Subject: Re: Xanalys Germany (was Re: Discussions, was Re: Why is Scheme not a Lisp?) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 19:56:08 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3225470179877386@naggum.net> * Espen Vestre | Are you counting out the possibility that these two interests may | coincide? No. Using 23 lines of his 48-line "me too" article for advertising is an extremely poor professional as well as personal decision. Banner ads are bad enough on the Web. Here on USENET, we have a pretty general rule against advertising and for using only 4-line signatures. We also have a general rule against posting "me too" articles. I mean, America Online got to be synonymous with that kind of idiotic newbie behavior, and now it is used by a Lisp vendor to tell the world that not only is their German office run by a moron, they advertise in his moronic articles. | That lisp vendors actually may be interested in a more friendly | climate in comp.lang.lisp? Of course they are. Does it help to post idiotic "me too" posts with huge ads? No. Should they learn from this and avoid doing it in the future? Yes. Does it help to post idiotic "you other guys please use mail while I continue posting" posts? No. Should they learn from this and avoid doing it in the future? Yes. Has Rolf Mach done the same idiotic things before? Yes. Has he learned from it? No. Does he think that there is always something wrong with people who do not follow his rules? Yes. Is any of this an instance of _politeness_? No, most certainly not. Hence my reaction. | Even in the noisy scheme vs. CL thread, I've read a lot of really | insightful comments, especially from Kent Pitman and you (which e.g. | helped me understand why I like CL and have a distaste for scheme myself). I am happy about this. | But the noise level is high, and the level of rudeness is sometimes quite | unnecessary. I regret that, naturally, but in polite company, when someone tells you that you are doing something useless, you back down, you do _not_ start to yell back, defend yourself, or start telling stupid lies about the person who simply corrected something or made a joke you took personally to begin with. I actually criticize _actions_, but the response I get to that from the morons is 100% pure personal attacks. | So in its current state, I don't think c.l.l. is something lisp vendors | can point at and say: "Look here and see how the lisp community is | thriving, see how helpful it is!" (as an example of the opposite, flame | wars are virtually non-existant on the quite active info-mcl mailing | list). The list probably has a pretty specific purpose to which people adhere. The more people are aware of their purpose in doing something, the less they stray from it. I want the purpose here to be: Discuss Common Lisp, do not try to re-open old issues for the 4711th time, do not instigate trouble with open hostility towards things you do not "like". I argue that a professional _likes_ his tools, or he just uses different tools. A professional who dislikes his tools is a contradiction in terms. If you cannot stand the dirt you get under your fingernails in one line of work, get yourself a different job or another line of work. The purpose of comp.lang.lisp is different to Scheme freaks and whiners: They want to spend all their time here attacking design decisions in Common Lisp which they use to fault somebody else for their own personal failure either to succeed with Common Lisp or to learn how to use it to solve their problems. All this idiocy about Python, for instance, is like going to a cat show and whine endlessly about how dogs are better than cats. Then there are the moronic "politeness crowd" which has no purpose here whatsoever, other than to harrass people with extremely impolite behavior of their own, as if anyone can achieve polite behavior out of others that way. For some curious reason, many of these are German and display an atrocious lack of taste when they are "offended", as if other people have a duty not to offend them, and if they do, they have the "right" to attack people viciously. Something is rotten in Germany. I believe you are in position to be fairly objective about this. | I can _understand_ why you and others react the way you do sometimes, but | I don't think it's a wise thing to do. Look, I tell people _politely_ but not necessarily _kindly_ that that they should do something else. 95% of the time, people get the message and never even get into a position they need to back down from. 5% of the time, they get themselves into such a position, and then do _not_ back down, but start taking _everything_ personally and feel hostility in everything I say, no matter what it is, and some even go so nuts they go on a fault-finding mission that lasts for years, just to take "revenge". There is clearly something wrong with such people. | This is something I try to tell my kids as well (I'm a person who has a | tendency to shout loud when I really dislike something, so I speak of | experience...): Try to react as polite and calm as you can. I do not shout, which my cat can attest to: She spends the time I spend with the keyboard lying in front of me on my desk, relaxing or sleeping on her back -- and she hates sharp noises of all kinds. I calmly ask people to go fuck themselves in real life, too, which has a much stronger effect on people. Some people, however, spend a lot of time fantasizing about screaming and foam coming out of my mouth, such as Thomas Bushnell did recently, and apparently have a strong personal need to demonize their opponent so they can feel good about their own downright atrocious and even evil behavior and relieve themselves of responsibility for it. Nothing makes people behave worse than believing that somebody else is to blame for their behavior. I consider it such an unintelligent thing to do that people who have stopped being responsible for their own actions must be psychotic or generally completely out of their mind and that there is no longer possible to talk to them -- one just has to wait until they regain their consciousness. For some it seems to take years. | By overreacting in a dispute, you only risk being regarded as the | "impossible" party. As if anything I do could possibly change that in the minds of the bad guys. If people have to reach their conclusions without thinking or without investigating causality and context, what do I care what they think? But _still_ some people pick a fight with me? I consider someone who does that to be retarded beyond recovery just there. I mean, the _only_ reason these shitheads keep fighting me is that they have come to the conclusion that they are no longer to blame for their own behavior. I want such people to show the whole world how they behave when they want others to behave. In short, if you cannot be polite when you ask other people to be polite, you _are_ an idiot. If you cannot do what you suggest that other people do, such as using mail instead of news, you _are_ an idiot. The curious thing with these people is that they are unable to stay reasonably on-topic and _also_ express their petty little moralistic gripes. They even actually think that if they find a word which is on _their_ "do not use" list, then there _cannot_ be anything technical in the same article. I want to see what kind of people are thusly retarded and unable to focus on their purpose of learning and using Common Lisp. I also want to give people a chance to show me what they focus on: If I have 90% technical content to an article and 10% stuff that some retard finds "offensive", and he responds only to those 10%, I know that his purpose is not compatible with this newsgroup -- his purpose in life is to make _other_ people behave, while he himself is free to do anything he goddamn pleases, including much worse insults than I ever use. I find this somewhat entertaining, actually, and I guess that gets communicated to the morons who keep kicking and screaming. But since you ask so nicely, let me see if people get any less moronic and psychotic with less strongly-worded reactions. I strongly doubt it. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.