Re: OS X compile

On Jul 11, 9:15 pm, George Smith <gsm...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Wanderer wrote:

[snip]

I thought I said this conversation was over.

They never listen.

George Smith wrote:
I don't care. I am here to discuss Angband, not to discuss Neo or
have my own identity questioned. This is all off-topic, apparently
inflammatory, and counterproductive.

Then why are you continuing to respond to posts on the subject?

Because people keep posting them, and their posts are wrong and need
correcting.

Right on.

Go away, you're bothering me.

By behaving as you have been, you are bothering multiple people.

I have not been "behaving" in any particular way. I try to discuss
Angband, but people keep trying to change the subject to whether I'm
this Neo guy or not, for some silly reason, and the ones that think I am
keep pestering me because they don't like him. It's all rather
ridiculous, especially when anyone that finds me bothersome can probably
filter out my posts somehow.

They can, except for google groups users. They just don't want to.
They LIKE being assholes in public.

Please do not be rude.

After you.

Heh. That's almost exactly what I said. Good luck with that. :P

This is supposed to be a forum for discussing Angband, not a forum for
discussing Neo or for calling people names that you think might be Neo.

Right on.

If you continue to misuse it, perhaps I will need to have a word with
whoever runs things.

Unfortunately, nobody much "runs things" on usenet. You'd have to
either complain to each attacker's individual internet provider (and
that means figuring out who that is, and knowing what to do if your
messages bounce or are ignored, in violation of RFCs, as has become
sadly very common these days), or else try to convince Google to not
keep any archives of any nasty off-topic drivel from the group. Most
ISPs aren't very responsive to complaints about anything but copyright
infringement these days, and Google isn't responsive to complaints
about pretty much anything at all unless actually dragged into court
(and then they're all too cooperative; witness the recent Viacom vs.
Google video records nonsense, which clearly violates the VPPA and
other laws, not to mention the fucking First Amendment).

Good luck with that, in other words. And I do mean that sincerely,
even though you're not completely innocent of insulting me yourself.

My point is that, *regardless of whether or not someone else has been
offensive to you*, behaving in that fashion *is* offensive.

So it's OK for someone to be offensive to me, but it's not OK for me to
simply tell everyone, in response, that whatever nasty stuff they said
about me isn't true?

You're warped!

That's putting it mildly. I lay the blame at a certain recipe being
incorrectly prepared with Chlorox in place of flour; see my previous
post.

I do expect them to behave in a manner which is *reasonable*

And I do. I, unlike you, don't find it unreasonable for someone to
publicly dispute it when publicly maligned.

Right on.

I give explicit warning of the fact that I am not going to be reasonable
on the specific point in question, and if anyone else continues to
expect me to then that becomes their problem.

Oh, so this is about "being reasonable", and "compromise", and "going
along to get along" now, is it? In other words, if someone is nasty to
me and publicly insults me, I should compromise and accept *half* the
insults even if I honestly believe ALL of them to be baseless slurs?

Sorry. No can do.

Right on.

No, I'm not. In part, this may well be because I tend to treat people
fairly well.

You parroted this uncritically, but I guess I can't blame you for
that, as you don't have quite the history with this newsgroup and its
subpopulation of nutters as I do. From long experience, I know that he
most certainly does not "tend to treat people fairly well", or at
least that he makes exceptions for anyone that either a) is me, b)
maybe sorta resembles me in some slight way, or c) does not treat him
as a superior. :P

When I do treat people poorly, I expect them to call me on
it.

Then why did you write a book-length diatribe when I did so?

Because he's lying. Duh.

I don't like Neo because he is [numerous insults deleted]

No. None of the nasty things that The Wanderer has said or implied
about me are at all true.

Christ, George, did you HAVE to leave that nasty little thing in
there, verbatim? It's like almost getting blown up by a land mine and
then not doing the rest of us the courtesy of disarming the bloody
thing, and then I come along and step right on that fucker. :P

He gets quite enough exposure posting his insulting twaddle once,
without you going and parroting it so that now there are TWO copies
for people to possibly stumble onto with a google search and read, and
maybe even believe. :P

At least now both copies have replies hanging off them that explain
that none of that nonsense was true...but double the copies, double
the work for me, work I shouldn't actually have to do in the first
place, seeing as I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG. Sheesh!

