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While I am normally happy to poke fun at the crazy, the stupid, and the like, there is a level of crazy that even I have the sense to just leave alone, at least under normal circumstances. Like Rixstep, http://rixstep.com. That site is just a whole mess of crazy. Not the fun kind. I don't mean like the Andy Stone kinda crazy, which is the Nutty Professor kind. The kind that's a really nice guy, really smart, and working really hard to do good. It's just that you *really* want to know what his earth's gravitational constant is, because you have the feeling that it's just a wee bit different from ours
But we need guys like Andy, crazy as they are, because well, they make the world a lot more fun than it otherwise would be. I'd be very sad about a Mac OS X world without Andy Stone.
That's not the crazy I mean with Rixstep. Whoever the fuck runs that festering pool of shit is a decidedly different kind of crazy. The kind that decides that if you are not one of their sycophants, that you're unworthy of even basic human dignity. Disagree with them, for any reason, and they will attack you in the most immature, vicious, spiteful way possible. They claim to be long-time programmers and consultants, with a long list of impressive-sounding names to drop, but in reality, they're the idiot savants that prove every bad stereotype of computer programmers to be based in fact. They are an eternal Roy Stalin, forever screaming in anger at his defeat on the K-12 by Lane Meyer, and normally, I use them for my weekly moment of WHATTHEFUCK, but deliberately leave them alone. Because it's like fucking with a rabid chihuahua. The entertainment value isn't high enough to justify the annoyance factor.
Tonight ain't normal.
Rixstep, as part of their Joe and Wendy Whiner-ian jihad against Apple for not making Mac OS X a "pure" port of OpenSTEP, decided to poach a few years worth of Stepwise.com WWDC reviews, to show how Apple pulled a cross-platform bait and switch on us. Normally I wouldn't care what a bunch of Exceptionally Small-Penised, (ESP'd) nutters do. But, this has really upset Scott Anguish, who has run Stepwise for 13 years, and worked hard to make it a site that helps a lot of people learn to become better programmers. Scott talks about it, http://www.stepwise.com/
The deformed dldos running Rixstep stole a bunch of Scott's WWDC columns, and posted them in a way that would make it look like Scott agrees with Rixstep, and worse, actively supports their POV. This is most emphatically not true, and reading between the lines, I'll hazard that Scott's been on the receiving end of Rixstep's standard abuse for people who don't greet them on bended knee with open mouth. Judge for yourself:
Where is Stepwise??Fuck you Rixstep. To every one of the diseased leaky douchebags running that site, Fuck you, and the cayuse you ride while dreaming of a human sex partner. Scott has, for over a decade, made Stepwise a site that did good, that helped people. All you have ever done is shit on everyone who didn't beg you for another helping of jizz. You're a fucking blight on the Mac web. Even the delusional ravings of Rob Enderle are preferable to the slime trail you leave in your wake.Although it makes me sick to have to do so, I have temporarily pulled the main page of Stepwise off-line. The rest will likely go this weekend.
The "Rixstep" site has stolen a large chunk of my WWDC 1999 coverage and republished it without permission. I won't link to the article (I don't want to give him the spider traffic) but it is here http://rixstep.com/2/4/20071221,00.shtml.
Frankly, I can't take the stress of fighting this with "Rixstep", it makes me ill just thinking about it.
Let me just state...
I did not write this for him.
I did not write this for him to steal and misrepresent.
I do not agree that we were 'lead down the garden path', nor that there was a bait and switch.
My copyright has been violated by his reproduction. But given the track record, I see no way to stop him from doing this. He's published incorrect information about me before.
I only hope that the long-time readers of Stepwise will recognize that this is not my feelings on the matter, and that my co-workers also understand this.
Frankly, I don't know when, or if, I'll put Stepwise back online unless that content is removed from his site.
But what to do about it? Caling them names won't really work, and shit like hacking them is descending to their level. So what to do?
Expose Them
Go read Scott's take on it, then dead some of the crazy at Rixstep, including their ass-raping of Scott's good name at http : // rixstep.com / 2 / 4 / 20071221,00.shtml, and if you agree with me, call them out on your blog, site, lj, whatever. If you like, use my new Technorati tag with your post to make it easier for people to spot the kind of dicksnot they are.
Then shun them. Don't link to them, don't visit that site anymore, make them dead to you. Rixstep has the right to be a bunch of dogfuckers, but they can do so alone. Let them shit where they eat, and befoul whatever they touch, but let them do so in an oubliette. Shun Them.
