Deconstructing BoycottNovell: Steve Jobs is a disgusting person

Following last week’s analysis of a BoycottNovell (a.k.a “TechRights”) article by Dr. Roy Schestowitz, PhD, I’d like to take the opportunity to score a double here, because I can’t help myself and seem to have too much free time on my hands lately (although I’m not lucky enough to be a professional student with 14 hours/day to burn). This one is interesting because it shows not only the pointlessness of the vast majority of the author’s vaunted 11 gazillion posts, but also a bit of the systemic hypocrisy that permeates most everything he publishes.

The article in question today is very dramatically (as always) entitled Apple’s CEO Leaves Just as Apple Probed for Monopoly Abuse. As usual I’ll go through it in roughly paragraph order.

We begin with this (note the original links are left intact in the quotes):

The announcement about Steve Jobs’ departure did not interest us immediately because just about every site covered it and mimicked Wikipedia’s pagefest with a mug of some allegedly heroic figure.

Yay! “I am not angry”, sez Dr. Roy constantly. And oh merciful god Wikipedia has a photograph or two of Steve Jobs? Good god, someone call Jimmy Wales and demand it be replaced with a picture of… Jimmy Wales? Hmm. Better not.

And who is “Us” again? I see no one but Dr. Roy posting on that blog. Anyway:

Fab, an Apple sceptic, put it like this:

Gratuitous and empty “there are people out there who agree with me” filler.

People who lurk in this site and are longtime Apple customers tell us that Steve Jobs is a disgusting person and has always been a disgusting person […]

This is absolutely hilarious, because I’m sure that these alleged Apple customers who “lurk” in BoycottNovell are close friends of Steve Jobs. Note also that it’s OK to quote “longtime Apple customers”, assuming they exist, but for example Dr. Roy playfully (or to use his favorite term, politely) calls Matt Asay “Mac Asay” because he  owns a Macintosh or something like that. Except that he writes [sic] after intentionally misspelling it, so it’s perfectly OK!

so his departure from Apple can generally be beneficial to computer users’ rights, even freedom

Yes, the first thing Apple is going to do after Jobs leaves is to remove all DRM from their OS and devices, and then tear down their app store.

People must remember that Jobs — like Gates — is surrounded by PR people.

No shit?

As one news site rightly points out, details are unknown about this departure

“Rightly”? What does that even mean? Starting to see a pattern here? This is all filler, nothing more.

and the relevance to Microsoft and Linux was explained by Wayne Borean:

Wayne Borean is another one of Dr. Roy’s friends. Or had you heard about Wayne Borean before today? The reference is presented as if it was written by a respected journalist at the Financial Times or the Boston Globe. This is a common pattern at BoycottNovell -- presenting “sources” as independent entities that just happen to write about the same things with the same slant all the time. Beware of links to GatesKeepers, The Source, No-Mono, OpenBytes, Pogson, etc. These are all his friends’ blogs -- a.k.a the Munchkin Network.

Oh and Wayne Borean is clearly not reading my blog, otherwise he’d know that Dr. Roy pretty much despises Linus Torvalds. Oh well.

We particularly liked Ghabuntu’s take on it:

Oh, I’m sure “they” liked Ghabuntu’s take on it, since the only thing Ghabuntu does on twitter is repeat Dr. Roy’s spam from identi.ca. Again, the Munchkin Network. And I love the part where the Google founders are compared to Steve Jobs. Why not compare Jobs to Google’s CEO? Oh that’s right, he used to work at Novell. Oops.

Well, we have a little theory about Jobs’ departure.

The beauty of BoycottNovell is that this theory will be tomorrow’s fact. Isn’t GNU/Evangelism great?

He could probably put that off for a bit, but let us talk about timing and note that Europe has opened a probe into Apple’s practices:

Dr. Roy is privy to Steve Job’s medical condition, so he knows that it could have been “put off for a bit”. His informers, who are close friends of Steve Jobs and informed him as to the man’s disgustness [sic], probably rendered an expert clinical opinion as well. Sweet, huh?