I haven't seen very many posts by him (I assume several of the
"someth...@xxxxxxxxx" personas are him?)

Yes, but they're not separate personas -- they're just a workaround
for various awkwardnesses with google fucking groups.

but those that I have seen and
that I'm fairly sure were him have been a mixture of rude and not-rude,
and all of the rude ones that I saw were in response to someone
maligning him or mistaking me for him.

Someone actually has working eyes, besides me? Nearly everyone else
has vision that's shot to hell, and just sees a blur of rudeness
without any distinction of where and under what circumstances it
arises or does not arise. :P

Perhaps if you left the poor guy alone instead of behaving vindictively,
rude postings by him would stop.

That is, indeed, the case.

(Admittedly many of them are not particularly polite to
him, but I gather that most of them are so in response to his having
behaved this way on previous occasions.)

Behaved what way? Not kowtowing to the Great and Mighty Self-Declared
Poobah of Usenet? Or any of the several thousand *other* Poobahs that
seem to exist out there? :P

Might as well prescribe the death penalty for crossing a street *with*
the lights. (I don't even want to know what any of them would do to
*jaywalkers*. Torture, I suppose, would be involved.)

(In my experience, crossing with the lights just gets me honked at by
at least one arrogant SUV driver who thinks he owns the road and
didn't even signal that right turn anyway. And the fucker invariably
stops with the nose of his gas-guzzling climate-wrecking behemoth well
over the fucking stop line and halfway into the fucking crossing zone.
But it doesn't get me killed, or even subjected to perpetual rudeness
and abuse in some particular newsgroup forever after. :P)

Someone has to break the cycle. My own rule is to try to always be
civil, but especially to never, ever lash out at someone unprovoked.

Ditto.

If
you don't like him, but he posts a perfectly on-topic and reasonable
post about Angband, don't flame him in response.

Right on. (If only I had the time, these days...)

Either respond civilly
and without impugning his honor in any way, shape, or form, or just
ignore him.

Right on.

Is it really THAT hard to ignore someone?

Apparently, it is if you're one of *them*. Whoever *they* are. :P

This was true before I ever
posted anything to or about him - though it was not as strongly true as
it has become since his responses to me have convinced me that he is not
even slightly amenable to reason in this matter

You will find that quite a lot of people are "not even slightly amenable
to reason" when your definition of "being reasonable" is "let me call
you all sorts of names in public and don't say anything to contradict
me", as seems to be the case. More generally, people that are quite
reasonable and willing to compromise on other matters will not be when
their own name is being dragged through the mud; then they will fight,
and fight hard.

Indeed.

It's one thing to debate which weapon is better, Ringil or the Glaive of
Pain. It's quite another to debate whether or not such-and-such a
person, who reads the forum, is evil/bad/whatever. You will find the
subject of discussions of the latter nature often unwilling to
"compromise"; he's not evil or whatever and that is non-negotiable; he's
not bad and that's final.

Indeed.

Debates on such a topic are singularly unproductive. I recommend that
you not waste your time on such debates in the future.

Unfortunately, right though you are you're also wasting your time
trying to convince any of the wankers that persist in this pattern of
usenet abuse. They either know and don't care, or they're such
severely retarded morons as to be completely uneducable on the matter.
Each one being one or the other, perhaps separately.

I also consider [insult deleted].

No, The Wanderer is the one that is not worthwhile.

None of the nasty things that The Wanderer has said or implied about
me are at all true.

Insulting Neo is counter-productive; see above. Giving me back-handed
compliments is not much better.

Seconded.

Neo has proven to be impervious to attempt to
convince him that this behaviour is not the best approach

Why continue trying, then?

