Argonaut said:
On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 23:31:06 -0800 (PST),spinoza1111
Okay, glad you cleared that up.
So, we forget about "the new game" and revert to the "old game", where
you just call anyone you disagree with a bully, nazi, ******, etc,
etc, whenever you deem appropriate. [...]
You're wasting your time (and ours). "spinoza1111" isn't going to
become consistent or reasonable just because you remind him that
he's being inconsistent and unreasonable.
The "game" hasn't changed, and it isn't likely to do so. The only
winning move is not to play.
I think it's obvious that the reason Nilges keep posting his trolls
here is that he can always get Heathfield to spar with him. They've
been at it for ten years now?
That's how it may appear, because the posts all subconsciously seem to
be made simultaneously. But what really happened was that at the time
I'd been selected to be on a Princeton University press panel on
internet governance, I posted on comp.programming, starting a well-
received thread on programming professionalism.
Unfortunately, Richard took offense because given his limited culture
and education, he was unable to keep up. Instead of learning, he
claimed that the subject was off-topic, and said [sic]
"comp.programming is not about programmers".
He's an ignorant thug who appears to have been some sort of software
manager: you know, the type of manager who masters some buzzwords and
then enables other people to bully more intelligent programmers. The
usual drill.
So although I fight with him, there is no comparision between us. He
is not my equal, he is in fact, my inferior, and because of this, he's
going to lose. He's not guilty, truly enough, of "criminal libel"
under UK law, because that refers to seditious talk about the monarchy
and the established religion, and Parliament has repealed the law.
However, civil libel is a very, very serious matter in Britain, and
Richard is clearly guilty of it on the basis of his malicious claim
that "Nilges has never posted to comp.risks" made yesterday.
There are any number of solicitors in London who appear to specialize
in reputation management. I do not wish to bring an unnecessary
lawsuit, and at this point all Richard needs to do is
(1) Retract the claim that I was never accepted at comp.risks
(2) Apologize for that claim
(3) Apologize to all other people he has harmed here
(4) Take a month-long sabbatical
I hope this clears things up.
If you can get Heathfield to sign the pledge I'll happily follow suit.
Sure. When the actual, corporate process (of "domination of the
dominated by the dominated") is actually in operation, programmers
prefer to look the other way. Many reasonably intelligent people
entered programming to avoid "politics" and prefer a fantasy,
"libertarian" world of "rough consensus and running code" in which all
their lives they can play the role of Hobbits or Avatars instead of
human beings (like their defeated and complicit Fathers).
The world seems virtual, one in which we can post a fake biography of
Herb Schildt on wikipedia and show it to the guys at the office,
sniggering at our power. But then a spoilsport like Nilges comes along
and points out that wikipedia, on an emergency, ad-hoc basis, has a
policy about "biographies of living persons", and the article had to
be changed.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor: go ahead and cheat a friend.
In this world, "government", "lawyers" and "politicians" are symbols
of a lost reality principle, and a lost internalization of the super-
ego. People found (usually after studying something unrelated) that
they could have fun and be "skilled" in something that was well-paid,
but not be responsible, ultimately, either for bugs in software (their
job being, for example, to find them and not fix them) nor for
something so unimportant as the reputation of another person
(something almost inconceivable in a post-human era in which people
proudly announce dysfunction as an excuse, while not forgiving it in
others).
That's the reason why people snigger when legal threats are made.
Unfortunately, as Lawrence Lessig has pointed out, the law is real. It
created technology: absent law, there would be no electric power.
So...Heathfield may think he's being cute. But his actions have
consequences. There is a growing number of people here who want to see
him go away. Sure, there are some who would like to see ME go away,
mostly Heathfield's toadies and butt boys. But the difference is that
there's something called right and another thing called wrong. It's
both wrong and stupid to make a claim which is so easily found to be
false, as is Heathfield's claim that I've never been accepted at
comp.risks.