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Thursday, October 17, 2002
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 Thursday, October 17, 2002
started 10/17/2002; 9:12:13 AM - last post 10/20/2002; 5:34:33 PM
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Doc Searls - Thursday, October 17, 2002 
10/17/2002; 1:12:13 PM (reads: 9100, responses: 27)
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Stories wanted 
| | In case you guys don't subscribe to my SuitWatch newsletter for Linux Journal, I made a pitch in today's issue for stories I can tell in my keynote talk during next week's Geek Cruise. The title is "The Silent Majority: How Linux Got to be Everywhere While Nobody Was Watching." Great subject. I've got some great material, but I need more. Here's the explanation: |
| | As I pointed out the other day, we seem to be in a new phase of SuitWatching for Linux in Business. In the crosshairs is what Don Marti calls "mysterious subversive projects within large corporations". That puts me in the market for stories about important projects nobody talks about--including accounts of quiet but widespread adoption. |
| | So I want to hear from you about how Linux has been quietly adopted in your organization or by other organizations you know about. If you want, I'll give you credit as a source; if not, you'll still help me tell some interesting stories that need to be told. |
Reduxion
You get what you blog for
| | Bryan Field-Elliot: Googliness is next to Godliness. He has a heap of other quotable lines there too. |
A message from the cosmos
| | It's finally happened: I'm overcome with email. Even without the spam, there's more than I can deal with. And today Eurora decided to it would start to hang whenever I opened the search window. Maybe it's telling me something. |
Presence of malice?
| | In The Ellen Feiss of blogdom, a big-J journalist takes down a little-j journalist with one post. But since the little-j journalist happens to work for the biggest company in the computer business, that makes the attack fair. Or something. I don't know what. I just pisses me off. |
| | Andrew and Beth are both friends, or as close to friends as we get here in the surreal Agora I wrote about in the post below. That's what gives me a huge pain in the heart right now. I know they're both good people, generally trying to do The Right Thing. |
| | However we might fault her efforts, that's what Beth was trying to do with Mobius 2000, and with her blog. |
| | And however we might credit the rest of his work (and I give him plenty), what Andrew did with this post was mean and cruel and destructive. |
| | Andrew joins an anonymous parody in cutting Beth to pieces for talking about her cat on her blog, and for a bunch of other trivia (all of which amounted to simply being herself) that would get attract zero heat if she didn't work for Microsoft. |
| | I'd be amazed if Beth blogs another word after this. Or if she even bothers to invite bloggers back to Microsoft. But I do hope she keeps it up. |
| | I don't know what Microsoft's response to this attack will be, but I hope it's not defensive. My unpaid, unsolicited advice to Bill, Steve and the rest of the company is to encourage everybody in the whole place to blog all they want, with minimal common-sense guidelines (no talk about upcoming products, etc.). It'll be the best PR the company ever had, in addition to embracing a deeply healthful practice — a way of adapting to a new world the company gets insufficient credit for helping to create. |
| | To Andrew and the rest of us, my advice is to measure twice, cut once. And the second time, measure with your heart. |
| | [Later...] Just got off the phone with Dave, who thinks Andrew was not out of line. Dave challenged me to ask myself if I would rise so quickly to Beth's defense if she were a man. |
| | His point: she needs no defense. And maybe he's right. |
| | My point: I care about people's feelings, even if they are "fair game." And especially if they're friends. Like I said before, friends are my weakness. |
| | I've stirred enough shit for today. Let's move on, if we can. |
The Gold Standard
| | In Beware the fairy dust, Sheila Lennon lays out professional journalism's big-J gold standard for ethics on the matter of influence: |
| | I am typing in a the newsroom of a mainstream major metro daily where no payola is allowed. None. I sometimes leave at night with giant bouquets sent to the society writer or the restaurant reviewer, reporters who are not allowed to keep them under our stringent rules. |
| | Reviewers may keep the books, cds and software they review. They may not sell the overflow; these are offered in monthly "book grabs" open to the entire building. We are monkish about preserving not only our objectivity but avoiding the appearance of impropriety. It's why you can't get rich in journalism. |
| | In respect to the cadre of geek toy obsessives with blogs and sites who attended Möbius 2000, she asks the big-J questions: |
| | How can you act on behalf of readers who only get to buy the stuff, without the glamour of all the freebies (and a sighting of Bill and Melinda Gates) |
| | Do you trust these bloggers to be objective in reporting on the whole array of choices open to us, knowing now what you do? |
| | This is why what we do here is journalism in the literal sense rather than the professional sense. We keep public journals, often to express our passions. In many cases this involves advocacy. What we're doing in those cases is, frankly, closer to PR or entertainment than to big-J journalism. |