Because either he's a moron or he's actually trying obliquely to
convince other people that I'm evil when he does this. Either way, his
claims are baseless and without merit. I'm impervious to his attempts
for the same exact reason that I'm impervious to any attempt to
convince me that three is an even number. :P

[implied insults deleted]

No, you're the curmudgeonly ***.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

And mentally transferring his alleged deficiencies onto completely
innocent third parties is even more pointless and counterproductive.

True enough. And props for not forgetting to use the word "alleged"
there.

Keep it up and before long you now have TWO [insult deleted]

No, you're the curmudgeonly ***.

None of the nasty things that you have said or implied about me are at
all true.

By the time you're done with
them, you see, they've both learned that spending the time and effort to
compose and submit a worthwhile, informative post on the subject of
Angband is a waste of their time because all they'll get in response is
several variations on the theme of "you suck" and one or two long,
nit-picky dissections criticizing every last thing, with predominantly
specious and trumped-up charges, no less.

Good point here. Too bad it has about as much chance of penetrating
these idiots' thick skulls and actually reaching their shriveled,
desiccated, underdeveloped excuses for brains as a three-inch ice pick
has of penetrating the Greenland ice ***. (Though the latter might
change before much longer if those SUV drivers have their way. :P)

Most likely, he doesn't even play anymore and only hangs around so that
he can respond when publicly badmouthed instead of risking letting the
chronic badmouthing go unchallenged with who knows what long term
consequences for him.

Sort of. I'd play more, but I don't have the time lately. Posting on-
topic here, however, would indeed likely be a waste of my time, given
the probable reception it would receive, regardless of the merits of
its content considered in isolation. Not because of anything I did
wrong, even; but merely because I've been badmouthed enough here for
it to have taken its toll with the general population. :P

Perhaps a waste of his time, but I'm not sure I
wouldn't do the same in similar circumstances. Regardless of any
possible long term harm from being chronically badmouthed (I'd think
there might be none in such a small, esoteric forum as this, but then
again who knows how findable it might be if someone googles him someday?

It's very findable, and you should be even more afraid. If they really
start laying into you, and George Smith is actually your real name,
then you're probably doomed.

At least he's insulated by using a pseudonym. Several pseudonyms,
actually.

That hasn't stopped several of my attackers from making various
intrepid attempts to figure out my real name. Yes, they are that
vicious and determined to do me harm. If they didn't intend for their
badmouthing to affect my reputation everywhere and not just here, then
why would they try to identify me? The only *other* reason I can think
of is even *worse* -- so that they can add physical harassment,
threats, beat-downs, or similarly to their repertoire of nastiness.

I'm afraid that by simply showing up in this newsgroup and resembling
me in some way, you've potentially attracted the negative attention of
some *very* nasty people.

(So far, their attempts to identify me have failed. Laughably, they
spent quite a while fixated on a particular wrong identification,
refusing to admit defeat. One of the idiots is STILL fixated on that
particular wrong identification, but he doesn't post in rgra.)

I expect there's some satisfaction to be derived from
catching people that go to badmouth him "behind his back" red-handed and
calling them on their behavior.

Not really. I find it fairly boring drudge-work, actually, though far
more pleasant than the consequences of *not* doing so, of letting my
vigilance lapse for even an eyeblink...

I've seen, firsthand, the consequences when someone fairly close to me
was given a similar treatment. Actually, it was somewhat worse, in
that a) the attackers had her real name and b) they did, indeed, stoop
to physical intimidation, though not quite violence, on at least one
occasion sending a big, intimidating-looking goon to follow her around
at a public event and glower at her. She did the sensible thing and
brought the big, intimidating-looking goon to the attention of two
even bigger, more intimidating looking uniformed policemen, and as I
recall he kept his distance from her for the rest of the event. Now
that's what I call standing up for yourself! I'd like to think that if
the same happened to me, I'd do the same, rather than slink off like a
coward. :P

But the ending isn't very pretty, all the same. For all that she stood
up to them, her name throughout the town became mud, all because of
baseless accusations for which her harassers had no actual evidence,
but which they repeated ad nauesam whenever they had a soapbox to do
so from. Perhaps if every single false charge had been immediately
followed by a reply saying "Not true!" and pointing out their lack of
evidence, things would have turned out differently. In the end, I was
the only one left standing by her; everyone else, even people who
didn't seem the type to believe any old random scuttle***, gradually
withdrew from her. Eventually she left that town and we've not been in
touch since. (I don't even live in that town anymore, having left for
other reasons later, chiefly skyrocketing rents and other cost-of-
living expenses there.)

