Giving an application a window icon in a sensible way

[Twisted]

I'm sorry, I had to respond to this. Retardi? Are you kidding me? I was
called that in first grade. That speaks volumes about your maturity
level, I guess.

Actually, it speaks volumes about just how bloody annoying you are, and
what you drive an otherwise mild-mannered programmer to!

I notice you called me a liar. What exactly did I lie about?

Shutting up, for starters...

 

[Twisted]

Two rebuttals:

(1) If it were ten thousand links, tools and file types, then yes I'd
probably be overwhelmed too. If it were more like 50, then I can dedicate a
30 seconds google search to each, and it'd take less than half an hour to
get a basic understand of each of them.

That almost is half an hour, and you've made yourself vulnerable to a
denial-of-service attack wherein people post large numbers of links and
your time is substantially consumed.

An hour spent rebutting crud in this group, plus this, and the time I'm
losing here increases by 50%.

And all of this assumes, generously, your 30 second estimate. It takes
maybe 30 seconds to crank up a web browser, put in a search, and
examine the list of hits. Refining the query, if that proves necessary,
adds more time. Actually examining the pages linked to adds even more.

(2) As an alternative to judging them by their cover, you could withhold
judgment until the next day, week, or month...

I was discussing my decision to follow or not follow a link. I have to
make a snap decision using the information available at that time. I
can't defer it; that means investing the time to bookmark the link or
something so that it's still around, which means I've already made the
decision to spend (waste?) time on the link in question.

Why are we even discussing this? It should be obvious that no-one is
going to click on more than a tiny minority of the links they see, here
or anywhere else, and my being exactly typical in that regard should be
a non-issue.

[Seven second estimate]

This is frankly ludicrous. It takes that to reach for the start button,
find the web browser in the clutter, and click it. It takes another
seven (at least) for a browser to actually appear and be ready for
input. It takes more time still to get to Google, and only then is
there a few seconds spent typing the query and hitting enter.

Of course, you may have some kind of shortcut, like parking a browser
window somewhere guzzling RAM open to Google or something, but I don't
think it reasonable to expect everyone who reads this group to do
likewise!

So if your concern is optimal allocation of your time, you'd do a
lot better to investigate the links/tools/file-types presented to you, than
posting on the newsgroup about how you don't know anything about these
links/tools/file-types.

I don't doubt that I could have found some Web page regarding the tool
in under five minutes. But you see, I didn't want to.
1. People were singing its praises implying it might do something
useful for my current project right now. I doubted some Web page would
know anything about my current project at all, so asking people here
for more information made a lot more sense; it would be more specific
to what I was doing, rather than generic.
2. I wasn't so much interested in the download URL to download it as I
was interested in why people had conspicuously avoided mentioning the
download URL despite otherwise strongly endorsing it. Now I see that my
attackers may have intended it as a trap, so at some point I'd mention
the curious lack of any mention of it and then they could pounce on my
"obvious lack of google-fu" or whatever they figured to pounce on. If
so, several of them are subtler than flaming usenet loudmouths usually
are.
3. I'd already determined that at the current juncture I'd gain nothing
from an automated build tool versus whatever amount of time spent
investigating one, whether 7 seconds (your lowest estimate), 25 minutes
(your highest), or something else.

 

[Twisted]

Assuming you're using Windows (the hint was the mention of WinAmp), you
can right click on a file and choose "properties" to see a window which will
display what the OS thinks the type of the file is, as well as what program
will open it.

That's hardly helpful when the file extension appears in a URL in a
usenet posting. I'd have to have already downloaded the
potentially-useless file *first*, just to discover one piece of
information to use towards determining whether it would be a waste of
time to download it!

If that's too slow for you, you can also right click on the file, and
highlight the "Open With..." menu, in which case a pop-up submenu will
appear, listing the programs known to be able to open this file. In my case,
it shows "Adobe Reader 7.0" and "Firefox".

For which file? .jnlp?

 

[Twisted]

I guess you're screwed then. =P

Why, because you did a half-arsed job and (implicitly) are refusing to
try harder?

 

[Twisted]

Wow, you actually spent some effort to reply to me

Have you tried using ClassLoader.getResource() yet?

Nope; I've been too busy trying to put out fires and do damage control
in a certain usenet group to get much Java work done lately.

 

[Twisted]

I'd rather see the exact words I wrote. No offence, but I find you tend
to misread

You had to open your mouth and insult me. (And no, adding "no offence"
before an accusation of gross incompetence does not work on me, any
more than smiling while you say it would.)

As for the "exact words you wrote", I didn't have them handy then and I
still don't. You'd have to repost them, since I am most certainly not
rereading all 300+ posts of this thread just because you apparently
want me to. I'd be here all day.

And also, you weren't giving a lecture, but asking a question. Yeah,
it's different, but the fact that you can say "Ok" and go on with your life,
without having your life become worse off is the same.

NO IT IS NOT! I have to at least indicate that I disagree as well. And
I have to repeat doing so every time the jerk repeats "idiot" or
whatever, as otherwise someone might encounter one of the "idiot" posts
but not the rebuttal.

