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Comment by crux_ | Hacker News Reader

In case your rudeness springs strictly from ignorance:

- Any time you're moving up under your own power, you're climbing.

- Any time you're moving up on a suitably steep cliff under your own power, it's rock climbing.

- If you're placing gear into the rock, then pulling on that gear -- sort of making a moving ladder -- you're aid climbing.

- If you're using ropes and gear strictly for protection, moving up with hands and feet on the rock only, you're free climbing.

- If the gear is at the top of the climb, you're top-roping. Falls are usually very safe and only a few feet.

- If you're placing the gear as you climb, then climbing above it, you're leading.

- If you forgo all the safety gear, but stay low enough that you're only risking your ankles, you're bouldering.

- Otherwise, free soloing.

The vast majority of climbers use safety gear for good reason... I'd be dead many dozen times over without it.

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"In case your rudeness springs strictly from ignorance: - Any time you're moving up under your own power, you're climbing."

1. Namecalling my comment as "rudeness" is just an ad hominem attack, so you lose. 2. According to your definition of climbing, my suggestion to build an escalator is "climbing" so why are you calling it rude when it is also climbing according to you?

I did say I don't get what was so special about a C-clamp that just looks like an inverted version of what I have seen before. I am entitled to my opinion of what is cool or not, why be a hater and attack me? I never criticized you for using safety gear.

It's very different from a C-clamp. You'll notice that it has four pivoting logarithmic spirals on the ends (two on each side). That way the clamp tightens when you pull on it. That design is similar to a cam, except that a cam goes inside a crack and the spirals are facing in the opposite direction.

yes, that is a good point, maybe scissor clamp with cams would have been a better way for me to explain it if I had been more precise.

Nobody's hating, you are being rude. Saying you're rude isn't an ad hominem, it's a description of your behavior. It's an ad hominem if you had made an argument rudely, and someone said, "he's wrong because he's rude." Crux, on the other hand, is informing you. Which you find offensive.

I think you might find a better home at Digg.

  13 year old hacker who loves computers and freedom.

Might explain some of it.

That's ad hominem, now. (Though understandable.)

I didn't attack ;) Just saying their age might play a part in their comments.

I only said ad hominem, not attack. :-p

For what it's worth: that's new. I checked earlier to find out who this person was, and the profile simply had a link to http://gruupr.com/. The profile update seems fishy.

I changed my profile out of frustration. Obviously, I am not 13 years old. I just changed it again now to "Dyslexic 31 year old who loves computers and freedom. and I can be reached via gruupr.com.

I apologize for offending you and for being rude.

It's not a C-clamp. A c-clamp won't produce nearly as much leverage. It is the difference between a vice grip and a plyer. I can assure you there were plyers before vice grips, and the guy who invented vice grips went on to make a whole lot of money selling them to people who had a problem a pair of plyers couldn't solve.

Could the vice-grip idea be applied to this anti-cam, to make it easier to place one-handed?

yes, now that I understand it, it is pretty cool and it must have taken a lot of work to get it right.

Technically speaking, an escalator wouldn't be moving up under your own power, would it? But: if you walk up ten flights of stairs, have you not climbed ten stories?

It's important to read carefully, especially definitions. Giving a list of commonly accepted definitions is not attacking you.

Edit: The beginning of this video has some nice ladder building for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY1lNAEzZP0

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