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.' "

Re:You dare defile Amiga!?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nice troll. Where is that quote in the article?

Page 2.

But a very nice troll anyway...

Re:You dare defile Amiga!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're using Firefox (or IE too I imagine) just click the link a few times, it will ask you to take a survey, and if you click "no" it will bounce you back to Slashdot.

Re:Oh god not dvorak

[Martin Blank]

He's actually right, to some extent. Go back further, and you'll find people like Walter Winchell, who, while bringing some really interesting stuff to light, also went out of their way to work with some really sleazy characters to get dirt on people that they didn't like, offended them, or otherwise were deemed worthy of public ridicule for their beliefs, actions, words, or other aspect, whether taken in context or not.

It never really went away. It was just relegated to the fringes of journalism.

If only the world judged Windows by Windows users

[Elwood P Dowd]

He thinks idiot fanbois are going to make Lunix look bad, and that's going to kill it? That's a good point: Consider the Playstation's penetration into the enterprise market.

Talking about the death of Linux guarantees that he's full of shit. Linux will be imortalized in routers and handhelds and webhosts until the end of time. No matter what John C. Dvorak thinks of the comments here on Slashdot.

What would the death of "Linux and the open-source movement" even look like? What would the Amiga lunatic community look like right now if their holy OS had always been available as source code? IMHO, a lot like it looked in it's fucking heyday (not that that's a good thing), even if they were abandoned by the platform provider. Kill Lunix how??

Re:Stop Quoting Dvorak

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I work in a care center for people with Alzheimers and dementia, and I just wanted to say that some of the people there make more sense than Dvorak.

LinuxWorld isn't the only one

[Halo1]

LinuxInsider also has a pretty strange track record. I've only followed it on the topic of software patents, but at least there they are only publishing pro-swpat lawyer opinion pieces without giving any room for rebuttals. See the collected documentation on the FFII wiki [ffii.org]

Time to call out the old folks

[timster]

So I've been here a while, and I don't remember this "site where intelligent people shared ideas". I'm trying to figure out when Slashdot was supposedly like that, since when I started reading people were already complaining about how it had deteriorated into a cesspool of nonstop idiocy.

Will anyone older than me testify that Slashdot was once a hallowed institution of platonic debate?

LinuxWorld automated the editors

[Animats]

What really happened at LinuxWorld is described here, by Martin Brown [mcslp.com], one of the staff who resigned. LinuxWorld's web site has been automated.

• "We have no control over the website; even the new one, which went live recently, is completely out of our control. Many people don't understand how this can be the case - even with the recent issues, many assume we have full and absolute control over content on the website. This simply wasn't the case. Instead the LinuxWorld.com website is an automatic amalgam of articles and posts from across Sys-Con that may, or may not, be Linux related. Our only direct way into providing content for our site was through our also recently enabled blogs (http://mc.linuxworld.com./ [mc.linuxworld.com] We have no control over the articles automatically added and syndicated on the site."

Remember, LinuxWorld's "staff" wasn't paid. So with no pay and no control, of course they quit. "Quitting" is barely a meaningful concept in a situation like that.

Re:Journalists - We are watching

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Atlanta and an editor not too long ago deplored the fact that a "respected writer" on the local paper was forced to resign because he got caught making stuff up. She seemed a lot more upset with the fact that he was forced out than the fact that he made stuff up. In the old days, journalists got away with this stuff because no one bothered to check up on them. I wonder how many respected journalists of the past got away with this and never got caught.

Re:Cheap shot

[notasheep]

Here, read this article on group dynamics and you'll understand why groups need leaders:

http://www.gmu.edu/student/csl/5stages.html [gmu.edu]

Article Text (don't give Dvorak a raise)

[generationxyu]

The weirdest thing I've seen lately has been the craziness provoked by a feud between tech writer Maureen O'Gara of LinuxGram/Linux Business News and her apparently bitter rival, blogger Pamela Jones (PJ) of Groklaw. It began some time back when the two exchanged barbs over intimations that Jones was somehow a stooge for IBM in the SCO-Linux battle and that O'Gara was somehow a stooge for SCO. You can see where this is headed.

So over the past week O'Gara tracked down and photographed PJ's home and PJ's mother's home and posted pics in her column, with veiled accusations that the entire Groklaw site is a front for IBM in its battle with SCO. Once this article appeared, all hell broke loose in the Linux community, with editors scrambling. There was removal of the offending article with apologies all around. Then came accusations of this and that; staffs of editors quitting in protest; publishers befuddled; veiled threats of lawsuits; vituperative attacks on multiple parties, including the LinuxWorld publisher, editors, O'Gara, and PJ; several worldwide denial-of-service attacks on LinuxWorld's parent company, Sys-Con Media; calls to Interpol; O'Gara's "firing"; and a flamestorm on Slashdot and elsewhere.

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.

Although her article was removed, you can usually find it on the Google cache (an interesting situation if you think about it), and I'm sure someone will mirror the piece eventually. Whatever the case, I've seen this feud become ridiculous and invasive, but I've seen worse on network TV with less-public figures than PJ. I would have paid no attention to the whole thing if I represented the collective thoughts of the Linux community. What difference does it make?

First let's get a few things straight. All of O'Gara's assertions are nutty. And I'm not talking about the yet-to-be-proven assertion that PJ is a 60-year-old dowager stooging for IBM. That's just ludicrous on the surface. Yet that is what is claimed.

First of all, IBM has lawyers, and it sure doesn't need to have someone find out via the discovery process that it's fronting a Web site about this case. That would simply never happen. Besides, IBM is not that clever. There are also enforced policies against this sort of thing.

It's wrong to assume that IBM expected the SCO battle to drag out like this from the outset. Unlikely! And I should mention that just because I, for example, developed an early timeline of the SCO history doesn't mean I'm a stooge for SCO or IBM either.

That said, the Linux community figures that O'Gara is being paid by SCO or Microsoft or someone bad. Again, if this were so, and if it was ever proven or stumbled on during the discovery process (nothing to take lightly), it would be a disaster for the litigation chances of the company doing the paying. It just wouldn't be worth the risk. It appears to me that O'Gara is just being overly provocative to get readers. And apparently it doesn't take much provocation, as 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. "Too nutty even for the Mac community? We welcome you!"

Now these lunatics are issuing death threats? I can tell you that my mere mentioning of any of this will result in incredibly hateful attempted postings on this forum and on my moderated blog. What is wrong with these people?

If anything is going to kill Linux and the open-source movement, it's the presence of certifiable lunatics in the ranks representing the users. It may be that this is actually a deep Astroturf PR campaign orchestrated by Microsoft to discredit open source and Linux. It sure seems like something weird is going on.

I can tell you this much: Normal people do not like being associated with fanatics and lunatics. Once Linux gets the image as the OS for the criminally insane, it's a dead duck. Unless the community gets a handle on this, grows up, and rebukes the extremists, the trash heap of history is where this is all headed.

Re:Dvorak's 1996 impression of his Amiga

[Khalid]

Sure this guy is a crackpot himself, he is just discrediting himself even more with this kind a provocative, tabloid journalism (if he has ever got any credit). Really Slashdot must not give echo to this kind person; they are just giving him what he is looking for a tribune and a readership.

Re:Dvorak's 1996 impression of his Amiga

[elemental23]

Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a sense of humor.

Re:Dvorak's 1996 impression of his Amiga

[connorbd]

Dvorak is a pundit with no particular credibility. He was always bearish on Apple, and the Mac just refused to die.