chairface

At the time I posted this, plenty of others had posted their counterexamples. Mine would have just added to the noise.

Further, I would submit that it _is_ wrong to let a generalization masquerade as a general truth in public.

I am very close to agreeing with your first paragraph. Yeah, in those situations, you're to blame for being an asshole or rejecting people. But if they respond by beating you over it, the blame for _that_ falls on them.

In any case, I think what I wrote in the other thread about how I'm separating the concepts of "cause" and "blame" should clear this up.

> I find that the people I know who have succeeded are the people who don't doubt for an instant that people want them to succeed

This is not the same as "Everyone who attempts to climb the social ladder succeeds", what you are saying here is more like "Everyone who succeeds at climbing the social ladder attempts it". The latter is true, the former is what I objected to. You are ignoring the people who attempted and failed.

> You know that you're the reason I wrote this article, right? This is exactly the attitude that made me freeze my main account away. People who take things that other people say and extend them to drastic proportions just so they can be dicks about it.

Look man, you said you had a solution to the problem. What I said is hardly a leap. You have a funny definition of "drastic proportions".

> But no, you won't address the ideas I put forth. You'll nitpick. You'll be an absolute snot just so that you can gain the upper hand in an argument. And so you might reach a point where I and people like me get tired of your bullshit and walk away, and then you'll declare yourself the victor because you were the last person to make a post in my comment thread, but all you're doing is making the person on the other side want to punch yourself in the face...

You're descending into ad hominem territory here. Please don't.

I didn't address your solution because I don't think there is one, and I don't see value in arguing about it. Perhaps I misunderstand the problem you're trying to solve.

> They're interconnected.

I never said they weren't - I limited my discussion to the assigning of blame, which I took to be your primary subject as well. But now, it seems to me that you are not separating the issues of "cause" and "blame" the same way I am.

To be clear, of course the victims are part of the cause of any particular confrontation. It couldn't happen if they weren't there, so there's at least that. What I object to is assigning _blame_ to them. Causes for these things are shared - blame is given to one side or the other for their own actions.

Your commentaries on battered wives and rape focus on what happens _after_ the incident. I am asking about the incident itself. The blame for the raping and the beating lies solely with the aggressors.

> Is McDonald's to blame for making people fat? Partly.

No. McDonald's is to blame for making fatty food. There's a difference.

The entire article and most of rory's comments in this thread are about what the unpopular do to other people. I'm balancing that.

You've got a lot of living to do if you believe all that, pal. Particularly that last sentence.

> Is it wrong to say that when they are?

No. But your essay reads like they _all_ are.

> But everybody does that.

That's no excuse.

> Martyr?

Yes. Here's another example: "I'm saying that I have a right to write what I think is right". Nobody ever tried to take that right away from you, least of all me. All I did was say that you were wrong, but you have decided to carry on like I am persecuting you by attempting to take away your rights. Martyr.

> But the criticism against me for writing this piece in the first place offends me, and I don't think I'm being an asshole martyr for saying that.

Again, I never called you an asshole or criticized you as a person, as opposed to something specific that you said. Now you're being a martyr in response to me saying that you are writing with a martyr mentality.

> I feel that people who are persecuted for arrogance should at least admit that their own attitude is partly at fault

Again with this theory. Should battered wives admit that they are partially at fault because they annoyed their husbands? Should rape victims admit that they are partially at fault because they led a guy on? People are responsible for _their own actions_. No more, no less. If this means that the people you're talking about are guilty for being arrogant and annoying, then fine. I have no problem with that. But they are not responsible for the crimes committed by others.

> my solution to this problem would be twofold.

I think it's funny that you think you can solve this problem, and that we can all live in egalitarian bliss.

> But there's an attitude amongst this type of person that says they are entirely not to blame for the harassment they get

They _are_ entirely not to blame for what they get. What they _are_ to blame for is their own behavior.

I don't have a problem with you saying that some people are irritating and do annoying things. What I have a problem with is the suggestion that they _share in the blame for what others do to them as a result_. There is a difference there, and it is an important one.

To be clear, I am going on the principle that a person is alone responsible for their actions, and not for those of others.

> What's the risk for nerds?

The risk, of course, is that they'll screw something up and the tormentors will continue to torment. These are generally socially awkward people we're talking about. You're being rather silly to suggest that someone who isn't at home in social situations to begin with and has been ostracized for pretty much their entire life is not at risk of real failure in a social environment.

I'm glad that you were successful in your social ladder climb. But you are pretending that _everyone_ will be successful. It's simply not a foregone conclusion - there are losers in this game, even among those who try their hardest not to be.

> you realize that nobody is any more at risk than anybody else

This is so very false that I don't even know where to begin. Are you saying that there are not real advantages and disadvantages in social situations? Can you not see that the captain of the football team is way less likely to be harassed than the math dweeb?

> maybe it wasn't completely the jock's (or whomever's) fault that the nerds were unpopular.

I can agree with this to a point - by the time high school rolls around, yeah, the unpopular kids probably have adopted a set of behaviors that contributes to them being unpopular. However, those behaviors are probably defenses developed against some early damaging experiences. And who is responsible for those experiences? In my experience, it was those same jocks (or whatever) inflicting their damage all the way up.

Personally, I find it much more helpful not to worry about who to blame for unpopularity itself, and to focus more on what is _done_ to the unpopular. And the responsibility for that is much more clear.

> This is the world that I know. I write about it.

Except you didn't limit yourself to that. You wrote about the world that everyone experiences, and essentially told a bunch of other people that they are wrong about their own experiences.

> Are you saying that a young, bright 18-year-old shouldn't write at all because he knows that most of what he says is wrong?

