Linux Community Implodes — I just finished this essay for PCmag.com and expect quite a bit of flak for it since I targeted the nutballs who think everything written pro-or-con about Linux is about them personally. Worth reading. Let me know what you think on that forum and here too.
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So let me guess, you’re NOT trying to kiss up to the slashdot crowd with your new piece?!
That article sums up my general feelings very, very well. Also, “Astroturf Movement” is a great expression.
Mr. D,
I’ve looked all over your site, but I’ve failed to find any of the following:
1- Your home address
2- Your home phone number
3- Your mother’s address (and optional phone number)
4- Your religious affiliation
5- Pictures of your mailbox and house
6- What companies are in the same city you’re in, and why you don’t state in bold letters at the top of your site that you’re paid by them to write what you do.
The last one runs under the assumption that since you live in the same city as the company, they must have hired you to write for them. After all, since PJ supposed lives near an IBM office, she must be working for them according to O’Gara.
Please post the above information on your site. After all, you have no right to privacy.
You completely lost the point of what happened. All of the above information got posted about PJ (supposedly, noone knows if it was accurate, and O’Gara has a reputation for inaccuracy).
But the point was it was an attempt to try and public humiliate and “out” someone against their wishes.
Tell me, where were the ethics in that? I can define “ethics” for you if you don’t have a dictionary.
Tell me, how would you respond if you found out some psycho woman was stalking your mother? If mom’s no longer among the living, someone else you might care about.
And then after the stalking, writes up the addresses, phone numbers, and shows off the pictures. Like it’s news.
And finally, the site this stalking-fest showed up on was titled “Linux Business News”. Now keeping in mind the article had nothing to do with IBM, SCO, or even Linux, just PJ’s personal information:
1) What did it have to do with Linux?
2) What did it have to do with Business?
3) Where was the News?
Cannonballs in 5…. 4…. 3…. 2….
I’m guessing that the pics of the houses were only run because MO could not get a pic of PJ herself. And I’m not defending MO!! I just said that I’ve seen worse with less fuss.
AND I agree — what did it have to do with Linux? So why is the Linux community up in arms? The whole thing was dumb. So why do a denial of service attack and make death threats?
> I … expect quite a bit of flak for it since I
> targeted the nutballs who think everything written > pro-or-con about Linux is about them personally.
Translation: “I’m going to write a nasty article about how nasty some people react when someone writes something nasty about them. Let’s see what happens…”
This reminds me a little of O’Gara stalking PJ and then acting as if it were unreasonable for PJ to be slightly “paranoid”.
Sounds like a “self-fulfilling prophesy.”
But I suppose it sells ad impressions.
“But I suppose it sells ad impressions…”
Isn’t that the idea? You know, to get people to read.
First, you/Dvorak reason that O’Gara was simply trying to get some attention by stirring up controversy with her own brand of wildly speculative journalism (this was hardly the first of her laughable windmill joustings).
Then, you go on to try to get some attention by stirring up controversy with your own brand of unabashedly contrarian journalism. I love the symmetry there, the form following the content. Very well done! 🙂
It’s just too bad that O’Gara’s brand doesn’t have more of that kind of intentional humor and cleverness — Anyway, stay irrascibly grouchy, man! Always a treat…
BTW there is a documented history of MOG echoing SCO spin including revealing the contents of confidential IBM emails etc. It’s for these kinds of practices she has been accused of acting as a “shill” for SCO. (If you did a little research you would have found it).
Your twisting the above into “the Linux community figures that O’Gara is being paid by SCO or Microsoft or someone bad” to lead into your accusation “the Linux community is slowly evolving into a state of mob rule” is disingenuous.
Why are you twisting the online community’s disdain for Maureen’s hatchet job/unethical behaviour into a fictional story about mobs, death threats, fanatics and lunatics? Are you calling Fred Brown Co-chair, SPJ Ethics – a lunatic for stating “That piece by O’Gara definitely is outside the norms of good journalism. It’s bullying, insulting and harassing, and I, for one, really don’t get the point of it.”??
“Isn’t that the idea? You know, to get people to read.”
I’m just saying that if you’re going to poke a hornet’s nest so as to get their attention, it is a little unfair to complain that the hornets stung you.
