After the Macalope took George Ou to task for his paranoid and patently false rantings and Mr. Gruber did the same, the horny one hardly expected to see them uncritically reported elsewhere.

And yet they were.

The first incident was by a goofball that even the Macalope — who covers the goofball beat — won’t touch.

There is considerable irony in a blogger uncritically repeating and boosting false information in a post where he’s taking another blogger to task for… uncritically repeating and boosting false information.

That’s kind of the textbook example of irony, actually.

The second is Seth Jayson at the Motley Fool (tip o’ the antlers to several readers who emailed this in).

There’s a large and tangled web here, but according to ZD Net’s George Ou, the effort to smear the computer security researchers was led by none other than Apple PR director Lynn Fox, aided and abetted by the brittle, easily fooled iSheep at Slashdot and Digg.

Mmm. Well, according to one of the two victims of Ou’s bizarre vendetta, Ou has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. So…

This comes from a company that’s proven to be unbelievably adept at marketing, beginning with its adoption of the MP3 player technology that others pioneered, and the successful creation of the mass fiction that it invented the concept.

The word is “reinvented”, dumbass. Apple reinvented the computer, it reinvented the MP3 player and it reinvented the phone.

It even says that in their marketing materials:

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.

Reinvented.

This is, after all, the same company that whitewashed a large options-backdating scandal, giving a free pass to CEO Steve Jobs for the bogus excuse that he didn’t understand the accounting implications.

Is it bogus? The Macalope suspects it is, but he doesn’t know. And neither do you.

Jayson also reaches back to a year ago when Apple fired an employee who jokingly waxed poetic about long hold times for support calls. Does the Macalope think that was the right thing to do? No.

But waaaaiiiiit fooooooor iiiiiiit…

Because, to its credit, the Motley Fool posts the portfolio of each of its writers. Jayson holds no AAPL, but he does hold MSFT.

Surprise!

Well, it’s probably because Microsoft never axed anyone for image reasons.

Cough.

The Macalope holds an inconsequential number of Apple shares.

The Macalope thought about the implications of using the Nazi comparison throughout, but wanted to drive home the point. He hopes you understand.]

Following up on his successes yesterday, George Ou keys what should be called “Artie MacStrawman in Nuremberg” and will probably cause Macalope readers to hemorrhage out their eyeballs because, yes, we’re still talking about the wireless controversy!

The Macalope is terribly, terribly sorry. But, in for a penny…

Last summer when I wrote “Vicious orchestrated assault on MacBook wireless researchers”, it set off a long chain of heated debated [sic] and blogs. I had hoped to release the information on who orchestrated the vicious assault, but threats of lawsuits and a spineless company that refused to defend itself meant I couldn’t disclose the details.

Ah, we’re already off to a good start.

The problem with Ou’s entire premise — that Lynn Fox is a Nazi propagandist and has been whispering nothing but sweet, sweet lies into Mac users’ ears — is that he thinks Mac users can’t read.

Everyone simply assumed Maynor and Ellch were frauds because they supposedly “admitted it.”

No, George, “everyone” did not assume that. “Many” may have assumed that or “some” may have assumed that, but most simply thought that they might be frauds because they kept changing their story.

Ou has a particular beef with two pieces — one by Jim Dalrymple at Macworld and one by David Chartier at The Unofficial Apple Weblog — which he thinks were “hit pieces” all but commissioned by Lynn Fox and part of Steve “Call me Adolf!” Jobs’ master plan to take over the Internets by blitzkrieg.

The Macalope doesn’t recall reading Dalrymple’s piece at the time, but he did read Chartier’s piece and he knew it was wrong when he read it — Secureworks was not admitting anything — because he read the disclaimer on their web site. Chartier is a good blogger and the Macalope thoroughly enjoys TUAW, but that particular post assumed too much.

Ou wonders:

But did Chartier really just happen to come across the evidence?

Ou is clearly skeptical that Chartier would be able to type “www.secureworks.com” into his browser. The Macalope is not going to contest this particular point, but he will note that if you read the post Chartier ends with a thank-you to “NotVeryPC”. Why, maybe that’s Lynn Fox’s secret code name! Personally, the Macalope would have thought it would be something like “AppleFoxy” or “CleverLikeAFox”, but that’s exactly what she wants you to think!

Ou believes Chartier was fed erroneous and/or misleading information from Fox which he then — being the good German Artie MacStrawman blogger that he must be to keep Ou’s fantasy view of the Mac web whole — mindlessly regurgitated to please his Cupertino masters.

When I called David Maynor to get to the bottom of this, it turned out that Apple PR director Lynn Fox (who was also cited by Jim Dalyrimple [sic] as proof that the researchers “misrepresented” the research) was the puppetmaster from start to finish.

So, you called David Maynor and he said Fox was unleashing her Mac blogger Luftwaffe. Gotcha. No, no! That’s good enough for the Macalope!

And, dude, you did not just write “puppetmaster”, did you?! That is awesome.

She not only contacted sympathetic bloggers like Chartier and “journalists” like Jim Dalrymple, she was actually the one that got SecureWorks to publish the “clarification” in the first place.

