I do not think the word "ad hominem" means what you think it means. An "ad hominem" argument is one that targets a specific person advancing the opposing argument. Ad hominem arguments are fallacious when the characteristics of those people aren't germane to the argument.

Obviously, no part of my argument focuses on whoever it was who said Apple's Dropbox rejection is an antitrust violation.

You are implying that your opponent's knowledge of antitrust law is limited to a "nerdly" definition he has read on Wikipedia. Perhaps it was not your intention, but that's how it came off to me.

My argument isn't that such a definition of Sherman Act violations is "nerdly". It's that it's wrong. "Nerdly" is just color commentary. And, for what it's worth: it's from one nerd to another.

Happy to clear that up for you.

For what it is worth... I was not offended. I've a thick skin and enjoy a good debate. Psssssstt... half the time I don't even know much about what I'm talking about... but I usually learn something every time. :)

In light of your recent rantings about "nerds"[1] and the law, it's hard to see your post as anything other than a continuation of your angry attacks on anyone who dares speak on the subject of the laws governing our hypothetically-democratic society. Your authoritarianism has degenerated into simple mockery. Even when you are right (which I think you largely are on this matter), you no longer contribute anything of use because any meaningful content is wrapped in an opaque blanket of anger and hostility.

[1] I do not consider myself a "nerd", by the way, nor do many other people that you probably seek to apply that label to. Some of us find it quite insulting. Call yourself whatever you want, but speak only for yourself.

You’re missing the point of tptacek’s criticism. He’s not trying to mock nerds, but rather to point out that their mental model of how the law works is woefully mismatched to how the law actually works, with a great deal of resulting whining and handwringing that could be avoided if they bothered to learn and think a bit about it. That I’ve seen, there’s been very little anger or ranting coming from his direction, and the label “nerd” is only barely pejorative (if at all) in the context of this forum: hardly a deep insult.

I think maybe this is an example where tone of voice is transferring poorly to internet text, and you’re interpreting his statements to have quite a bit more bite than he intends (or most others are reading)?

Speaking as somebody who enjoys intentionally mocking others (go ahead, check my comment history. Fuck, I picked this username just to make the then-popular diet discussions on HN more interesting), if he's honestly not trying it (and I have a hard time believing that, he is as far as I can tell a reasonably intelligent person and should be able to analysis himself objectively) then he is damn good at doing it by accident. Damn good.

I only wish I could convey such attitude through text intentionally.

EDIT (posted after jacobolus' reply):

When I first came here, I was annoyed at the entire HN attitude of "a better discussion board". Good clean discussion is great, but at the time it seemed too dismissive of the great conversation that happens elsewhere on the web; too arrogant if you will. Furthermore, I saw that attitude as a sort of challenge: could I game the system and be just helpful enough some of the time to allow myself to be an utter asshole the rest of the time without getting banned?

You see, somebody who is an asshole some of the time and useful the rest of the time is not a valuable community member. Even if most of the time is spent being useful that is still not a person that you want in your community; in short, the karma system is broken. Of course HN isn't quite as broken as a pure karma system would be, hellbanning still kicks in for people with positive karma, but it is broken nevertheless. It's pretty easy to keep individual comments at positive or at least neutral karma by picking your topic correctly, which gets you around (to my knowledge) all but manual banning. (I suspect an improved banning system would involve flagging people for manual inspection after they have too many comments with large amounts of up and down voting. I can't speak for the false positive rate of such a system except to say that my honest productive comments rarely seemed to swing)

But I'm done now. tptacek does a better job of what I wanted to do than I think I ever could.

I think I'm past due on closing this account anyway. I'm out; apologies for any grief I've caused. I probably owe a good number of you a beer.

I should clarify: he surely is trying to mock them sometimes, but (a) it’s a pretty friendly ribbing, and (b) the mockery isn’t the purpose, it’s just a rhetorical device. By my italicized “mock”, I meant something closer to: “he’s not trying to shame them into submission, as some kind of ‘authoritarian’ bully power play”.

Edit: maybe it’s better to say that he isn’t trolling them (i.e. intentionally riling people up just for the sake of being a jerk), but is trying to be genuinely helpful and advance the conversation, even though sometimes that takes a teasing sort of tone. Notice all the smiley faces.

Like hell he isn't. Go back through his comment history. He's arrogant, dismissive, presumptuous, and yes, outright mocking. This is, intermittently, his MO on other subjects as well, notably infosec, but it's been particularly bad of late in legal subjects.

I've often corrected many of the kind of misapprehensions he seems to see himself as on a crusade against, and it has never been necessary for me to adopt his abysmal attitude in the process.

Edit: To answer your added bit at the end, which has changed several times, I'm interpreting it in light of him. Hence my references to his past history. Some months ago, he went through a particularly nasty period, and when I called him on it, he outright admitted he was intentionally being a jerk.

See this, right here, is an actual ad hominem argument. :)

You don't think that maybe this sub-thread is a waste of time? Your opinion of me --- which you can probably guess I don't organize my thoughts around --- does not change the fact that product tying isn't "per se" unlawful.

No, Thomas, it isn't, because I'm not arguing you are wrong because it's you making the statements. On the contrary, as I said, you are largely correct. I'm arguing you're being an ass. Separate issue.

Thanks for clearing that up.

I think you guys have gotten off topic..

Little bit, yep.

Now that's an ad hominem attack.

There's a link that I like to give in response to erroneously declared "ad hominem"s. http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

Since it's so full of examples, even the thickest of nerds can learn!

I swear, it's like a few months ago somebody somewhere introduced tptacek to the concept of using "nerdy" as an insult (and to the debating tactic of attaching an insult to a position with the goal of forcing people to distance themselves from that position).

What part of "I'm a nerd, the term is a shorthand, not an insult" are people having so much trouble with?

I've been a systems programmer since 1994. I do not believe that you honestly believe that I think "nerd" is an insult. It beggars belief. Please find a better way to be irritated with me; this is such a stupid one.

Why not just go the extra mile and call me a "self-hating nerd"? At least that would make sense.