Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion

[Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>]

Tim Colson wrote:
>>>>It seems a bit daft.
>>>>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
>>>>paradigm.
>>>>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough 
>>>>that neither 
> 
> 
>>An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's 
>>character, not  on their ideas. 
> 
> Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
> perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
> have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
> is offensive to me. 

Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought 
it was ill-advised.

> 
> 
>>When I said that your idea seemed 'a bit daft' or 
>>'nutty' and explained why I thought this, that was not an ad 
>>hominem attack.
> 
> This insults and offends me even more! 

That's beyond my control really. It wasn't ad hominem.

> Please, do not tell me what my
> opinion is on the matter of being offended! I know quite well that and I
> am offended. 

It's a rough-and-tumble world, Tim. Do you think anybody cares very much?

> 
> 
> 
>>>The speciulation is incorrect, and the attacks are
>>>offensive.
>>
>>Could you please outline what is incorrect about it?
> 
> The speculation that this idea was based on some "perverse, distorted
> MVC paradigm" was incorrect.
> 
> Despite needing no defense, I previously outlined in faily simple
> language that this question about how one might modify the velocity
> engine to limit comparisons to booleans was academic and based on the
> modus operandi of another template language I use in PERL called
> HTML::Template.
> 
> There is no need for reply unless it contains apologies for offending me
> (yet again) and wasting my time repeating myself explaining rationale
> that should not have required any explanation in the first place.

I limit my response basically to pointing out that, contrary to what you 
say, I did not engage in any ad hominem attack on you. I simply 
expressed my highly negative reaction to your idea. That's not 
ad-hominem. Moreover, despite my negative reaction to your idea, I ave 
you step-by-step instructions on how to implement it.

Regards,

Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Velocity->FreeMarker template conversion utility, 
http://freemarker.org/usCavalry.html

> 
> -Tim



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Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion

[Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu>]

Friday, July 4, 2003, 11:12:11 AM, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:

> Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:
>
>>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought 
>>it was ill-advised.
>
> You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"

Hey, don't cheat! That was in a different thread... the debated question
in this thread was if the concrete initial affair in this thread was ad
hominem or not... Not that it is interesting if it was or not -- it's
not a philosophy mailing list -- just if you debate then do it in
accordance with the rules.

> when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
> members of this list being thieves.
>
> This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
> below the belt attack.  The fact that you didn't actually write it
> down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.
[snip]

I'm not inherently determined to protect Jonathan (even if I'm a FM
contrib.), but these are artificial reasonings. *Obviously*, nobody will
think that Vel. people are actually pickpockets, also *obviously*
Jonathan didn't meant it verbatim, it was cleanly just a nasty sarcastic
note. OK, its an ugly thing to say things like this (i.e. that they are
thrives), but you know, this is something like if I say you: "You
shit!". It's offending, but nobody will think that you are actually from
excrement. So, simply put, it's ridiculous if you start to prove, that I
have slandered you, that you are from excrement (while you are form
flesh), because I want to discredit you. Actually, "You shit!" just
means that "I hate you!". Frankly, I think that you are just playing
with the words, be trying to to win some rhetorical battle: it was NOT
ad hominem attack. It's cleanly an artificial thing to start to use this
affair to prove ad hominem attacks. Also, and most importantly, I don't
believe that anybody can *really* be offended on things like this...
it's a such pretending... you realize that "Phew... this guy is really
angry about us..." and that's all.

> Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
> simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
> know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
> obnoxious way like yours is.
>
> You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
> "technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
> listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
> your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule.

The whole self-exciting flaming is full with the lack of frankness and
with pretending (especially on the Vel. side), senseless offences
(especially on Jonathan's side) and glowing dispute that has lost any of
its original points (on both side), and today it exists solely for
itself. It's a bloated sh*t. And the conclusion that J.R. is an utterly
terrible man, so he will drive you crazy if you are an FM
user/developer... is, as a matter of fact, mistaken.

> You seem to expect that everyone discusses only "technical"
> information and you're allowed to deliver your snide comments "from
> high" because of your conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.
>
> To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago, the whole FM
> project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
> people have a serious problem towards anything Apache". Continous
> putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
> superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some

Can you imagine that somebody puts down a project because he *really*
thinks that the project is technically inferior? And not because of some
religious or political reasons?

> desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
> has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is "ASF".

(which is BTW, I strongly believe, true...)

> But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what you
> don't seem to grasp.

Kind of political question... but I also think it doesn't help FM.

> Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
> templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
> rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
> impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
> problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
> and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
> your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
> attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.
[snip]

It's mistaken. An important difference between Vel. and FM. community is
exactly that FM developers respect criticism more from the users. And
you will not be bashed just because you tell negative critics... well,
except if you say *utter* nonsense. If something is s*it, then you can
tell that that's s*it; nobody will be offended.

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany



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Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion

[Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>]

Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought 
>>it was ill-advised.
> 
> 
> You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"
> when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
> members of this list being thieves.
> 
> This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
> below the belt attack.  The fact that you didn't actually write it
> down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.

I feel it was quite appropriate. I was responding to a bunch of phony 
drivel about how everybody loves me and wants to have a big group hug. I 
sarcastically stated that it would be a partial hug in my case because I 
wanted to keep one hand on my wallet. I was indicating that I perceived 
extreme phoniness on the part of these people and that therefore I 
didn't trust them any further than I could throw them.

> 
> Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
> simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
> know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
> obnoxious way like yours is.

