Game: Spot the death threat

In short: Caitlyn Martin said last month that she was unable to review Puppy Linux. She claims today that a commenter in a Distrowatch thread issued her a death threat... Nasty stuff but I just can't see the threat angle of it. "Threat" included in the post.

Information security consultant and writer for O'Reilly, Caitlyn Martin just published a report saying she received a public death threat for saying she couldn't review a certain distribution of Linux (Puppy) because it refused to boot on her laptop.

She finishes her report:

This is a public appeal to Barry Kauler and the Puppy Linux user community to speak up against anyone who would resort to threats of violence to defend their distro. Indeed, I’d like to see some of that community speak up against the personal attacks on me in general. Do you believe there should be “hell to pay” (quoting post #90 again) if someone has a bad experience with Puppy Linux and reports on it?

Immediately I thought it was pretty disgusting. Death threats aren't cool and they're really, really uncalled for especially over something as inconsequential as somebody not reviewing a distribution of Linux. But she does say to go and check out the thread and the post where the "threat" is made, so I did. Here's the "important" part:

So, in most circumstances - I would not bother to refute ignorance
In her case, it culminated other disparaging Linux insults

Besides, it serves notice - if she wishes to continue in her vanities - Esp. RE published political rantings :
There WILL be hell to pay, (not from me) = who needs yet more terrorist 'justifications" to worry about ?

There truly is such a thing as being "DEAD right" !

Fair enough ?

Read the rest. Post #90

So, yes. A bit of an arseholic reply. I've dealt with my own fair share of people who refuse to read what I say and go on what they think I say. She's not blasting Puppy Linux for not working, rather saying that she can't review it if it refuses to boot. That's certainly a valid thing to say from a reviewer's point of view.

But I can't see a threat in there. I can see that the tone is fairly unpleasant but I can't see anything that warrants a post titled "A Death Threat From A Puppy Linux Supporter" Have I just seen too many flamefests and there is a threat in there?

If so, could you please help my addled little mind and spell it out because I'm really not getting it?

Written by Oli on Monday, 08 October 2007. Tagged with linux, distrowatch. Read 1673 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

#1 /* 11 months, 25 days ago */

Sounds to me like the jerk is calling for someone else to make the murder, which, IMO, is nearly the same thing.

If a PCLOS-loving douche told you "I hope someone stabs you to death", you wouldn't be cool with that, right?

Cross me and be thagomized.

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Stegosaurus Normal User

#2 /* 11 months, 24 days ago */

Wow. I have seen OS X, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Debian (the four *NIX distros with the most loonies) and even Ubuntu (the most tame one in terms of amount of loonies) fanboys throwing flamefests and even death threats against M$, but this lone guy whoever did this won the guiness record, I never thought someone would throw a death threat to a common journalist over a review (we normally throw the death threats to M$ and only because they really deserve getting killed due to all the bad things they do (M$ have the PC/hardware makers threatened that if they make linux compatible PC's/peripherals M$ will drive them into bankrupcy, M$ also is known for illegal product integration at source code level, predatory pricing, monopolistic practices like driving into bankrupcy PC makers who preloaded OS/2, linux or BeOS instead of DOS/Winodws, or cloning competing companies applications, suing them over copyright infringement after purposefully cloning their apps and then when those companies are unable to keep fighting buying them out to destroy them).

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Ptero4 Anonymous User

#3 /* 9 months, 8 days ago */

Wake up people! The threat from Puppy Linux is real.

Consider the evidence:
1.) It's fans are rabid.
2.) It comes from a nation that distributes a mind-altering chemical worldwide (Fosters).
3.) It loads itself into memory like a virus.

The other day, my neighbor's chihuahua, foaming at the mouth, lunged at me. Safe in my apartment, I began to wonder, perhaps there is something to these
charges against Puppy Linux after all, so I did an investigation of its creator, Barry Kauler. What did I find?