| | This does not mean bloggers have relatively slack ethics. (Well, maybe they do, but anyway...) They have a different set, or a set that arranges the priorities differently. In whatever case, we've barely begun to decide what the arrangements are. We're still in the discovery phase of this thing. |
| | What we're seeing right now is the influence of a different kind of gold: the professional standards bloggers like Sheila Lennon and Dan Gillmor follow in their day jobs. |
| | The serious pubs set the gold standard a long time ago. And they still do. Even here. It's a good influence to have around. |
| | What we have going for us with blogs is a different kind of familiarity with the people we read. We also have the opportunity to fact-check the crap out out of each other, and watch Google put it all on its public record — something the big pubs deny by locking up their goods after a day or a week on the Web. |
| | Here in blogland here is also a very different sense of the first person plural, of we. This is a social place, a public market, full of gossip and noise and the sounds of vendors selling, customers arguing and the various breeds of Socrates and Pythagoras, teaching. |
| | We get to be real here, whatever that means. And maybe we're still finding that out, too. |
| | And, like the Agora in Athens, nobody owns or dominates the conversation. Not even Microsoft. Maybe not even Google. |
| | We can even say no to the hemlock. |
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Fred Grott - SideNote:Java Blogs
10/17/2002; 3:53:43 PM (reads: 663, responses: 0)
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I notice this happpening on the Java blog an chats as well..
For example most java people I know have dumped sites like TheServerSdie.com because of the big Vendor influenced and have choosen plces like JavaRanchSalon or JavaLobby.org
I have also notice s light migration from java blogs say at Oreilly to those pointed out in the list that Revebultionery kjeeps..namely JavaBlog,,
I find myself doing it as well and learning more about java stuff I will come in the future to use ..
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Fred Grott - Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 5:37:13 PM (reads: 756, responses: 19)
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I just tried to go to Beth's site and it seems to be no longer on the server..
Sad actually I hope she doesn;t get discouraged in blogging.
Actually I woudl like to see more non-programming MS employees blogging, Intel, Sun, Apple , and tec I think it could have apositive influence on how companies act.
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Mike McBride - Re: Thursday, October 17, 2002
10/17/2002; 5:55:09 PM (reads: 676, responses: 0)
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I think Andrew is out of line, not because he criticizes Beth and her writing, we're all open game for that, but because of the elitist way he ended the column:
"Of course, you'll argue: we're just being mean. Online journals give a billion people who can't write and who have nothing to say the means to publish. It's good!
To which I reply: here's a mechanism which allows a billion people who can't sing, can't write a song or make an original beep, and have nothing to express, the means to deafen me with their tuneless, boring cacophony. Get a producer!"
That reeks of Big J elitism to me and my response is pretty much, if you don't like it don't read it Andrew!
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 5:55:15 PM (reads: 1289, responses: 18)
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Why such a chivalrous defense of Beth?
What did Orlowski say that was so terrible?
Does it or did it matter to you that this is about a woman?
As one who gets it every day, I gotta say it's not cool that Doc stands up for her, when the criticism was so mild, and when she used blogs for her marketing work at MS. For crying out loud, where is the offense?
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Mike McBride - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 6:12:43 PM (reads: 952, responses: 13)
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Dave,
No I don't think what Andrew said was harmless. His "get a producer" line was a direct assault on all online writers, not just Beth. (Recast it, if you take it out of his metaphor context what he was saying was "Leave writing to the professionals", was he not?) No, if he wants to criticize Beth's writing skills or whatever that's fine, but he comes off as rather elitist by ending the column this way, IMHO.
As far as comparing the ripping you, and others, get online, you've also got to consider that you give it pretty good too. I don't recall Beth ever really ripping anyone else's blog or their writing. I can expect, that when I criticise other people on my blog that they'll be right there to give it back, and that holds true whether you're male or female, but it's always been sort of "beyond the pale" to rip people who aren't making any attempt to criticize others and are just writing about their own lives and interests. But that's really a side issue, I wouldn't care if Andrew wanted to rip Beth's writing, I'd probably let that stand on it's own, but I commented about it because I felt like he was using Beth to take a shot at all bloggers. If he doesn't like weblogs, he should come out and say that, not take shots at one and then use metaphors to get at what really bothers him.
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 6:21:05 PM (reads: 977, responses: 12)
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And how different is that from the "we fact-check your ass" that bloggers apply to the pro's? What's the matter, can't take a little heat? Geez.