Now, this, for example is, just ad-hominem drivel. I'm obnoxious, I'm 
this, I'm that, so that discredits or devalues any technical point I made.

Pure ad hominem.

Besides, I have had enough interaction with you recently, Henning, to 
know how obnoxious you are, so, you know... you're in a glass house 
throwing stones anyway.

> 
> You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
> "technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
> listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
> your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule. You seem to
> expect that everyone discusses only "technical" information and you're
> allowed to deliver your snide comments "from high" because of your
> conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.

The stuff about my great ego is very overblown. The fact remains that, 
as I have said, there has been no ongoing development on Velocity over 
the past year. Nothing. No CVS commits. No new features, no bug-fixes, 
no improvements in documentation or examples. No nothing.

For me to contrast favorably my efforts and that of the FreeMarker 
community with the above-described situation does not require some 
inflated ego. It boils down to the fact that we are comparing a serious 
ongoing development effort (on the FreeMarker side) with *absolutely 
nothing* (on the Velocity side).

Obviously the results of a year of our hard work are going to be better 
than the results of a year of *doing absolutely nothing at all*.

So, to say this is not so terribly egotistical... <shrug>

> 
> To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago, 

Henning, I am confident that you still know zilch about FreeMarker.

> the whole FM
> project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
> people have a serious problem towards anything Apache". 

So what? That's just more irrelevant ad-hominem type stuff.

> Continous
> putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
> superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some
> desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
> has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is
> "ASF". But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what
> you don't seem to grasp.

Maybe not. But there is nothing ethically or morally wrong with my 
pointing out the true state of the Velocity project. I have noticed an 
ongoing attempt to mask the truth. Over the last months, I have 
perceived a tacit agreement here to keep talking about the project as if 
it was alive, as if ongoing development was taking place. "Maybe the 
committers will do this". "Have you submitted a patch for that?" And so 
on. They even put out a release in April that was identical to the 
previous release 8 months prior simply to give the impression that 
something was happening.

It seems right and proper for me to say that the emperor is wearing no 
clothes. That actually could be beneficial to the Velocity project if 
people respond pro-actively to that wake-up call. Whether it's 
beneficial to FreeMarker or not, I don't know. But that's not relevant 
anyway.


> 
> Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
> templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
> rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
> impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
> problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
> and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
> your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
> attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.
> 
> If you were able to exhale, you might have been able to persuade some
> velocity users to try out and maybe use FreeMarker. But I'm pretty
> sure, that most developers and users that read the archive of the
> discussion of the last days will not touch FM with a ten-feet pole.

This is just speculation on your part. Actually, many of the people 
showing up on the FreeMarker lists are pretty obviously Velocity refugees.

> 
> That's your personal achievement and has nothing to do with technical
> aspects of any templating engine or one being superior to the
> other. It's your attitude and that's the truth.

The above is just more irrelevant ad-hominem smoke-blowing.

Regards,

Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Use JSP taglibs from a FreeMarker template: 
http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_servlet.html

> 
> 	Regards
> 		Henning
> 
> 




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Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion

["Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hp...@intermeta.de>]

Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:

>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought 
>it was ill-advised.

You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"
when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
members of this list being thieves.

This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
below the belt attack.  The fact that you didn't actually write it
down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.

Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
obnoxious way like yours is.

You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
"technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule. You seem to
expect that everyone discusses only "technical" information and you're
allowed to deliver your snide comments "from high" because of your
conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.

To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago, the whole FM
project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
people have a serious problem towards anything Apache". Continous
putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some
desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is
"ASF". But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what
you don't seem to grasp.

Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.

If you were able to exhale, you might have been able to persuade some
velocity users to try out and maybe use FreeMarker. But I'm pretty
sure, that most developers and users that read the archive of the
discussion of the last days will not touch FM with a ten-feet pole.

That's your personal achievement and has nothing to do with technical
aspects of any templating engine or one being superior to the
other. It's your attitude and that's the truth.

	Regards
		Henning


-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen          INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de        +49 9131 50 654 0   http://www.intermeta.de/

Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services 
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development  -- hero for hire

--- Quote of the week: "It is pointless to tell people anything when
you know that they won't process the message." --- Jonathan Revusky

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RE: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion

[Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>]

> Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why 
> I thought  it was ill-advised.
Along the way insinuating that someone would be daft, nutty, and
perverse to come up with the idea. What is amazing is that the attack
was based on lack of reading comprehension.
 
> That's beyond my control really. It wasn't ad hominem.
It was an attack in _my opinion_. The proper response might be to say,
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question, and I apologize for
attributing my incorrect conclusions to you and making statements about
the idea and the character of the person who generated them." 

> It's a rough-and-tumble world, Tim. Do you think anybody 
> cares very much?
I'm sure you realize the fallacy made by this statement.

> I limit my response basically to pointing out that, contrary 
> to what you say, I did not engage in any ad hominem attack on you.
"Abusive: An Abusive Ad Hominem occurs when an attack on the character
or other irrelevant personal qualities of the opposition--such as
appearance--is offered as evidence against her position. Such attacks
are often effective distractions ("red herrings"), because the opponent
feels it necessary to defend herself, thus being distracted from the
topic of the debate."

I have expressed why it is indeed in my opinion an Abusive Ad Hominem
fallacy - as proven again by my perceived need to defend my character
rather than discuss the topic. 

And as such, since this is my opinion, there is no point in arguing it.


-Tim





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