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NYT Exposes the Identity of Fake Steve Jobs
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Aug 05, 2007 08:18 PM
from the hard-to-be-anonymous-if-someone-is-determined dept.
from the hard-to-be-anonymous-if-someone-is-determined dept.
mattatwork writes "NY Times writer Brad Stone figured out the real identity of Fake Steve Jobs. With classic nick names like 'freetards' and 'beastmaster' Fake Steve captured an audience of 700,000 visitors to the site and around 50 emails a day. According to Daniel Lyons, the senior editor at Forbes magazine who maintained the blog, there is no definite plan for the future of the site. 'Mr. Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year, when a small group of chief executives turned bloggers attracted some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it." Mr. Lyons says he recalled trying out the voices of several chief executives before settling on the colorful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.'"
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NYT Exposes the Identity of Fake Steve Jobs
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Solved? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Solved? (Score:5, Funny)
Break out your magnifying glass kids, we're off to solve the Mystery of The Fake CEO Blogger!
Re:Solved? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.nomorestars.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 31 2003, @11:23AM)
Re:Solved? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 27 2005, @02:29PM)
I feel a bit pissed at the NYT for spoiling the party, but I guess it was going to get spoiled sooner or later, and if not the NYT, then some other rag. The race was on.
I pretty much can't stand Mr. Lyons as a journalist, but as a parody SJ he was awesome. Thanks for the lulz, Dan. You'll always be FSJ in our hearts.
Solved? Or handed on a platter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it makes a lot of sense... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.cyberarmy.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday February 13 2007, @01:10AM)
Finding out that he's been out trolling some more only makes sense. I mean, the guy is one great big douchbag and he loves getting people riled up. Doesn't Forbes want him publishing under his real name any more? I don't blame them. He's like a Dvorak clone who likes to rile anti-SCO people instead of Apple fans.
Re:Actually, it makes a lot of sense... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://ian.testers.homelinux.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday March 18 2007, @01:47PM)
Don't have much of a memory do you? Try reading some Groklaw. In fact, PJ posted about this just today [groklaw.net]. Mr. Lyons has quite a history around the SCO case. He's also attacked bloggers for being largely anonymous and lacking credibility. Pot calling the kettle something...
Re:Bill Gates (Score:5, Funny)
(http://2130706433/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 19, @10:29AM)
And as they say on Ebaum's World (Score:5, Funny)
Link NYT article@news.com (Score:5, Informative)
John Howard: Prime Minister (Score:5, Funny)
Re:John Howard: Prime Minister (Score:5, Funny)
Re:John Howard: Prime Minister (Score:5, Funny)
Darn. (Score:2)
(http://pyile.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 19 2006, @01:33PM)
Re:Darn. (Score:5, Funny)
Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.initialized.org/)
Re:Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://skippus.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday June 19 2005, @07:25AM)
You do know that the New York Times has more than one reporter, right? And that it's possible for them to write stories on silly little things like this and still cover the Taliban, homeless, floods, and government? Oh, and even give us a nifty new crossword every day?
Re:Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
If The New York Times feels that this is a worthy exercise for their investigative reporters....
Maybe it's the only kind of investigative reporting that they can do these days without being arrested.
Don't scoff - Bush himself went on a rampage after the NYTimes outed his little "go around the courts" wiretapping program.
Re:Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Wednesday January 31 2007, @02:25AM)
Well, none of us have real Jobs.
Re:Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.louishochman.com/)
That its did this says nothing about the quality of its coverage of other items. You can't look at every use of a resource as wasteful just because it's not devoted to the single most important item of the day; the breadth of coverage is important too.
Re:Good job, New York Times. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, if I were an investigate reporter trying to find out who minimsft is, I'd start by moving anyone who is not a current or former blue badge to the bottom of my suspects list. The stuff about being a manager and being male may be true or may be obfuscation, so I wouldn't put too much stock in it It's not hard for a non-manager there to make the same observations mini-msft makes. I accept that minimsft is probably male, if for no reason other than most of the people working there (at least in coding jobs) are men.
Minimsft may well be exactly what he describes himself as. OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if he were actually a mid or senior-level manager. Turning an oil tanker can be hard, even for someone with a lot of clout, and revolution is sometimes easier to start from the bottom than from the top. Microsoft is certainly an oil tanker, or perhaps an aircraft carrier might be a better description. They, too, take a lot of time and space to turn, but once turned can move pretty quickly and bring a lot of power to bear on the target.
Can Microsoft be turned? Now that's an interesting question. The corporate culture there so powerful, pervasive, and seemingly immutable. Turning Microsoft may not be impossible, but it would be very, very hard.