I spent a year wandering the halls of Linux U because [1] I wanted out from M$oft; [2] some of my extended family had already begun similar research on how it might fit their computing needs — with some positive results; [3] I concluded nothing out there was closer than 90% to prime time — and [4] bought a Mac Mini, reveled in OS X and I’m happy as an Ipswich clam over the conclusion.
I don’t consider the year wasted. I learned a lot.
I’m not convinced at all of the respect and devotion you’re supposed to give to the Open Source folks.
Once I posted my “switcher” status on a couple of Mac websites/forum — joining in to something I’m enjoying learning more about — I immediately received a spate of wingy-dingy emails and PM’s from self-appointed Linux “agents” who apparently comb such sites looking for those who’ve left the seminary — who tried for a couple of weeks to brainwash me into “returning to the fold”.
These dudes should move to Kansas and join a proper idiot religion.
My honest and frank opinion about this dispute?
I couldn’t care less!
Here’s what I really care about: installing the danged software.
I’d LOVE to use Linux but I have NEVER been able to get Linux to install on any system I own. .. and this has been true for years now.
In your article, you state “In the olden days, O’Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership.” You have invoked the logical fallacy of the Anonymous Authority; just who would give her a medal?
Why don’t you interview someone from the Society of Professional Journalists and have a named authority give it’s opinion on the ethics of Ms. O’Gara’s column?
You also referred to “today’s world of the so easily offended.” That is based on the fallacy of Composition; your logic says that because some people are easily offended, then the world is easily offended. I could just as easily use the reverse of this fallacy, the fallacy of Division, to say that the 19th century world was not offended by slavery; that is clearly not the case, if one examines the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mark Twain.
If I were to make the same rhetorical arguments, then I’d say that because you don’t find anything unethical about Ms. O’Gara’s article, then you think that Samuel Clemens was wrong for taking the pseudonym Mark Twain, and making an effort to keep his professional and private life separate. However, I don’t believe this argument at all; I’m not going to draw any conclusions about your support or critiques about Samuel Clemens because of what you said in this column.
By the way, I’m a member of the Linux Community, and I don’t think that Ms. O’Gara is being paid by Microsoft or SCO, I’ve never used an Amiga, I have never issued a death-threat, and I don’t consider myself a fanatic, lunatic, or paranoid crackpot.
I can’t believe you wrote this.
Some quick generalizations:
1. Linux users are part of the Unix crowd which is generally considered the most arrogant of all the OS types (and with a dear brother I have to call a MacFascist I’m talking from hard experience. As Walt Kelly wrote we have met the enemy and he is us–despite competition which is sometimes fierce).
2. There have always been a lot of lefties involved in computers and certainly Jobs and Gates are driving them away as they forget what it was like to be young. At this point in my misspent dotage I’ve gone off in the wilds of New Hampshire, but if you look at the history of the Pacifica Foundation or the Nation, and you take a look at what goes on in the pages of Groklaw, you will find a lot of the same stuff.
I am NOT saying that Unix or even Groklaw users are old communists. I am saying that some of us have brought those standards of behavior into the community with us. And we lived with them very well in our youth, I thank you. You have already been accused of being a Microsoft agent on Groklaw, dear man. I forget which column provoked it. The True Believers are cute and sometimes they are irritating. PJ tries to keep everyone to keep a lid on it.
This time much of what you said was either rehashing old tired ideas about us or just expressing superficial ideas. You’re paid for your opinions but if you want to sound off on us in our diversity (from Silicon Valley to Bedlam and Maudlin hospitals) you won’t be making any friends for the “mainstream” media–and maybe you should think about trying it.
Mr. Dvorak:
I think you’re missing out on some things that fuel some folks at Groklaw and elsewhere to believe that Maureen O’Gara is working, if not QUITE hand in hand with SCO, then towards a common ground.
Earlier in the trial, SCO attempted to introduce some information into evidence that was disallowed because it was privileged. That information has since been redacted from transcripts and sealed. (Once again, privileged information)
None of the observers who have reported on the hearing saw Mrs O’Gara attend that hearing, yet she wrote a fluff piece about this “damning bit of evidence that IBM is so desperately trying to keep sealed”. That information could have only come from SCO.
Then, in the recent quarterly earnings report open call for SCO, their CEO, Darl McBride blustered that “You don’t know everything there is to know about PJ and Groklaw, and we’ll be putting that out when we get to the bottom of it.”
