It wasn't an actual first strike. If some delusional or hallucinating
individual saw something entirely unrelated to reality that's no skin
off my nose. The lot of you need serious professional help anyway.
If one person saw it that way, sure. That's been my point about
social interaction all along. The issue is, where do you draw the
line? It looks to me like *many* people saw your initial post in this
thread as an unprovoked attack, which is bad for your reputation
whether you meant it as an attack or not.
Interesting, particularly when they expect this ONLY of me, and not of
everyone else.
Would you care to identify where that restriction has occurred? I
certainly hope everyone providing advice and help here has checked
their work before posting it, and I've appreciated the inevitable
corrections when I've forgotten to do it myself.
The fundamental difference is that when, for example, Arne or Roedy
gets corrected (which is rare, but possible), they don't jump up and
down screaming that they're not incompetent and how dare anyone
correct them in public -- they take the correction in stride and don't
repeat the mistake. So too with myself. You, on the other hand,
apparently feel that direct corrections are "rude" and indirect
corrections imply you're incomptent and that you must reply, vocally
and rudely, in either case, which makes it very hard to correct you
when you, too, make a mistake (you're human, it happens, it doesn't
reflect badly on you on its own) without turning the entire thread
into a shouting match.
Do you have a suggestion? How, exactly, would you have preferred I
made my point about the Swing event dispatch thread, for example,
assuming for the moment that I believe manipulating components outside
the EDT is a sufficiently bad practice that I can't simply ignore
advice to do so? I'm all in favour of finding constructive ways to
ensure the best possible information for as many people as possible.
That's the kind of thing you people do, not the kind of thing I do.
From: (e-mail address removed)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: "its" vs. "it's"
Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:36:50 -0000
Message-ID: <
[email protected]>
for example. If you weren't trying to bait me into replying, then why
on Earth did you mention me by name?
I'm not neutral any more than I'm in agreement with BS like that.
Rather, I'm in violent disagreement.
Indifference is not neutrality. Indifference is a lack of concern for
something and implies nothing whatsoever about your belief in its
truth or lack thereof. Neutrality is a different animal entirely and
implies that you're unwilling to support that a statement either is
true or false. One can believe a statement false and be indifferent
to it, but not neutral towards it.
Indifference towards insulting behaviour in others is, on the whole, a
very positive trait: it demonstrates firm self-control and allows you
to get useful work done even when people are being rude to you. I
agree with you that neutrality towards insulting behaviour in others
is not particularly positive, but it's not particularly negative
either.
I don't want the perception to be either that I nodded my head or that
I remained agnostic on the issue. I want it to be clear that "my side
of the story" is that the truth is diametrically opposed to whatever
the asshole said.
I'm reasonably sure intelligent people encountering Mike's "you can
stop hitting on me now" posts will assume that without your help.
Stupid people are of little relevance, and in any case can scroll up
and read for themselves that you did no such thing. Letting Mike look
ridiculous (Sorry, Mike!) on his own would've been much more effective
a use of your time than trying to "counter" him: you're arguing,
voluntarily, with someone who is taking a ludicrous position in order
to bait you. That kind of makes you look ridiculous along with him,
IMO.