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Mike McBride - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 6:30:14 PM (reads: 1000, responses: 1)
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When a NY Times writer, for example, gets a fact wrong there are two main differences compared to what Andrew did here, in my book. One, the NY Times writer is getting paid to get his facts right, and presenting his story as "the facts", thereby any correction to that is fair game. Writing about your favorite Xbox games is not, last time I checked, a fact-based aritcle. Two, when said NY Times writer gets his facts wrong I don't think it would be appropriate to conclude your criticism with "Gee every professional journalist is completely incapable of checking his own facts". Andrew implied at the conclusion of the article that all non-professional webloggers should just not write, didn't he? How do you take his concluding paragraphs then if that's not the case?
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Don W Strickland - Re: Eudora hangs
10/17/2002; 7:32:59 PM (reads: 698, responses: 2)
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It's finally happened: I'm overcome with email. Even without the spam, there's more than I can deal with. And today Eurora decided to it would start to hang whenever I opened the search window. Maybe it's telling me something.
Doc, What version of Eudora are you running, on what OS, how many megs in your mail folder ... if you don't mind me asking? Send me email if you'd rather not discuss it here. don2002 at istrick.com
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Frank McPherson - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 7:47:22 PM (reads: 1020, responses: 8)
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And how different is that from the "we fact-check your ass" that bloggers apply to the pro's? What's the matter, can't take a little heat? Geez.
The problem Dave, is not every blogger makes that statement. We don't all believe that we are better than Journalists, and we don't all believe that we are even little j-journalists. Please stop broad brushing every person that writes a weblog into your definition of a blogger.
You have aspirations to be the New York Times of the Internet. That's fine, but please be aware, that not every single person that writes a weblog has the aspirations. Just as not every person that puts pen to paper has aspirations of being John Markoff.
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Doc Searls - Re: Eudora hangs
10/17/2002; 7:48:56 PM (reads: 726, responses: 1)
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I'm using 5.1.1b23 on OS X 10.2. I'm sure the files are huge. I have many mail boxes, a number I recently reduced.
If I quit, re-open and do a search command, the window comes up and works fine. If i have a window open, or if I've already started to use the program for something other than search, it starts taking up to 85% of the processor's cycles (according to top in the command shell), and I have to kill it.
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Frank McPherson - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 7:50:12 PM (reads: 942, responses: 3)
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What's wrong with being chivalrous? That's what my grandma taught me, my wife likes it too. My wife doesn't seem to have a problem with my being chivalrous.
Chivalry aside, how about just a little class?
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Doc Searls - Re: Eudora hangs
10/17/2002; 8:00:37 PM (reads: 804, responses: 0)
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Okay, I just got off the phone with tech support. Turned out even though I was using a beta version instead of the current supported version. I downloaded the supported version, installed it and we appear to be fine.
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Doc Searls - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 8:04:20 PM (reads: 1107, responses: 7)
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Again, as with the item the other day, Dave brought it up with me personally before he said anything about it publicly. (First time by email, this time by phone.)
Y'know, we're all still new at this. Building it out. Standards matter, even if they don't apply exactly. Dave's right to bring the questions up, to agree and disagree. No big deal.
If we hadn't started talking about this, I wouldn't have realized how close to PR a lot of what we do actually happens to be. Not that it's a bad thing, just an interesting one.
One of many more to come, I'm sure.
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Jonathon - Eudora and blogged and andrew's response
10/17/2002; 8:28:05 PM (reads: 649, responses: 0)
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Dunno why I felt the need to but my nose in. Did. My problem was with the "bad music" comment....I emailed Andrew and he responded back saying he is calling for Peer to Peer editing. More of it. My "unmeasured" blog about it...
http://www.stretchingthought.com/2002/10/17#a260
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 8:30:38 PM (reads: 1045, responses: 2)
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Doc has witnessed lots of abuse much worse than this, and stood by and said nothing. I bet you have too. For some reason when the target is a man, he's on his own. The weirdest situation is when it's a woman doling it out. Doc has even been the target of that kind of abuse. No one stands up for the guy. I guess I don't like it because I don't like double standards. What if Orlowski had been a woman, and the target had been a man? Why aren't men deserving of as much protection as women? And don't assume it's because we're stronger, I've been swamped when I was physically very weak. Basically the choice I was offered was get off the Internet or take it like a man. Well, I'm fed up with that choice.
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Shelley - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 9:02:25 PM (reads: 1376, responses: 6)
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I don't know this person, but I believe that Sullivan and the other sites were out of line.
