Mi2g - idiots or bought and paid for?

TeeJay on 2004-11-24T17:55:18

Mi2g have a reputation for speaking without thinking in IT circles and have been shown as an unreliable source of security information frequently in the past.

Now they talk about OSS zealots DDOSing SCO's website. It is probably one worm written by one virus writer who saw SCO as the liars they are. They are popular target for vitriol, who's gonna mind if you target them for a laugh with your botnet network.

Of course this conclusion would run counter to what they have said about windows being more secure than linux as they don't believe that there is a massive network of comprimised windows XP SP2 boxes out there.

in answer to the question in the subject - both.

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google knows about their detractors..

TeeJay on 2004-11-24T18:07:23

There are plenty of experts and journalists ready to expose mi2g

• the register explains some of the reasons everybody hates them : mi2g mislead, distort and just plain make stuff up
• google for mi2g bullshit

Open sourcers aren't all angels

brian_d_foy on 2004-11-24T21:20:44

Like it or not, "Open Source" has a militant right wing. mi2g may be idoitic or crass, but the kernel of what they are saying is not something they made up.

It's not unreasonable to imagine a group of slashdot kiddies attacking SCO, although I think a lot of people have a problem realizing open source has bad people like every other community.

Re:Open sourcers aren't all angels

TeeJay on 2004-11-25T09:02:00

There is hardly a militant wing. The typical slashdot kiddies are running windows these days and couldn't code their way out of a paper bag

It is fairly obviously a botnet, of windows computers controlled by a single person. Maybe 1 or 2 people. That doesn't make a militant wing or a minority any more than ted bundy was a militant wing of men.

Re:Open sourcers aren't all angels

brian_d_foy on 2004-11-25T18:23:30

And the death threats to Darl McBride? And Eric Raymond advocating people kicking Jonathon Schwartz in the theeth?

Sounds pretty militant to me. I'm not talking about this one incident.

Re:Open sourcers aren't all angels

TeeJay on 2004-11-26T11:44:25

I don't believe Darl McBride has received death threats. If you follow groklaw you will see a history of Darl and SCO making unfounded claims about threats and hackers and nothing actually happening (i.e. self-inflicted outages, FBI unaware of threats and taking no action, etc).

Eric Raymond is a nut. There are other nuts, some of whom might be arsed to use a virus to control a botnet to DDOS sco, but they are no shady group that tries to recruit.

They are a few bad apples, but independant loner bad apples. Given that anybody can be an 'open sourcer' just by using or liking open source means that there a few people who will do or say stupid things.

There hasn't been any physical violents, realistic threats or anything but a couple of outages to the SCO website. No picketing of offices, no direct action against the directors personally.

Many big corporations put up with a lot more from protestors and people they piss off (one UK bank had a truckload of manure dumped outside its front door by an angry customer) than SCO has to deal with. But they don't make as much fuss as that windbag SCO. I would still say there is no proof that the person controlling the botnet has anything to do with open source beyond having the common sense to use nessus and firefox on his windows XP box from kmart or pcworld.