Vincent Van Quickenborne also lobbied for ludicrous laws that help Microsoft, sometimes while citing Microsoft lobbyists from ACT […] This man cannot be trusted and Free software proponents in Belgium do not like him because his policies help Microsoft a lot of the time.

This is amusing – this guy is apparently one of the Evil Ones, but it’s fantastic that he opened an antitrust probe of crApple, as the company is called in Dr. Roy’s chat room. Who cares about obvious contradictions with the BoycottNovell Bible when there’s a perfectly good blog posting to be made to fill the day’s quota? Consistency? Pfft.

Oh, and when the EU opens a probe of IBM’s airtight mainframe monopoly, Dr. Roy goes positively apeshit. But when they investigate Microsoft or Apple, it’s high-fives all around. Hypocrisy is a terrible thing.

Speaking of hypePads, they lead to lawsuits

First off, a lawsuit is an entirely different thing. Isn’t it strange that someone who claims to be an expert on legal issues would use that term incorrectly?

Second, why even bring this up? The charges are against two individuals that breached AT&T’s network to retrieve personal data about users, which just happened to be “hypePad” customers. Better still, they were charged because they notified AT&T of the hole in their infrastructure. This might as well have been people with Android phones on the Verizon network, and is at best tangential to the device itself. Truthyness in advocacy, from the guy that warns us about people who surround themselves with PR people. Or maybe just more filler, who knows.

But you knew all this, because you don’t get your news from BoycottNovell or BoycottBoy [sic], right?

[sic]

BoycottNovell and liabilities

I was amused this morning to see that for Dr. Roy Schestowitz from BoycottNovell (aka “TechRights”) is finding himself on the receiving end of the conflict he likes to dish out on everyone who fails to measure up to his ideological purity tests. This is a screenshot of comments made by Dr. Roy in identi.ca just a few minutes ago:

I’m not sure what’s happening in Dr. Roy’s chat room at this time, but I’m not surprised if he is being “trolled”, what with his blog being the biggest troll in all of FOSS and beyond. Sometimes you reap what you sow.

But the thing that really struck me is Dr. Roy’s apparent implication that Jono Bacon is responsible for the actions of everyone in the Ubuntu community.

I find that to be a very strange claim.

You see, BoycottNovell tends to attract the dregs of FOSS; people who have been pretty much run out of everywhere else. Case in point is his valued collaborator twitter, a notorious Slashdot troll and generally a very unpleasant person, or at least his online persona is.

Dr. Roy claims BoycottNovell is a community. He uses the royal We constantly, trying to convey the idea that somehow the ten or so people logged into his chat room (who also post the vast majority of the comments in the blog) are a team effort. This, despite the fact that no one other than him can actually post to the blog at all. Trust issues? Who knows.

But Dr. Roy has found himself in hot water before because of what his associates say and do. Witness the “Fink” debacle, for example (which is the reason I prefer to remain anonymous… no need to be “Finked” by one of Dr. Roy’s friends). Then there’s azuthian, the newest incarnation of the AstralKnight meme operating out of identi.ca.

So Dr. Roy has come up with an innovative defense mechanism: Simply claim that whatever is said by other people on his blog cannot and should not be held against him in any way, shape or form.

It’s easy to log into IRC, shout “Heil Hitler” and then log out. It would be disingenious to point to that and claim everyone at BoycottNovell is a nazi (sorry Mr. Godwin). And no one would really believe it anyway, so it’s generally pointless and stupid. It would simply play into Dr. Roy’s drama-inclined hands.

But collaborators or associates are another thing. People who have been part of the “community” for years, and are  continually used as sources of juicy (if irrelevant) quotes that help fill the daily post quota, not to mention providing entire articles for the blog (even if they are routinely attributed to “Anonymous” to avoid embarrassment). Do these people speak for BoycottNovell?

It’s hard to make a case that your IRC conversations are not to be used against you, as Dr. Roy does here, yet elsewhere we are continually invited to read the logs; for example here. There are many more examples. Indeed, some of his posts are made up of nothing more than fragments of IRC chats. And where the logs used to be posted simply as “IRC Logs”, they were recently changed to “IRC Proceedings” as part of the “TechRights” rebranding. Proceedings sounds mighty important, like something official.

So can one find Dr. Roy liable for things like these?