If the other scientists wanted to hear Einstein's lecture, after a
repeated interjection of "idiot", the entire crowd would get upset and ask
the person to leave.

Unfortunately, that doesn't translate well to Usenet, does it?

If the other scientists agreed with this person that
Einstein was an idiot, and didn't want to hear the rest of the lecture, then
Einstein would be wasting his time giving the rest of it, and should just
pack up and leave, heading towards the next conference, giving the next
lecture there.

A widespread, incorrect perception that he was an idiot could not be
allowed to go uncorrected, though. It would spread through half the
population and Einstein would have difficulty getting *anyone* to take
him seriously after awhile, because the rumor that he was an idiot had
been allowed to get started and then to become widespread.

I forget why I told you this fictional story, though. =P I never
realized how much I depended on being able to check the parent and
grandparents of a post in a thread until now that it's unavailable to me.

It is? Why?

What if the game was seeing who could walk away the fastest?

I'm not aware of any such game actually being played. In any case,
"walk away" should be interpreted as "refuse to continue the game".

Learn to become him.

This is so ridiculous it doesn't even deserve a longer response than
this sentence.

Learn to become invulnerable to insults slung your way.

That's also not possible. I'd have to somehow cause every person I
might ever want to have dealings with in the future (potentially six
billion people, then) to be certain to disregard any insults or rumours
about me that they might ever hear in the future, in order to proof
myself against such insults having negative consequences to me. Unless
you can suggest something I can put into the water supply (and loan me
the stuff, and a few huge tankers to use to dump it all into the
Pacific Ocean, since it's beyond my budget) to make the world
suggestible for a while while I broadcast a television program (you'd
have to loan me the equipment to do that, too) to achieve this effect,
I think we're done with this line of debate...

(Mind you, I'd throw in some freebies, such as suggesting that everyone
stop all the wars and rich people suddenly become a lot more generous
and stuff. )

Right, but you forgot about secret strategy 3.

3:
Someone insults you.
You ignore it.
Everyone else ignores it.
Your life remains as happy as ever.

That "strategy" is a joke, since it clearly requires you to somehow
control everyone else and make sure they ignore it. (Otherwise, it's
pretty much guaranteed that some of them won't!)

The benefits of 3 over 2 is that you don't even get that temporary dip
where you happiness falls for a short while and comes back up.

Your strategy actually seems to be "4. Delude yourself into being
always happy no matter what happens to you."

Yes. And I now recall that a lot of people claim that they are unable to
do this. I think I may have a slight advantage here because I have
high-functioning austism, so I don't seem to go through emotions the same
way other people do. However, it certainly is doable by so called
"neuro-typical" people. Buddhism, for example, is all about learning to
control your emotions, and I'm sure a lot of Buddhist monks are
non-autistic.

So now you'd suggest that becoming a monk be a prerequisite for using
Usenet? But doesn't it mean giving up all your worldly possessions too,
such as your computer? Oh, I get it ... nice try, but I'm not falling
for it! You'll have to find some other way to shut me up, if that's
your aim.

Perhaps in theory, but in practice, unless you do something really bad
(e.g. slaughter Jewish people), it's very unlikely that *everybody* will
hate you. So this problem very rarely comes up.

It used to take something like that. Then some genius went and invented
the Internet, and now 1/3 of the world's population has access, with
the rest soon to follow. The result being that a damaging rumour can
potentially reach them all. And, as I'd already explained, a damaging
rumour is capable of inducing hostility in anyone -- even the
supposedly non-gullible and even those that supposedly "know you too
well to believe it"; they just take longer and require more repetitions
of the rumour to influence. The only possible defenses are a) a
counter-rumour stating the negation of what the original one states or
b) mutually assured destruction...

I claim that meditation, prayer, or really frequent masturbation, will
not result in shitty real-world conditions, such as a slum or a cell.

To the extent that while you're doing time-wasting attempts at
self-delusion instead of your job, your income may very well suffer.
Most drugs, including the "opium of the masses", tend to sap your money
more directly anyway. Illicit substances are expensive; Scientology
charges a fortune; most religions at least try to convince their
adherents to contribute to a church fund or something similar.

I get
plenty of opportunities to just let my mind wander (which is basically what
meditation is) on the subway on the way to work or going back home.

I don't see any connection between letting your mind wander and what
was discussed earlier, which was self-deluding to be happy
independently of your real circumstances. (And if you've made your
happiness always-on don't you no longer even have an incentive to work,
or to do anything else but sit there feeling happy? It explains those
pole-sitters, but it doesn't strike me as long-term-viable. If everyone
followed your advice, the human race would be extinct by 2126.

If you want to be in this happy state, but don't want your life to go to
shit, take responsibility for something. Depending on your age, join a Big
Brothers or Big Sister organization, or raise a pet, or if that's too big of
a commitment jump, take care of a plant.

I have two cats; beyond that I don't have a) the time or b) the access.
Most of those things require having better access to a) transportation
and b) money than I currently do.

