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"Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

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Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#431

Post by kazinator »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #416
kazinator wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only described the technical back-drop for mailing lists. The behaviors of setting Reply-To: headers, and of rejecting posts from non-subscribers, are still implemented as hacks against the old mechanism. These configuration features have not changed how mailing lists work. My original original point is that moderating mailing lists is not possible. I have not seen an effective counterargument. Reply-to munging and…

In a 'modern' mailing list a troll will be able to spam people on the list, but they won't really be replied to. They won't be able to participate. The actual conversations will be moderated.

What is true is that the troll's message will not appear in the list's archive. (That's how I became aware that one person was actually a troll; I went to the archive, and, huh? This guy is not there! And neither are my replies to that guy. What the .... Then it immediately dawned on me!)

But, yes, trolls will be replied to. Because, remember, they are not even going through the mailing list robot. They are just sending mail. Of course the troll's mails can be replied to and go back to that person, and to everyone on the CC list that he or she put in.

Not only that, but the troll can include the list address on the CC: line! A reply to the troll will include quoted material from the troll (typically), and since the person responding is a valid subscriber who is allowed to post, that quoted material gets to the list.

So all the list subscribers end up seeing:

  On Monday, October 6, 2014 T. Roll wrote:
  > Inflammatory crap  ...

  I disagree with your inflammatory crap!
Nobody on the has the original message with the full inflammatory crap (except those on the CC: list of that troll thread including the person writing the above response). But thanks to this reply and others like it, everyone on the list continues to have glimpses into what T. Roll thinks. (They are is even trimmed nicely to give the list members just the most inflammatory parts!)

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#432

Post by kazinator »

DonHopkins wrote: post #426
kazinator wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is a particular mailing list configuration (one often seen today); not what mailing lists are . Traditional mailing lists (such as ones created by a vanilla install of GNU Mailman) do not work they way you describe. They work like this: 1. You send a message to a mailing list address. This address belongs to a software agent which sends the message to everyone. Your From: header is clearly pres…

Yeah, I'm old too. I subscribed to INFO-COBOL@MC (which was not about COBOL, but used that name because joke mailing lists were forbidden on the ARPANET), DB-LOVERS@MC (maintained by the tty of Geoffrey S. Goodfellow, specializing in dead baby jokes, not databases), ITS-LOVERS@MC aka UNIX-HATERS@MC, and I also ran a large international mailing list NeWS-makers@brillig.umd.edu, with lots of redistribution lists as wel…

My point never was that an e-mail message is a mailing list.

What is a mailing list? It is an "emergent phenomenon"(+). It is not just the mailing list manager; it is not just the handling of a single message. It's not the set of subscribers. It's the whole situation.

--

+ As in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#433

Post by Dylan16807 »

kazinator wrote: post #431
Dylan16807 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a 'modern' mailing list a troll will be able to spam people on the list, but they won't really be replied to. They won't be able to participate. The actual conversations will be moderated.

What is true is that the troll's message will not appear in the list's archive. (That's how I became aware that one person was actually a troll; I went to the archive, and, huh? This guy is not there! And neither are my replies to that guy. What the .... Then it immediately dawned on me!) But, yes, trolls will be replied to. Because, remember, they are not even going through the mailing list robot. They are just send…

But if the list is set up differently you can get it so people don't use reply all by default, and even better they can tell at a glance if a mail came from the list or not.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#434

Post by DonHopkins »

kazinator wrote: post #428
DonHopkins wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a terrible idea. Is it a bug or a feature? Why would anyone want to do that? I'd be afraid that some mail readers would choke on the empty addresses, and I can't think of any reason you'd want them, or any purpose they'd serve. It doesn't ever include actual email addresses in the cc does it? Because those poor users would get at least two copies of every reply.

The empty addresses are just in the public mail archive that is exposed through the web. They were scrubbed away by the archiver software. The recipients of the original message got it with all that information intact. Users do not get two copies because the mailing list software is smart enough to calculate a set difference between the expanded mailing list, and the set of addresses which are already in To: or Cc: G…

Sounds too clever by half. How can the mailing list software know that the direct reply actually got through to the people in the To: and CC: list?

Didn't the intended recipients occasionally miss replies to their messages, and wasn't it a bad idea to put the responsibility of re-sending bounced (or un-routable) email to the person you're replying to in the hands of the person writing the reply, not the mailing list itself? I doubt it would have worked very reliably with usenet addresses or the early internet with all those relays.

Remember when all the UK's host names were backwards, and you'd route mail through nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk (or uk.ac.ucl.cs.nss, depending which side of the pond you were on), which would swap the host names around on the way through?

The Brits drive on the wrong side of the road too, so I suppose backward domain names made sense to them.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#435

Post by Karunamon »

rbanffy wrote: post #387
rbanffy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, just maybe, "your mom should have aborted you and i hope you die" is just an overly elaborated form of saying you are wrong and should not be taken literally. > They care is they're told they are so wrong they should kill themselves or be killed. Honor killings are unfortunately still a big deal in some parts of the world. Nobody is wrong enough to warrant that. I see the "elaborate insult" thing can get out o…

Hint: downvoting is not a good way to provide constructive criticism.

