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Comment by guimarin | Hacker News Reader

It can be done. Look at the US. Ever had to fill out, 'Not a member of the Nazi Party between 1933-1945? The US Citizenship test in no way makes the US look like a 'serious jerkwad.'

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My original intent was to point out with sarcasm how taking what this CEO said as anything more than a publicity stunt/icebreaker for employees looking to leave yahoo, is absolutely absurd. OP is a result of way too much naval gazing on a pretty cut and dry topic. Yahoo is acting the villain, so let's incentivize employees to leave them. I don't think anyone believes seriously that the CEO is either going to keep a big list, or start acting this way towards other valley companies. He is capitalizing on the hype surrounding yahoos use of the 'nuclear option.'

Implementation of such a system is riddled with flaws, as evidenced by the fact that the US still asks people [ with a straight face as well ] if they were a member of the Nazi party on current citizenship tests.

To add some perspective Yahoo has just entered the ranks of a Grade-A patent troll. That is the _worst_ of their offenses. That puts them in the same league as Intellectual Ventures. That's it. They're no worse.

Let's not lose sight of that. There's no real "news" here, apart from the sad realization that this is the strongest signal yet that Yahoo is now just an empty shell of suits, bean counters, and lawyers.

To be clear, Yahoo has implemented and currently has in production the things covered by the patents. As much as I don't like what they are doing, they are pretty far above a patent troll.

Nice, pretty solid bit of Godwin's Law trolling. I'm not interested in debating this to the level of detail that will spare me being called a nazi by someone on the internet, so suffice it to say that _any_ blacklist based on generalized attributes and affiliations will unfairly target innocents.

Companies have lots of tactics to shorten applicant stacks ("wrote a personalized cover letter", "minimum 12yrs experience HTML5", "name printed in blue"). Power to Yammer if they want to add "dates employed at yahoo" to the list - talented folks will have little trouble finding work.

I think the Godwin-ing of the thread happened in the original post, which referred to Stalin. Responding with Nazi stuff is not an escalation at that point.

I guess there is supposed to be a brief pact before the escalation.

It's really really hard to avoid Godwin when discussing the responsibility of the rank and file of an organization for the actions of the whole. It's the model case.

> It's really really hard to avoid Godwin when discussing the responsibility of the rank and file of an organization for the actions of the whole.

This is a deeply idiotic statement. In fact, it's quite easy to talk about how much responsibility Yahoo employees have for the intellectual property lawsuits started by management, and yet not make use of comparisons to the Nazis.

When the roads into Sunnyvale have signs saying "Arbeit macht frei" over them, then you can feel free to make such comparisons. Till then, you're a complete jackass.

No, it's not. It's a debate commonly held when people claim to be innocent of the actions of an institution that they were a part of, and the source of modern debates about the ethics that apply are sourced in the writings of Arendt about the subject. You're not the only person in the room that realizes that Yahoo aren't the Nazis, Facebook aren't the victims of WWII, and Yammer certainly isn't Nurnburg, so cut the name calling and histrionics.

Just because naked mole rats aren't ants doesn't mean you can't refer to ants when talking about them, silly.

Does checking that off automatically disqualify you from being a citizen or does it simply spark an investigation into what your role was in the party?

One of my friends Dad immigrated here after WWII from Germany and he was HY (forced) and he got his citizenship. From his decription, it only triggers a check against of list of people the US would like to have a "deeper conversation" with.

As a good example for how long it might take people to wise up about IP (it needs to be abolished wholesale), take note that US citizenship stuff still asks if people are a member of the Communist Party.

If the US Citizenship test assumed all Germans from 1933-45 were volitional Nazis, then yes it'd be a jerkwad test.

If you collect a paycheck from the Gestapo, it doesn't really matter whether or not you call yourself a Nazi.

Thanks for invoking the Godwin's law. I can easily ignore this comment thread.

I think you're confusing his argument with Godwin's law because of the similarity with a nazi analogy. But above all, the Godwin's law is an Ad Hominem, which is not what guimarin is doing. He's just fighting an analogy with another analogy.

I do agree that both of them have bad analogies :) But that's a different problem, it's not an Ad Hominem.

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