It sounds like this particular incident had a very dramatic effect on
your outlook on life. In my experience, relatively few people fall into this
category. For me, the vast majority of people fall into the "Don't care"
category listed below. If I'm reading through a newsgroup, and I see a
message written by "Jack" and it says "Jill is an idiot", I'll notice that I
have no idea who Jack is. I have no idea who Jill is. And frankly, I don't
really care what Jack thinks of Jill. So this message will not leave a very
lasting impress on me, except perhaps that Jack tends to post off-topic
messages.

I'm believe that most other people on usenet feel this way too, and from
my experience so far, it seems that this belief is correct.

My own experience is the diametric opposite. In fact, on *every single
occasion* that there's ever been any kind of flamage of me in *any*
online context, it's usually resulted in large numbers of additional
people developing poor opinions of me. And that's even though I *do*
rebut the attacks. Imagine how much worse it would be if I didn't!

Now as to how this relates back to your situation, I suspect that the
vast majority of readers here won't remember you as (and I'm going to assume
you're male for the moment) "Twisted... he's that guy who made that thread
that blew up into over 300 posts, right?", as opposed to "Twisted... he's
that guy who valiantly defended himself against every attack of his
character. Every one of his posts was logically impeccable, and thus all
accusations against him were unfounded. Obviously, he's no idiot."

Either is preferable to "Twisted... he's that idiot, right?", which
seems to be the alternative...

Notice here that what (I hypothesize that) they remember about you has
very little to do with the actual content of the messages themselves;
rather, they'll only remember the size of the thread as a whole. As further
evidence of this, notice how you need to constantly repeat yourself to
newcomers to the thread, who have obviously not bothered to read your other
messages.

Most of the non-newcomers also have obviously not bothered to read most
of my messages.

I think most people here will also fall into the "Don't care" category.

Well, I am not reading any threads in this group I'm not a poster to.
So it's quite possible a second thread like this one is going on right
now that I don't know about. But the people that might be affected
negatively by the attacks are the same ones that might read my
responses: the people reading *this* thread. Including however-many
lurkers.

In general, you can't. There's no sure-fire way to prevent
misunderstandings in human communication.

Why is it happening especially frequently? Nothing in my language is
unclear or ambiguous, so it seems to be because there's a concentration
of people with poor reading comprehension skills hereabouts. Which is
mysterious, given the nature of the newsgroup's subject ...

A genuine explanation would probably be extremely complex, dipping into
psychology, group psychology, linguistics, etc. and beyond my abilities to
derive and provide. As for a constructive suggestion, I wasn't aware that
you were asking for one, but now that you did ask for one explicitly above,
I'm affraid I'm going to have to say I have no suggestion for avoiding these
misunderstandings, other than the ones you don't seem to approve of already.
(i.e. the one which you call lying or being dishonest).

It seems to me that saying that I meant exactly <something> and not
whatever-else should suffice. Unfortunately, as soon as I say anything
new at all, someone then reads something bogus into *that* ...

So now that you see from (b) that people do not nescessarily behave the
way you think they should behave, maybe it's time for you to revise your
strategy... or better yet, revise the rules of the game you're playing in
such a way so that you end up winning with less risk or effort.

I don't have the luxury of rewriting the rules. The rules derive
directly from the facts that a) the insults are in earshot of third
parties and b) uncorrected, such things have time and again *proven* to
result in adverse consequences. I can't change those facts without
somehow mind-controlling the whole fucking audience, which would be
ethically dubious even if it was within my power.

On the other hand, people trying to have an insult remain unchallenged
have been told again and again that it will not happen, and that it is
within my power to ensure against that outcome, yet keep trying; they
also continue to believe the damn things, even when plenty of evidence
to the contrary is marshalled and their own arguments' weaknesses are
exposed; and I don't see any other way to convince them to stop. As far
as I can tell, the worst offenders simply enjoy spamming this newsgroup
with character assassination postings, and don't care that this forces
their targets to keep rebutting these when they could be spending their
time on something more enjoyable and/or more productive.

I don't know how to make it not fun for a person of that sort of evil
personality; it's presumably just in their nature to enjoy behaving
that way. Short of having them all committed and medicated I don't see
that changing because of anything I do. The only thing that I can think
of that might even slightly discourage that particular mindset is
getting zero follow-ups, but that means leaving their insults to poison
the minds of everyone else present! It doesn't seem to me that there's
any way out...other than simply waiting for them to tire of it, or for
them to one by one cross some line and get thrown off by their internet
access providers.

 

[Twisted]

Notice though that it's not ad-hominem if the topic of debate is one of
the debaters themselves.

The correct topic here is "giving an application a window icon", lest
you've forgotten.

Also, it is my right not to be the topic of a debate if I don't want to
be, anyway, so long as I don't make myself such by either saying
something questionable about myself ("I'm Superman! Watch me fly!
*crash* Ow.") or doing something outrageous (kill someone, say, or
claim that two plus two is five, which clearly would call my IQ into
question).

For example, consider this fictional debate:

A: I never lie.
B: You lied just yesterday!
A: Ad-hominem! Discuss the arguments, not the people!

