don't send out legal threats and cease & desists as a *JOKE*. That's the sort of thing that can get one disbarred. And if any lawyer at *Apple* pulled a stunt like this as a prank... what do you think his chances would be of surviviing the Wrath of Steve?
Evil and stupid are not the same thing. Lawyers are certainly the first, but seldom the second. Ergo, it's most likely that it's FSJ perpetrating the hoax; and not Apple legal hoaxing him.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
As opposed to Vista kernel devs? Or OSX kernel devs? At least the Linux kernel devs are 'visible'. And I appreciate their efforts - at making a wonderful piece of software, not at appearing like assholes.
that mnemonic is archaic and so is the distinction.
Yepp, typical lawyers, like you'll find in every company.
Disclaimer: I deal with lawyers almost daily in my day job.
This is so typical of lawyer-thinking. It's unbelievable. For 20 years or so, managers are taught about "win-win" and "synergy" and "cooperative negotiatitons". Lawyers, meanwhile, are stuck in a "us against them" and "we must win" mindset. All of them (with rare exceptions).
I don't know what, exactly, it is about the study of law that turns you into that kind of human, but I know CEOs of large companies, senior managers, the lot - and the lawyers are more aggressive and stubborn than almost all of them.
So, in summary, if your dog is too nice and didn't eat the last wannabe-burglar, buy a lawyer and chain him in the garden, he is guaranteed to be more vicious.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I think Fake Steve Jobs is funny, but, in the end, a lot of it is trolling. Listen to his talk at Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLpxX9vqr5c
He says that intentionally introducing little errors (Lissabon vs Lebanon etc.) and watching the angry letters and corrections roll in is "better than sex".
The video is well worth watching, though, also for some other insights into how the business publishing world works (e.g., Icahn placing stories that paint a bleak picture of Motorola in order to get rid of Zander).
He may well have invented this entire legal stuff as a publicity stunt. If so, he may have crossed the line.
apple seems WORSE than other companies when it comes to this legal bullshit
Seems? Apple tried to keep everybody from using GUIs by trying to claim that anybody who created a GUI was violating their intellectual property:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_and_feel
This is in addition to a lot of other ways in which they screwed their customers and business partners over the years.
Apple has always been evil; what distinguishes them from Microsoft is that they are the underdog and that their products are a bit nicer. But a world dominated by Apple would be just as bad as a world dominated by Microsoft.
Apple didn't lock anything down that hasn't always been locked down.
Nearly from day 1, Apple tried to make sure that they controlled what you could and could not use with Apple computers. For example, on the Lisa, they deliberately made system software not work with non-Apple disk drives, even though standard hardware would have been otherwise compatible.
You can look through old PC mags from the 80s and find $8-10,000 Macs, but you can also find $10-12,000 PCs
At the same time, you could get UNIX workstations for a fraction of the price; both the Macs and the PCs were overpriced.
Your deluded, Dvorak-brainwashed generation will have to die off before technology can make any progress.
And the Jobs-brainwashed generation will have to die off before technology can make any progress, because Apple has been responsible for holding back progress as much as Microsoft. Apple doesn't spend significant amounts of money on research, they are running 20 year old software they bought from NeXT, and their big successes (GUI, iPod, etc.) were things other people invented and they just copied.
Apple is a copycat company with good designers and great marketing.
Humans are simple creatures, we need the world defined in goodies and baddies, that often means having to make the choice of the lesser of two evils, and not always getting it right.
Godwin time perhaps, in WW2 who are the goodies and who are the baddies? You have the axis and the allies. Well Japan and Germany clearly belong in the baddies groups, these are evil nations whose people have not a single redeeming quality. The role of Italy and and Austria is slightly more complex. Italy often seems to be able to shrug of the worsed of the holocaust.
But the goodies? The US of A? Hitler went to the east for lebensraum, the americans trekked to the west and killed the people already living there. What is the difference between a sign that says "Geine Juden" and "No Blacks"?
England? Talk about a country bend on taking over the world, it made an empire out of astraucities. The soviet union/russia? Well at least Stalin could never be called a racist, he had entire populations wiped out of all sorts. Equality of a kind I suppose.
Yet we must pick and in popular culture that often means we gloss over the "truth" to present one side in a better light. You might have noticed that in the recent WW2 tv series Band of Brothers absolutly no mentions is made of the US army policies regarding blacks or those with ancestors from Japan?
