Was MJR's discussion pronounced over? Yes indeed, and yet... On 24 Oct 2003, at 21:40, MJ Ray wrote:
> I do not tell you to go away. Though your last post ends with a "*PLONK*". The difference is only relative. > I tell you to try another approach. To be clearer, I advise you to: Is that like "to be clearer" in the sense of "to be precise" where Thompson & Thomson are always trying to clarify what they've muffed, or were you advising me to revise my own murky meanings? > 1. stop adding irrelevant information to this bug report; Yes yes, but I maintain all that stuff is relevant. Roundabout sure, but it connects. Some of it, in hindsight, probably could have been pared down, or have been better arranged, oh especially the dictionary bits, but it all branches from the same scary tree. > 2. develop a clear and generally understood description of the bug on > -project or -devel; Describing bugs is what a BTS is for. Should I go to the '-devel'... that place of flames, where I read a lot of 'em while inspecting various contributors to this prolonged #210879. Some jaded posters of '-devel' mention conflicts persisting without progress for years and years. Brrr. On "clear"... well I think it was clear, just not to this crowd. It's greek to them. On "generally understood"... that's the tough part. What's it take to get this generally understood? For other little typo bugs, I've taken pains to name which parts of speech were wrong... the details can help if somebody's new to English or just confused. Example, look up: Bug#212943: coreutils: typo in 'tr' info page: "Changing one characters to another." But for #210879, I figured, "crikey, this is a constitution... surely the authors of a constitution, whoever they are, should be a cut above" -- at the same time, worrying, "but if they were, they wouldn't write that way would they?" Well I was too lazy to describe the error down to its parts of speech, (which might offend the smarties anyhow), and was also hopeful its nature would be obvious to the maintainer. Wrong. It has turned out pretty interesting though. The problem isn't just a bit of bad prose, it's a deep abiding love of cliquish dreck. A Debian horde bent on being smarter experts, honored for their density; winners. Can there be any general understanding among specialists who refuse to be general? Not original to Debian, it's the plague of the sciences and arts too, business, government, yadda yadda yadda, and there is no cure that's free of embarrassment, it infects concealed pride making sufferers delicate and sensitive. Peck away at 'em with Criticism I say. Is Debian curable? Don't know. If it was slowly dying of word-rot, maybe this sort of crit could help some future patient. > 3. get agreement from developers that this really is a bug; Now there's a BIG problem underlying that. If they're philosophical egoists and epicureans, (or worse), then it follows that cliquish lingo** is not a bug, it's a feature. They understand the lingo, that's all that matters. Those who don't understand, or who object, are outside-people, idiots, inferiors. Plus there may be money in being the only men who know the words, and it's less work to talk like you're in with the in crowd, once you're used to it; and, on the other hand, it's perilous to offend one's brethren who might throw an uppity egoist outside in the cold. We are living in a material world. From an egoist's view, jargon is simply natural selection at work, there's no right or wrong, it simply is. Adapting to this environment is playing the game to win. There's no agreement possible without enough philosophy to see through that. Which you think is irrelevant, why I don't know. Round and round we go... Thus arguments on -devel go on for years and years. Nobody ever breaks the damn pinata, they just tap it, the candy never falls out. Maybe they haven't learned to think outside the PC. The best they can do is say something pious about "well that's one point of view", then "agree to disagree", fearing that "personality" and "opinion" are invincible. By not disagreeing we all can resolve any conflict by not having any. We're thinkin' positive. Let's have a round of applause for specialized education, where youth is just decades of loans away owed perhaps to people like you... decades from freely tilling a field (of study), mining a vein (of knowledge), or serving a purpose (to humanity). Win cash & neat prizes. Have a drink. Take a well earned vacation. Then back to work. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's brain, nor the contents thereof, or any ideas which belong to him, his wife's brain, his ass's brain, his wife's ass's brain, nor any bytes thereof. (** "developers"! Who were "developers" first? house builders, lot buyers, or who; programmers didn't need their self-esteem boost til much later. What made programmers feel like such punks that being "developers" was a step up?) > 4. possibly seek their assistance with the bug; It's not deep, just rewrite it in English. > 5. reopen the bug; You seem here to be leaning towards the possibility that it exists, or that it might exist. In either case, it shouldn't have been closed. > in that order. The wrong order. Treat the cause before the effect. If Debian devolves into a club for me-firsters and techie hedonists, its future is going to reflect that. Bugs can have social and philosophical causes. Those causes are germane and wholly relevant. If the notion prevails that such causes may not be "technical" enough to be worthy of discussing, or too good for the BTS, or are insoluble, then such bugs will be virtually sacred. Totems, idols; witch doctor programmers will blame them for bad weather and demand we make appeasing sacrifices. > I also urge you to accept what I say at face value, instead of writing > random accusations. Random? "I paint what I see." Again, if MS can't even answer if he's read a bug report or not before and after closing it, that's wrong. Defending that practice is also wrong. > I was most amused by your lengthy comment on the obvious usenet-related > reference. Er thanks, which obvious usenet-related reference? The "seen it" URL gag wasn't usenet. > If you didn't get it, just leave it alone. Sorry for asking. Did you mean the "mother's basement" Google search? Try Googling these: "my time is valuable" (3700+ hits) "I couldn't care less" (102000 -- often not an insult...) "nobody here cares" (2790) "ask me if I care" (5670) "everything you say is" (16,000 -- often conciliatory...) "shut your pie hole" (4250 -- high for an unusual expression) Are those relevant? Alas yes. The way a gerbil running in wheel is. > It is just the way that I sometimes write, possibly a side-effect of the > culture that I am from. Isle of The Queen, and Viz Magazine... > Some apparent cultural references in your email leave me cold, but I do not > comment on them unless they obscure the meaning. Not to say I seldom miss the mark, but sometimes it might be the accent, think flat accent, nasal. Words are sound, too much text makes people forget. > *PLONK* Again??? That last take must have been a rehearsal. How do you get an Elephant out of the theatre? (Google's usenet "PLONK" count is 573,000. Poor old usenet.)