--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> --- In [email protected], "sparaig" <sparaig@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@> 
wrote:
> > >
> > > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> 
wrote:
> > > >
> > > > --- In [email protected], "shempmcgurk" 
<shempmcgurk@>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Maybe Barry could get some of his celebrity friends like 
the 
> > > > > Rolling Stones, Robert Crumb and the owner of the Yum-Yum 
> > > > > Whore House to hold a benefit concert to raise the funds 
> > > > > needed to sue.
> > > > 
> > > > Nothing to sue for, Shemp. We tech writers don't
> > > > own the rights to what we write. And since these
> > > > definitions were in an old dBase manual last 
> > > > published in 1982 or so by a company (Ashton Tate)
> > > > that no longer exists, even if we did there's not 
> > > > much of anyone to get the loot from. But thanks 
> > > > anyway.
> > > 
> > > The Computer Contradictionary, which contains
> > > the "Infinite loop. See Loop, infinite" entry,
> > > was published in 1981 (under the title "The
> > > Devil's DP Dictionary").
> > 
> > They may have gotten it from him. /shrug. Many computer 
> > jokes are rather obvious to the people who have the 
> > technical background. Some jokes probably sprang up 
> > independently many times over the years.
> 
> Ah, the voice of someone who has actually worked
> in the industry, and who isn't hell-bent on trying
> to slam me. This time.
> 
> Because I know what I wrote for Ashton-Tate, I find
> this particular exercise of Judy's rather amazing.
> It's *not* that big a leap, after all, to think up
> the two quips I published in the dBase glossary.
> The same idea probably occurred to hundreds of us
> who were working as programmers and tech writers 
> back in the late 70s and early 80s. 
> 
> I have to believe, however, that this particular 
> smear campaign is more revealing that she wanted 
> it to be.
> 
> Judy must really believe that only one person in
> the world thinks up funny lines. Because *she* has
> never been able to think up one, she assumes that
> everyone else has to steal their ideas from others 
> the way she does. Therefore, if she Googles long 
> enough, she'll be able to find *anything* that evil, 
> horrible Barry ever says he wrote, attributed to 
> someone else. That'll get him!

(Notice the incoherence here.  The first sentence
makes absolutely no sense in context with the rest
of the paragraph; and the rest of the paragraph is
absurd on its face.)

> Why else would she have Googled these phrases in 
> the first place if that wasn't her assumption?

I'll tell you why.  Awhile back, Jim was talking
about how he reads our exchanges not for the semantic
content but for what he calls the "music" of our
interactions.

It's a good metaphor; people's writing does have
a kind of "music" above and beyond the semantic
content.

You obviously don't realize this, but when a
person isn't telling the truth, it affects the
music of what they're saying.  It's akin to
tone of voice.  Even when thesemantic content
seems plausible, the music has false notes,
dissonances that stick out.  They don't tell
you what exactly is false about what the person
is saying, they just alert you that something
isn't quite right.

This is especially the case when you've been
repeatedly exposed to that person's "music."

As I was reading your tale about putting those
cross-references in the manual, I could hear
false notes, and that alerted me to look more
closely at the semantic content to see if I
could identify what was false.  And I realized
that the cross-references you claimed to have
dreamed up on your own were very familiar to
me from other contexts.

You have a very long and consistent history of
making stuff up, of telling falsehoods.  I'm all
too well acquainted with what your "music" 
sounds like when you aren't telling the truth.
You weren't telling the truth in this case, as
in so many others.

I might have just let it go, but Shemp--who also
listens to your "music" and can hear the false
notes--had recently caught you in yet another
fabrication, so it seemed a propos to expose
this one as well.

That was the point at which I Googled the cross-
references and verified that many others had also
used them. But as Lawson noted, they're so obvious
that it's not unlikely that many people could
have come up with them independently.

You then proceeded helpfully to confirm that
you hadn't been telling the truth.  You could have
made the point Lawson did and insist that at
the time you came up with the cross-references,
you weren't aware that anybody else had done
so as well.

But instead, you suggested that the only reason
you couldn't sue all the people who had used
your cross-references without giving you credit
was that the company you'd purportedly invented
them for no longer existed.  And you even gave
the date the manual was last published.

I noted that they had appeared in a book that
had been published a year previously.  You
could have claimed you had dreamed the cross-
references up for an earlier edition of your
company's manual.

But you didn't; instead, you backpedaled and
signed on to Lawson's surmise.  And predictably,
you started attacking me.  By this time you
were so upset you weren't even making sense.

> It's all kinda sad. So much intelligence, and wasting
> it because she's locked into a cycle of hatred.

The point of all this is that you've become
addicted to falsehood, and you need to realize
how unproductive it is.  This falsehood was
pretty inconsequential, but many others you 
tell are not.  In most cases, they're more
destructive to you than to your targets.

More and more, you're coming to resemble Rush
Limbaugh.  You don't *care* whether what you
say is true or not.  When you need to prop up
your shaky self-esteem, or when you feel
threatened by something or somebody, you just
invent things to make yourself feel better.

That's a hell of a way to go through life, Barry.





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