Then send Scott an email so he knows he's appreciated.
Just in case Scott reads this:
Scott,
I may not have always agreed with you, and I know I probably went off on you at some point in the past, but I have always respected what you and Stepwise have tried to do, and largely succeeded at. You have a lot more people on your side than you think.
Technorati Tags:
Rixstep - Diseased Douchebags
Posted by John C. Welch at 18:56 | Permalink
Comments
Wow. Sounds like another case study for the Internet Fuckwad patient research that's desperately needed.
Which suggests something that I've been thinking about for about a year or so. A lot of what passes for tech journalism is actually linkbaiting crap. Exposing it with attribution, as folks like yourself do so well, necessarily provides the link that curious readers will use, to the inevitable profit of the crapmakers.
Is there any way for people of conscience to reference and refute detestable Intarnet scandalmongering (which seems to be on the increase, thanks to the lack of critical-thinking skills among our public-educated population) without actually providing immediate profit to said mongers? Or am I being 47-year-old-naive about the mechanisms available?
Posted by: Maurice Kessler | December 21, 2007 8:41 PM
For what it's worth, I've never even heard of "rixstep" before, or the people associated with it. While they may be assholes, they appear to be assholes with a rather small audience. Hopefully one that's shrinking.
Posted by: Jens Alfke | December 21, 2007 8:48 PM
Why would Stepwise pull their own content over this? Perhaps this Anguish guy isn't familiar with Rixstep? No one, anywhere, takes them seriously. They're the wild-eyed, raving derelicts of the Mac community. Actually, referring to them in the plural is giving them way too much credit. Near as I can tell, it's one guy, and he keeps all the crazy for himself.
Posted by: Chris B. | December 21, 2007 8:57 PM
adding nofollow will avoid giving them Google mojo but it won't stop people from clicking on it. Maybe just scrape their content (without their ads) or post a screenshot of their site so people don't actually have to go there.
Posted by: Mike Cohen | December 21, 2007 9:32 PM
Would a DMCA-type takedown be in order? I'd hate to invoke it but you use what weapons you have. Let their hosting provider know they are violating copyright (being a diseased douchebag is not yet a chargeable offense).
Posted by: paul | December 21, 2007 9:52 PM
I've never read stepwise or rixstep before. So I went to Google to find some content on stepwise.com, and couldn't find anything more recently dated than 2005. ? Then I tried Google Advanced Search for any new pages in the past year, and ... nothing. ?!
Posted by: much ado | December 21, 2007 10:58 PM
As I said in private email, thanks John.
much ado.
There haven't been new technical articles on Stepwise in about 2 years. Having the day job and the hobby now covering the exact same territory have caused that (I work in Tech Pubs at Apple in the Cocoa and Developer Tools group now). However, much of the older Cocoa technical content is still very much relevant.
Community driven content has moved away from a single content provider to individual blogs.
To support that the news links are updated constantly to interesting Cocoa postings and such.
But there is stale content, and stuff needs a general upgrade. Time is the enemy there.
Posted by: scott Anguish | December 22, 2007 1:34 AM
What an amusing internecine clusterfuck!
Payback for past arrogance?
Bunch of ex-NeXTers coming home to roost?
Posted by: Adolf | December 22, 2007 2:21 AM
Hey, your digg links are broke.
Posted by: Digger | December 22, 2007 9:50 AM
A blast from the past about the Rixter: http://perversiontracker.com/archives/000249.html
Posted by: Trevor | December 22, 2007 11:17 AM
Digger,
I know, but I've not had the time or the caring to figure out why Digg's code isn't working. I probably just have to pick a different option.
Posted by: John C. Welch | December 22, 2007 1:18 PM
They are an eternal Roy Stalin, forever screaming in anger at his defeat on the K-12 by Lane Meyer
Let's hope the Rixster doesn't get his testicles tentacles all over anyone else...
Posted by: Gregg | December 22, 2007 1:27 PM
I have long felt Rixstep was one guy suffering from multiple-personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, and other mental maladies of which I know not the names, but now we know: he's just stealing content from other people (and then peppering it with historical inaccuracies and foul, inaccurate personal insults) -- of course it's going to look schizoid.
Posted by: Shazbani | December 22, 2007 3:35 PM
John, you just go ahead and try to rip me apart. But I'm cooler and smarter than you! Here's my response to your nonsense.
Posted by: Fake Rixstep | December 22, 2007 10:43 PM
Scurrilous Rogue! Base mendicant! Away with thee, away with the back to that bog of eternal stench from which thou crawled. Oh, do we not rue that dark day! Oh, do we not rue it so!
