DJ Bernstein's str library

[Keith Thompson]

You know what? I've dropped it. I don't care. I never really cared,
and I explained at the time my reason why, *despite* not caring, I
pointed it out.

[...]

No, you haven't dropped it, but I encourage you to do so.

"I've dropped it" followed by more discussion is not dropping it.

"I've dropped it." not followed by anything is dropping it.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Public notice of a "*plonk*ing" is at best entirely unnecessary and
at worse an attempt to hurt the 'victim' more through groupthink.

You're quite wrong. Ask yourself how else the plonkee would know
they'd been plonked. Which surely they ought to be made aware of?

He has one. Your newsreader is broken.

It's in the middle of his sig, rather than preceding it, and the
section below it is [by his admission] sometimes not present.

By definition, his sig is the bit below the "-- ". The fact that he
chooses to ALSO put his human readable name at teh foot of each
message is irrelevant.

Many people's sigs don't contain their actual name but for them its
less relevant as they've chosen to make their moniker visible through
their posting ID.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block

That font of unproofread, opinionated pseudo-knowledge...

lists the dash as a
requirement, not a prerequisite.

When you can explain the difference between a requirement and a
prerequisite in this context, I'll understand your point.

[i.e. (paraphrase) "Sig blocks must
be delimited from the message with the dash" NOT "a sig block is any
text preceded by the dash"]

Hm? By definition ,if a sig block must be delimited by the dash, then
any text /after/ the dash must be a sig block.

I'm also unconvinced by his rationale for having his name above the
sig line.

Since when was it your choice where he chooses to type his name?
Arrogant idiot.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

First you claim he has no sig at all. Then you complain that he
changed it.
Like many people here, Brian changes his .sig from time to time.
Since when was that a crime?

I've explained the [spurious] reasoning behind my mistake and
apologized. I still don't appreciate being called a liar

When you make false statements, or redistribute the actuality or
whatever one wants to call it, expect pedants to notice.

and plonked
when it was an honest mistake.

I suspect that this is because you apologised exceptionally late in
the thread, after much bluster. If, much earlier on, you'd said
"whoops, my mistake", this would have been done days ago without
killfiling.

 

[Jordan Abel]

You know what? I've dropped it. I don't care. I never really cared,
and I explained at the time my reason why, *despite* not caring, I
pointed it out.

[...]

No, you haven't dropped it, but I encourage you to do so.

"I've dropped it" followed by more discussion is not dropping it.

"I've dropped it." not followed by anything is dropping it.

I dropped it and he brought it back up.

 

[Jordan Abel]

Hm? By definition ,if a sig block must be delimited by the dash,
then any text /after/ the dash must be a sig block.

And thus any text after the dash which is not a sig block is in
violation of the standard.

 

[Jordan Abel]

You're quite wrong. Ask yourself how else the plonkee would know
they'd been plonked. Which surely they ought to be made aware of?

Surely there are more polite ways than a public "*plonk*"

How about "You have irritated me and thus are added to my
newsreader's ignore list for thirty (30) days, ending 28 November
2005"? ...via email. because it's really nobody else's business.

By definition, his sig is the bit below the "-- ". The fact that
he chooses to ALSO put his human readable name at teh foot of each
message is irrelevant.

Many people's sigs don't contain their actual name but for them
its less relevant as they've chosen to make their moniker visible
through their posting ID.

Except that the requirement that a sig be preceded by "-- " is
meaningless if nothing can be considered a "sig" for purposes of
that rule without already being preceded by it, nor to be considered
not to be a sig if...--

You know what? Screw it. I give up. I will no longer attempt to
convince people not to use spurious circular reasoning to define
etiquette rules out of existence. Happy?

 

[Mark McIntyre]

And thus any text after the dash which is not a sig block is in
violation of the standard.

You have this about-face. /ANY/ text appearing after "-- " is a sig
block.

What you put in it is entirely up to you - many people use it for
humorous quotes, or pointers to useful info. A sig block need not be
merely ones signature. Mine isn't.

This is a sig block .

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Surely there are more polite ways than a public "*plonk*"

None that work.

How about "You have irritated me and thus are added to my
newsreader's ignore list for thirty (30) days, ending 28 November
2005"? ...via email.

And when their email is set to "(e-mail address removed)" or
"(e-mail address removed)"? Or not set at all? Or they junk all mail from
unknown senders?

because it's really nobody else's business.

On the contrary.

 

[Netocrat]

Jordan Abel : Any content following '-- ' is required to be a signature.
Mark McIntyre: Any content following '-- ' is defined to be a signature.

The egg has wings.
Implicit meaning and convention collide in ambiguity.

 

[Mark McIntyre]

Jordan Abel : Any content following '-- ' is required to be a signature.
Mark McIntyre: Any content following '-- ' is defined to be a signature.

The egg has wings.
Implicit meaning and convention collide in ambiguity.

 

[Jordan Abel]

Also, "Any signature must be preceded by '-- '" vs "Any text not
preceded by '-- ' is not a signature"

I've already conceded that it's not worth fighting over and never
really was in the first place. Sorry for dragging it out so long

 

[Default User]

Jordan Abel said:


Brian - that seems pretty unequivocal to me. How about some grace here?

That's fine. I'll undo things next week and reply more directly to
Jordan then.



Brian

 

[Default User]

For all these reasons, I suggest that you re-consider your
decision. I happen to think Jordan is in the wrong in this case,
but I don't agree that his "crime" is beyond redemption, and I
suggest that an embarrassed "sorry" on his part

One more time, in light of the fact that others may not perceive my
previous attempts as being sincere [To be completely honest, if i
were in a bad mood i wouldn't]:

I screwed up and i'm sorry.

Ok, that's not a problem. I know it's easy for things to spin out of
control sometimes. As I said in the brief reply to Richard, I'm sorry
if my stubborn attitude caused things to drag out unnecessarily.

Believe me, I don't post the Google information out of anger or
contempt for the users of the service. At the start of the year, I used
it for four months as our usenet feed was in the process of doing a
crash and burn. I still use it at home as it's faster with dialup. So
I'm aware of the shortcomings of the product.

Most of the users fail to quote either because then don't know they
should or haven't figured out how. I've seen poor souls who wanted to
do the right thing cutting and pasting text and hand typing attribution
lines. It took me quite a bit of playing around to find the trick, and
I'm a long-time usenet veteran.



Brian

 

[Jordan Abel]

For all these reasons, I suggest that you re-consider your
decision. I happen to think Jordan is in the wrong in this case,
but I don't agree that his "crime" is beyond redemption, and I
suggest that an embarrassed "sorry" on his part

One more time, in light of the fact that others may not perceive my
previous attempts as being sincere [To be completely honest, if i
were in a bad mood i wouldn't]:

I screwed up and i'm sorry.

Ok, that's not a problem. I know it's easy for things to spin out
of control sometimes. As I said in the brief reply to Richard, I'm
sorry if my stubborn attitude caused things to drag out
unnecessarily.

Mine too, to be honest - the whole thing went out of control because
of a number of... let's say 'strong' personalities, of which yours
was not the only one.

It took me quite a bit of playing around to find the trick, and
I'm a long-time usenet veteran.

I never really bothered with google groups - though once i'm out of
school i'll need to find a usenet service of some kind.

Brian

And we can just agree to disagree about that, ok