My memory may be failing, but I believe that he also mentioned that he had hired private investigators to learn everything about PJ that they could.
A mere matter of weeks, comes this stalking piece (I’m sorry, I can’t come up with a better term for this piece of garbage) from Maureen O’Gara, which violates several ethical standards for journalists.
How badly?
Here’s a Co-Chair on an ethics comittee for journalists (yes, considering recent events in the major media, I’m as surprised as you :))
I agree with you. That piece by O’Gara definitely is outside the norms of good journalism. It’s bullying, insulting and harassing, and I, for one, really don’t get the point of it. That’s not to say that other journalists are sometimes guilty of those sins, but that still doesn’t make it good journalism.
So I don’t think you did the wrong thing in using you First Amendment rights to call for O’Gara’s ouster or reprimand or whatever. The SPJ Code of Ethics says ethical journalists should “expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media” and “abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.”
Fred Brown
Co-chair, SPJ Ethics Committee
(end email)
Now.. for the DDoS “attack”.. well there are other things that were going on at the time, that were working, so I don’t think if there was an attack, it was very successful. I know several people were doing a batch wget of the site to make sure they couldn’t claim that no “attack article” of the sort had ever happened.
And before you pin it on Linux “enthusiasts”, I ask you to remember the virus that was supposedly “Written by OSS Extremists to DDoS SCO off the net.” that SCO and others made hay out of for weeks. When it turned out that it was NOTHING of the sort, it was a smoke screen for a spambot/zombie virus created by Eastern European mobsters… the silence was palpable. Not even a grudging “Ok, we were wrong”.
Boycotts of publisher and advertisers aren’t “Bad” or “illegal” either. It’s one way to vote with your pocketbook.
Does it surprise you that the whole Senior Editorial Staff of the magazine whose online branch published it resigned, because the publisher A) Decided to run it over their objections and B) Saw there “was nothing wrong with the article” despite O’Gara even mentioning IN THE ARTICLE that she wasn’t sure she had the right person?
I hope you’ll take a 2nd look at the issue, and realize you’re barking up the wrong tree.
I take it you did not actually read either MOG’s article or Groklaw, but merely are writing about what you have “heard”. Pity.
Getting people to read an article, magazine or blog by exposing information about where they live, their phone number, their family members, etc. is just wrong from any journalistic standpoint. Many people who have taken on the mantle of “journalist” are little more than muck rakers who are trying to attract attention to themselves simply because they either don’t know how to write a good article or are too lazy to actually investigate both sides of an arguement.
As for the accusations of a DOS attack, have you ever considered the “slash dot effect”? Then let me explain. The “slash dot effect” happens when an article is posted that draws the attention of readers and they go to the mentioned web site in such quantities as to overload the server. It is not an intentional attack but merely a quest for information.
As for the death threats, both sides have received them. PJ used to get a lot of them in the early days of Groklaw from the SCO crowd. She ignored them. She did not hold them up and say “that bad lunatic SCO crowd is out to kill me!” like Darl does. She didn’t hire fictitious bodyguards to protect herself. And then MOG prints all of that personal information about PJ which went WAY overboard (I would liken it to “stalking”) as if to say “hey, all of you loonies, here is what you need to find her!”, would you want that to happen to you? To your loved ones?
There are loonies on both sides of the court, extremists who have nothing better to do than take personally any imagined offense and insult so that they can go into a blood lust filled rage firing off email after email promising death and destruction. SCO loonies did it. Linux loonies did it. In case you didn’t notice, Republican and Democrat loonies did it during the last election and no one died.
John, become a professional journalist/reporter. Investigate and ask questions instead of popping off rhetoric that you picked up from reading a few lines off of a blog somewhere.
Stop trying to draw people to your blog through this kind of crap reporting. Journalists who take the cheap and easy sensationalist approach to reporting are usually debunked, devalued, and in the end, ignored.
Linux is not going to implode. The whole movement may morph into something else or it may disappear. SCO may stick around or it may dissolve (IBM isn’t going to buy them out just to buy them off). But the face of software as we know it IS changing and the whole business model that was built up around it will never be the same.
Remember that SCO said that they had all of this code that would prove their case. Dispite repeated requests from the community at large they have not done so. Why?
And from the evidence that I have seen, MOG is a shill and a hack, and I think that I shall be ignoring her in the future.
