hk

Yeah, I guess I'm more used to slashdot. I'll take some time to get used to the culture of the site before poking the nest with a stick again.

I assume you're a moderator - although they're much appreciated by myself, these well-written tips will just get lost in the noise here. You might consider adding them to the FAQ yourself : )

Of course not. And I'm not fine about it at all, it's a disgusting thing to do. I just can understand why people might be driven to do it, and don't think it should be an actual crime!

I'm beginning to suspect my writing style is prone to misunderstanding, though. C'est la vie.

Not "most" countries. I am not sure it is even "many" countries. And whether something is illegal is not an argument for whether it should be illegal - see Saudi Arabia.

I don't remember defining bravery anywhere? I simply said that in my opinion, most "cowards" don't consummate their cowardice by walking up to big guys (Arrington is a big guy) and spitting on them.

Assault is punished by law according to physical consequence. If you break someone's jaw, you go to jail. If you break their heart by verbal assault, you don't.

There are no physical consequences to being spat on by a healthy person (if they are sick and do so knowingly to infect you, that is completely different). It is an insult, a grotesque one, but an insult none the less, and should be treated as such by law.

If someone with an infectious disease knowingly infects another, whether it be by unprotected sex without disclosure or by spitting, then that is malicious intent to harm and is already well covered by law.

I disagree that the issue was "something that should be common sense". Every manner of trivial insults being criminalised in modern society is a huge, profound and controversial topic.

Spot on about the expedient solution to seeing something you don't like, though.

Fair enough, I hadn't read those guidelines - thanks for the tip. Won't do it again.

I do wish those guidelines had something about why to mod up or down, though. Modding something down or up simply because you happen to agree, regardless of the quality or validity of the argument presented, will also lead to boring reading - the majority view, endlessly repeated, since it's the only "safe" thing to post.

How about that, it is illegal, at least in the US and some other places. I had no idea. I disagree, too; it's highly distasteful but shouldn't actually be criminal - but that's getting off topic.

Anyway I stand corrected.

I don't really know how to respond to that in less than a thousand words, so let's just say:

1. because he obviously has 2. I consider this to be generally accepted as truthful 3. if you don't agree then we are probably not going to agree on anything, ever

and leave it at that. This is probably breaching some law of argument ("Fallacy of Call to Common Sense" or something?) but hey, who has the time.

Huh? You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?

I don't understand what you mean, anyway. You don't like his business, you don't like his writing, but you have all sorts of cares for him? Er .. why? What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?

In my book, a man is but the sum of his actions. I can't stand Arrington's actions, therefore I can't stand him, ergo I have no sympathy for the hatred his actions have engendered amongst sum.

And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either. The coward would be writing spiteful comments anonymously on blogs. Walking up to someone and spitting in their face takes balls, IMO. Not exactly my preferred means of communication but it certainly got the point across.

Spitting in his face is going a bit far, but it's pretty difficult for me to feel sympathy for the guy. I struggle to think of a more dislikable, arrogant jerk. This belated plea for human-to-human sympathy falls on deaf ears, for me at least.

In my group, Arrington symbolises everything we hate about the "Web 2.0" greed culture. He's relentlessly promoted himself as the gatekeeper to this bullshit world of easy VC money, now crashing down around him. Good riddance.

If it hadn't been something as revolting as spitting, and instead say a nice cream pie to the face, I'd be delighted.

Huh? If you have a product that works, is growing, and revenue coming in, you don't need a VC, you need a normal business loan from a bank. If you actually have money coming in and a business plan that's demonstrably working, but just need money to expand (that's the word regular businesses use to mean "scale"), then you need to 1. get an accountant to write it up in the correct manner and 2. make an appointment with the business section of a good bank.

You still might have trouble with that right now, it's really not a good time for any kind of loans, and you can forget these multi-million dollar speculative paydays with little obligation or timeline, but if you have a proper business then you have proper business options and hopefully don't have to sell your businesses' soul to get the cash you need to grow.