Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!lll-crg!styx!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cartan!brahms!gsmith
From: gsmith@brahms.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Abuses of the net
Message-ID: <412@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sun, 23-Nov-86 16:19:58 EST
Article-I.D.: cartan.412
Posted: Sun Nov 23 16:19:58 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Nov-86 01:49:15 EST
References: <225@mind.UUCP> <21023@styx.UUCP> <228@mind.UUCP> <21030@styx.UUCP> <231@mind.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@cartan.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Organization: Math Dept. UC Berkeley
Lines: 50

Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Keywords:

In article <231@mind.UUCP> harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) writes:

>As to plurality and controversy, in place of an inclination to suppress
>it, you might say I had a certain professional interest and involvement
>in fostering it. Ad hominem abuse, on the other hand, I'm rather committed
>to combating.


   Is this one of those subtlies of language which can be appreciated
only by true language mavens? I get the impression that if you had said
you were committed to combating ad hominem abuse, you would feel obligated.
But since you are only "rather committed", you content yourself with
denouncing it--and engaging in it. Or is calling someone "obviously dis-
turbed" or a "borderline personality" not ad hominem abuse in your diction-
ary (which I will gladly and humbly stipulate to be more professional
than mine?)


>Who's dictating? I have neither the power nor the desire to dictate. I
>simply did what you profess to be defending.

   I would call this the lie outright, but I wouldn't want to fall into
the deplorable habit of ad hominem abuse--I might loose your respect,
and that I could not stand. But if you had merely written some e-mail,
or posted a complaint or a flame, that would be one thing. Instead you
tried (and succeeded) in getting your victim into trouble, and insisted
on this debate in news.misc, rather than confining yourself to sci.lang
as the rest of us would have.


>I also wished to draw the case to the attention of the relevant author-
>ities so that if (as I hoped) there were rules against such behavior,
>they might be enforced. [As it happens, the account in question was
>shut down because the individual who had posted the message was not the
>authorized user of the account, and that violated the rules of the system;
>so, as the system administrator indicated, the local matter is "moot."]

   Well, we are all happy to have such a good net.citizen with us. A
"sea green incorruptible" such as yourself is the obvious choice to decide
who next to send to the guillotine. For what it is worth (very little)
Mr. Ellis did have authorization from jurgen@brahms (the owner of the
account) to use his account--no doubt this was a violation of system
rules (I don't know what the rules are) but he wasn't a hacker breaking
in illegally.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
"The *evident* character of this defective cognition of which mathematics
is proud, and on which it plumes itself before philosophy, rests solely on
the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its stuff, and is therefore
of a kind that philosophy must spurn." -- G. W. F. Hegel