How the mighty have fallen. How is it possible that one with some much intelligence and has given so much to the Computer industry could have fallen so low as this article? I am no zealot, but am an avid Linux supporter. I make a living writing software, mostly proprietary. The O’Gara article (which I haven’t seen and have no desire to see) apparently was about attacking another writer. I don’t see the connection to Linux and nor reason to group all the Linux Community as zealots. I also don’t see how you minimalize the immoral character of one exposing the privacy of another, when the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the right of annonymity in free speech is constitutionally supported. Butn that is neither here nor there. The fact that the entire senior staff of a magazine should be an indication of serious import. Yet you call it silliness? Perplexing. I don’t see your logic here. I have enjoyed reading your writings for way more than a decade. Alas, it is true all good things must come to an end.
Oh how the mighty have fallen.
OK. If you point is ‘whatever it takes to inflate
the readers numbers is acceptable’, you are
100% right, all the way.
So do the spammers, and the ‘politics’ (just in
case, there are politics who believe in truth,
and who are straigh…but not all of them).
I have read your articles in the past, well,
this is the last time, so, from now on
you and sys-con, will NEVER got a hit from me
anymore.
And if people ask me (by the way, I lecture
for quite a few of students…), I just try
to tell them that the best thing to do,
against spammers, and brown-press
is just to look the other way, and ignore them.
IF everyone do the same, sooner or later
they will get tired…ok, perhaps not, after
all there is a lot o money in stake…
You must be careful making generalisations like that. Personally, I feel slightly betrayed by one who I thought was a Mac advocate. How would you like to get back to OS 9?
I would guess I am a moderate on the Linux side of things.
A few issues I will read, not many do I get involved in.
Usually I just raise an eyebrow and say “Interesting”.
I have run across Maureen O’Gara’s name quite a few times,
usually in the context of not well research articles on
this, that and the other thing. Of what I’ve read I would
say that Groklaw related articles might be a significant
fraction, but I doubt it is a fraction large enough for
which one might say that most of her articles (that I read
or heard about) were related to Groklaw.
When I heard about O’Gara’s article about PJ’s home, I
couldn’t believe that a reporter would actually do something
like this. So, I visited the web site to read the article
in question, and upon doing so, attempted to find an email
address to some responsible party for Sys-Con to send a
polite note voicing my dissatisfaction with what one of
their higher level employees had done. The links I thought
would produce an email address, never did turn up anything
(timeouts on connection to a dbase?). I tried a couple of
times to do this, and every time response was SLOW. There
may have been some people who tried to DOS the site, but I
think a far more likely explanation for what was happening
is just the slashdot effect. So many people were attempting
to read and/or respond to the article, that the web server
was struggling to cope.
Yes, there are people in the Linux community who do
inappropriate things. Are they learning? I would hope so,
but I have neither the time or the resources to examine the
issue in any scientific way. All I can do is try to be a
moderating force within my LUG.
Was Maureen O’Gara paid by SCO or Microsoft? Directly I
doubt it. Indirectly, probably in part. (I’m thinking of
pro-Microsoft/SCO advertising on the articles she writes, or
to the various journals she writes for.) What I think is
more likely, is that her “sources” for articles were
probably a little tainted. It’s hard to write an unbiased
summary from biased data. Beyond that? Maybe she just
liked provoking the Linux crowd. As you said, this often
promotes “readership”.
What’s normal? Some grouping around a measure of central
tendency according to a set of variables. If you look at
individual people, they may be “normal” with respect to some
characteristics and “abnormal” (distant/distinct from any
measure of central tendency) on other issues. I would
suspect that this is probably true more often than not, but
I don’t study sociology.
Yes, it would be nice if more of the Linux community would
grow up faster. But I don’t think it helps any when we run
across articles like yours either. Implodes? I see no
justification for the use of the word implodes in your
article? Or are you using some variation of Bill Clinton’s
dictionary where words are defined to have convenient
definitions to the requirements at the time? Vituperative?
If you stop 100 people on the street, how many of them are
going to know that it is even a real word, let alone its
definition?
I’ve written emails similar in tone to your article and let
them sit in the drafts folder for a while to get re-written
a time or two. If they are eventually sent they are often
far less emotional, and for the ones which are sent I often
wish in hindsite I had toned down the emotional content
further. I think your article could have used a little more
time and a few more rewrites.
