Too Much Red Bull? Commenters Gone Wild

Poor Ben Worthen. The Wall Street Journal's business technology blogger managed to ignite a vicious web riot with his post about why corporate I.T. departments will avoid Google's new Android mobile operating system.

In a post titled "Google Phone: A Business-Tech Nightmare Waiting to Happen," the following few sentences are what got him in trouble:

Here's the first thing that will happen when a phone with Google's operating system hits the market: Information-technology departments will ban employees from connecting phones that run Google's operating system to their computers or the corporate network. The reason is that Google's operating system is open, meaning anyone can write software for it. That includes bad guys, who will doubtlessly develop viruses and other malicious code for these phones, which unsuspecting Google phones owners will download. Employees could spread the malicious code to the rest of the company when they synch their phones to their computers or use it to check email.

Pretty benign stuff, right? Not to the online tech community who unleashed a barrage of withering abuse on Worthen. A sampling below:

How did an author who has obviously not the slightest understanding of what "open source" means get a job blogging for the WSJ?
_{Comment by I mean seriously — November 5, 2007 at 8:29 pm}

The author is clueless. Great job, WSJ.
_{Comment by Miniscule Sclar — November 5, 2007 at 9:13 pm}

The Wall Street Journal could clearly find better technology journalists at a very, very, low-end community college. This article is total nonsense.
_{Comment by Linus — November 5, 2007 at 9:55 pm}

Does Ben have any IT background whatsoever?! I might expect this in some sort of local rag, but in the WSJ? I'm cancelling my corporate subscription today.
_{Comment by Thomas Aquinas — November 5, 2007 at 9:58 pm}

Worthen's article is either irredeemably clueless or malicious, anti-open source FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt]. Either way, it's disgraceful and quite unexpected from WSJ. Hello, News Corp?
_{Comment by FUD? Probably. — November 5, 2007 at 10:20 pm}

Agree with FUD — either Worthen is just criminally ignorant of the topic area or he's been paid off.
_{Comment by Ajaxian Prototype — November 5, 2007 at 10:28 pm}

A little bit hard to believe this is coming from the wall street journal. The new york times, maybe, but i had higher hopes for the paper people actually read to make investments and stuff. i wonder if it's possible to short the worth of a blogger?
_{Comment by Wall Streeter — November 5, 2007 at 10:31 pm}

Geez, Ben! I'm really hoping you were handed a bag of cash to write this, because if you actually believe this, you should probably be reassigned to writing about agriculture policy, or something nobody cares about.
_{Comment by BenBennyBenBen — November 5, 2007 at 10:59 pm}

The Scream painting was a really nice touch, WSJ. Real cute. Here's some _factual_ news: *I* am the "IT guy" and the only thing I'm screaming at is you.
_{Comment by Screamer — November 5, 2007 at 11:01 pm}

Ben Worthen: A Business-Tech Nightmare Already In Progress
_{Comment by Anonymous — November 5, 2007 at 11:10 pm}

Hate to identify myself as an IT guy if this guy meets the bar. News is always dumbed down but this is a new low.
_{Comment by John — November 5, 2007 at 11:24 pm}

After such an assault, Worthen felt compelled to post an update:

Update: Judging from the comments, some people think we're saying something we aren't. We don't think Google's mobile operating system is a security problem because it's open source. But the phones that use it could become a security threat because, if Google succeeds, there are going to be a lot of applications for this phone, and individuals are going to be able to download whichever ones they want to use. As this happens, bad guys are going to start targeting these people with their own code, much the way they target PC users today.

But this could not placate the livid web hordes — on the contrary, it only further enraged them:

Some update. The author misses the point, again. Real quality stuff, this journal.
_{Comment by BBBQ — November 6, 2007 at 12:24 am}

Ben Worthen's 'Update' screw up things further! People with a degree in home gardening might also click on the 'Career' link on WSJ for a career in technology blog writing.
_{Comment by aks — November 6, 2007 at 12:27 am}

The first part of your article I read was the update, so I'm aware of any supposed corrections. Your point is still invalid and you have a serious lack of understanding regarding open source software. I think you would do yourself and open source advocates, as well as the public, a favor: do not write about what you do not know...I've always had the highest respect for what I've felt, for all my life, was one of the most accurate, well run, and professionally written news publications in the United States. I have never read anything that made me doubt the professionalism of any writers at the WSJ.
Until, of course, I read this article.
_{Comment by Hal Vaughan — November 5, 2007 at 11:36 pm}

Something needs to be pointed out. It's not that there are 60 comments here disagreeing with ben. It's that there are 60 comments here casually mentioning that this article is so screwed up that we're totally off the agree-disagree scale. To be on that scale, we'd need an article with pesky little bits such as facts and logic and stuff.
_{Comment by benworthenisanidiot — November 6, 2007 at 12:03 am}

We remind ourselves this isn't disagreement on the article. It's just agreement that the article is utterly insane. As in, beyond the realm of reason. As in, are we sure that Ben isn't really just the fashion editor posing as an IT boke?
_{Comment by Sloppy the Squirrel — November 6, 2007 at 12:47 am}

I'm guessing that by "business technology" the author meant 1950's era typewriters. Someone phone HR.. the Journal needs to make a staffing change.
_{Comment by Anonymous — November 6, 2007 at 1:27 am}

Fact: Due to some of the linking which has occurred, a few hundred thousand of the most influential IT people in the world will read this article today, and it will totally decimate whatever remaining good thoughts they had with respect to theWall Street Journal.
_{Comment by Na na na na hey hey hey good bye — November 6, 2007 at 1:33 am}

Dude — are you for real? Sadly, it seems you didn't realize you were incompetent in the subject-area before putting "pen" to "paper". It'll take you a while to live this one down ...
_{Comment by red — November 6, 2007 at 1:34 am}

Terrible. I give you an F-
The "F" is for "fired."
The "-" is for "posthaste."
Author has in no way explained how being open-source will make the platform any more inviting to crackers and script kiddies than closed-source platforms which allow outside development.
Author has also completely overlooked the history, and indeed, present day state, of personal computing.
Finally, Author's update fails to really address any of the fatal flaws of his original work. And yes, I'm from Slashdot, but we're not ganging up on you to be pro-open source. It really just is that poor an article.
_{Comment by Reid — November 6, 2007 at 3:45 am}

And on and on and on.

A word of friendly advice for Worthen that an editor once told me about how to deal with nasty commenters and other bullies:

"Ignore them."

by Sam Gustin