Ad Hominem

This blog linked to my earlier post about the Boing Boing/Secure Computing debacle.

He writes :

And it is still a rumor folks. I mean, Cyrus Farivar gives the impression he thinks there was research involved:

Cyrus somehow thinks Joi and Kathryn found evidence. Remember, all Sean did was Google for a name. He has no proof. (As though it matters. Remember “ad hominum.”) Cyrus simply spreads the rumor, but readers of his blog don’t get the full story.

My reply is as follows. I left the comment on his blog, but it has yet to be approved.

Domini,

I appreciate your taking the time to read my blog. However, while you accuse me of making ad hominem attacks, you sir, are as guilty as anyone of making the attacks.

You say the following: “Cyrus somehow thinks Joi and Kathryn found evidence.”

Nowhere in my sentence does it refer to the word “evidence.”

What I said was:

“A couple of bloggers, Joi Ito, (who found the link from Sean Bonner) and Kathryn Cramer, and sex blogger Violet Blue have found that Mr. Foote-Lennox isn’t quite the “protector of kids” that he’d like to make himself out to be.”

Firstly, Tomo Foote-Lennox isn’t the most common of names, so when it turns up on the Internet, it’s probably the same guy. I have a semi-unique name and when people google it, they’ll find my website.

Secondly and more importantly, if you looked more closely at Sean Bonner’s post, he actually *does* make the connection. He links to this page, which establishes one Tomo Foote-Lennox as living in Minnesota (where the Usenet posts were inviting people to) and as working for Secure Computing. I’d bet that the combination of those three facts computes to exactly one person.