Damn. These guys jump higher than the Mac Kool-Aid Drinkers when JCD gets on them. Nice work.
James Hill
What death threats are you referring to in the article? I’ve seen plenty of zealots frothing at the mouth, but no threats of violence.
“Unless the community gets a handle on this, grows up, and rebukes the extremists, …”
I have 2 problems with that:
1. A community has _very_ little control over fanatics that misinterpret the true meaning or intentions of the community itself.
2. You shouldn’t associate a community with the fanatics at the fringe when you know they aren’t representative of the community. And you’ve admitted that you know the nuts are not actually part of the Linux community.
I wonder, have you had any experience or interaction with the true Linux community? I’m referring to those actually developing and contributing to software. Read a mailing list archive for any software on Sourceforge for example.
Most of us are too busy to rant and rave about what OS someone else chooses to use. We hardly have enough time to send replies to articles making broad generalizations about us, but will occasionally do so anyway out of indignation.
Thanks for the tip John, we’ll try to keep the nuts under control, but we can’t control what someone writes before they hit the “send” button.
Yo D,
Again, post the following:
1- Your home address
2- Your home phone number
3- Your mother’s address (and optional phone number)
4- Your religious affiliation
5- Pictures of your mailbox and house
6- What companies are in the same city you’re in, and why you don’t state in bold letters at the top of your site that you’re paid by them to write what you do.
You think it was okay for O’Gara to post such information about PJ, then you think such information should be public.
Post it or explain your failure to do so in light of your belief it’s okay to post such information about someone against their wishes.
Great articleAt least I cannot be flamed or modded as a troll here, lol, when i say your article hit the nail on the head. I, for one, have observed this for a long time and have raised the issue on more than one occasion. Each time I have openly stated that the fanatics are painting the wrong picture of the open-source community, I get flamed big time. Doesn’t that response in itself prove our points? As a company we now steer away from Linux based products because of the black eyes many of our clients have experienced when trying to move an existing platform to linux. The same story seems to arise time after time. “We are treated like idiots” by technical support and such when we try to troubleshoot interactions between our linux and other platforms. The normal response from support teams seems to be to change the platform the linux installation cannot communicate with, to linux as well. That is the same answer that irked so many of us with MS. Don’t these people get it? They are battling for King of the Hill with a banner that points to all of the horrible policies that MS has used in the past and then they use the same tactics themselves. The perception is that the linux community is fanatical, at least from the GP’s (General Public’s) point of view. I read Linux articles with a lot of salt now for I know that most often it is either overrepresenting the solution being tauted, or over enphasizing the faults of the solution it sets out to replace. You simply cannot trust what is being said anymore. I don’t see it diminishing in the near future either. That does not bode well for the community at all. Take Heart JD, flak like this comes when the people it is aimed toward see truth in it and vehemently try to defend themselves in it’s face. Laughably, it only bolsters your arguement even further too. I just hate to see a small group of morons ruin something that could have been good. Perhaps if a company or individual had real ownership of it, there would be a bit of pride behind the product(s) and how it is perceived in the public’s eye. Perhaps there is an arguement to be made that corporate ownership can make a product simply through nmarketing and control of perceptions. Maybe Linux is proving the road MS took (tight corporate ownership and tightly controlled marketing despite shortcomings in the product) to success is in fact the only road that can have a successful outcome in this venue.
Hey bonehead I read you the first time, quit spamming! AND EXACTLY..TELL ME WHERE do I say it’s OK what O’Gara did? What I said was that I’ve seen worse offenses. How is that the same as approval? I specifically said it was “invasive” didn’t I??? Well???
AND I specicially said it was nutty. Now tell me EXACTLY where I said it was OK! Give me a quote where I said it was OK. I sure cannot find it.
I await your reply.
G’heh, i’m not exactly a tech geek, but i’ve been around the community for a while, since I was like 13 or so, and now i’m a mere 21– anyway you’ve hit on something I realized back in like 1999: a lot these people are crazy, and they’ve been that way for some time. A lot of it is probably that my generation is just now entering the labor force (although tech was not for me, given that I noticed this) and kooking up the place; for better or for worse we’ve been worked up to be this crazy. I don’t mean crazy as in “Wow! These people sure are excited about software!” I mean crazy as in “Wow! These Taliban sure are excited about the Jihad!”