Part of the final solution was to deport jews to remote areas where they could be controlled/wiped out. Explain to me the motivations between Indian reservations and the rather diminsied population figures of native americans?
In WW2 there were only baddies, just that some at that particulair time were not as active as others and depending on your own background some weren't intrested in being very bad to you at that moment. Why string up a jew when blacks are so much more fun?
Yet we need to have a hero, and so we make one, by putting on blinders.
Steve Jobs is a figure in IT, there are many others, but he can be very closely linked to Bill Gates, an obvious baddy (although once seen as a hero freeing us from the evil IBM, a company that is now often seen as a goodie).
What really is the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates apart from income? It is a well known part of computer history that it was Steve Jobs own (what is the word, incompetence, arrogance) that handed Bill Gates the PC market. Apple, IBM, Commodore, Atari etc etc all screwed up at a crucial point leaving Wintel to rule the market. A lot has been written about it already, including on slashdot.
But just imagine that Steve Jobs hadn't made what ever mistake it was he made and that Apple had come to rule the PC market, what then? Would it have been any better? Imagine that the holocaust had never happened, would the US be the evil country for its treatment of blacks, would it have continued like South Africa? How much did the realization of the holocaust change american opinion on its own treatment of a part of the population?
Apple has never been any more open with its software then Microsoft has. While MS software has always been bug prone, I have to say that the most crashy PC I have ever seen was running OS9. Supporting DRM, are we talking about Steve "Disney" Jobs here? Sony is often a villain when it comes to consumer rights, but when did Apple ever fight a legal battle FOR fair use?
But we need a hero, and so we make one, reality be damned. The sad part is that we got real heroes in IT, Stallman in front, but that person is WAY to much of a hero. People often insultingly try to compare him to Jezus but I personally see that as a rather important clue as to real heroes who truly stand for something. The person of jezus, if he was real, was a real pain in the ass for the powers that be, even his own followers. Really read the bible and you find a guy who was kicking against a lot of pedastals and upsetting people. Very confenient he was killed and that the pleps couldn't read and that the powers that be could tell their people what Jezus had RE
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog.
The scox-scum made millions from their extortion efforts. Seems clear that msft is behind Acacia bogo lawsuit agiant Redhat as well. Looks like Lyons was offered some extortion loot as well.
With real estate in the toilet, and IT jobs getting offshored, and all. I think extortion may be the new growth industry.
Think about it: there is no down side. You have people pay you to not file nuisance lawsuits against them. How can you lose?
of the original imacs...purely to stop third party developers they didn't approve of from making hardware that would look nice with your Mac. I don't think his comments about what apple wants have entirely missed the plot.
Apart from the mention on fakesteve blog, do you have any other references, from Apple for instance. Can we believe utterances from a blog with 'fake' in the title ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
Are all of you actually buying into this as something real? C'mon, look at who you're dealing with - this is nothing but a big hoax. A funny hoax, though, especially since it was absolutely guaranteed to draw in a ton of frothing at the mouth suckers.
Hi-lar-i-ous!
Fake Steve Jobs? That's not the only thing he's faked being...
How about fake journalist? Fake analyst? Fake intellectual?
The guy is firmly attached to the corporate teat, and things like
Linux scare him to death, because he can't figure out how to make
money on it. When Fake SCO came along, he started spouting anti-Linux
vitriol at every turn; here's just a sample;
"In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies
in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own
righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will
agree."
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux_print.html
Of course, when it turned out we Linux supporters had it right all
along, Dan jumped off of the SCO bandwagon while it was hurtling
downhill at warp speed, and he nearly broke both of his ankles in the
process. His "apology" basically blamed Darl McBride, saying all Dan
did was repeat what Darl and company told him. Excuse me? You're
trying to pawn yourself off as a journalist, yet you take the word of
a litigious, all hat, no cattle wannabe cowboy, and then fail to
research the whole story?
If anything, Dan Lyons is an even worse shill than Rob Enderle - at
least Rob has the decency to reply to people directly, as he has done
with me on several occasions; Dan is too chickenshit to admit he was
wrong, on his own accord.
(I'd bring up the poor quality of his "blook" here, but that would
mean I'd have to detail all of the material he blatantly stole from
the regulars of the Yahoo SCOX message board, which I don't have the
time for right now; I will say that when you read the material there,
you've gotten exactly what you paid for; I don't see how Dan can live
with himself for trying to *charge* for it in print!) -saltydogmn on
Yahoo SCOX
P.S. Dan, if you're reading this, make sure to have Darl send me my $699/cpu invoice for running Linux on my computers; I have 3 of them, including this IBM laptop; 2 running Kubuntu, and 1 Xubuntu. Where should I send the check, and, more importantly, WHY? kthxbye
Crikey - use of the word "cunt" getting +4 funny. Slashdot's grown-ups having the day off?