Here, A is misapplying the ad-hominem label. B *is* allowed to bring up
the behaviour of A, specifically because it is A's behaviour which is under
debate.

Only because A made a disputable claim about himself. I didn't do
anything to invite this; I posted a question about a Java problem, not
about myself.

I think part of the debate in this thread on comp.lang.java.programmer
has to do with your (Twisted/Nebulous') behaviour

That part is off-topic for this thread, is off-topic for this
newsgroup, and was uninvited by me.

 

[Twisted]

Here's what you said, as part of the post that I originally replied to:


That sounded to me like a reference to a specific thread. If I was
mistaken, okay.

It was, but not a thread I participated in, and it was only mentioned
to serve as an example. No thread I did participate in there is at all
germane to this discussion. Nor is any mention of such at all welcome.

That was probably me, but again, it sounded to me like you had already
made reference to a specific thread.

Not the same one. You yourself pointed out that the numbers of postings
differed; one was over 500 and the other under 400. (I don't remember
the exact number you quoted.)

No. But this misunderstanding is my fault. What I'm disagreeing
with is your characterization of c.t.t. That wasn't clear from where
I put my reply with regard to quoted text.

Unfortunately, the evidence is that my characterization is not
inaccurate. Half-baked advice is given there more frequently than it is
given here, and so are sales pitches (soft-pedaled for the most part,
admittedly). I'd judge the number of flaming l00serz that nitpick
things to death and jump down peoples' throats for their perceived
inadequacies instead of sticking to the original topic of a thread to
be about equal, and too damn high in *both* newsgroups.

So apparently when I described my skimming of c.t.t. as "following
the group" it came across as meaning that I follow it closely, which
wasn't what I meant. I don't read every thread in the group by
any means.

Neither do I.

I guess I *do* assume that the ones I do read, or skim,
are a representative sample with regard to how helpful (or not) the
regulars are.

Evidently not.

 

[nebulous99]

I feel the need to warn you that I think this will be a losing strategy
for you. MAD only works if the mutual destruction is actually assured. I
think you'll be taking a big risk getting into a flame war here. In fact, I
think your destruction will be assured (in the form of mass plonking), while
others will not (they will not plonk each other, and thus be able to
continue their participation in this newsgroup unfettered).

This seems to assume a different victory condition than the one I have.
Mine is for the crap to stop with the last word in each branch not
being an insult directed at me, each of those having a rebutting reply.
Mass plonking by the flamers would actually help, since I could then
post a final round of rebuttals without, presumably, further flames
being heaped up. Then end of thread. You seem to assume instead that
not being plonked by the flamers is somehow a goal for me. Since
nothing they have to say can be trusted anyway, now that their
hostility has become apparent, anything that encourages them to shut up
and leave me alone is in fact potentially my ally.

Probably yes. I would assume it's okay to provide unsolicited advice or
questioning outside the original question, unless the OP specifically states
they don't want this to occur.

Hrm. But not if the questions suggest incompetence on your part, I
assume? Or attempting to elicit proprietary information, or whose only
logical purpose can be a fishing expedition to find some nit, any nit,
to publicly pick...

Yeah, this is probably what happened. Though people (myself included)
would disagree about the "misguided" and "attack" labels.

Really, even though it will clearly force the original poster onto the
defensive? After all, attacking (OK, suggesting-might-be-bad) their
approach leaves them with only two choices: a) defend their choice of
approach, or b) admit to having done something wrong, or at least
appear to be so admitting. Clearly b) is untenable if an audience is
present and the original poster is to avoid becoming some kind of a
laughingstock, which leaves a). b) is also untenable if the poster
doesn't believe it, since in that instance b) is dishonest.

So how would you phrase it?

"Perhaps Z is better suited to your needs." And if asked about Z,
details, including when it has advantages over whatever it's being
compared to. No mention of any people at all, unless it's necessary
(e.g. Z is named after someone).

Pretend the above paragraph was written by someone else and read it
again in that context.

Why? (The result by the way is feeling sympathetic towards the guy
that's being harassed and nitpicked to death instead of permitted a
graceful, noncommital exit. And antipathy towards whoever the bozo is
that absolutely refuses to let anyone continue to openly not believe
him.)

Right. It's a losing game. Time to change the rules of the game.

I don't have the means. As I detailed in another thread, I'd have to
mind-control the planet's whole population (or at least everyone so
much as lurking here, if they could all somehow be identified to target
more narrowly) into being certain to disbelieve any bad thing claimed
about me; only then could I rest in the knowledge that the crap being
said would have no influence on how people treated me in the future.
Until then, I know, for a fact based on actual experience in case
you've forgotten, that it WILL have a negative influence, because on
every similar occasion in the past it HAS had one.

Right. But people do stuff that they shouldn't do. And one needs to
learn to deal with it. That's life.