Tragedy (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday October 15, @07:06PM)
Next assignment: (Score:5, Funny)
This needs quoting (Score:5, Informative)
"You put the pieces of the puzzle together. You went through my trash, hacked into my computer, and put listening devices in my home. Now you've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina."
A better quote (Score:5, Funny)
thanks NYT! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.godawful.com/)
NYT guy wanted revenge (Score:1)
"Lyons clearly used the Fake Steve persona to further some of his own interests and positions. For example, articles in other business publications and their journalists were a frequent target of criticism from Fake Steve, while Forbes got off comparatively easy."
He was mad that this obviously fake Steve, which nobody was really taking seriously, was making too much fun of him.
Seriously, that looks like a kid wrote it. I can even hear the whiny voice...
Re:NYT guy wanted revenge (Score:4, Insightful)
Shoot. (Score:2)
Yeah, no one really believed it was the real Steve Jobs, but it's still one of those things where now that it's out things aren't quite the same.
Secret Diary of Bill Gates (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's ok... (Score:2)
--
BMO
This is borderline lolcat! (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday March 08 2003, @03:00PM)
“Fake Steve Jobs is fake!” Shocking!
The Real Question /.ers Want to Know... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://deadhobosociety.com/)
the senior editor at Forbes? (Score:1)
Forbes sponsorship (Score:2, Informative)
Fake Steve Jobs comes clean [forbes.com]
Forbes' phone interview with Daniel Lyons [forbes.com] (has annoying commercials)
Dan Lyons (Score:3, Insightful)
off topic (Score:1)
Monty Python Version (Score:2)
Pantomime Steve Jobs: iHello, everyone!
Bigels: Back in the closet, you pantomime CEO person!
[Pantomime Steve Jobs, still waving, walks backwards back into closet]
[Real Zonk appears]
Bigels: Begone, you pantomime editor person!
[Bigels thwacks Zonk with big foam cluebat]
[Zonk runs off in tears, with kdawson close behind, licking Zonk's posterior]
The original true fake Steve Jobs' blog (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://kebawe.com/)
No... (Score:1)
the real Daniel Lyons in his own words .. (Score:2)
'In other words: The cat-lady personal-injury [forbes.com] lawyer in Iowa who's been running the shakedown on Microsoft finally decided to take the money and scoot'
Shilling for SCO
"the Free Software Foundation doesn't want royalties--it wants you to burn down your house [forbes.com], or at the very least share it with cloners"
Providing a unique interpretation of GPL licensed code
"For the past two years Fleury's company, Atlanta, Ga.-based JBoss, has been stealing business from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) by giving away a set of open source programs"
Spining an acqusition for IBM into a death spiral of Open Source
"Sounds like the dot-com bubble, except that this time it's not just investors who will get burned. Customers are taking a risk too. Because when these open source software providers burn through their venture funding [forbes.com] and go out of business"
Managing to get the words fanatics, stalinist, paranoia, zeolots and conspiracy into a mention of Open Source.
"Mickos is being denounced as a traitor by noisy fanatics in the open source software community"
"For die-hard open-source zealots, this difference is not just a matter of personal preference or technical advantage; it's a holy war. And SCO is the Great Satan"
'Nasty as the open source crunchies [forbes.com] might be, they may be nothing compared to the hardball tactics for which Oracle is known'
This confirms the theories of L. Detweiler. (Score:2, Interesting)
Some cypherpunks [jargon.net] discovered that Detweiler was using his own theories, and that he had several tentacles of his own.
This incident confirms the Detweiler theory.
Thanks (Score:1)
Oy - mod parent up, y'all! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday March 26 2004, @02:46PM)
Actually, given who it turned out to be, the motives and biases are rather clear in hindsight. I'm almost willing to bet that Steve Ballmer wasn't among the "other CEO voices" Mr. Lyons tried out...
But then, maybe it was a means for ol' Dan to get out his juvenile side?
I dunno - this is starting to sound too much like a flamebait -ish pack of conspiracy theories. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was funny here and there - but seeing who's behind it makes me wonder if it wasn't just a larger propaganda campaign on Lyons' part.
Re:Best known. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070805
sums it up pretty well.
An "analyst" who supported SCO Group and is suspected as an MS front man. You wonder why there are conspiracy theories about MS being behind SCO Group's actions?
With 20/20 hindsight, it had to be Lyons, MOG or Dildio.
Re:THIS IS IDENTITY THEFT (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday November 20 2006, @03:07PM)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/United_States_C
Re:Frosty Piss (Score:2)
I am glad to know it is a Forbes guy because Forbes has always been at the low rung on the ladder when it comes to understanding the computer industry.
Well, now he's outed and we all can go back to our efforts to change the world to use open standards and non-proprietary software as a breaker to technologies that lock you into a platform and deny choice.