Steersman wrote:welch wrote:Steersman wrote:
<snip>
But he didn’t – the bulk of his rant was apparently her “fuckabilityâ€. Seems to me that “ugly on the inside†tends – at least for a very large percentage of men – to have limited relevance to that question. “Some of us all of the time; all of us some of the timeâ€.
Steerso, just be honest. When it comes to me you have a blind spot. I could write 65 pages with citations, and you'd still miss the point
because you don't like me.
Stop pretending.
That’s a bit of a hoot - "How come you don't love me no more?" While I’m not particularly keen to have sex with you, although if the alternative was to be thrown in a pit of poisonous spiders then I at least might reconsider, I still think you’re generally an ok guy. You certainly seem to have a fairly impressive command of some “mad Internet skillzâ€, and you apparently have a published book or two on the topics under your belt, and I rather think you make some significant sense on a number of issues. And you certainly do have a flair for some “colourful†metaphors or images.
However, it also seems that you periodically have your thumb on the scales, and tend to react more from emotion than from reason and logic – that comment above, and the recent one about Benson being cases in point.
Funny how out of the people commenting on my thing, you're pretty much the only one to miss the point.
Also, while my comments do contain *emotion*, because I think there's a place for honest feeling in things, there is a difference between that and what you accuse me of. Reason and emotion are not mutually exclusive, something you'd do well to better understand.
In one of my better "Go fuck yourself Adobe" rants, I was both furious at what their shitty installer had just put me through, but simultaneously determined to make sure they understood the details of why I was mad and why their installer needed to be fixed. Comparing it to fecophile porn was just added emphasis. And makes the article more fun to read.
Here's the bit you don't get. For years. *years* mind you, IT people on both Mac OS and WIndows had *begged* adobe to fix their installers. Using your methods, dry emails full of technical points. Very reasonable.
Results? Well, they'd started thinking about fixing it, but honestly, it was a low priority. After all, the installer isn't a profit center.
Then I post a series of angry, fact and obscenity-filled rants, and as I find out later,
hundreds of people/customers are forwarding them to Adobe, and devs and PMs INSIDE adobe are also forwarding them to the installer people, because evidently, for the first time, there was someone who had said what they were actually thinking and what they were thinking was
MY FUCKING GOD, WHY ARE YOU FUCKING TORTURING ME WITH THIS SHIT!!!!
All of a sudden things moved faster. Much.
As it turns out, reasons + emotion are really fucking effective. For example, which one describes a bigger problem:
"when your product is installed remotely, it attempts to open a finder window. As there's no checking for a current login context, this happens even when a user isn't logged in, thus creating a root login without any kind of password needed. A recommended solution would be to first check for a user context and not run <script lines> if one is not active."
or
"Okay, I asked nicely, and got ignored. Fine, I tried the carrot, here's the stick. What <vendor> is doing is just fucking stupid, and shows someone who never even thought to test their bullshit installer outside of "it works on my machine". Fortunately, their security fuckuppery is fixable, via cracking the installer package and disabling <script lines>. At that point, it will no longer open root finder windows at the login screen. Yes, Apple needs to fix that shit too, but while that's happening, <vendor> needs to live in the goddamned real world and test to see if a user's logged in before popping their "AIN'T WE COOL" window, and creating a massive security issue.
Tip for installer builders: TEST THAT SHIT REMOTELY, YOU FUCKING NINCOMPOOPS!"
As it turns out, I do both. The first bug report is the dry, logical one. The second one, some reasonable time later, usually after an update or two is where the claws come out.
Care to guess which one works better?
Now, the latter one almost got me punched in the mouth, BUT, unlike the months of ignoring the fuck out of my attempt to be reasonable and logical and dispassionate, I post the second one, and oh fuck things got fixed.
(It works with Apple too. It's just trickier to pull off. But a series of screecaps labled "areyoufuckingkiddingme_<number>.mp4" proves the point rather nicely. and is more interesting to watch.)
So, given what I've been taught, over and over, reinforced by lots of data from multiple sources, as it turns out, a combination of emotion and facts is far, far more effective than your "grail" of how to do things.
Given the choice between your Ben Stein or my Carlin, I know which one i'm going to go with. Also, means I don't fall asleep writing it.
The way I look at it is this: if the person is going to ignore the points because they aren't presented nice, then they're fucking stupid, and my experience dictates that they probably aren't going to pay much attention to those same points no matter how presented, because they've shown that they spend a lot of time looking for really weak reasons to ignore criticism.
if they do listen, even if they dislike the tone, then they're smarter than I thought they were, and worth giving another chance.
Either way, I get something out of it.