In other words, there needs to be some kind of justice system to cope
with newly emerging forms of online behavior. Nasty rumours spread
online can ruin someone, potentially, and be very hard to combat. Nasty
rumours in a small town can be escaped by leaving the town; nasty
rumours on the internet can be escaped by leaving the planet, or maybe
by changing your name and suchlike, but not by anything less drastic
that I am aware of. Cyberbullying (even by grown men and women) is
becoming a growing problem, along with rumour-mongering and similar
slanderous behaviors, and it needs to be dealt with. I just have no
idea how to get a mechanism for stopping such miscreants started, or
how to design it so that it can't be abused. It would be awfully easy
to pervert such a thing into a tool of censorship...

 

[Lew]

"He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it."
- James Boswell

"[He] claimed that he had a mind above the average, but that was regarded as
one of {his] whims, and it failed to modify the public opinion. Or rather,
that was one of the reasons why it failed, but there was another and better
one. If [he] had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of
effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position."
- Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool
than to open it and remove all doubt."
- (misattributed to) Mark Twain

"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth
his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."
- Proverbs 17:28

- Lew

 

[Oliver Wong]

I was discussing my decision to follow or not follow a link. I have to
make a snap decision using the information available at that time. I
can't defer it; that means investing the time to bookmark the link or
something so that it's still around, which means I've already made the
decision to spend (waste?) time on the link in question.

Why are we even discussing this? It should be obvious that no-one is
going to click on more than a tiny minority of the links they see, here
or anywhere else, and my being exactly typical in that regard should be
a non-issue.

Well, I knew about Ant, and you didn't. If you want to be more like me
in this regard, maybe you should start doing the things I do, such as
clicking on more links. If you're happy staying the way you are, then don't
click links.

[...]

1. People were singing its praises implying it might do something
useful for my current project right now. I doubted some Web page would
know anything about my current project at all, so asking people here
for more information made a lot more sense; it would be more specific
to what I was doing, rather than generic.

Does anyone on this group really know anything about your project? I
certainly don't.

2. I wasn't so much interested in the download URL to download it as I
was interested in why people had conspicuously avoided mentioning the
download URL despite otherwise strongly endorsing it. Now I see that my
attackers may have intended it as a trap, so at some point I'd mention
the curious lack of any mention of it and then they could pounce on my
"obvious lack of google-fu" or whatever they figured to pounce on. If
so, several of them are subtler than flaming usenet loudmouths usually
are.

Haha. It's not your "obvious lack of google-fu" that they're pouncing
on, but your "obvious lack of effort". The problem wasn't that you put in
the wrong Google query. The problem is that you didn't even bother to try
googling at all. And the even bigger problem is that you automatically
assumed that Google would not return useful results without even trying it.
And an even bigger problem than that was when people told you googling for
"ant" *would* return a useful result, you argued with them, despite that
there existed a trivial, easy to repeat experiment to demonstrate that you
were wrong: namely to try actually googling for "ant".

So really, your google-fu level had nothing to do with why you got
pounced on, IMHO.

3. I'd already determined that at the current juncture I'd gain nothing
from an automated build tool versus whatever amount of time spent
investigating one, whether 7 seconds (your lowest estimate), 25 minutes
(your highest), or something else.

Right, it's too late now, since you've already spent more than 7 seconds
on it. I'm just giving you advice for next time something like this comes
up.

- Oliver

 

[Oliver Wong]

That's hardly helpful when the file extension appears in a URL in a
usenet posting. I'd have to have already downloaded the
potentially-useless file *first*, just to discover one piece of
information to use towards determining whether it would be a waste of
time to download it!

Alternatively, you could create an empty text file, by right clicking on
an empty region of a folder or the desktop, and selecting "New -> Text
file", and then changing the extension from "txt" to whatever extension it
is you wish to investigate. This will reveal what your computer thinks that
file extension is.

Alternatively, you could google for the file extension. That'll reveal
what the extension "really" is (or what some web site claims that file
extension is), as opposed to what your computer thinks it is.

Usually the two information are in agreement with each other, but not
always. This is helpful when multiple programs decide to use the same file
extension, and your computer seems to be assuming the wrong one.

For which file? .jnlp?

No, PDF. I was using the same example as before.

- Oliver

 

[Oliver Wong]

Why, because you did a half-arsed job and (implicitly) are refusing to
try harder?

I guess you're screwed, because you are unable to find an e-mail address
or a toll free phone number to complain to someone about, and no one is
helping you find one.

Going back to game theory, you rarely want to be in a position where
whether you "win" or "lose" is controlled by another player. Take control of
your own destiny. Don't wait for someone to provide you with Google's
contact information. Seek it out yourself. Or change your goals, so that you
no longer need Google's contact information.

If you're going to only depend on me (or other posters on this group) to
find Google's contact info for you, and remain unhappy until someone does
so, then I assert you are screwed.

- Oliver

 

[Joe Attardi]

Actually, it speaks volumes about just how bloody annoying you are, and
what you drive an otherwise mild-mannered programmer to!

Oh, Twisted. You're so funny.

 

[Oliver Wong]

Oliver Wong wrote: [Twisted wrote:]

And also, you weren't giving a lecture, but asking a question. Yeah,
it's different, but the fact that you can say "Ok" and go on with your
life,
without having your life become worse off is the same.

