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Updegrove's Groklaw article

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 13, 2011 4:02 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
In reply to: A better review (From the H). by SilverWave
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

What you call a nice review contains a passage that's a downright insult to human intelligence: he concedes that the entirety of his communication with "PJ" was electronic but nevertheless says he's certain "PJ" is real.

That doesn't only defy logic. It raises even more serious questions about the author.

to post comments

"Mueller’s churlish comments" Ouch :-)

Posted Apr 13, 2011 20:41 UTC (Wed) by SilverWave (guest, #55000) [Link] (6 responses)

Pamela Jones and Groklaw: An Appreciation:

"Along the way, I gained ample evidence (as if any were necessary, Florian Mueller’s churlish comments aside) that PJ is a living, breathing, committed and passionate advocate for the causes that she and Groklaw stand for. I won’t share any personal details of our (always electronic) conversations, but suffice it to say that she has ample reasons to defend her privacy, and also that she deserves a well-earned rest."

Hmm... you are not being "churlish" again now are you?

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 4:41 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (5 responses)

I you look at what you just quoted, the interesting part is not what Updegrove says about me but his admission that all the communication he ever had with PJ was "always electronic" correspondence, nevertheless he talks about "ample evidence" that "PJ" is real. That's self-contradictory beyond imagination and I've never seen a lawyer with a lower evidence standard than Updegrove.

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 19:09 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

All the communication I've ever had with my boss is electronic, but I don't suspect her of being a robot. All the communication I've ever had with Mark Twain is not only written but posthumous, but I don't suspect him of being fictional. It is possible to read writing for style and content and to draw conclusions about the people writing from what is written. I have difficulty believing that you don't know this.

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 19:12 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (3 responses)

You attack a strawman with the "robot" thing. Concerning consistency of style, text analysis tools like Gender Guesser suggest that the articles published under the "PJ" pseudonym were written by at least two different persons (one male and one female).

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 19:34 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

if someone walked up to you and handed you a drivers license saying that they were Pamala Jones, I suspect at this point that you would suspect them of getting a fake drivers license.

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 19:38 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (1 responses)

It's unbelievable how Groklaw's desperate defenders blow things out of proportion and set up so many strawmen.

We're talking about an avatar who never published a photo, never appeared at an industry conference or awards ceremony, never disclosed a past or current employer or client. Those are the facts. You can't change those facts -- which you obviously don't like -- by making claims like the one about a driver's license.

We're far from requesting a driver's license in this case. We're talking about an avatar that hasn't disclosed any of what I listed above; as Sam Varghese explained on iTWire, Groklaw was quite obviously a full-time effort but never disclosed its funding source; articles published under the "PJ" pseudonym were, according to text analysis tools like Gender Guesser, written by at least two different persons; differences in punctuation previously suggested more than one person behind the avatar.

Updegrove vouches for "PJ" being a real person based ONLY on electronic correspondence

Posted Apr 14, 2011 23:49 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

The only relevant disclosure here is the funding question. We don't know who funds project Pamela Jones. We also don't know who funds project Florian Mueller. Hypocrisy demands that one of those criticizes the other for their secrecy, and actually supports invasion of privacy of that other. When someone doesn't want to give up her privacy, that doesn't give you the right to take it from her forcefully.

Disclosures aside, what's really important here is actual contributions. One of them publishes truths and half-truths that help the open source community a great deal. The other publishes truths and half-truths to hinder the open source community. One wonders why this piece of work won't make any friends here.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 1:18 UTC (Thu) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link] (11 responses)

Did you fail reading or logic in school? As has been noted, he did NOT claim he verified PJ was PJ, but that he was convinced that he was communicating with "a living, breathing, committed and passionate advocate for the causes that she and Groklaw stand for." I suppose he was communicating with a version of Watson(tm) or a team of IBM lawyers, but I feel comfortable that someone can determine that their communications are with a person.

Of course, it's possible you are also simply a set of electronic circuits, as I have never met you.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 4:53 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (10 responses)

jjs, your lack of logic is the problem here. A maior problem, actually. What are you trying to say in Updegrove's defense, and how relevant is it to what I said? You missed the point completely.

No one claimed that those "PJ" posts, comments and mails were written by a computer like Watson. Obviously, Artificial Intelligence can't handle that (at least not at this stage).

The problem is, however, that if you only have "always electronic" correspondence with an online account, you can't know who's behind it, and you can't know how many people.

Updegrove made reference to my comments on ZDNet. I didn't claim that "PJ" wasn't an account used by one or more human beings. So you just attacked a total strawman.

My points on ZDNet (to which Updegrove referred) and other sites were about a reasonable balance between privacy and public activism. A balance that the person or team behind the "PJ" account never struck. People with sound judgment were able to see all the time that there was something very wrong with that. It's just that a number of people who wanted to believe in "PJ" as their savior were willing, and some of them still are willing, to ignore or to try to rationalize in often very pathetic ways what was going on.

"Is a dream a lie if it [wasn't] true, or is it something worse?" (modified quote from a famous song)

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 10:24 UTC (Thu) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link] (6 responses)

Updegrove never claimed to know PJ - who she specifically is, where she lives, etc. He claimed, based on his communications, that he felt comfortable with 2 things:

1. PJ is a person. Not a he or she, not old or young, but a person. As apposed to an AI or a collective. Most likely through consistency of voice, quick turnaround, etc (I don't know specifics, ask Andy).

2. PJ is passionate about what he/she is interested in. Again, tone, consistancy, etc.

Neither of these require face to face meetings or phone calls.

