Journal twitter's Journal: Old Media and The Fake Steve Jobs Heart Attack. 8
The SEC is investigating fraud in stories that damaged Apple's share price last week. Bloomberg has a confused write up on how things happened which calls the event a failure of "citizen journalism" though the responsible parties is an old hack who's infamous for telling people "shit" stocks were something to buy back in the tech bubble. OS News also has a confused article with a few more details of the blame game.
The story was first submitted to MacRumors.com, but the website's owner did some background checking, and quickly found out the story was a fake, and consequently didn't post it. The story also appeared on Digg, but didn't make the front page, and - as we know - on iReport. It was picked up by the respected Silicon Alley Insider, which simply said something along the lines of "There's a report that Steve Jobs might have had a heart attack, we're fact checking right now". Not too long after that, Apple denied the story, Silicon Alley Insider updated the item, stating it wasn't true. In the time between posting and updating, Apple's stock made a 10% drop, but quickly recovered after Apple made clear it wasn't true.
It is difficult to tell who picked up the story, but there seems to be a pattern here. Both Apple and Google have been relentlessly pounded by M$ through old media, with iPhone and Google privacy coverage being the most visible examples of hypocrisy. Steve Ballmer and friends would like to tell you that all of IT is poised to fail in the present credit crunch but Apple and Google are far better positioned with a range of cheap products that people actually want to buy. Google and Apple are also targets of proxy lawsuits. Negative attention is also showered on Mozilla, Wikipedia, ODF, free software and everything else that threatens M$ and old media. Let's see how far down the rabbit hole the SEC will go this time.
Update: Slashdot is suckered by the "Citizen Journalism Takes a Hit" line.
Hey flocktard (Score:2)
I see you've been busy shitting all over your favorite website for the past year or so. How does it feel to be ridiculed by your peers? I bet it hurts like hell when there are people who use you as a punchline on their sigs and funny AC threads.
But I was going to ask you if you have proof of Microsoft's involvement on this? You know, proof? That pesky thing everyone's always asking of you and you seem to never actually locate among your endless streams of useless links?
And I mean, something specific that go
Re: (Score:1)
Can you point me to the place where I wrote you up?
Sorry, I only have the ones where I "wrote you up", if I get your meaning correctly. You'll have to look them up yourself. Isn't that half the fun anyway?
You've been a bad little troll
ROFL [slashdot.org]
M$ will probably cut you out of their budget shortly.
Unfortunately, Steve fired all 4,902 of us when he figured you didn't need outside help to look like a complete retard. He's launching a new "Get The Facts" campaign with the money he saved. You'll love it.
Re: (Score:1)
Hahaha! "bitter little thing"!? HAHAHAHA!!!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=961371&cid=24971551 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=635513&threshold=-1&commentsort=1&mode=nested&cid=24505769 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=985275&cid=25254195 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=986049&cid=25269423 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=474092&cid=22639320 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=573869&cid=23659029 [slashdot.org]
http://brlug.net/pipermail/general_brlug.net/2008-August/018647. [brlug.net]
Re: (Score:1)
This guy Schestowitz' blog is full of lulz. Don't miss the part on one of those IRC logs where he tells twitter to lose the socks, and yesterday's heady discussion on that story about the "astroturfing" video (astroturfing, from Novell, on a Novell channel on YouTube, genius) about how his association with the flocktard reflects badly on the whole BoycottEverything crap-nuveau concept. He's pretty much just linking to that now, isn't he?
They sound like two little nerds crying on each others' shoulders over
Re: (Score:1)
Yes. New found special friends and all that. And "M$ is going into debt" is the fresh new meme of the week.
Think about how this guy's online persona translates to a real-world personality and demeanor. Shudder in fear.