NO IT IS NOT! I have to at least indicate that I disagree as well. And
I have to repeat doing so every time the jerk repeats "idiot" or
whatever, as otherwise someone might encounter one of the "idiot" posts
but not the rebuttal.

Well, in my example, Einstein didn't indicate that he disagreed, nor did
he give a rebuttal to being called an idiot.

Unfortunately, that doesn't translate well to Usenet, does it?

Actually, I think it does. Notice how a lot of people on this thread are
calling you a troll, for example. That's the USENET parallel with the entire
crowd getting upset and asking the person to leave.

A widespread, incorrect perception that he was an idiot could not be
allowed to go uncorrected, though. It would spread through half the
population and Einstein would have difficulty getting *anyone* to take
him seriously after awhile, because the rumor that he was an idiot had
been allowed to get started and then to become widespread.

Perhaps, but the more important question you should ask yourself is: If
Einstein had stayed at that podium, arguing with the crowd that, no, he is
not an idiot, would that have "corrected" the perception that he was an
idiot?

I think he'd have been better off packing up and heading to the next
conference. There's no use using logic to argue with an angry mob. He might
get a few people at the next conference to take him seriously. And for
people who are easily swayed by reputation, this is probably more convincing
than just Einstein himself in a shouting match.

It is? Why?

I don't know. Crappy newserver, I guess. I think I'm starting to
remember though. You brought up Einstein (among other reputedly smart
people) as evidence of it not being okay to say "okay" and walk away.

I'm not aware of any such game actually being played. In any case,
"walk away" should be interpreted as "refuse to continue the game".

What if the goal of the game was seeing who would refuse to continue the
game first?

These games are interesting to me, because they contain rules which are
self-referential. So by playing these games, we are actually playing a
meta-game in which we explore the space of all self-referential games
(including that meta-game we're playing itself). And everybody wins, because
we all have fun learning about new games.

This is so ridiculous it doesn't even deserve a longer response than
this sentence.

You should have read the next sentence clarifying this metaphor, before
taking it literally and replying.

That's also not possible.

I think a couple of people have achieved this, demonstrating that it
actually is possible.

[...]

That "strategy" is a joke, since it clearly requires you to somehow
control everyone else and make sure they ignore it. (Otherwise, it's
pretty much guaranteed that some of them won't!)

Yes, it makes assumptions on everybody else's behaviour, but no more
than your strategy 1 (in which everybody believes the insults) or your
strategy 2 (in which everybody is swayed by your arguments). If my strategy
is invalid due the lack of control over everybody, I suggest so are your
strategies 1 and 2.

Your strategy actually seems to be "4. Delude yourself into being
always happy no matter what happens to you."

That's another way of phrasing it, yes.

So now you'd suggest that becoming a monk be a prerequisite for using
Usenet? But doesn't it mean giving up all your worldly possessions too,
such as your computer? Oh, I get it ... nice try, but I'm not falling
for it! You'll have to find some other way to shut me up, if that's
your aim.

No. I'm not a monk, and I didn't give up all my worldly possessions or
my computer. I don't know how you inferred that from what I wrote.

To the extent that while you're doing time-wasting attempts at
self-delusion instead of your job, your income may very well suffer.
Most drugs, including the "opium of the masses", tend to sap your money
more directly anyway. Illicit substances are expensive; Scientology
charges a fortune; most religions at least try to convince their
adherents to contribute to a church fund or something similar.

So don't choose a religion. You don't need to do so to pray, let alone
to meditate or masturbate. And don't masturbate while at work. Achieving
this is not as difficult as you might think.

I don't see any connection between letting your mind wander and what
was discussed earlier, which was self-deluding to be happy
independently of your real circumstances.

I think you brought up meditation and stated it might cramp your
lifestyle, and I showed how you could meditate in your spare time without
cramping your life style.

(And if you've made your
happiness always-on don't you no longer even have an incentive to work,
or to do anything else but sit there feeling happy? It explains those
pole-sitters, but it doesn't strike me as long-term-viable. If everyone
followed your advice, the human race would be extinct by 2126.

I'm responsible for some people. So I go to work and earn money and
spend it on their (and thus my) survival. See next paragraph.

I have two cats; beyond that I don't have a) the time or b) the access.
Most of those things require having better access to a) transportation
and b) money than I currently do.

Great! You've got the pets already, so now you won't allow yourself to
slowly die of euphoria. Now the only part that's missing is actually
becoming happy.

In fact, on *every single
occasion* that there's ever been any kind of flamage of me in *any*
online context, it's usually resulted in large numbers of additional
people developing poor opinions of me. And that's even though I *do*
rebut the attacks. Imagine how much worse it would be if I didn't!

Could it be that the large number of people developing poor opinions of
you is *due* to your "rebutting" the attacks? Note that a lot of people have
been complaining about your rebuttals. What if you stopped doing it? What
have you got to lose (since you say they're already developing poor opinions
of you anyway)?

Why is it happening especially frequently? Nothing in my language is
unclear or ambiguous, so it seems to be because there's a concentration
of people with poor reading comprehension skills hereabouts. Which is
mysterious, given the nature of the newsgroup's subject ...