Wow. George seems pretty sure of himself.

But the Macalope decided to check. He asked Chartier if he’d ever been contacted by Lynn Fox about this and here’s what he said via email:

What a riot: no, I have never been contacted by Fox or anyone else from Apple regarding any of this stuff. In fact, I’m not even receiving those post-support call surveys or notices that my Mac warranties are about to expire and that AppleCare is an affordable way to stay within Apple’s graces.

Huh. Well, how about that?

Ou also pointed his tin-foil hat in the Macalope’s direction in those halcyon days of late summer but, for the record, the Macalope has never been contacted by Apple PR, Lynn Fox, Steve Jobs, Joseph Gerbils [sic] or anyone qualified to speak in any official capacity about Apple.

Ou appears to be hinting — as only Ou can appear to hint — that Fox confirmed that she contacted both Dalrymple and Chartier with the express purpose of goin’ all Leni Riefenstahl on their asses.

When I finally got Fox back on the phone, I asked her some questions about how MacWorld [sic] and the unofficial Apple blog [sic] got the information on the so-called confession. I got all my questions answered, but I can’t disclose what she said since Fox refused to speak on the record. But the bottom line is that Lynn Fox played Jim Dalrymple, David Chartier, and the rest of the Mac press/blogosphere like a violin, though it was clear they were all willing participants.

Ou says “yes”. Chartier says “no”.

You can guess who the Macalope believes.

But why would Chartier think all on his lonesome that Secureworks was admitting to have falsified the presentation if Frauline Fox wasn’t pulling the strings?

Well, maybe it has something to do with Brian Krebs (tip o’ the antlers to Brian Krebs Watch).

Indeed, as I reported earlier, in his hotel room on the eve of that presentation, Maynor showed me a live demo of him exploiting the built-in Macbook drivers to break into the machine from another laptop — without a third party card plugged in.

Ou doesn’t mention it, but it had already been reported that Maynor and Ellch had hacked native Airport drivers. Secureworks didn’t want to talk about the free lap dance they gave Krebs in the hotel room because they botched their delivery. They only wanted to talk about the formal Black Hat presentation. Now how could those silly Mac users get so confused when it was all so clear?!

But, shhh. George is on a roll.

Once she got SecureWorks to publish the clarification that merely reiterated the fact that third party hardware was used in the original video (which was clearly disclosed in the first 20 seconds of the video that it was third party hardware), she used that as “incriminating” evidence that the researchers admitted to falsifying the video and shared her “findings” with Apple friendly press.

Well, George, Chartier says he wasn’t contacted by Fox. And it’s at tad (read: extremely) absurd to ascribe some conspiracy theory to the fact that Dalrymple — a journalist (despite Ou’s quotes) for Macworld magazine — was in contact with Apple PR on the most significant story of last August and September.

When I pointed out the flaws in their stories, Chartier and Dalrymple simply ignored me and stuck to their guns.

This is false. Yes, Chartier’s piece is still in its original form, but you can read through Dalrymple’s piece and see if you see the word “misrepresent” (the word Ou complains about) anywhere in there. It’s not, because the piece has been corrected, which is what journalists do. But here it is six months later and Ou is still bitching about it.

The Macalope knows a lot of readers wish he’d just stop covering Ou. Isn’t the real question why ZDNet continues to let his cartoonish rantings go on?

UPDATE: David Chartier posts some thoughts and amends his original post.

Fans of the Simpsons may recognize the title of this post.

[George Ou will] be at Toorcon and offer coverage of that event.

George Ou:

[Exploiting a MacBook Pro right out of the shipping carton is] precisely what I intend to do.

[UPDATE: Upon slow-motion review, it appears George was saying that recording the exploit of an out-of-the-box MacBook Pro was what he intended to do.]

Sounds like Ou will be actively participating in SecureWorks’ demonstration, not covering it.

You say, among other things, that the Macalope is “a site dedicated to bashing” you.

Including this post, the Macalope counts 4 out of his 14 posts that focus on you.

(Sadly, you have dedicated but a couple of measly comments to the Macalope. George, this relationship is never going to work if you aren’t going to put something into it.)

But 4 out of 14 is still just 29%. Is that a lot? The Macalope is kind of new at this. How much time do sites dedicated to bashing you usually spend on you?

Frankly, it’s been a busy week for the Macalope. He already has two people who think his blog is dedicated to bashing them – one who thought the Macalope was George Ou and now George Ou himself.

It’s like the Horny One stumbled into an episode of Three’s Company.

But, George, the Macalope was most confused when reading this:

So it appears he just proved himself wrong all along and my camp has been telling the truth all along. If Apple is now leaking to Mac bloggers that a wireless patch will come out and they’re changing the story that Maynor and Ellch are “frauds” to “unprofessional” for refusing to share exploit source code.

George, you have to get over these paranoid fantasies of the mighty Apple propaganda machine before they start to eat you alive and you begin to think that Apple’s responsible for everything bad in the world and you fall into a spiral of hatred until finally you do something really embarrassing.

