I was not so shocked, shocked to learn that Forbes editor, Dan Lyons, onetime voice in the outcry against anonymous blogging tactics, went from a defensive treatise against the Dark Arts to dabbling in them. Apparently, CEO blogs containing such compelling insights as "...coaslesce your unstructured data with our modular design for business processes based on a service-oriented parkitecture," inspired Mr. Lyons to take up the voice of Fake Steve Jobs.
As others have pointed out, Mr. Lyons' official "Floating Point" and his FSJ jollies blog coverage of Open Source were quite consistent. He sought to disabuse his readers of any illusions they might harbor on the topic. The salient aspects of the movement--licenses, products, business models--did not interest him so much. Why would they? If Open Source is successful, it would all be controlled by IBM anyway. As FSJ, adding "freetards" to the "long-hairs" and "sandal brigade" repertory for describing the delusional pissants afflicted with the highly contagious social disease was perhaps his most lasting contribution to the debate on Open Source.
The ramifications of the Lyons' j'accuse are portentous and terrible indeed. The FSF and Groklaw PJ get money from IBM? It's not enough that the FSF goes out of its way to alienate every other corporate entity that could keep the lights on for them, they've got to let go of IBM too? As for PJ, isn't an ongoing obsession with chronicling every legal brief coming of the SCO case a hard enough cross to bear? Or, you're only a credible Open Source advocate if the compulsion leaves you penniless and starving? As for Richard Stallman, the guy may be a raving pinko Commie, but he works out of the William Gates, III building at MIT, after all. Isn't that poetic justice enough?
Then I got to thinking, plugged in as the talented Mr. Lyons may be, he still supposedly held down a full-time job while writing FSJ. The variety and quantity of the posts as well as the direct reference in FSJ's "El Jobso Rides Again" (...Instead of just having the Steve-inator write the whole blog, VC dude says let's have a team blog...) August 2006 post hint at a collective blog. Then there is the whole issue of matching anonymous authors with their public counterparts through unique writing pattern recognition. That jogged a memory. When had I last read about the success of that technique. Belle de Jour was hotter and supposedly got a six figure advance for her book.
As for the real Steve Jobs, I have to admit, I had quite a crush on him after watching the made-for-TV "documentary" "Pirates of Silicon Valley" back in 1999...until I realized that El Steve-O hadn't looked like Noah Wyle...for quite a while.
As others have pointed out, Mr. Lyons' official "Floating Point" and his FSJ jollies blog coverage of Open Source were quite consistent. He sought to disabuse his readers of any illusions they might harbor on the topic. The salient aspects of the movement--licenses, products, business models--did not interest him so much. Why would they? If Open Source is successful, it would all be controlled by IBM anyway. As FSJ, adding "freetards" to the "long-hairs" and "sandal brigade" repertory for describing the delusional pissants afflicted with the highly contagious social disease was perhaps his most lasting contribution to the debate on Open Source.
The ramifications of the Lyons' j'accuse are portentous and terrible indeed. The FSF and Groklaw PJ get money from IBM? It's not enough that the FSF goes out of its way to alienate every other corporate entity that could keep the lights on for them, they've got to let go of IBM too? As for PJ, isn't an ongoing obsession with chronicling every legal brief coming of the SCO case a hard enough cross to bear? Or, you're only a credible Open Source advocate if the compulsion leaves you penniless and starving? As for Richard Stallman, the guy may be a raving pinko Commie, but he works out of the William Gates, III building at MIT, after all. Isn't that poetic justice enough?
Then I got to thinking, plugged in as the talented Mr. Lyons may be, he still supposedly held down a full-time job while writing FSJ. The variety and quantity of the posts as well as the direct reference in FSJ's "El Jobso Rides Again" (...Instead of just having the Steve-inator write the whole blog, VC dude says let's have a team blog...) August 2006 post hint at a collective blog. Then there is the whole issue of matching anonymous authors with their public counterparts through unique writing pattern recognition. That jogged a memory. When had I last read about the success of that technique. Belle de Jour was hotter and supposedly got a six figure advance for her book.
As for the real Steve Jobs, I have to admit, I had quite a crush on him after watching the made-for-TV "documentary" "Pirates of Silicon Valley" back in 1999...until I realized that El Steve-O hadn't looked like Noah Wyle...for quite a while.
2 comments:
You know Daniel Lyons was a SCO shill:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q3.07/61BE28FC-FCFF-4997-9CCC-B3E215B3D153.html
It is all making sense now. And the satire is less and less funny when its not satire anymore.
I'll tell ya, never new what a "freetard" really was til I started working at Red Hat.
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