Each person who is said to speak English actually speaks their own
personal variant of English. Broadly speaking, most people agree on the
meanings of most words, however each personal might have emotional or
personal connotations associated with specific words that other people
don't. For example, I associate the concept of "tooth-ache" with the term
"ice", and probably a lot of people don't. So when someone says "ice", I
have to "translate" that into my own variant of English, perhaps to "frozen
water" (which doesn't have this "tooth-ache" connotation in my language).

That said, if people on this newsgroup seem to be able to understand
each other and get along just fine, but none of them seem to understand you,
then perhaps your variant of English is sufficiently different from variants
spoken by the other people here. It's akin to someone saying "fag", and
someone else getting offended, when the first person thought it was
unambiguous and clear that he was using the British term "fag" which means
cigarette.

Communication usually isn't done to oneself, but to a community. If you
want communicate with the community of people living in France, you'd
probably have to speak French. If you want the community of people in this
newsgroup, you'll probably have to speak the variant of English that is used
in this community.

That means, for example, don't claim you found a bug. You may think
you've found a bug, but it's apparently considered very bad form in this
particular language and culture (the two concepts are intertwined). As an
analogy, you may think you're a really great
chef/musician/programmer/whatever, but it's considered extremely bad form to
brag about yourself in the Japanese language/culture. So when speaking
Japanese, you would downplay your own skills. You may call that dishonest or
lying or whatever. Fine. Call it that, if you wish. But if you want to
communicate smoothly with Japanese people, you need to speak Japanese. And
that's how you speak Japanese.

It seems to me that saying that I meant exactly <something> and not
whatever-else should suffice. Unfortunately, as soon as I say anything
new at all, someone then reads something bogus into *that* ...

It happens both way, because of all those hidden connotations I
mentioned above. It usually happens subconciously too, so it's not like
people are misreading you on purpose.

I don't have the luxury of rewriting the rules. The rules derive
directly from the facts that a) the insults are in earshot of third
parties and b) uncorrected, such things have time and again *proven* to
result in adverse consequences. I can't change those facts without
somehow mind-controlling the whole fucking audience, which would be
ethically dubious even if it was within my power.

You're mistaken. You *can* change the rules. You can't mind-control
other people. You are confusing these two things. You can change the rules
without mind-controlling others. Not everybody has to play the same game
you're playing. Consider the Mao game
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(game)) it's actually a meta-game in
which each participant is playing a different game.

I don't know how to make it not fun for a person of that sort of evil
personality; it's presumably just in their nature to enjoy behaving
that way. Short of having them all committed and medicated I don't see
that changing because of anything I do. The only thing that I can think
of that might even slightly discourage that particular mindset is
getting zero follow-ups, but that means leaving their insults to poison
the minds of everyone else present!

You're on the right track.

It doesn't seem to me that there's
any way out...other than simply waiting for them to tire of it, or for
them to one by one cross some line and get thrown off by their internet
access providers.

There are other ways: Get out of this losing "game" you're stuck in, and
start playing a game you can win.

- Oliver

 

[Oliver Wong]

Also, it is my right not to be the topic of a debate if I don't want to
be,

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you really do have such a right. I'm
not sure what does or does not constitutes libel, but my impression is that
as long as you say things which are "true" or which could "reasonably be
believed as true" (i.e. mistaken beliefs) are allowed.

I think people can debate about anything they want. And if they want to
debate about a specific person, they don't need that person's permission
first.

anyway, so long as I don't make myself such by either saying
something questionable about myself ("I'm Superman! Watch me fly!
*crash* Ow.") or doing something outrageous (kill someone, say, or
claim that two plus two is five, which clearly would call my IQ into
question).

Perhaps some people feel that you did do something outrageous (e.g.
argue that a google query for "ant" would not and/or should not return
anything on the Ant software).

- Oliver

 

[Mark Jeffcoat]

It used to take something like that. Then some genius went and invented
the Internet, and now 1/3 of the world's population has access, with
the rest soon to follow. The result being that a damaging rumour can
potentially reach them all. And, as I'd already explained, a damaging
rumour is capable of inducing hostility in anyone -- even the
supposedly non-gullible and even those that supposedly "know you too
well to believe it"; they just take longer and require more repetitions
of the rumour to influence. The only possible defenses are a) a
counter-rumour stating the negation of what the original one states or
b) mutually assured destruction...

You're in a tricky position here. You've noticed that
comp.lang.java.programmer isn't really able to help you
do any Java programming. Unfortunately, you're stuck here
doing damage control, spending time rebutting negative
rumors that you'd rather spend doing something really creative.

I do see a way out: the damaging accusations are aimed
at Twisted, not the real you. It's the real you that does
things at are really important in life: he spends time in person
with friends, applies to jobs, and has a family. It's his
reputation that's really important.

You've been careful not to connect Twisted to your real
life, so you do have the option of letting Twisted lose, but
preserving your own good name. To make it really work, you'll
have to drop the (e-mail address removed) address (at least on
Usenet), but you'll finally be able to escape the comp.lang.java
quagmire -- and not being forced to post here again will
save hours a day of your real life.