I'm saying that anyone, regardless of age or intelligence, should try to avoid generalizing from their almost certainly narrow experience.

Also, the tone of your comment has certain elements of the martyr mentality that you have criticized in your essay and in these comments.

> The meek, quiet type usually gets ignored in favor of the one who talks too much in class, not because people hate smart people, but because there are certain sorts who are really jerks about it and that irritates people.

Okay, wait a second. First off, I have a hard time picturing how someone can be that much of a "jerk" by answering a teacher's question. And secondly, are you honestly siding with a bully who beats on a kid for that kind of behavior? I mean, I understand that it can be irritating to hear from the same kid all the time, but frankly, the onus is on the bully to deal with this incredibly minor irritation in a less destructive way. Your implication that those being tormented are more at fault than the tormentors sickens me.

> After the opening section I think the rant goes completely off the deep end with a rapid succession of wrong-headed generalizations.

Hang on - there was a part without wrong-headed generalizations? The way I read it, the first two sentences tripped my generalization alarm. The guy constantly extrapolates from his tiny sample and says that the whole world is that way.

I have not verified this myself, but the people you're talking about apparently have reputations and have posted work outside of StockArt. It's highly unlikely that they were just "made up".

I am flabbergasted that this guy gives the Ext documentation a better grade than jQuery's. I have to use both at work, and I can always find what I need very quickly with jQuery, but with Ext I end up hunting, sometimes for hours. Honestly, for someone just getting into Ext development and not want to use one of the pre-fab RIA stuff, the documentation is among the crappiest I have ever seen, for all its volume.

I am by no means an expert, but shouldn't it be possible for the source's ISP to tell whether the source address is spoofed?

edit: Looks like the OP managed a better explanation than I could since I loaded the page. Please disregard.

If I click on something like that, I'm expecting a page reload, not a menu.

Have you tried the Firemacs extension for Firefox? I use it with Emacs bindings, but I think it should be able to do an approximation of vi bindings as well.

1. Perhaps we simply have different definitions of malicious. I don't even think it's possible to be malicious with info on HN, unless he were to try to get our passwords or something. I just don't think karma is something to get all upset about.

2. I don't care what this is to pg. If he doesn't want it to be cracked, then he should spend some hobby time doing what every decent web programmer knows to do. There is no "element of trust" on publicly available sites. Further, note that I have not made an argument that xach has been a "great positive influence" - only not a negative one

I don't feel like any trust was violated by xach in showing us this exploit. He clearly wasn't trying to be malicious, so I frankly don't understand all of these people who are so upset about this. It sounds like a lot of pointless whining.

Frankly, if anybody has violated our trust, it's whoever wrote this exploitable code. When I use a site, especially an open source one claimed to be written by good programmers, I expect it to be protected from well-understood exploits. And pg, as the caretaker of the code (and its likely author), needs to do some talking about how "not cool" running easily exploitable code is and take some responsibility.

Unfortunately, no.

In the spring the sunrise is getting earlier as time goes by. Then the clock jumps forward an hour, which makes sunrise an hour later, causing the repeat the op talked about.

In the fall, sunrise is getting later. The clock jumps backward an hour, which makes sunrise an hour earlier. This causes the same repeat, in reverse (aka, trending darker rather than lighter).

edit: Also, I have the experience to back this up. I've been one of the living west of my workplace people for too long.

The title seems a little triumphant for my tastes - wouldn't it arguably be more accurate as "IE6 dips below Firefox in market share"?

Was the title edited? I don't see any of those things.

I don't think it's a joke - I just read it as a Britishism.

Repeat the thing I said right before "How many times must I repeat it?" It's not hard to follow. Here's where I said it before:

> Floats are simple the closest thing we can practically use

Furthermore, I did not define the "available subset" as floats. I'm saying that floats are the best available tool in that available subset for implementing table-like behavior. And yeah, they suck for that purpose, but _there is no better alternative_.

If you still don't understand that, then I'm afraid there's no use in continuing this discussion.

And for the second time, "common" and "typical" are synonyms. Furthermore, there is no one case that is "characteristic of the whole set". Apparently, in order to satisfy you, a blog post (!) must cover every type of layout. Awfully demanding, aren't you?

He is criticizing the available subset of CSS of not being tables. As I said, floats are the closest approximation currently on offer. How many times must I repeat it?

> it's posted at the bottom and away from the content

But it's HTML, and should therefore should BE content. But it's not; it's presentation.

> I thought we discussed that browsers incompatibilities are the reason for this.

You seem to be missing my point. If CSS, as implemented NOW, worked as advertised and offered a way to separate content from presentation while retaining flexibility, then we'd have no argument. I'd happily be using it for what is intended. You just can't do that now, and I'm tired of people telling me that I can.

> I would hardly call this level of adding extra markup anywhere close to other HTML where the presentation is completely ingrained.

Of course it's not completely ingrained. But I want it to be able to be completely separated before I'm going to join your camp.

In the source of csszengarden, do you also see this

> There are more classes and extraneous tags than needed, and in a real world situation, it's more likely that it would be much leaner.

and this

> <!--extra div for flexibility - this list will probably be the trickiest spot you'll deal with --> <div id="linkList2">

and this

> <!-- These extra divs/spans may be used as catch-alls to add extra imagery. --> <!-- Add a background image to each and use width and height to control sizing, place with absolute positioning --> <div id="extraDiv1"><span></span></div><div id="extraDiv2"><span></span></div><div id="extraDiv3"><span></span></div> <div id="extraDiv4"><span></span></div><div id="extraDiv5"><span></span></div><div id="extraDiv6"><span></span></div>

The HTML guy could not be "nearly clueless" about the designer's needs if CSS Zen Garden's flexibility is what you're looking for.