I’ll bite, partially because I’m used to finding resistance to exploratory ideas and learning paths, but mostly because I find this kind of passionate, biased argument fascinating in tech contexts...
> On 4 Oct 2018, at 09:50, Kurt H Maier <k...@sciops.net> wrote: > > On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 08:50:35AM +0100, Rui Carmo wrote: >> I wouldn’t allow the passive-aggressive mood that surfaces here from >> time to time to turn me off the project. > > How about regular aggressive? Regular aggressive is taking things outside the realm of civilised discourse, which is easy to do behind a keyboard, since being irate at abstract things seems to be a slippery slope when removed from regular human contact. However, it is not really acceptable, even with an attempt at (biased) logic behind it. > Starting with "what project?" We're gonna slap down an alpine rootfs > and throw plan9port in /bin? Every single person on this list has heard > this exact "idea" with this exact lack of coherent expression at least > twelve times before, probably from me. And the problem with doing that as a learning experience or for the purpose of having better tooling is exactly… what? > The problem here is, in a record few number of posts, this person has > demonstrated a desire to mix two operationg systems while demonstrating > fundamental misunderstandings of both of them -- then in some kind of > incompetence coup de gras, You meant “grace” (pronounced “grasse”), not “greasy”, as in “foie de gras”. I can understand that mastery of foreign languages might slip away under the kind of blood pressure involved in your original reply. > managed to display an utter ignorance of > software development en route. A fine display of efficiency! most > Kickstarter projects, for instance, take years to demonstrate this > degree of overconfident ineptitude! Ignorance takes many forms, such as lack of empathy (which can translate in some contexts to “emotional ignorance”). The attempt at drawing parallels with Kickstarter (and the implicit bias against experimentation and focusing only on failures) is amusing, but telling. > This sort of garbage post results in flames because it's > attention-seeking nonsense of the kind that generates many upvotes on > web forums, but no actual goddamn software. This isn’t a web forum. It is a mailing-list, and as such (as I would like to think) one of the last bastions of measured, rational discourse on today’s Internet (ok, there was ample precedent for flame wars in FidoNet, and we can gloss over the Usenet massacres, but I think my point has a chance of getting across). You are not helping to set a positive tone. >> That said, I’m fascinated by how often (and how quickly) some threads >> devolve into “there is no point in doing that” or “we don’t need >> those modern contraptions” arguments - reminds me a lot of some of >> the hard boiled academia types I used to work with back when VMS >> started losing ground. > > You're not fascinated by shit; that's a medium- to low-quality > rhetorical dodge to throw mud at straw men. Stand by your opinions, > soldier -- you don't get bonus points for fake rumination. For the > record, I think it's a fine idea, but this guy isn't the one who's > gonna cross that finish line. Not this decade, at least, and I'd > lay good money that it's not next decade, either. And yet, if no-one tries, nobody will ever deliver on it. > If nothing else, by the time you get a decent clip down this road, you > come to understand why the locals were laughing as you passed them. History is filled with people who were laughed at and changed (even if in small ways) the world we live in. Being able to remember that is what separates civilised cultures from biased, negative cultures that prey on (and anticipate) failure for the sake of entertainment. Ancient Rome comes to mind here. >> As much as some folk here are not exactly fond of various nuances of >> modern tech (from Linux to X to git, etc.), I don’t think there’s >> any need for dissing personal efforts to use or improve various >> aspects of Plan9 (including, horror of horrors, making the user land >> a bit more modern and usable, or at least more accessible to >> mainstream users). > > Efforts? More hypothesizing? or is there some effort happening > somewhere here? Anyway, needlessly or not, I'm not dissing any effort. > I'm dissing a person; 100% USDA Prime Ad Hominem, just ask Irving Copi > if it ain't. I parsed that as the Dept. of Agriculture until I realised there were no animal husbandry puns to fit this situation. Regardless, I fully expected a red “let’s make Plan9 great” again baseball cap to emerge from this argument. Not being a political partisan, I’m not going to go there, and point out that ad hominem is always a way to introduce fallacy when genuine arguments don’t hold water (or alcohol). > You know what the best part is? If I've got it all wrong, and this > person is indeed the Palamedes who will round out our unixy alphabet, > then I'll still get to use the software. So let's all hope I'm wrong! Let’s. > But I'm not. You might. Failure to recognise the odds that you are says a lot. >> I’m just going to fetch my vitriol wiper now. > > Happy to help, Loved this bout of sparring. Reminds me of when I believed technology alone could save the world, until I figured out that people (and how you relate to them) is the whole point of doing most of what actually matters. Cheers, R.