Regarding balance. Gee, I have no clue of most of the reporters in the NY Times, either. In the case of Groklaw, since PJ back everything up with documentation, I can judge for myself whether she is right or not (or for that matter where on the white-black scale things are, since some of the stuff is ambiguous). I don't need to "know" PJ, or find out about her private life to judge that. No one does. I need to know her arguments and the facts behind them, which she provides in more detail than any other news source. That's the transparency that's needed, and that she provides.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 11:57 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (5 responses)

You just keep reiterating things that don't address the concerns I raised about "PJ" being mystery-shrouded and not verifiable. Your point (1) is very unconvincing. You just say you believe everything's fine though you don't know specifics. What Updegrove said is by far not enough for him to make the claim he made. And (2) is a strawman because an avatar shared by a team or by different people over the years can also be "passionate" etc.

Even if one believed your points (1) and (2) combined, that still would not address the issues I raised on ZDNet and which Updegrove referred to. If he makes reference to my concerns and then says everything's fine, while meaning something different, then he's misleading to say the least.

Concerning the backing-up of facts, didn't you click on the links in Groklaw's "sue the pants off TurboHercules" article and find out that "PJ" told the oppposite of the truth about a claimed limitation of IBM's patent pledge (the very first and central statement of that Groklaw article), especially since it was pointed out in the discussion there but not even corrected then, which means that if "PJ" saw the correction, she decided to lie anyway? Assuming the answer is No, does this concern you now? Assuming the answer is Yes, didn't that give you pause and why do you then make the claims you make here?

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 13:00 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (4 responses)

  • I, for one (as a follower of Groklaw from the very beginning) am convinced PJ is a person (by consistency of style, opinions, and knowledge on certain issues). Does it matter? No, what mattered is that she showed the evidence, and so in several cases I came to different conclusions that the "official party line".
  • See the above point: An avatar (even one created by the famed HBGary) won't be as consistent as she has shown over the years. No commitee of IBM lawyers (or others) will come out as forcefully for (or against) some points as she did.

Re the Turbo Hercules stuff: Here I do side with IBM. The system is licensed to use on real, IBM machines (yes, IBM did get burned way back with the clones by Amdahl and others of their big iron running IBM software); if they opt to look the other way if somebody installs a self-compiled copy of an emulator for fooling around as an alternative to doing it on the big iron in the neighboring datacenter, that certainly is their prerogative. But they certainly will not look the other way if somebody,as part of their business operations, asks for copies of the software for running on emulated machines and leaving IBM completely out of the deal. I just don't understand how somebody even imagined that such would fly (maybe being inmersed into technical stuff can make you blind to the wider implications of what you are doing); and even less that some (clearly otherwise intelligent) people who aren't directly involved bought into this ridiculous theory.

Plus I am fogetting my guideline of not feeding trolls...

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 16:30 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (3 responses)

>Re the Turbo Hercules stuff: Here I do side with IBM

Would you still say that if it were anyone but Florian defending them?
I'm confused as to how so many OSS people seem to think IBM are in the right and I can only assume it's because they hate the messenger.

When Apple did more-or-less the same thing they were being Bad; when Microsoft sold copies of Windows with a EULA saying you couldn't run it virtualised they were being Evil; when IBM sell copies of their OS with a EULA saying you can't run it on anything but their own expensive hardware, suddenly that's cool?

It's a blatant abuse of a monopoly position - far worse than bundling IE or WMP with Windows or rubbish like that, but for Groklaw IBM can do no wrong, and herds of people just copy and paste their opinions from there.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 18:50 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (1 responses)

I came to that conclusion after looking at the evidence shown in (suprise!) Groklaw's article which so inflamed Florian Mueller. At first reading, I thought IBM was being overly heavy-handed (which wouldn't have been surpsising to me, given part history); on further analysis I came to the conclusion that they were right. And then Mr. Mueller showed up and the whole discussion went down the drain (just like here).

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 18:55 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link]

I didn't show up in that Groklaw discussion on IBM. By making this completely false claim, you just show that you're not a serious participant in such discussions, @vonbrand, but willing to say anything just to defend Groklaw.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 15, 2011 6:29 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

I find these FM threads generally very annoying, but I have to agree with the parent: The Turbo-Hercules/IBM case sounds like a potential abuse of a monopoly in one area (copyright on critical software) to tie down another, different area (the sale of hardware, real or virtual).

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 12:27 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] (2 responses)

"The problem is, however, that if you only have "always electronic" correspondence with an online account, you can't know who's behind it, and you can't know how many people."

Just like you refusing to disclose all those who are behind/supporting you. You certainly cannot be regurgitating the voluminous of words you do without help.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 12:30 UTC (Thu) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048) [Link] (1 responses)

You can't seriously think that there's any way to compare my huge degree of transperency to the intransparency of the avatar named "PJ".

Look at the wealth of information out there about me from the last 25 years and compare this to an avatar who never published a photo of "herself", never showed up at a conference or awards ceremony, never disclosed a past or current employer or client.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 14, 2011 12:51 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Like I have asked you before since you are the one making a big deal about it; belly up and disclose ALL your sources. Come on, be the man you say you are.

You write a lot and I can only surmise that you are being fed by unknowns in the shadows. You cannot possibly be writing that much without the help of others while maintaining the consistent bends of truth.

Right now after reading much of your bilge I am reminded of a scene in the movie Sharktail where Sykes shows Oscar just where he fits in the grand scheme of things. You are below whale poo. Unlike the movie, you will never come clean.

Updegrove's Groklaw article

Posted Apr 16, 2011 23:59 UTC (Sat) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]

I think electronic communication (which might include real-time chat) over an extended period is more useful to identify somebody as "a person" than a superficial "in person" meeting with an actor or another person acting as a front for an organization...


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