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“I have toyota corola”

daniel.haxx.se

311–320 of 365 posts

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#311
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

part of that is not assigning value judgements to a communication style. I disagree with this kind of pluralism. Communication style and skill matter deeply, but styles aren't simply "different but equal". In the current context, it's easy for technical people to dismiss everything but the "content", usually a kind of reductio ad absurdum to "technical content". But communication, by definition, involves the audience…

> If your communication style inhibits your audience's understanding or even their willingness to listen, then you are simply a bad communicator. It's certainly not that simple. This only makes sense if your goal is to communicate in a culturally-agnostic manner, which is not something you can reliably do. It's like flag burning: you can't really communicate the same point better in another way. It at least makes som…

I think you're reading too much into what I'm saying. I'm not trying to argue that there's some total ordering on the set of communication styles (whatever that might mean), and/or that there's some kind of "ideal" communication style.

But sometimes an asshat is just an asshat. There are boundaries of negativity past which it's basically never productive to cross, and telling people who've received that kind of behavior that they should just grow a thick skin ... is pointing the finger the wrong direction.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#312
I have the "classified" user account in one of the big web email providers. For years, the Boston Globe was setting "reply to" on the emails they sent to people that placed classified ads to "classified".

So guess who got the replies from advertisers using the same email provider? That's right. Me.

I explained the problem to the Boston Globe, but they just didn't get it.

Once, somebody sent me all their credit card information so they could place another ad.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#314
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

part of that is not assigning value judgements to a communication style. I disagree with this kind of pluralism. Communication style and skill matter deeply, but styles aren't simply "different but equal". In the current context, it's easy for technical people to dismiss everything but the "content", usually a kind of reductio ad absurdum to "technical content". But communication, by definition, involves the audience…

> If your communication style inhibits your audience's understanding or even their willingness to listen, then you are simply a bad communicator. It's certainly not that simple. This only makes sense if your goal is to communicate in a culturally-agnostic manner, which is not something you can reliably do. It's like flag burning: you can't really communicate the same point better in another way. It at least makes som…

Unless you're teaching philosophy or some sort of self-help seminar, IT'S NOT YOUR JOB to teach people that "their emotions are an obstacle to success"

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average. He's a perfectionist and he seems to get distracted easily. Like me, he seems to overly inured to the siren song of Force Multipliers (making other people more productive) and really should have spent more time practicing the craft. If I had it to do over again I probably would have spent a little more time coding and a…

> I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average. In fact, Donald Knuth is so below average from a productivity standpoint that there is an entire book published about books and papers that Donald Knuth published: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cp.html

Ah, I thought you had me there.

Aside from Art, the Tex books, his earlier work on computational complexity and the one on AI, isn't most of the rest of that his bound lecture notes?

His extremely long side rail into typography was mostly what I was talking about. Art was left unfinished that entire time.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#316

Back in the days of shareware, around 1985, I wrote a program called TXT2COM. It was a simple way of turning a text file into an executable. All a user had to do was run the converted com file and the text file appeared on the screen with full scrolling, search and save. I had my name and phone number embedded in the program. My first problem was when someone converted the Constitution of the United States into a COM…

Wow!!

Reminds me of this - https://youtu.be/L8lA1pNvcz4 go to 2:45

Basically this guy is talking about the "first PC virus" called "Brain." 25 years after the virus first appeared (2011) finds a street address in Pakistan in the source code, goes to that address, and the malware authors are still there.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why. "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system. And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice per…

Ever heard about irony? Or maybe nordic self-depreciation is not something the SV culture is able to parse.

*self-deprecation

Although IMO self-deprecation is often also self-depreciation, for some liberal interpretation of that word in this context, but I doubt that's what you meant.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#318

I have had a similar problem for about two decades now in regards to eCards (virtual greeting cards). I own youknowwhat.com and one of my email addresses is youknowwho@youknowwhat... Turns out that thousands of people every year think they are being super clever by putting my email address in the "From" field. So of course I get zillions of "receipts" for these eCards. "Sister, I hope you feel better soon" ...is the…

I get something similar. I was an early adopter of a popular email service, so I managed to get @ .com. Pretty neat, pretty simple, right? Except I have a really common name, and people seem think that if the email address has their name in it, it must be their email address. I get sign-ups for Facebook all the time. I get emails about credit scores that make me panic until I realize I didn't sign up for that service…

Yup :(

My email is @gmail.com (six characters total) and I get about 1-1.5 misdirected emails per day. Receipts, phone bills, homework, meeting minutes, personal messages that someone passed away, angry email from a homeowner to his general contractor (in Botswana), and even a international love letter.

It's quite annoying, but the worst is sites that make it very hard to unsubscribe, or don't understand that it's possible for someone to enter an email address that doesn't belong to them in a form. In one case (a bank), I actually had to call customer service on the phone to get them to disassociate my email address with someone's account.

In the case of the love letter, I thought I should reply to say that the intended recipient didn't get the message, but when I did, the sender got really confused and didn't understand that she had mis-typed the address.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why. "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system. And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice per…

Ever heard about irony? Or maybe nordic self-depreciation is not something the SV culture is able to parse.

Clear evidence of his self-deprecation is in the word that most of us say every day: git. His second major project was named with the philosophy "I named the first one after myself, so why not the second one?"

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logged in to upvote your comment, hopefully you won't be disuaded by downvotes. Maybe this whole "deal with my being unpleasant" thing stems from people seeking to justify their unwilingness or inability to practice self-control. Whatever the reason it is detrimental and worthy of being opposed to. It's one thing to be unpleasant to people who are obstinate. It's another to be unpleasant to people who are ignorant. A…

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I WANT Linus to be "rude" to SENIOR devs who should know better, because it's better to be rude than to ship code that results in critical infrastructure getting pwned, or worse, somebody to die. I actually fear the day, when somebody more polite gets in and lets it known, (unintentionally, of course), that shitty, rookie code is now fine, that being lazy and not treating the tru…

It's not a binary choice between being rude or shipping bad code. You can reject patches and give feedback without being an asshole about it.
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