Posted by: John C. Welch | December 23, 2007 9:35 AM
Do I dare post a comment against this flow? I feel I must. As Mr. Anguish himself para-quotes in his comment above, this whole kerfuffle has been "Much ado about nothing".
Having read the original Rixstep article, I find two things.
One, it was clear to me that the statements sourced from Stepwise were quotes not theft - do you folks honestly think otherwise? They were in block quote style, in a different font to that of the narrator and, above all, the text before each quote made it clear that the following text was quoted from a source!
Two, let's clear this up once and for all, Rixstep's quotng of Mr. Anguish' content is perfectly legal and normal. See this blog post for a rundown on the legalities of fair use, and stop waving your DMCA flags.
Mr. Downes does have a raw and uncompromising writing style and will therefore put some people's backs up, but if you review his written output you can't help but notice how often he has been right on the money. Arrogant and even rude yes, but not wrong. Let's not let the messenger's style drown the message content.
Posted by: Dr. Ian Silvester | December 29, 2007 4:18 AM
So... it's ok for you to steal an entire post from the stepwise site and post it here because you agree with scott, but not ok for Rixstep to take some quotes because they don't? How is this fair use. Sounds more like something that happens in Communist China to me.
Posted by: LRM | December 29, 2007 2:01 PM
It sounds to me that the gentleman at Stepwise is unfairly indignant.
The Rixstep article quotes source and attributes correctly. An opinion is expressed and views are published.
A rational response to the criticism instead of a slamming the door against dialog would have been more appropriate.
Posted by: SLmanDR | December 29, 2007 8:59 PM
LRM, the difference is, if Scott asked me to change it, or add in commentary from him on this, I would. But, besides that, I didn't change his post, nor did I set it up to suggest he's saying something he didn't. That's a rather important point in all this, actually, it would be THE important point.
You're also ignorant about China. In China, there wouldn't be any bitching about copyright or anything similar, and you'd be damned lucky to have a blog in the first place. But you did attempt a strawman, so that's something. Something sad and pathetic.
SLmanDR
The point isn't about attribution, it's about reposting Scott's articles to make it sound like Scott either agrees with what Rixstep says, and that is Apple pulled a "bait and switch" wrt cross-platform cocoa, (which is ridiculous anyway, unless you think every mention of a product roadmap is a guarantee. If you DO think that, I have some nice oceanfront property in MO to sell you), or that Scott said that himself.
Neither is the case. It is that attempt to make it look like Scott supports that POV that is the problem here, not quoting quality. That's the scummy part. The stealing multiple years worth of posts wholesale, (and yes, there is a difference between a single post, and years and years of posts) is not helping Rixstep any.
Of course, your theory that rational discourse with Rixstep is possible is, to be mild, hilariously ignorant, although for someone who is a fan of Rixstep, unsurprising.
Posted by: John C. Welch | December 29, 2007 10:45 PM
"they're the idiot savants"
"idiot savant" is probably not a good term to be throwing around in a spat of this sort, John. It's an old term that's been used by neurologists to refer to the extraordinary abilities that are occasionally shown by autists (c.f. Dustin Hoffman in _Rainman_) even sometimes by those who are in other ways severely retarded. Such people are interesting in themselves - take a look some time, for example, at the story of the twins in Oliver Sacks book _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_.
http://www.oliversacks.com/hat.htm
It's possibly not a good term to use at all these days, but it most certainly shouldn't be used as a term of abuse. If "idiot savants" deserve anything, they deserve some consideration and support.
Posted by: Nick | December 30, 2007 8:37 AM
Nick,
I was well aware of how I used the term, and I meant it precisely the way I used it. If that, for whatever reason offends your sensibilities, that is your issue. Read that definition again:
noun ( pl. idiot savants or idiots savants pronunc. same)I do consider people who are living examples of the stereotypical programmer, unable to interact with anyone or anything but code to be mentally handicapped, yet brilliant in a specific area. It is the perfect term to use for what I am talking about, although "brilliant" as applied to the morons at Rixstep is being rather charitable.
a person who is considered to be mentally handicapped but displays brilliance in a specific area, esp. one involving memory.
I suppose I could have called them "moronic cocksuckers", but that wouldn't have had the precision that "idiot savant" did in that case.
However, what you are describing is probably better described as an "Autistic Savant" which carries the more correct connotation that you are ascribing to idiot savant.
Posted by: John C. Welch | December 31, 2007 10:11 AM