For years and years thousands of young geeks have been indoctrinated into this Versus culture that the tech community, if you wish to call it that, has built up; KDE Vs. Gnome, VI Vs. Emacs, Linux Vs. Windows, etc. etc. etc.
If people would stop fighting a holy war and start writing software, we’d be fine, but the super serious nature of the whole linux community is pretty much in the way of that as things stand now.
Quote: “Perhaps there is an arguement to be made that corporate ownership can make a product simply through nmarketing and control of perceptions. Maybe Linux is proving the road MS took (tight corporate ownership and tightly controlled marketing despite shortcomings in the product) to success is in fact the only road that can have a successful outcome in this venue.”
This is the reason why the “zealots” feel so strongly to reply harshly to the false “negative-marketings” done by these nonobjective analysts. These non-commercial software products don’t have a marketing budget and therefore can’t bolster (either accurately or falsely) their reputations like consumer software does so they must depend on word of mouth. The problem turns “personal” when one person attempts to use their “position of power” to falsely or unjustly (FUD marketing) seed a large number of people with negative information while grass-root supporters are struggling to spread the functional progress and benefits of a product that they truly appreciate. The fact is that people are influenced by media because it is a shortcut to acquiring an opinion without testing something personally. As a result, irreputable “analysts” need to be outed publicly so that their effective influence is reduced considerably. Unfortunately, the line between a lie and ignorance is hard to discern but either way it should remain a prominent part of any analyst’s public resume. BTW, I think other reporters need to defend the truth and point out falsehoods of other reporters so that the “news” media doesn’t lose what’s left of the public’s respect as done by the “analysts” on Wall Street.
Dude, come off your high horse. While I agree with you on the spamming part(and it is your site and you can say what you wish), you are professional writer, and know full well how to say somthing with out actually writing it. Your whole article reeks of approval. To quote:
“Oh, brother. In the olden days, O’Gara would have been given a medal for generating readership. ”
The use of “nutty” makes light of the egregarious breach of ethics, and as columnist I am suprised you do so. Well, maybe not. The whole section where you review what happened is treated blithely, and merely an aside to the main point of the article – the conclusion/title of which both you and I know is wrong.
The whole article is written to elicit responses, the more strongly worded the more fun for you. I was amused at that part, as another commenter pointed out. Why do you need to start using CAPS when you actually get weird comments?
But I have the reverse question for you: Exactly where do you say it is *not* okay?
Quote from article: “paranoid crackpot leftovers from the waning days of Amiga”
At this stage, I could care less about the THIS VS. THAT OS thing (I run Windows, so I guess I am on somebody’s “hit-list”), but PLEASE don’t slam the Amiga – not even indirectly. I still have a VERY BIG soft spot for it.
I started my journey in the very early days of the 8 bitters right up to the present day, and when Amiga/Commodore went belly up, some of the “magic” dissapeared for me personally. Maybe it’s just a sentimental thing for me – but the Amiga will always bring back fond memories of when computing (a term you don’t hear anymore) was adventureous – like anything could happen (even with a 300 baud modem and 2 local BBS’s)!
Now, possibly with age, my computer is just another appliance to get things done with (Hey, you’ve got to roll with the changes sometimes – even if it’s not your “ideal”), but the memories of the Amiga will always bring a smile to my face.
I also agree with the gentleman who stated that Gates and Jobs (and a lot of others) seemed to have forgotten what it was like to be young – THAT was an excellent insight. I’ve got to give a ton of credit to the Linux community (everyone has a “community” these days, don’t they?) for trying to improve on what they feel are the failings in the current state of OS’s. It’s early grass-roots start made me take a look, but quite frankly – Linux just isn’t ready for prime time and may possibly never be. It’s disjointed upbringing is what is killing it – they need to quit squabbling and come up with (Gasp!) standards. No one owns Linux, and that may just be a possible reason why no one will be running it in the future (like I said – too disjointed, different distros etc. etc.). If no one takes the reigns (or is allowed to by “the community”) and starts forming Linux into a standard viable OS alternative, it’s doomed to just be a curiosity for most. The Linux community needs a wake-up call in this department.
FROM: A NON-paranoid crackpot leftover from the waning days of Amiga who now runs Windows.