Another symptom of feelings-over-results: quick and effort-free attacks like downvoting take the place of elaboration and reasoned debate.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#436

Post by nanoscopic »

grantmnz wrote: post #422
nanoscopic wrote: post #32

I think this is an important point for people to accept, acknowledge, and keep in mind as a reason to strive harder to be open and accepting to people, especially those you don't agree with. I got a bunch of attacks from members of the open source community, due to developing my XML parser. ( Grant McLean and others ) I also got attacked by Poul-Henning Kamp, and then threatened that he would "shame" me for pointing…

I am disappointed to learn that you feel I have attacked you in the past. I apologise unreservedly for any offence I caused you. I always try to be civil and professional in my interactions and to be mindful of the difficulty of conveying the intended tone over an electronic medium. If I have voiced some criticism of your code it is certainly not because I wished to belittle your efforts or to make any value judgemen…

Thank you for expressing this. It helps me to be able to move past it. I have always thought you were angry at my contributions to the community. You will note that I applaud the simplicity of your module, and even went so far as to create a SAX streaming version of my parser that works together with XML::Simple so that those who wish to stick with your interface can do so. I didn't maintain it much, but can do so if there is any real interest in it.

I named you simply because you are the first person to state that my XML parser is "invalid", despite my having worked very hard to ensure that it does parse XML meaningfully.

I do acknowledge freely that I am disregarding the specs to some extent for the sake of raw speed. You will see that I have altered the documentation to make this clear so there is no confusion.

For myself, with your apology I consider that extremely adequate to address the past. I don't really remember clearly, but I know that it was a very rough entry into the open source world to have my parser attacked ( considering it is the first meaningful thing I contributed to the community )

I would like to point out that communication and understanding between members of the community is exactly what I am asking for. I thank you for stepping out and attempting to resolve this. There is no way I would ever know that you felt this way without you expressing it, and unless I did I would have lived forever thinking you have bad feelings towards myself and the code I have created.

For all the people who imply that I was attacking any of the named people, including Grant, see that was and is not my intention, and I am very happy today to have some of these things addressed.

I will throw this out there for consideration; it boggles my mind how wikipedia has banned the article on my parser, considering there are entries for many other equivalent parsers. The article was up for years then removed suddenly for no legitimate reason imo... Do you have any opinion on the clear favoring of certain parsers in the information community? ( such as on wikipedia or in excluding specific parsers from being mentioned as related codebases )

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#437

Post by nanoscopic »

binarysolo wrote: post #423
andyl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this you? http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/why-he...

If it is, thanks for being a high-integrity individual.

Thank you. Unfortunately the FBI and Secret Service have a different opinion, and so the FBI is still holding onto $5000 of my gear. For myself, I can't say I would try to "do the right thing" again, because it simply isn't in my best interest to try to get people to listen to what is reasonable.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#438

Post by nanoscopic »

feld wrote: post #412
nanoscopic wrote: post #32

I think this is an important point for people to accept, acknowledge, and keep in mind as a reason to strive harder to be open and accepting to people, especially those you don't agree with. I got a bunch of attacks from members of the open source community, due to developing my XML parser. ( Grant McLean and others ) I also got attacked by Poul-Henning Kamp, and then threatened that he would "shame" me for pointing…

I would love to hear some details. When I've see PHK get vicious he's always been right. He's been in this game years longer than most and perhaps he's tired of defending the right way nicely.

I wasn't exactly polite when he attacked me. I responded in turn because it was absurd and silly to me to be threatened. To know anything about me is to know that threatening me is a joke; I'm not afraid.

To this day I'm unclear why he didn't understand the problem with ESI include files being invalidated not forcing the main including file out of the cache as well. ( in Varnish ) I think he was just in a bad mood and didn't have the time nor care to understand what I was pointing out at the time.

He was pretty mean though, and refused to play nicely to the bitter end of that particular argument. Just google "Lots of Configs" if you want to read the whole silly debate.

Here is what I want: A cache where it supports ESI... File A ESI includes file B. Both A and B are in the cache. If I forcibly tell the cache to invalidate file B, I expect that file A will automatically be invalidated as well, since the cache should know that file B was included into file A. Varnish does not do this. That was my statement to PHK, but apparently he doesn't want to hear it and somehow things this is an unreasonable request.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#439

Post by yummyfajitas »

minikites wrote: post #333
yummyfajitas wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit of a change of subject. Lennert Pottering is male. Would the aforementioned unpleasant behavior be more acceptable to you if it were directed via a random number generator (i.e. a random set of people are singled out to receive 100 messages/day) rather than a predictable decision process?

I was responding to your overall premise: > Somewhere along the line, we gave this up and became a culture where feelings matter more than results. I think the solution here is for the tech world to regrow the thick skin it once had. I disagree that the solution is to regrow a thick skin and if you ignore the differing experiences that tech women have, you're overlooking a gigantic problem in the current tech industr…

It is unclear to me why a few people receiving a disproportionate amount of hate invalidates my "thick skin" proposal. I don't think 100x more hate would materially affect my experience beyond wasting a few more minutes of my time deleting it.

Could you explain why you think otherwise?

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#440

Post by mcantor »

bronson wrote: post #410
mcantor wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. The problem I'm seeing in this thread relates to this point: > There could be a debate about what constitutes verbal abuse, on a case by case basis. And that would turn into a mess. Right now, a lot of people simply do not make the distinction between verbal abuse and direct language. In other words, they are arguing that we should not bother discouraging verbal abuse because it "shouldn't" affect t…

Universal expectation? It seems you two are railing against a straw man. Abusive behavior, even on the LKML, even by Linus, is rare. If you feel as strongly as you seem to, please subscribe, form a first-hand opinion, and maybe contribute to positive change. (I contributed around 2001-2003 and really enjoyed it; I don't subscribe now). Too many misunderstandings have been caused by well-meaning people reading too muc…

The problem isn't that it's too abundant. The problem is that people make excuses for it every time it happens, instead of just saying, "Yeah, that was really verbally abusive."
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