I'd be irritated if other people were making it difficult
to use an email address that I liked, but even more irritated
if they were stealing hours of my life away every day. Maybe
it would be worth paying a smaller price to escape forever
a costlier trap.

 

[Oliver Wong]

Hrm. But not if the questions suggest incompetence on your part, I
assume? Or attempting to elicit proprietary information, or whose only
logical purpose can be a fishing expedition to find some nit, any nit,
to publicly pick...

It seems you infer the suggestion of incompetence a lot more frequently
than I do, for a given set of messages. And the suggestions of incompetence
isn't such a bad thing, really. Some people actually are incompetent. I'm
very incompetent when it comes to cooking, for example. If I posted on a
cooking board, asking a question which clearly shows my incompetence (e.g.
"Which end of the pan do I use to cut carrots? The round part or the stick
part?"), then the posters may very well make a post which you would
characterize as implying incompetence (e.g. "Why don't you use a knife to
cut the carrots instead?") but which I would take as earnest, helpful
advice. And if someone did intentionally imply incompetence in me, they'd
only be implying the obviously true.

Really, even though it will clearly force the original poster onto the
defensive?

I disagree with the modifier "clearly" and with the assertion that it
"forces" the poster into anything.

After all, attacking (OK, suggesting-might-be-bad) their
approach leaves them with only two choices: a) defend their choice of
approach, or b) admit to having done something wrong, or at least
appear to be so admitting. Clearly b) is untenable if an audience is
present and the original poster is to avoid becoming some kind of a
laughingstock, which leaves a). b) is also untenable if the poster
doesn't believe it, since in that instance b) is dishonest.

A: "Thanks, everyone, but I figured out I could cut up the carrots using a
rolling pin instead."
B: "What advantages are there of cutting carrots with a rolling pin instead
of a knife?"
A: "I don't know, but I only cook like once a year, so I'm not gonna spend
too much time looking into alternatives. The rolling pin worked for me, the
dinner is done, and I'll leave it like that. If I need to cut carrots again
next year, I'll try to remember this thread and look into the knife-based
solution."

"Perhaps Z is better suited to your needs." And if asked about Z,
details, including when it has advantages over whatever it's being
compared to. No mention of any people at all, unless it's necessary
(e.g. Z is named after someone).

Doesn't "your" refer to a person? I think to require no mention of any
people is unreasonably obstructive, like the previous wave of political
correctness (i.e. taking every perceived negative term, and finding the
corresponding neutral term, and adding the "-challenged" suffix to it, e.g.
"short" -> "vertically-challenged").

If you (not you personally, but the "generic you") want someone's
advice, why not just let them dispense that advice in whatever manner comes
naturally to them, rather than forcing them to jump through hoops?

Why? (The result by the way is feeling sympathetic towards the guy
that's being harassed and nitpicked to death instead of permitted a
graceful, noncommital exit. And antipathy towards whoever the bozo is
that absolutely refuses to let anyone continue to openly not believe
him.)

So imagine that this was written Joe Attardi (as a random example of
someone I saw you get into an argument with), and that the "idiot" he is
refering to is you. Are you still sympathetic to Joe? I think he'd like you
to "do nothing", but instead finds that you "stubbornly persists in some
sort of stupid quest to prove him wrong, presumably to boost your ego."

I don't have the means. As I detailed in another thread, I'd have to
mind-control the planet's whole population (or at least everyone so
much as lurking here, if they could all somehow be identified to target
more narrowly) into being certain to disbelieve any bad thing claimed
about me; only then could I rest in the knowledge that the crap being
said would have no influence on how people treated me in the future.
Until then, I know, for a fact based on actual experience in case
you've forgotten, that it WILL have a negative influence, because on
every similar occasion in the past it HAS had one.

Okay. If you think it's impossible, I guess you're destined to keep on
playing (and thus losing) this game.

In other words, there needs to be some kind of justice system to cope
with newly emerging forms of online behavior. Nasty rumours spread
online can ruin someone, potentially, and be very hard to combat. Nasty
rumours in a small town can be escaped by leaving the town; nasty
rumours on the internet can be escaped by leaving the planet, or maybe
by changing your name and suchlike, but not by anything less drastic
that I am aware of. Cyberbullying (even by grown men and women) is
becoming a growing problem, along with rumour-mongering and similar
slanderous behaviors, and it needs to be dealt with. I just have no
idea how to get a mechanism for stopping such miscreants started, or
how to design it so that it can't be abused. It would be awfully easy
to pervert such a thing into a tool of censorship...

I don't think anybody can. Which is why most people abandon this
solution after a while and try to think of alternative ones.

- Oliver

 

[Twisted]

Lew wrote:
[snip]

This looks like a rather elaborate put-down from a man without an
original bone in his body.

Please do us all a favor, and go find something you're better at to do.

 

[Twisted]

The problem is that you didn't even bother to try googling at all.

I never do for a three-letter query. 999,999 times out of a million it
will be a waste of time.

[hostile stuff deleted]

So, showing your true colors at last? You're just another one of them?

[snip everything else]

Good day.