The Macalope has not heard that a wireless patch is coming and has never said that he did.

As for “proving himself wrong”, the Macalope is just scanning back over his posts from the last week and a half and… hmm… no… nope. No, George, he can’t find the post you’re referring to where he said there was never any hack and that Maynor and Ellch are liars and that the MacBook is invulnerable and Steve Jobs is God and the Macalope’s dad can beat up your dad (which, nothing against your dad, wouldn’t be a fair fight as the Macalope’s dad is a 600 lb buck).

Just because some Mac users have said Maynor and Ellch are frauds does not mean that all have said it.

As a matter of fact, in relation to the code the Macalope said:

Maybe they felt they should be paid for their time to help reveal a problem with Apple’s drivers. And maybe they should. But the Macalope would suggest that getting the attention of a prospective client by publicly dissing them isn’t such a great business model.

The Macalope never said it would be unprofessional of SecureWorks to refuse to give their code away. He actually leaned in the opposite direction.

This might be the bit you’re looking for about unprofessionalism, George:

You [Ellch] and David Maynor shot your mouths off about a vulnerability in the MacBook and then backpedalled when angry Mac users demanded you prove the vulnerability exists. Now you claim you don’t want to confirm it because it wouldn’t be responsible.

Now, there is another possibility the Macalope neglected to consider. It’s also possible that Brian Krebs screwed up and reported something he wasn’t supposed to. There are certainly those who think Krebs is to blame. So, if Krebs reported something that should have been off the record, Ellch and Maynor are just guilty of being jerks, not necessarily unprofessional.

Which leaves the bit about what contact SecureWorks had with Apple. You said you attempted to get some more information about that out of Lynn Fox, asking:

Did SecureWorks or David Maynor ever attempt to indicate to Apple that an exploitable flaw exists in the stock Apple MacBook wireless laptop regardless of whether Apple believes this qualifies as “evidence” or not?”

Like, maybe through a puppet show or an interpretive dance?

It’s been a week since I asked this in email and I left voice mails. Fox refuses to answer.

You should probably take note that Lynn Fox isn’t the only one not answering certain questions.

And the Macalope can’t imagine why she doesn’t want to talk to you. Particularly when you’re such an impartial observer.

It sounds like Apple was too lazy or incompetent to do their own work after they were given the crash dumps and disassembled drivers and it’s sour grapes.

Is that what they were given, George? Who told you that? Isn’t that evidence? If you knew that’s what they were given, why didn’t you ask Fox why she doesn’t consider those specific items evidence?

So many questions, George. So many questions.

What’s so odd is that the Macalope doesn’t recall there ever being such a stir over a Mac security vulnerability before.

Apple’s had a few. A couple of them (that’s two, George) rather severe. But never such a controversy.

He wonders why that is.

Well, until we next lock horns, George. Oh, by the way, Tuesday’s not good for the Macalope. He’s getting his antlers filed. Have your people call the Macalope’s people.

Yours truly,
The Macalope

P.S. Oh, and, George?

Since when do journalists have “camps”?

[Edited slightly for grammar.]

George Ou-the-Humanity! has pimped this idea for over two weeks, but now Jon Ellch has broken his silence (antler tip to Daring Fireball). Silence, that is, if you don’t count the frequent conversations with George Ou.

Ellch refuses to take Gruber’s bait and mostly focuses on the technical details of the exploit SecureWorks demonstrated, implying it’s all very complicated and it’s really only the kind of thing experts understand.

While the Macalope is sure the technical intricacies of the exploit are beyond his reckoning, he’s fully qualified to discuss the PR elements of this story. And Ellch and Maynor still have a number of steps to complete in their 12-step journey to PR recovery.

Ellch:

Am I doing a very good job of winning this PR smear campaign lynn fox ignited? No.

Sorry, Jon, but don’t look any further than the mirror when you’re looking to place blame for this PR debacle.

You and David Maynor shot your mouths off about a vulnerability in the MacBook and then backpedalled when angry Mac users demanded you prove the vulnerability exists. Now you claim you don’t want to confirm it because it wouldn’t be responsible.

You can’t be rogue hackers on the edge and button-down businessmen.

Some have taken Lynn Fox’s statement as a refutation of the existence of an exploit. It’s not. It’s a refutation of Maynor and Ellch’s professionalism. If the argument was soley about the science of whether or not Apple’s Airport is vulnerable to SecureWorks’ exploit, Maynor and Ellch would simply sit back and wait for their vindication via an Apple update.

But Apple took a shot across the bow of SecureWorks’ professionalism. They botched their delivery and then – according to the Macalope’s Apple sources – provided only vague information to Apple about how the exploit can be executed.

Maybe they felt they should be paid for their time to help reveal a problem with Apple’s drivers. And maybe they should. But the Macalope would suggest that getting the attention of a prospective client by publicly dissing them isn’t such a great business model.

George appears to be surrounded with hostiles closing in. The Macalope suggests he look over his shoulder, too. That might be Maynor skedaddling to the hills behind his back.