>If you're using a bouncer, it's trivial to set it up to change your nickname when you're not there.
This is a terrible way to communicate your absence. It's spammy, potentially confusing and, worst of all, imitates a built in functionality of IRC. The _only_ correct way to set an away status is IRCs builtin `away` message.
Where's that quote from? fwiw, I 100% disagree with it. Setting an away status is fine, but if I join a channel, it's not at all trivial for me to see who is away and who isn't (although, this may just be the way I have my client set up.)
What quote? And yes, in my opinion some IRC clients have suboptimal defaults or missing support for this. It's a shame, but changing your nick to emulate a built in IRC command is in no way a solution. Away is standard, and every client should support it. In the end it's a question of the channels rules, but spamming nick-changes is annoying-- especially because people use different formats and simple filtering won't catch all cases. In addition it also breaks queries and might change your identity from a trusted nick to one that could be... everyone.
You're advocating using a hacky workaround that stems from client-side UI issues, instead of using a well-defined built in message. This just seems wrong to me, in every way.
Oh, i'm sorry, I thought your response also started with a >; I thought you were quoting something. My mistake.
And I agree that nickchanges can be annoying; I guess I've never been in a channel big enough where it was a significant issue.
And yeah, it's hacky - but given that IRC is fairly bare-bones, I think it's a good human-readable compromise. You can register your afk nickname as well, and notifications work just as well if you configure your client/bouncer to highlight them both (which I think most do by default anyway.)
I'm really not sure whether you're pulling some kind of a passive-aggressive "I'm being misquoted so badly that I refuse to even acknowledge it's a quote" routine, someone has edited their message, or you're genuinely not seeing it. At least currently the text after the ">" is a direct quote from the message it was a reply to (i.e. your initial message). It also seems pretty representative. If you disagree with that text 100%, it seems that you perhaps intended to write something else originally.
> this may just be the way I have my client set up
Two explanations are either yes, your client is configured to show active and away people the same; or other people aren't using the 'away' feature, so they show up as active 24/7. In the former case, fix your settings; in the latter case, it is other people who need encouragement to change - but encorage them to make use of the built-in away feature, don't encourage them to change their nicks :)
>Hypothetically, if the CEO of another tech company was revealed to have political interests in slavery, would we feel the need to tip-toe so carefully?
First, I would ask if that interest influences his job. If that's not the case, it doesn't concern the broad public. At the very least not in combination with his status as CEO. And that's it. Everything further is a witch hunt.
>While I don't feel comfortable lynching someone based on contextually irrelevant beliefs
You say the words but somehow you manage to do the exact opposite.
>I intend to demonstrate with meaningful action my commitment to a Mozilla that lives up to its ideals, including that of being an open and inclusive community.
I believe that, until proven wrong. So how about judging him by his actions as a CEO? Instead of a private donation? IMO its the only correct thing.
That was point one.
The second one I want to make is about elephants and blind people. Elephants are big– so big that blind people are only able to perceive a part of them. So they all disagree about what the elephant is. And gay marriage is an elephant and opinions are elephant parts. I doubt this elephant has just two parts labelled "Equality For Everyone" and "Hate And Bigotry". Please don't make the error of boiling down a complex issue to two sides.
What's complex about allowing gay marriage? Sure, you've got some tax law wording to fiddle with, maybe, and the definition of "partner" probably needs changing in a few ordinances but how is it complex? Even the UK (and we're pretty useless most of the time) has managed to allow it with civilisation collapsing.
The complex part is that a lot of people have a lot of different opinions on it. Now I don't know most of them, because I have no personal interest in it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_marriage has a few...), but dismissing every argument made against same-sex-marriage in one broad swipe is refusing to take every other point of view into consideration.
People have lots of different opinions on things but government hasn't ground to a halt (except when yours does but I don't think that's policy paralysis.)
Saying "there's many sides to the story" is a lame excuse that people (especially politicians) use to avoid making decisions.
>Saying "there's many sides to the story" is a lame excuse that people (especially politicians) use to avoid making decisions.
That might be true, but it's also true that making decisions based on a strongly opinionated argument led to literal witch hunts. With burning and everything involved. (And OS-flamewars, these are even worse). I guess the best option is to find a healthy balance between choosing a side and considering conflicting points of view.
In this case, I think there are some angles of view that might be contra-marriage but not hateful. That's all I wanted to say– I don't think Eich is a bigot, his reason might be different than the one that a a lot of people placed in his mouth.