I doubt “agent_smithe” was planning on delivering flowers to Miguel de Icaza. And what about this:

I wish they gave [Miguel de Icaza] euthanasia

That’s another valued long-time contributor, not some troll that just appeared out of nowhere.

There are literally hundreds of example like these. Violent homophobia, comments about how all Microsoft or Novell employees should die, how it must be “sickening” to ride in the same train as them, how they should all be thrown in jail and subjected to torture.

So if Jono Bacon is responsible for the entire Ubuntu community… is it not fair then that Dr. Roy be held responsible for the actions of his community? Or does he get to have the cake and eat it as well?

 

BoycottNovell minion nymshifts again after embarassing episode

Summary: Notorious Slashdot troll and nymshifter creates yet another sockpuppet account in BoycottNovell and gets down to work for Roy Schestowitz

It was brought to my attention over the weekend that a new mysterious and rather vigorous commenter on BoycottNovell was doing the "perception management" rounds. Intrigued, I ran a few of his posts through one of my Slashdot acquaintances that have a more intimate knowledge of his posting patterns and what do you know, it seems we have a good match.

^“ And he asked him, "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many." _„

– Mark 5:9

Background, of course ¶

For those who are not familiar with this unique phenomena, William Hill started out doing some rather nasty ^[1] "advocacy" on Slashdot many years ago using the handle "twitter" (no relation to the microblogging service). Eventually the community got fed up with him, sending his two main accounts (as in you know, you gotta have two accounts) down to the karma doldrums, which he promptly blamed on "M$" and black helicopters. His response was to organize a 16+ sockpuppet shilling feast, at which he failed completely, becoming the funniest meme since "FIRST POST" on Taco's turf, and even transcending Slashdot itself. ^[2] Eventually laughed out of there (and a few other places, including the Baton Rouge LUG for posting things like these), Hill then skidded — perhaps predictably — right into the only place where he could pour his grief out and find a few like-minded extremists like him, and he's been there ever since, helping Schestowitz out with perception^[3] management.

He still posts to Slashdot occasionally (and trolls anonymously too), even re-activating one of the sockpuppet accounts he supposedly promised he would never use again.

Schestowitz' response to this gift from heaven was to alternatively denounce and defend and praise him, possibly unwilling to completely sever a relationship that perhaps has its advantages. ^[4]

One has to wonder what propels people like Hill into spiraling down this kind of self-destructive vicious cycle. Hill is apparently so far gone that he believes Microsoft threatens his life, he thinks riding on the same train as Microsoft employees must be "sickening", that people in Seattle are "confrontational" (because, you know, that's where Microsoft is at), recounts how he went into an Apple store to demand they make "GNU/Linux" run on their hardware, calls 11-year old kids "paytards" because they happen to use Microsoft software... Is this FOSS advocacy? Is this the kind of person the FSF wants out there making their points for them? I mean, seriously?

It's irritating that M$ perpetuates the "on line predator" myth after studies have conclusively show it's bullshit except for bullying, which M$ knows all about.

And this jewel:

... "all non-free software, regardless of quality, is immoral"

Hill is disliked even among Schestowitz' friends, some of whom he has repeatedly attacked for not being "pure" enough. ^[5] And when his shenanigans come up, he tends to get defensive — hilariously even whining when they suggest that perhaps his OCD-like use of the "M$" thing is counter-productive at best and possibly the reason his submissions to Slashdot are rarely accepted, and have to be edited when they are. In response to that Hill claims the Slashdot editors are "tamed", of all things. ^[6] He has "ignored" so many people so many times (isn't that funny?) there that eventually he'll end up talking to himself and Schestowitz.

All this predictably came to a head last October 15th, when during the course of a FLOSS Weekly program where Jono Bacon interviewed Schestowitz, the matter of massive spamming on behalf of BoycottNovell came up, along with poor twitter:

"... a guy with 16 accounts that used to troll Slashdot and hangs out on your IRC channel"

Four days later Hill comes into Schestowitz' IRC channel and lets it rip:

Hi, jono ... I saw where you called me a spammer ... Fuck you.