They weren't attacking her position at Microsoft. They weren't attacking a specific essay or posting. They were attacking her.
Your being pissed was actually a decent thing. But backing down because Dave calls you was bluntly, wrong. Would Dave had called you if she wasn't a woman? Would the issue had even risen? Would the parody had happened if she had been a man?
However, the point is mute as she has taken down her weblog. I think that all involved can take pride in silencing a weblogger. Well done, folks. Way to show the world how really fucking good you all are.
You know, Doc, regardless of this particular story, I did want to say that I don't worry about your values being compromised because of your professional affiliations. But it sure seems to me that your writing is getting 'edited' quite a bit, lately, by Dave Winer.
Last time I looked, good, bad, or indifferent, we can each write our own viewpoints. And we can agree and disagree. You wrote what you did, and Dave disagreed, and that's cool. And Dave has this thing about anything to do with woman must therefore be a anti-male thing, and unfortunately, that's Dave's problem. But, Doc, I've seen you back down on your writing twice in the last week because of a call or direct contact from Dave. This does me begin to question your objectivity.
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Doc Searls - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 10:52:38 PM (reads: 1490, responses: 4)
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Dave challenges me, and others, all kinds of ways — and quite frequently. (We've been going back and forth around open source for years now.) I don't always agree with him. And if I do, it's not editing. It's just agreement. There's a difference.
FWIW, I don't think I backed down in the first case, because he brought up some very good points. I *had* meant to disclaim the fact that the gig with Microsoft was paid, and I hadn't done that. I also think holding bloggers up to the same gold standard as big-J journalists is an interesting exercize, as Sheila Lennon challenged us to do today. I think good has come out of the whole conversation, and I'm glad Mitch and Dave brought it up.
I also agree with Dave that I was giving Beth insufficient credit for her own strength (whether she took her blog down or not), and I do agree with you, and myself, that what Andrew did was mean-spirited and personal. There's no contradiction here. FWIW, I also said "maybe he's right." And I was referring to her need for defense, nothing more.
I'm also betting that Beth is not silenced as a blogger. While it's a shame that she took her current blog down, that doesn't mean she won't be back. She's had other blogs before, and I suspect this last one was not her final one. She's a pioneer and an experimenter, and I believe that's the spirit she's still bringing to what she does.
Live and learn. Blogging is one way we live, and live to live again.
As for my objectivity, question it all you want. My response to Andrew's slam on Beth was not meant to be objective anyway.
When we try to be objective, we sign on to a myth. What we get here in blogland is a lot of personal perspectives. Mine is just one of them. Sometimes more than one, even within the same word. As Whitman says, Do I contradict myself?
Very well then. I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. So do we all.
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Fred Grott - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 11:04:02 PM (reads: 1042, responses: 0)
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Good question..
But consider this blogging is os much more than what is normally called Journalism..what I mean is in the print world there are very famous literary classics not becasue they are Journalistic in nature, although some of them are ..but becasue they enter the realm of personal diary..
We have the Famous diary of someone living on a pond in the woods, we have a WWII diary by a Journalist..
I think blogging brings os much more to the table that anything said by someone like ANdrew can only be taken as being pitfull in its understanding of something he does not do or know of..
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Fred Grott - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/17/2002; 11:06:13 PM (reads: 1003, responses: 0)
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ah Dave remember that hoax we taken on not two weeks ago.. shall I remind you?
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adamsj - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/18/2002; 12:33:53 AM (reads: 1060, responses: 1)
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Dave said:
> Basically the choice I was offered was get off the Internet or take it like a
> man. Well, I'm fed up with that choice.
I'm with you on that--but part of that means (at least in the way I read it) deciding not to put up with it when someone else is being given a similar choice. When someone is getting kicked around for no particuarly good reason, one ought to say something.
I've done it myself--but not often enough.
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/18/2002; 9:34:01 AM (reads: 1208, responses: 0)
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I'm with you on that--but part of that means (at least in the way I read it) deciding not to put up with it when someone else is being given a similar choice. When someone is getting kicked around for no particuarly good reason, one ought to say something.
Yes, I couldn't agree more. The people who get up close and personal are cowards. When even one other person speaks up and says "That's not fair, I know xxx, and he's a good person," they often back down. A third person has objectivity that the person being attacked doesn't.
Yesterday, Doc did a good job of defending me here. He said it's not uncommon for me to raise issues relative to his writing, and that we had had a multi-year disagreement over some issues.