That this linux is in fact the first step towards Aussie world domination. Look at the picture at the top of this page:
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/AboutPuppy/

What do you see over the BLOOD-RED word "PUPPY" (sounds innocent doesn't it?)? A chihuhua with a poppy flower in its mouth. This raises some questions:

A.) What is an outbacker doing with Mexican dogs in the first place?
answer 1: He is training an army of attack dogs in a remote desert region, they have to come from a similar locale, the desert, to survive.
answer 2: He can easily have this army of Mexican dogs "emigrate" into the U.S. under the nose of immigration officials unnoticed. Clever, eh?

B.) Why is the dog wearing a military hat?
answer: It is a diabolical downunder deed, a plot to take over North America, starting with promoting Linux, an operating system known to confuse and intimidate
the unsuspecting, innocent Windows users who were minding their own business when this upstart creates mayhem.

C.) Why does the dog have a poppy flower in it's mouth?
answer: It is well known that Tasmania is one of the world's leading producers of Opium poppies. Kauler is obviously drugging him to make him take ANY orders
on command, no matter how viscious.

I have received word from others who are watching the Puppy Linux trend that Kauler is also the master-mind of the Roo Virus. It hops from computer to computer
and unleashes a pouch-full of evil outback code. We have only one message to Barry Kauler: just drink your bloody stubbies, watch footie, and leave the rest of us alone!

Linux Unleashed, indeed!

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The Joker Anonymous User

#4 /* 6 months, 14 days ago */

I just discovered this blog entry about my posts on O'Reillynet regarding Puppy LInux. If you read the comments to my article I certainly wasn't the only one who saw this as an implicit death threat. It was, at the very least, an attempt at intimidation. My editor at O'Reilly saw it the same way and said as much in response to demands by the Puppy Linux crowd that my posts be removed.

Was the posted capable of carrying out such a threat? Probably not, but... in this day and age one can't be too careful. I took it seriously. It certainly was uncalled for and is indefensible as far as I am concerned.

FWIW, I have never, either before or since, ever received such a reaction to anything I've written. The response of the Puppy Linux community was unique and was certainly enough to put me off their distro permanently.

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Caitlyn Martin Normal User

#5 /* 6 months, 10 days ago */

Oh, it's not unique; you should've seen the reaction Oli got from the PCLinuxOS crowd when he wrote a review which basically said "PCLinuxOS is okay, but needs work". Even the PCLOS dev leader, Texstar, attacked Oli, although he later apologized.

Anything that has any sizable merit gathers a crowd of maniacs who take fanaticism to the extreme. What really saddens me is the religious wars that are fought between two groups of maniacs over two products that are both great for their own reasons (Firefox and Opera, Linux and Mac OS X, KDE and Gnome, etc.).

Cross me and be thagomized.

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Stegosaurus Normal User

#6 /* 6 months, 9 days ago */

oli writes reviews, deletes rebuttals then goes back changes the reviews then pretends it was the original. The only douche here is oli.

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getitstraight Anonymous User

#7 — Author comment /* 6 months, 9 days ago */

Excuse me, getitstraight? I was extremely transparent with the PCLOS review. Unless you think phrases like this are pretending it was original:

Edit: Well I'm going to back-peddle a little. Draklive does have resizing features and comes with an experimental wizard that should handle a Windows parition and automatically shift it down in size to make room for PCLOS.

Or:

Just so you know, this is my second conclusion. I took such a beating in the comments over the first one from the PCLOS fans that I've looked a little deeper into my primary concern (the installer) and found that rewriting this last bit would sum things up best.

Or how about the comment I made after the edit was published:

I'm also cleaning out the comments that deal in "omg you're shit" or focus exclusively on Drakelive-Installer. If your comment is one that dies, I hope you understand and I welcome you to repost anything you have to say on this version of the review.

Wow yeah, I'm pretending so hard that I've forgotten to hide all that stuff.

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Oli Numero Uno

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