What quote? And yes, in my opinion some IRC clients have suboptimal defaults or missing support for this. It's a shame, but changing your nick to emulate a built in IRC command is in no way a solution. Away is standard, and every client should support it. In the end it's a question of the channels rules, but spamming nick-changes is annoying-- especially because people use different formats and simple filtering won't catch all cases. In addition it also breaks queries and might change your identity from a trusted nick to one that could be... everyone.
You're advocating using a hacky workaround that stems from client-side UI issues, instead of using a well-defined built in message. This just seems wrong to me, in every way.
>If you're using a bouncer, it's trivial to set it up to change your nickname when you're not there.
This is a terrible way to communicate your absence. It's spammy, potentially confusing and, worst of all, imitates a built in functionality of IRC. The _only_ correct way to set an away status is IRCs builtin `away` message.
>Saying "there's many sides to the story" is a lame excuse that people (especially politicians) use to avoid making decisions.
That might be true, but it's also true that making decisions based on a strongly opinionated argument led to literal witch hunts. With burning and everything involved. (And OS-flamewars, these are even worse). I guess the best option is to find a healthy balance between choosing a side and considering conflicting points of view.
In this case, I think there are some angles of view that might be contra-marriage but not hateful. That's all I wanted to say– I don't think Eich is a bigot, his reason might be different than the one that a a lot of people placed in his mouth.
The complex part is that a lot of people have a lot of different opinions on it. Now I don't know most of them, because I have no personal interest in it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_marriage has a few...), but dismissing every argument made against same-sex-marriage in one broad swipe is refusing to take every other point of view into consideration.
>Hypothetically, if the CEO of another tech company was revealed to have political interests in slavery, would we feel the need to tip-toe so carefully?
First, I would ask if that interest influences his job. If that's not the case, it doesn't concern the broad public. At the very least not in combination with his status as CEO. And that's it. Everything further is a witch hunt.
>While I don't feel comfortable lynching someone based on contextually irrelevant beliefs
You say the words but somehow you manage to do the exact opposite.
>I intend to demonstrate with meaningful action my commitment to a Mozilla that lives up to its ideals, including that of being an open and inclusive community.
I believe that, until proven wrong. So how about judging him by his actions as a CEO? Instead of a private donation? IMO its the only correct thing.
That was point one.
The second one I want to make is about elephants and blind people. Elephants are big– so big that blind people are only able to perceive a part of them. So they all disagree about what the elephant is. And gay marriage is an elephant and opinions are elephant parts. I doubt this elephant has just two parts labelled "Equality For Everyone" and "Hate And Bigotry". Please don't make the error of boiling down a complex issue to two sides.
Considering the (lack of) alternatives I fear that using language to argue about meaning in language is the best I can do :S.
But seriously, I think talking about what _exactly_ something is meant to represent isn't "lawyering", it's essential for a serious discussion. I got another quote, too: "The boundaries of our language are the boundaries of our thoughts".
Telepathy would propably be better though, I agree.
>I take this to be an argument about complexity. The fox side of the argument is roughly that the world is more complex than most people allow for, and one principle or world view will usually not cover an area of knowledge well.
I don't think there is a clear division between those two. Both, the fox and the hedgehog use only one view– their own to seperate signal from noise. The fox side is just more open to integrating conflicting point of views into their worldview.
What I mean to say is that in the end both use only one trick, one skill- filtering information. This of course doesn't mean that the metaphor is wrong, just that it's wrong to think that the fox doesn't filter information the same way the hedgehog does.
BTW, this reminds me of something from Laozi "Through what do I know the nature of all things? Precisely through them." While the things are many, the principle of understanding them through themself remains singular.
>Meanwhile readers of "HackerNews" and all the self-proclaimed "Hackers" at YC start-ups and all the trendy new "Growth Hackers" of course have much more in common with the CCC and hacker culture...
Please do a Ctrl+f again, I'm sure you wont find anything about HN or Start-Ups in my post.
>Like every entrepreneur at venture backed start-ups, right?!
Dunno, guess some startups are shady, guess some don't. Can we please talk about Kimble now? You're derailing the topic here.
EDIT: For a bit of background: He and the CCC were never really friendly with each other. He tried to fit in the german hacker culture, but everyone knew he was a fraud.
For example, he tried to recruit young people on the mailing list into shady jobs with promises of easy money (that he didn't have back then). There are a few other stunts, but generally he behaved like a 14 year old asshole with a big ego and too much time on his hand. Didn't help that he tried to bullshit everyone about how much money he made (DATAPROTECT LOL).
Kimble is a fraud and an asshole. The only things he's good at are marketing and scamming. Just take a look at his history- insider trading, selling userdata from a BBS he ran to a lawyer, scamming the german telcos... the list is quite long.
He's a good marketer, but one of the worst people I've read about. There's a file of his quotes (from the CCC mailing list) circulating, if you know german you should try reading that. Really gives some insight into him. For example how that l33t hacker cred he has is all for show– I wouldn't buy anything about free speech from him either. He's only interested in money. I remember one quote from one of his teachers about how Kimble was the most antisocial kid he ever teached LOL.
TLDR: You really shouldnt like the guy, read a bit about him and you'll figure out why.
You're advocating using a hacky workaround that stems from client-side UI issues, instead of using a well-defined built in message. This just seems wrong to me, in every way.