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Apple Lawyering Up On "Fake Steve Jobs"
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Dec 22, 2007 11:25 PM
from the end-of-the-blog-as-we-know-it dept.
from the end-of-the-blog-as-we-know-it dept.
An anonymous reader sends us to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for a developing situation. Daniel Lyons, a.k.a. Fake Steve Jobs, made a post earlier today revealing that Apple was offering him some money (in the wake of the ThinkSecret shutdown) to close down his blog. He said he was interested in taking it. A few hours later, Lyons posted again revealing that Apple's lawyers had contacted him angrily, saying the details of the deal were supposed to remain private. Fake Steve replied 'we either deal out in the open, completely transparently, or we don't deal.' A third post gives details of Apple's lawyers' next response, going totally medieval on him. Since then the situation has calmed down a bit.
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News: Think Secret Shutting Down 240 comments
A number of readers are sending in the news that the Mac rumors site Think Secret will be shutting down, as part of the (secret) settlement of a lawsuit Apple filed in 2005. Apple had claimed that the blog, published since 1998 by college student Nick Ciarelli, had revealed Apple's trade secrets. The only other detail of the settlement that has been revealed is that Think Secret was not forced to reveal any sources.
Firehose:Apple Offering 'Fake Steve' Cash to Close Shop by Anonymous Coward
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I really think it might be a good idea ... (Score:5, Funny)
It's also possible that fake Steve is being... fak (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's also possible that fake Steve is being... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's a joke, which it appears to be, I think Apple would be completely justified in going after him.
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Re:I really think it might be a good idea ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I really think it might be a good idea ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I really think it might be a good idea ... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the Danes are certainly involved, but it's the pigs who are committed.
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Control? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always confused by Apple on matters like this; a lot of these people are key in building & maintaining hype in Apple products. If Apple (apple legal?) had their way, it seems like there'd be... well... Apple.com and a few keynotes every year as the only way people would learn details of (and think of?) new products.
I'm a big Apple fan & I love their approach of using/contributing to open source software where it makes sense to improve their products - but their marketing and PR people seem at odds with their engineering attitude (especially with their solution-oriented attitude recently with iPhone, Apple TV compared to their key skill as a superb platform (NB. this point was blatantly stolen from Wil Shipley's blog)). I know PR people think about things completely differently from engineers but you'd think that was a company attitude, not just with the people making the magic
Guys... It's probably a joke. (Score:5, Informative)
One from the real Steve Jobs:
RSJ just responded to my email, saying, "I think this is a joke."
I'm a bit annoyed by this, since I was defending you, and now look something of a fool.
I wrote a bit of an inflammatory email to sjobs@apple.com, and actually got a response.
Here is the text of the conversation (read bottom to top, of course)
I think this is all a joke. And I think you fell for it.
Steve
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:35 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm not sure who I've reached here, but in the interest of finishing what you start, this is what I'm referring to:
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/12/thanks-for-your-support.html [blogspot.com]
On Dec 22, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Steve Jobs wrote:
What, praytell, are you talking about?
On Dec 22, 2007, at 2:01 PM, Gary Baldwin wrote:
I'm an admitted Apple fanboy, but I can't say I admire this. I would have thought you all would have appreciated the affectionate satire rather than being unaccountable assholes.
Gary Baldwin
Re:Guys... It's probably a joke. (Score:5, Interesting)
You are mistaken. Steve reads his mail, and has been known to rebuke Apple VPs who don't. It's Bill Gates who has the team of flacks to filter his mail for him.
-jcr
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Re:Guys... It's probably a joke. (Score:5, Interesting)
-jcr
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Ah yes, Dan Lyons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly a paragon of virtue himself... and not above conducting business in public when it suits him, and in private when he can get away with it.
This guy also thought SCO was a sure winner and wasn't very polite about the Linux community.
Is everyone on Slashdot a frigtard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is everyone on Slashdot a frigtard? (Score:5, Funny)
You're barking up the wrong tree. I expect stories posted here to be accurate for the most part. I'm not expected to be an expert on the stories, enough to call "BS" on them. You're post is utter crap. If this is a fake, the onus is on this site, not us that read this site.
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It's a hoax. (Score:5, Informative)
Dan Lyons had me fooled, since he was not in character as FSJ, and really did sound scared. I sent an e-mail to SJ about it, expressing the concerns that any shareholder would have if this situation were true, and he replied.
He told me, quote:
I think this is a joke.
Steve
-jcr
Seriously, people (Score:5, Insightful)
(2) The EFF would never say that.
(3) If Lyons has a contract to continue the blog, then his employer would most certainly be fielding the lawyers, because if anything were actionable, they'd be liable too. (duh) So his "I've already paid a ton for a lawyer" was another giveaway.
What's hilarious is that Real Steve Jobs (or at least someone acting on his behalf) took the time to reply to a few angry readers who emailed him.
Nice posts though. FSJ rocks.
A clarification or retraction is called for (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does enough things that genuinely warrant criticism. Inventing a story like this, and publicising it as fact, is unconscionable.
This guy just pulled off the biggest April Fools (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only has he baited those of us who read the FSJ blog, but he has also baited every Microsoft fanboy and Apple fanboy who read his blog, who don't read his blog, and now Slashdot.