I agree with you there - in that I don't think he's a bigot in the general sense of the word - he's misguided (IMHO, natch) in voting for Prop 8 but probably not actually homophobic (he might be - it's not possible to tell from this single action.)
But if you're going to be the CEO of a very public organisation, things like this (or, say, shooting an elephant, hiring hula girls for trade show, using racial epithets, whatever) will bite you badly in the ass and you really need a good narrative beyond "the lurkers[1] support me".
>I take this to be an argument about complexity. The fox side of the argument is roughly that the world is more complex than most people allow for, and one principle or world view will usually not cover an area of knowledge well.
I don't think there is a clear division between those two. Both, the fox and the hedgehog use only one view– their own to seperate signal from noise. The fox side is just more open to integrating conflicting point of views into their worldview.
What I mean to say is that in the end both use only one trick, one skill- filtering information. This of course doesn't mean that the metaphor is wrong, just that it's wrong to think that the fox doesn't filter information the same way the hedgehog does.
BTW, this reminds me of something from Laozi "Through what do I know the nature of all things? Precisely through them." While the things are many, the principle of understanding them through themself remains singular.
I really find this type of verbal meta- rearranging to be incredibly unhelpful. It reminds me strongly of arguments that atheism is a religion, or that abstaining from a choice is a choice. It's a kind of word-lawyering that never improves my understanding, only muddying the meaning in the previous formulation. Perhaps it's just me.
Considering the (lack of) alternatives I fear that using language to argue about meaning in language is the best I can do :S.
But seriously, I think talking about what _exactly_ something is meant to represent isn't "lawyering", it's essential for a serious discussion. I got another quote, too: "The boundaries of our language are the boundaries of our thoughts".
Telepathy would propably be better though, I agree.
Kimble is a fraud and an asshole. The only things he's good at are marketing and scamming. Just take a look at his history- insider trading, selling userdata from a BBS he ran to a lawyer, scamming the german telcos... the list is quite long.
He's a good marketer, but one of the worst people I've read about. There's a file of his quotes (from the CCC mailing list) circulating, if you know german you should try reading that. Really gives some insight into him. For example how that l33t hacker cred he has is all for show– I wouldn't buy anything about free speech from him either. He's only interested in money. I remember one quote from one of his teachers about how Kimble was the most antisocial kid he ever teached LOL.
TLDR: You really shouldnt like the guy, read a bit about him and you'll figure out why.
I believe he's comparing the less than above board things dotcom has done to the sidestepping of the law that AirBNB actively endorses. Basically saying that HN is all about companies like AirBNB because they hatched here while they aren't that much better when it comes to working within the law and playing by the rules. I could be mistaken though, correct me if I'm wrong yapcguy. Not saying I fully agree just trying to make sense of his post for you!
In all seriousness, I've had a quick read through (with the finest of Google's translations) and I'm not sure what you're drawing exception to. There's stuff that just sounds like satire and other BS, but I can't figure out why you wrote what you wrote.
EDIT: For a bit of background: He and the CCC were never really friendly with each other. He tried to fit in the german hacker culture, but everyone knew he was a fraud.
For example, he tried to recruit young people on the mailing list into shady jobs with promises of easy money (that he didn't have back then). There are a few other stunts, but generally he behaved like a 14 year old asshole with a big ego and too much time on his hand. Didn't help that he tried to bullshit everyone about how much money he made (DATAPROTECT LOL).
> He tried to fit in the german hacker culture, but everyone knew he was a fraud.
Meanwhile readers of "HackerNews" and all the self-proclaimed "Hackers" at YC start-ups and all the trendy new "Growth Hackers" of course have much more in common with the CCC and hacker culture...
> he tried to recruit young people on the mailing list into shady jobs with promises of easy money
Like every entrepreneur at venture backed start-ups, right?!
>Meanwhile readers of "HackerNews" and all the self-proclaimed "Hackers" at YC start-ups and all the trendy new "Growth Hackers" of course have much more in common with the CCC and hacker culture...
Please do a Ctrl+f again, I'm sure you wont find anything about HN or Start-Ups in my post.
>Like every entrepreneur at venture backed start-ups, right?!
Dunno, guess some startups are shady, guess some don't. Can we please talk about Kimble now? You're derailing the topic here.
Yeah, and this is why I'm still trading the precious hours of my life for a few dollars to write code nobody is ever going to use, look at, or benefit from, while he is bathing in money.
This is a terrible way to communicate your absence. It's spammy, potentially confusing and, worst of all, imitates a built in functionality of IRC. The _only_ correct way to set an away status is IRCs builtin `away` message.