However the most ugly charges against me remain without a response. Probably because they are so inappropriate and unfair and obviously untrue. Yet a person who is supposed to have a reputation in our industry made them, in public, on the record, here on Doc's discussion board.
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Shelley - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/18/2002; 1:22:53 PM (reads: 1650, responses: 3)
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Sorry, Doc. You're right -- this posting wasn't meant to be objective, and my anger got away with me in my original response.
Defending another person is a noble thing to do. But bringing that person's sex into this, out of the blue, was totally out of line. As I tried to say in my original email (and was angry, as you can tell by my use of Sullivan), if we're going to introduce 'sex' into discussions such as these, then this medium has become a sexist medium.
I don't know this person and I wanted to defend her, and not because of her sex. It was because she had a personal weblog where she talked about her company, true, but where she also talked about her cat, and her thoughts, and just stuff. A weblog. And this so-called journalist invoked an extreme elitist attitude and made fun of her, in the worst school yard bully manner. And there is nothing I despise more than a bully.
Your defense was appropriate if you think he was being mean, and personal. There was never an issue of sex in this.
By introducing Beth's sex, Dave demoted this issue to one of 'boys and girls', and that was wrong, very wrong. To Beth, to Andrew, to you, to your readers.
If we introduce sex into this story, then could we also say that if Beth hadn't been a woman, the parody site wouldn't have been created? Or could we say if Beth hadn't been a woman, Andrew wouldn't have written the article, or been so cutting?
But there was no evidence that Beth's sex had anything to do with the parody site, or Andrew's article. So why introduce her sex when it came to her defense?
And because the issue of sex was raised, will you be more hesitant to defend a woman in the future? Will you question your motives for defending a woman? Will you ask yourself, "Am I doing this because the person deserves my defense? Or am I doing it because she's a woman?"
I saw your defense as a professional journalist taking another to account for attacking what is nothing more than a personal journal. Sex had nothing to do with it. Well, not until it was introduced, and then it shadowed everything that occurred before and after.
We all have strength enough to fight our own battles. But if we all do so alone, then what's the point of reaching out, with connecting with each other? When we defend another, we're not helping just the person we're defending -- we're helping ourselves.
Sorry for comments, and comment length. I think you were right to defend Beth and I think well of you for the act. And I agree, I hope she does get another weblog, and continues writing exactly like she does.
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/18/2002; 1:32:00 PM (reads: 1828, responses: 2)
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Shelley, thank god you're not the final arbiter of right and wrong.
Further, I went to the trouble of talking with Doc and asking questions and listening to the answers. We've been friends for fifteen years. For you to presume you know what's right and wrong between Doc and myself is the height of arrogance.
Fewer and fewer people take you seriously. If you want to try to rebuild your rep, try sticking to commenting on things you know something about. My sexuality is not one of those things. I was going to demand an apology but changed my mind. You hurt yourself more by making such wild statements. Eventually I hope you realize this and stop making them.
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Jason - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/19/2002; 6:22:32 AM (reads: 1642, responses: 1)
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Oh, for the love of God, Dave, get off your sanctimonous high horse and breathe the air the rest of us are breathing. Shelley is arrogant? Shelley is taken less seriously by people? Have you absolutely no insight as to your own waning credibility? Have you no insight as to your own tendency to do exactly that which you decide is unacceptable in the behavior of others? It's absolutely, positively amazing to me that there are people who are willing to take you seriously anymore, much less pay you money or otherwise do business with you. Amazing.
(Not to mention, for you to think that your friendship with someone has any impact on the validity of that person's opinions and statements may very well be the height of arrogance, not to mention delusion.)
Shelley, not that I think that you'll deign to take his misinformed advice, but please don't stop pointing out the inadequacies of Dave's arguments and positions, or more broadly, don't stop speaking your mind. It's only people who are willing to cease suffering fools silently that the fools will be silenced...
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Dave Winer - Re: Side Note Beth's site is down
10/19/2002; 9:30:04 AM (reads: 1657, responses: 0)
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Oh it's Jason Levine, the weblog world's doctor with the fantastic beside manner. Nice to see you still have the spirit that made you so famous. 
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Fred Grott - Re: Thursday, October 17, 2002
10/20/2002; 9:34:33 PM (reads: 695, responses: 0)
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Dave Winer, I would state that you should read the press clippings of Mr Ford from his era..
It might shine some light on some of your behavoir, you don't always have the ful uderstanding or facts when speaking..
Not to say you are Mr Ford or that Mr Ford is you..but there are some remarkable behavoir pattern similarities..
If this sounds harsh, well how else am I suppose to put it?
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