If the Internet ever gave out trophies, this guy deserves at least 5. Maybe 6.
Re:EFF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really believe that? Parts of this hoax were believable, but the EFF part was obviously a joke.
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If that doesn't tell you it's a joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
Shame on the lot of you. This is supposed to be a smart crowd here. Don't let your bias get to the point where you just look foolish. It's xmas, it's the weekend, but Apple lawyers are firing off quick replies that are increasingly brutal despite their previous emails all going directly public via FSJ? Come on, nerds, use your brains.
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Re:EFF? (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking personally, I do prefer Daniel Lyons when he's writing fiction like this, to when he's acting as a journalist and penning articles talking about the dangers of anonymous blogs [forbes.com], and how you should shut them up by using the DMCA or by suing them [forbes.com]. That wasn't funny advice to give to businesses, and could have got them in non-fictional legal trouble real fast.
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Re:Slashdot has a complete absense of humor (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I've said ti before and I'll say it again (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I run Mac OS X and Windows XP on my Mac, and if I wanted to I could have my pick of Linux or BSD variants that work on Intel on my Mac.
And since my iMac is really nothing but a glorified Intel-based laptop on a stand, I'm not exactly sure what part of the hardware locks me in. Perhaps it's these proprietary USB and Firewire ports on the back that only allow me to attach Apple-only peripherals. Perhaps it's the built in Pioneer DVD-RW that Apple nicknames the "Superdrive" that allows me to only burn on Apple branded discs to Apple-only formats. (If only I could manage to read ISO files, perhaps even go as far as to mount them as a new drive when I double clicked on them). If only Steve Jobs wasn't such a channel-controlling, OEM bullying monopolistic control freak...
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Re:and when he shuts down...the fake steve jobs 2. (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember back in the System 7/8 days when in a 0.0.x update they modified the CD-ROM driver to no longer work with non-apple CD ROM drives. All you had to do to "fix" it was go open the driver in ResEdit and change two bytes, but still.
Apple has always been about proprietary, closed in, locked down platforms. They've generally wanted to be Microsoft, but control the hardware too. None of this is new---nor should it be surprising.
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It is simple, people need heroes (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans are simple creatures, we need the world defined in goodies and baddies, that often means having to make the choice of the lesser of two evils, and not always getting it right.
Godwin time perhaps, in WW2 who are the goodies and who are the baddies? You have the axis and the allies. Well Japan and Germany clearly belong in the baddies groups, these are evil nations whose people have not a single redeeming quality. The role of Italy and and Austria is slightly more complex. Italy often seems to be able to shrug of the worsed of the holocaust.
But the goodies? The US of A? Hitler went to the east for lebensraum, the americans trekked to the west and killed the people already living there. What is the difference between a sign that says "Geine Juden" and "No Blacks"?
England? Talk about a country bend on taking over the world, it made an empire out of astraucities. The soviet union/russia? Well at least Stalin could never be called a racist, he had entire populations wiped out of all sorts. Equality of a kind I suppose.
Yet we must pick and in popular culture that often means we gloss over the "truth" to present one side in a better light. You might have noticed that in the recent WW2 tv series Band of Brothers absolutly no mentions is made of the US army policies regarding blacks or those with ancestors from Japan?
Part of the final solution was to deport jews to remote areas where they could be controlled/wiped out. Explain to me the motivations between Indian reservations and the rather diminsied population figures of native americans?
In WW2 there were only baddies, just that some at that particulair time were not as active as others and depending on your own background some weren't intrested in being very bad to you at that moment. Why string up a jew when blacks are so much more fun?
Yet we need to have a hero, and so we make one, by putting on blinders.
Steve Jobs is a figure in IT, there are many others, but he can be very closely linked to Bill Gates, an obvious baddy (although once seen as a hero freeing us from the evil IBM, a company that is now often seen as a goodie).
What really is the difference between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates apart from income? It is a well known part of computer history that it was Steve Jobs own (what is the word, incompetence, arrogance) that handed Bill Gates the PC market. Apple, IBM, Commodore, Atari etc etc all screwed up at a crucial point leaving Wintel to rule the market. A lot has been written about it already, including on slashdot.
But just imagine that Steve Jobs hadn't made what ever mistake it was he made and that Apple had come to rule the PC market, what then? Would it have been any better? Imagine that the holocaust had never happened, would the US be the evil country for its treatment of blacks, would it have continued like South Africa? How much did the realization of the holocaust change american opinion on its own treatment of a part of the population?
Apple has never been any more open with its software then Microsoft has. While MS software has always been bug prone, I have to say that the most crashy PC I have ever seen was running OS9. Supporting DRM, are we talking about Steve "Disney" Jobs here? Sony is often a villain when it comes to consumer rights, but when did Apple ever fight a legal battle FOR fair use?
But we need a hero, and so we make one, reality be damned. The sad part is that we got real heroes in IT, Stallman in front, but that person is WAY to much of a hero. People often insultingly try to compare him to Jezus but I personally see that as a rather important clue as to real heroes who truly stand for something. The person of jezus, if he was real, was a real pain in the ass for the powers that be, even his own followers. Really read the bible and you find a guy who was kicking against a lot of pedastals and upsetting people. Very confenient he was killed and that the pleps couldn't read and that the powers that be could tell their people what Jezus had RE
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