*giggle*. So, someone using "cunt" gets modded "Funny". Someone pointing out how juvenile this is gets modded "Flamebait". Gotta love this place.
Even so, I see no reason to sympathise this guy in any way.. why should we even bother? I hope he spends a lot of money for legal fees.
If this is not a hoax, why would you say this? Call it satire or parody, both of them are powerful devices that are part of our free speech rights.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
This is a changing world in these terms. Blogs are a conversation, not reporting. Therefore the paradigm flips. What about news reports? Is is slander when the words were written and scripted and spoken aloud, but moved back to a transcript form?
The distinction use to be simple. It isn't any more.
So what is it on the Internet? Isn't it traditionally that you PRINT lines of libel?
Yes. Hoax is really a better word.
It was all fun and games until he started flat-out lying about Apple and the EFF (just like he'd already flat-out lied about SCO and Linux). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find either of them really suing them now, say for libel and defamation of character. Way to go, dumbass.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Are you sure they are not Fake Steve Jobs Attorneys?
What utter filth, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Not because some people got responses from Steve Jobs himself (he would always defend Apple) but because what these lawyers allegedly did can be considered as blackmail. Lawyers always need to be very careful when discussing possible litigation or making deals, because if things sound like blackmail, they can get seriously fscked.
This kind of threat-making can completely invalidate the initial objectives of the suit, because the company might end up paying more than the defendant and lawers will be involved on a criminal case. A friend of mine once received a letter with this kind of threat ("look! this is how much your house is worth and you need to think about your children!") and the laywer ended up in prison, because his attempt to solve the issue with extortion instead of the law was considered as criminal.
If you're negotiating a legal case, you can't even TALK about how much a person's house is worth, if the house is not the subject of the suit. Laywers can't EVER sound like they're threatening to ruin your life because of [put random business-related issue here]. They can take steps to actually try ruining it, but they can't use that possibility as a means of negotiation. There are even specific laws regarding that situations, besides common extortion and blackmail laws.
It's just Dan Lyin' Lyons. I doubt Apple cares one way or the other.
But it sure gets danny a lot of free publicity. Danny is a pure fiction writer. Danny is laughing up his sleeve right now, because of the slashdotters he fooled.
This is just more FSJ BS.
Look at the site title, look to the bottom right of it. What do you see?
"A Forbes.com Site"
I think Forbes maybe, just maybe, has a few lawyers. Don't you?
Get a clue people.
The First
suckers most of you are, it is a joke. Can we institute some kind of basic Recognizing Satire and Sarcasm test for the Internet?
He reveals discussions with his his lawyer, Tony Clifton, and appears to be using this blog as an allegory on the wisdom of forcing people who were giving you free publicity out of business.
Fuck off, cunt.
It was almost believable until the Fake Steve Jobs claimed the Apple lawyers knew the nature and value of private assets. Sure, it is easy and trivial to obtain someone's home address, value assessments, tax bills, prior sales, and so on, for anything with a title (houses, cars, boats, etc). This is s matter of public record.
However, bank accounts, college trusts, and other private assets require very nasty actions, usually felonies, to obtain. No lawyer would ever admit to knowing these things about you because to do so would be equivalent to confession to a felony.
I knew it was a joke instantly yesterday. Nerds may be smart, but they sure are humorless dumbasses.
I will no longer deal with Apple
Andy Allen
Please add your pledge for a liftime bouycott here:
Blimey! It's the one who put the 'coward' in anonymous!
Interesting the company finds it ok to parody Bill Gates
on their commercials (PC Guy) but finds any mocking of
the holy father as sacrilege.
In England anyway it would be libel. It is also libel if it is broadcast on TV or Radio.
Mr. Vague Disclaimer (of the Essex Disclaimers) is that cunt that put menstrual cramps into textual form.
At least he's not a completely anonymous douche, though. He stands behind the cries emanating from his sandy vagina.
...to be stupid enough to fall for this?
It's stupid because Apple has long tried to market itself as different than MS, more progressive than MS, and honestly, until relatively recently they've done a damn fine job of it.
