Warn­ing: flam­able.

It seems Ilan has found a fea­ture some de­vel­op­er wrote, called ref­er­ers log, and thus this blog.

Well, Ilan, I will make sure to fol­low this link so you no­tice this re­ply :-)

Since you in­tend to re­in­force your der­mal struc­ture through ex­po­si­tion to high tem­per­a­tures, let me be the first to as­sist you.

I am ful­ly aware of ev­ery­one's right to crit­i­cis­m. In fac­t, I ful­ly en­dorse it.

I al­so en­dorse my right to tell any crit­ic that his crit­i­cism has the val­ue of ma­nure. Call it meta­crit­i­cis­m.

And yes, a 10000 LOC piece of code is worth more than your lame patch. Want to ver­i­fy it? Check mar­ket val­ue of both things. You'll be amazed.

In oth­er is­sues,

• It's re­al­­ly a bad thing to use quotes on things that are not quot­ed, as you did. If you want to show em­pha­­sis, use cur­­sive or bold, not quotes.

• I am hap­py to chal­lenge your no­­tion­s, in­­stead of chal­leng­ing mine, be­­cause I think your no­­tions are stupid. want de­­tail­s?

Your no­tions are stupid be­cause:

• You make the point in a con­de­s­cend­ing man­n­er. What is that garbage about "bet­ter qual­i­­ty user­s"? if not con­de­s­cen­­sion you would hate on a de­vel­op­er? At least the de­vel­op­ers are pro­vid­ing val­ue. You aren't.

• Your project is tain­t­ed by para­noia. Noone is out to get you. Not even I am. I just don't suf­fer fools glad­­ly.

• TANSTAAFL. You get so called free soft­­ware, but you still pay for it. You don't want to pay the price, don't use it. The price, Ilan, is that you have no con­trol over it, be­­cause you did­n't pay for its de­vel­op­­men­t.

  Oh, you may say, I am get­t­ing in­­­volved. I re­leased Di­rec­­to­ry Free KDE! No, if you had got­ten in­­­volved, KDE would have those di­rec­­to­ry re­f­er­ences re­­moved, not your patch that noone will ev­er use.

• Your writ­ing style is stupid, and an idea wrapped in stu­pid­i­­ty is a stupid idea. I al­­most faint­ed with the re­f­er­ence to the "won­der­­ful­­ly sub­­ver­­sive path". Stu­pid­i­­ty.

• You ob­vi­ous­­ly have no idea of the ef­­fort in­­­volved in ac­­tu­al soft­­ware de­vel­op­­men­t. I do. I know it so well, I stopped. You just have a chip in your shoul­der and an at­ti­­tude. Your ig­no­rance drives your para­noia. Your para­noia drives your work. Your work drives noth­ing, be­­cause it's lame.

In your site, you say "think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly, think­ing dan­ger­ous­ly".

Amaz­ing as it is that you ape a mul­ti­-­bil­lion dol­lar cor­po­ra­tion's slo­gan to pre­tend to show your dis­con­formis­m, I agree.

You think dif­fer­ent­ly. You think wrong­ly, too, but at least yes, you think dif­fer­ent­ly. As for the dan­ger­ous­ly part... well, I sup­pose that if you are too busy think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly you may fall in­to a drain or some­thing.

In short:

• Your so-­­called soft­­ware project is­n't.

• It's a patch, and it's a lame one.

• Your at­ti­­tude, if you saw it in a de­vel­op­er (which you aren't), you would den­­nounce. So you are al­­so a hyp­­ocrite. (note: I am not. I ful­­ly en­joy flam­ing peo­­ple some­­times , and sup­­port ev­ery­one's right to flame and be ornery at will).

• Your im­pulse comes from sheer ig­no­rance, para­noia and con­­ceit.

I am hap­py to en­cour­age you, Ilan, in your path. Please go and prove me wrong, by de­vel­op­ing a much nicer KDE, and then mak­ing it the de­fault in many, many dis­tros.

On the oth­er hand, I am will­ing to bet USD 20 that in six months you will have noth­ing to show.

Go ahead, make my day. Or at least earn me a din­ner.

It seems my Hinges and Integration article is the first result when you search for Hinges in google.

I should get a hinge­mak­er to spon­sor me.

At least for me, since I have very lit­tle of it.

To­day I went to a meet­ing with a prospec­tive clien­t, and we were talk­ing with two peo­ple, one guy, ap­par­ent­ly man­ag­er of the com­pa­ny, and a girl, in charge of the se­cu­ri­ty area.

Blah, blah, yes, I teach for peanut­s, no, no, more peanut­s, and so on, then she tells me, she knows me from some­where.

La Pla­ta... CACI­C?

Ok, she had been, in 1996 or 1997, in the au­di­ence for a lec­ture I gave on hi­er­ar­chi­cal prox­y­ing, in a con­gress called CACI­C, in La Pla­ta.

She even re­mem­bered I was at the Uni­ver­si­dad Na­cional del Litoral at the time.

I just re­mem­ber that I did give that lec­ture at that time, and that it did­n't work out very well (I re­did it the pre­vi­ous night be­cause I lost my notes, it was a mess).

How the hell can she re­mem­ber that? I have no idea.

Ilan, dar­ling, you are para­noid. What you did is a patch. When you mod­i­fy a few strings (my guess is about 25 of them), that's not a soft­ware projec­t.

I al­so missed the part where any­one forced any­thing on your gov­ern­ment (what­ev­er that gov­ern­ment is). Must be the pow­er of the KDE guer­ril­las, sub­vert­ing the coun­try­side.

Mind you, when I say mo­ron­s, I don't mean the fol­low­ing:

• those us­ing Clarux are mo­rons

• peo­­ple who don't like cur­rent KDE are mo­rons

• peo­­ple who can't han­­dle UNIX are mo­rons

• peo­­ple who pre­fer Win­­dows are mo­rons

• peo­­ple who pre­fer Mac are mo­rons

I am specif­i­cal­ly say­ing that those who put in their web­page stuff like

Di­rec­to­ry Free kde-libs and Di­rec­to­ry Free kde-base have been re­leased (screen­shot). Both of these li­braries have been mod­i­fied to sup­port high­er qual­i­ty users (em­pha­sis mine)

are mo­ron­s. Of a very high qual­i­ty. Or at least they look like mo­rons un­til they cor­rect it.

On oth­er news: those de­vel­op­ers you clarux guys seem to dis­like so much are the ones who wrote all the fuck­ing soft­ware you are dis­tribut­ing, and they were kind enough to let you spend a week­end chang­ing strings and two icon­s, then dis­trib­ute it in such a stupid con­de­scend­ing man­ner from your web­site, which is, of course, pow­ered by more soft­ware you got as a gift from de­vel­op­er­s.

Got it? With­out those de­vel­op­er­s, you would be us­ing ground plants to draw an­telopes on the roof of your filthy caves, Clarux kid­s.

Now, that feels bet­ter. Or was it a lit­tle over the top? Nah.