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How Software Companies Die (1995)

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Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#121

Post by xmonkee »

ronaldx wrote: post #72
chris_wot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, way to go. Whilst he may have some beliefs that aren't very popular or even nice, does that mean that what's in the article is bad or wrong? Perhaps you should focus on his arguments, and not on the man himself. For once, this really is an ad hominem attack!

I would make an ad hominem attack, yes. I don't believe ad hominem is fallacious in this sense. Orson Scott Card has expressed such a lack of humanity elswhere that I do not understand why I would spend my time deciding whether his other arguments have any merit. He has disqualified himself from my consideration.

I don't think that qualifies for an ad hominem at all. It's only ad hominem if the factor you're dismissing the author due to happens to be irrelevant to his current argument. That's not the case, I agree.

Having said that, I just want to make it clear that I don't know enough about him to agree with your position on him. I know he's anti-gay, and I've read the Ender books. That's about it.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#122

Post by xmonkee »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #53
gscott wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have some heavy duty hate going on to dislike everything a person does because of their opinion on another matter.

Yeah, funny how it colors your opinion of a guy's reliability when he wants you and your friends thrown in prison as a warning to others. Crazy, I know!

It's understandable, but doesn't make it right. I personally dislike his opinions enough not to pay a dollar to watch his movies or read his books. I might even be loathe to give him enough respect to read this article, but that's a prejudice and it's not right.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#123

Post by lazyant »

nashashmi wrote: post #29
ghshephard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here, is that it's not the 1800s, and OSC continues to not just hold, but evangelize his hateful positions. See: http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html for one of the reasons people find him repellent. Choice quote (after he had a chance to reflect on the response to his essay): "...it has become clearer and clearer to me, since writing this essay, that gay activism as a movement is no long…

How is that wrong again?! It is true that they are trying to gain legitimacy. It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance. The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted. Now we have not just reached giving gays equal treatment but making changes to accommodate a different lifestyle. The second point OSC makes is sourced in a discomfort fr…

"a different lifestyle" - homosexuality is not more a lifestyle than heterosexuality. When did you decide to become heterosexual?

Also, as somebody already pointed out, change in Orson's comment homosexual with 'black' or 'Jewish' and see how it reads.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#124

Post by ColinWright »

keithpeter wrote: post #114
ColinWright wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did have, but it's been permanently disabled. I got too much grief over it. I have scripts to assist, but all these posts are "by hand". They don't take much time, and occasionally during the search and confirmation phase I stumble across other things that are interesting, so there is some reward.

Script assisted manual commands are something I use a lot as well, I can hack up scripts and cope with minor changes in data format &c. I'm interested in the reaction to automated posting but the comparative acceptance of 'by hand' posting. Is that simply frequency? Are you selecting which historic threads to run searches against?

I think in part many people were just upset at having a 'bot posting. Thin end of the wedge, and all that. Others didn't like the tone of the message, seeing it as a rebuke.

This is why when I do it "by hand" I make sure I hunt out previous discussions, and if there are none, make a note of that. I can script it all, but with the general hostility I've decided that I'll run the searches for myself because there are often interesting things turn up. Then I post my results because, well, why not? If I found it interesting, others may as well.

More than once I've caught myself constructing replies on negative results and deleted them. I may yet just stop entirely.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#125

Post by lazyant »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #69
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted. "The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-black position is criticized and/or boycotted." "The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-woman position is criticized and/or boycotted." "The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-Jew positi…

The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds a pro-Obamacare position is criticized and/or boycotted. The time has now come to the point where anyone who holds a pro-privacy position is now criticized and/or boycotted. The time has now come to the point where anyone who holds an anti-polygamy position is now criticized and/or boycotted. Yes, lets all give up reasoned discourse and simply attack those who…

you can criticize people for what they think, you cannot criticize people for what they are

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#126

Post by sanskritabelt »

sanoli wrote: post #37
nashashmi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that wrong again?! It is true that they are trying to gain legitimacy. It is no longer about rights but now it is about acceptance. The time has come now to the point where anyone who holds an anti-gay position is criticized and/or boycotted. Now we have not just reached giving gays equal treatment but making changes to accommodate a different lifestyle. The second point OSC makes is sourced in a discomfort fr…

Is this different from, say, the black movement? What if there were no longer segregated schools and bathrooms, but african-americans were prohibited to adopt children and black history were not allowed to be taught in schools? edit: I'm not from the U.S. so I don't know everything as far as minority rights go over there. In my country there are laws agains racism, and they're trying to pass anti-homophobia laws too.…

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/17-2

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#127

Post by grammaton »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #30
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #2

We all know that OSC is a horrible bigot, right? I feel like any sort of fatherly advice he emits needs to be suffixed with "...unless you're gay, then you should be in prison."

Your characterization of OSC is incorrect. He only believes sodomy laws should be used carefully to make sure people don't "shake the confidence of the community", and that most homosexuals should not be jailed. http://www.nauvoo.com/library/card-hypocrites.html I don't agree with OSC, and I doubt he'd like me very much due to my propensity for casual sex and my desire to abolish state marriage. That said, I do share…

> That said, I do share his distaste for the gay rights movement's propensity to attack and attempt to blacklist and attack their opponents.

Uh, what do you think that the gay rights movement's opponents are trying to do to them? That, and in many cases, much worse.

>I'm curious though - Communism has been far more harmful to the world than opposition to gay marriage. Do you also favor bringing back the anti-communist blacklists of the McCarthy era?

Argument from consequences.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#128

Post by wavefunction »

nollidge wrote: post #106
wavefunction wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The communist blacklist was merely a list of communists published the Hollywood Reporter Merely a list! You might feel a little differently in 1950s USA with your name on that list. A list that meant the end of your career, blacklisting by friends and family (even sympathetic for fear of association.) You're the second person in 24 hours to downplay McCarthyism as no big deal and it's left me scratching my head in…

Option 3 is that he was making the exact same point you are, and you failed to notice.

Thank you for pointing out option 3. I jumped the gun and for that I apologize. My reaction to the post was the "merely a list" bit and was definitely half-cocked.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#129

Post by grammaton »

brazzy wrote: post #17

Was this as ridiculous a pastiche of clichés when it was written in 1995 as it is now? Or did programmers really only start to have social lives, dislike permanent crunch mode and plan before coding in the last 20 years? It sounds to me like Card read through the Jargon file, i.e. the self-image of a considerably earlier subculture of programmers, took it at face value, added some hyperbole and wrote it up as a kind…

You need to remember - or know - that the Internet and software where THE thing to be writing about in science fiction circles back in the early nineties. See: Sterling, Bruce. Didn't matter if you're actually a writer, not an engineer, and have little idea what you're actually talking about.

Re: How Software Companies Die (1995)

#130

Post by aaronem »

xmonkee wrote: post #119
Udo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if people during Turing's time actually thought that homosexual behavior was unethical (which I think is not too far from the truth)? First of all, I assert being gay is not unethical. And it never was. Sure, it was considered amoral, but that's not the same. Could you elaborate on why you think an ethical argument could be constructed in favor of being militantly anti-gay?

It seems like you're purposely misinterpreting his point. He's not saying what should be, he's saying what probably was. You might have been saying that homosexuality is unethical a hundred years ago with the same certainty with which you denounce Card. I'm sure nobody here actually thinks that being gay is unethical.

I've found presentism to be an all but impossible concept for those whose ideology drives their historiography.
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