Well, they've done a good job of 'marketing' themselves as such. A tremendous job, if you look behind the veneer at what Apple really is. But is it a tautology for me to say a company whose main business thrust is hype and appearances does a good job of marketing that fact?
Apple has always been about proprietary, closed in, locked down platforms.
Not really. They only became that with the introduction of the Mac. The Apple ][ was rather open. I think Jobs felt 'burned' by the Apple ][ cloners and that was when the company changed. I know for a fact that at the Macintosh product launch when Jobs got up at the lectern (at a National Press Club speech broadcast on NPR if I am remembering correctly) and boasted that the Mac was a sealed-unit box that was 'hacker proof' (and in 1984, the common usage of 'hacker' was different- he _did_ mean Us when he said that,) that he made enemies of a lot of us.
So let's just say Apple has been closed proprietary locked-down platforms since about 1983.
Could Slashdot please change the inflammatory title of the post to reflect that it's actually a hoax?
You're wrong. The distinction is actually quite important. When you lie about someone in voice, your body language, etc, can make the lie less powerful. You can see if the seaker is pissed, and often far fewer people hear the lie. The lie doesn't usually persist, but must be recalled. It's not as bad. Even on TV, it's less likely to be recorded and repeated (and if it isn, there are machinisms for calculating damages).
When you write something, you are making a permanent record. You're preserving a fact about someone that could be around for 100 years. It's harder to delete, it's harder to ignore, it's harder to forget. No indications of your tone to see if you're pissed or joking. Your statement will be taken at face value.
Thus, Libel is more serious, usually, than Slander. There are exceptions to that, but the distinction is valid.
The columns are talking about things that would only apply to Fake Steve Jobs, not real Steve Jobs. Is it usual for Fake Steve Jobs to break the fourth wall in order to be funny? Not from what little I have read of his stuff, which leads me to believe that this is truthful.
Has not anyone else noticed the tag ‘DRAMA’? It is a drama!
Not only that, but Apple can beat any woman in the world in the wrestling ring! Feminists aren't so tough! They're small, with puny bodies. Any man can beat them, even a guy like Andy Kaufmann! I have to admit, I got fooled a bit. But it seemed crazier and crazier. And then when I saw his "lawyer" was Tony Clifton, I, well, got it. But then I got annoyed. Why would he pull such a hoax? Then I read the Slashtards and realized what a funny prank it was.
What? We have do do this over secure connections now?
hawk, who insists on libeling over telnet, not sssl connections
merry christmas all
Related Links ...
Compare prices on Apple Products
Compare prices on Legal Items
Wouldn't Illegal Items be more...fun?
Who marked this funny? It actually sounds like it has a ring of "Insightful" to it.
The moral is clear: you tech nerds need some training in basic literature, Aristotelian logic, and rhetoric. Otherwise, you're going to be suckered in by FSJ again and again. And worse, by false prophets. It's really important to be aware of parody, satire and irony. At his best, FSJ uses irony. He always tips you off about the fake with a tipoff like "Tony Clifton." The substance of the satire: it's to watch the reasons why so many here immediately thought it was true! Because they hate the RSJ! They hate Apple! Apple's finally as stupid as Microsoft! It confirms your prejudices, so it must be true, see? That's the trap door.
Then, slowly, it dawns on you that you just may have been had. So what do you do? You still hate Steve Jobs, so it must be true! Okay, so this isn't true, but they'd do that! They're much worse that Microsoft! They're all evil corporations! Linus forever!
This is not critical thinking, boys. When you hear a declaration of any kind, it should make you think: is that true? Do I know enough to say that's true? When it's an involved thing, like a story about Apple, lawyers, a columnist, the law, you really have to get down into the story and check it out. Of course, once you're in on the joke, it's perfectly clear how fraudulent, and how funny, the whole thing is. But like most good satire, the real subject is how and why people get "put on." The sadistic part is watching people running around here like chickens with their head chopped off. But it should be a warning to all you headless chickens. Learn how to make quick assessments of whether something's likely true or not, and how to figure out why you fell for the con. Because if you can get conned so easily, all your technical knowledge is nothing.
I tend to use cursive when I'm jotting stuff down, so I write. I'd imagine that stuff you put online is libel, since it's written down. Or printed. Or whatever verb you want to use. IANAL.
The verb used isn't important. It's just to remember "Lines -> Libel; Speak -> Slander."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I hope people realize this whole thing is a joke. - iPhone