The rest of that conversation is bizarre at best. To quote a comment here:

Fascinating. "twitter" goes apeshit and demands an apology from Jono for Jono's not having accused him of what he already admitted to. The mind boggles.

In reality though, I believe (and this is just my opinion of course) that Hill was essentially engaging in damage control vis-a-vis being associated with Schestowitz. Eventually I suppose these things do come back to bite you in the ass.

And getting to the point ¶

So anyway, someone alerted me to this brand-new but seemingly well-informed poster on BoycottNovell that goes by the handle your_friend. According to my secret contact ^[7], the probability that Hill is behind those posts is very high. Quoting (with permission, thanks!) from the response to my email, which referred to comments I copied from here as well as this one:

    From: [edited]<[edited]@gmail.com>
    To: Verofakto Blog <vindicareg@gmail.com>
    Subject: Re: Second opinion needed
    Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 23:33:13 -0800

    [my snippage]

    There's no science to this, really, though maybe I just think it's easy
    because [edited] also made it look easy. The "cadence" of people's comments
    rarely change. That pattern of Halting. Phraeses. Separated. By. Periods. is
    easy enough to spot, and if you add the usual hyperbole claims [snip]
    Key phrases like "intentional waste", "non-free software", "name calling",
    "big dumb companies", "malicious" and 
    consistent misspellings like "coppies", "dissasters" [snip] and the constant 
    butchering of it's/its are usually dead givaways as long as they show up 
    consistently. That's how all his [Slashdot] sockpuppets were identified.

    [snippage]

    Here's one:

    "It is a toy at best and a malicious spy at it's worst."

    [comment is on the first link]

    It's/its as usual. You would need ideally a few more posts but I'm
    pretty sure that's [him]. Again, it's the *totality* of the thing :)

    [snip]

    ROFL, but you'll know for sure when he slips up and actually types "M$" inst
    ead of "Microsoft". He used to do that with new socks and eventually he
    would give it up. I think he feels personally diminished somehow whenever he 
    uses the correct name.

More importantly, if that is indeed him, he is now engaged in arguing with people who are defending themselves from attacks by Schestowitz, a pattern that has been seen many times before.

I loathe nymshifters! ¶

The question here, I think, would be whether or not this is being done with some kind of blessing by Schestowitz. I find it hard to believe that he would pay so much attention to certain accounts that are troublesome to him and must be monitored and eliminated, yet he would manage to completely miss this new and mysterious one. Is there an agreement whereby Hill adopts yet another identity now that he's managed to insult pretty much everyone in sight and embarrass Schestowitz? And if that's the case then why is he even allowed to post?

I'm not counting on Schestowitz to respond to this of course, that's not the point. But perhaps someone among his crowd of regulars can bring up the topic and ask if, since he has the IP address and email for that account, Hill, twitter and your_friend are the same person. I could even go into a formal corpus comparison between Hill's known accounts and this fresh new identity if need be.

Because, after all, Schestowitz has claimed time and time again that these "nymshifters" have damaged him beyond repair... wouldn't it make sense to apply the same moral standards to his crew?  §

 

^“ I loathe people who have multiple accounts. It's cheating. _„

– 2008-10-17

^“ Nymshifters are not worth attention _„

– 2009-06-05

Notes ¶

1. ^{^} See also this. There are thousands more like those.
2. ^{^} See this or this for example. There are a few more on that SockDisclosure article.
3. ^{^} Comment by "Will Hill", look at the URL he used.
4. ^{^} Not only in the sticky Uriah Heep sense, but collaboration-wise as well: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Here for example we see some of his wisdom quoted, as here and here. Schestowitz even delegates some of the clever GIMP'ing to his pal.
5. ^{^} It's a long and boring read, but see the threads here, here, here, here, here and many, many others. The overriding theme in all these is if you suggest that GNU/Linux and free software and Richard Stallman are anything other than perfect, you must be employed by Microsoft and you should burn.
6. ^{^} In an amusing twist, Schestowitz quotes Hill's musings on IRC liberally in this article, yet also manages to replace all the instances of "M$" with "Microsoft". Should one assume then that Schestowitz has also been tamed?
7. ^{^} God, I'm so funny (see crossed-out text there).