(No, she wasn't my girlfriend, and no, I can't divulge any more
(especially not her identity) without violating a confidence.)

In extreme circumstances, doing something like that *once* to cut
off a conversation which plainly is going nowhere good might be
acceptable.

That's what I tried to do, but people keep not getting the message
and continuing the conversation that is unwelcome and off-topic.

Then the appropriate thing to do is ignore it from that point.

You just don't get it, do you? I do not want people discussing me behind
my back any more than Neo seems to. I am not a subject. I am not open
for debate. I am a person and I demand the minimum level of respect that
is automatically owed one, and that includes not being treated as a
public figure unless I'm also getting a seven-figure salary as compensation!

Right on!

 > If you do

not do so, then you have not "cut off" the conversation.

If it continues at all, then clearly it has not been cut off.

Point, set, match. George gets the trophy. It's a wonder idiots like
this even reach the qualifying rounds. Oh, wait, that's because there
are no qualifying rounds, and they let any old moron with two fingers
and a rudimentary grasp of at least one written language post to
usenet. :P

Even if I
ignore it, other people will read it, and may read, uncritically, some
insulting slur directed against me. And *won't*, if I'm ignoring it,
read any rebuttal of same. And that, my friend, poses a serious problem.

Someone other than me sees the light! It's a miracle! Hallelujah!

(Actually, you seem to have done that with this
very post, though it remains to be seen whether you will follow through
on it by not responding.)

No can do -- you didn't stop posting about me, and suggesting things
about me that simply aren't true, so I'm clearly not done correcting you
yet.

Oooh. Wanderer just got 0wnz0red. Methinks he's now underestimated
*two* opponents. He should learn how to pick his fights better. Here's
a tip: in the school playground, you pick on the kids that are
*smaller* than you are, *not* the ones that are *bigger* than you are.
On the Internet it's the same, except that you replace physical size
with IQ. :P

I'm not even sure I recognize the concept of an "incriminating silence"
in casual discussion.

Casual discussion? Who knows how easily all this crap might get dug up
by someone's google search some day.

I do, and unfortunately the answer is "pretty easily".

As near as I can figure, almost
anything that occurs in a publicly accessible space or forum goes on
some sort of "permanent record" these days -- you may be randomly
photographed in the street, cameras surveill stores and many other
open-to-the-public spaces, and google archives darn near everything that
happens on the net.

Yep. That's about the size of it.

As a result, all public badmouthings have the same
potential for doing damage as does a libelous hatchet-job in the New
York Times, given that anyone particularly interested in a person will
probably google their name, at minimum, and perhaps dig deeper than that.

And another hallelujah! Someone else does indeed see the light, and
think more than one move ahead, and see through the illusion of a cozy
little forum with only a handful of people in it. The invisible, all-
seeing eye of Google makes all of this indeed as public as published
letters to the editor; I've used the comparison myself recently.

Perhaps I should follow Neo's example and adopt a pseudonym, or even a
whole passel of them that I use interchangeably.

One of them will do. Even if you use more, everyone will end up
referring to you with one, and all the attack posts against you in
particular will come up under one. So using many won't dilute them
(but may dilute your own message somewhat); I have multiple email
addresses for unrelated reasons, which have to do with the shitty
excuse for a usenet provider I'm stuck with. Which happens to be
Google. :P

Perhaps we all should.

Indeed. I continue to be baffled by peoples' willingness to expose
their real names online, given the variety of threats that become
greater hazards when one does, ranging from identity theft and similar
scams to reputation damage at the behest of a bunch of random know-
nothing goons in ex-Soviet republics or even outright physical
stalking.

Women especially, but men too.

If you knew what was out there, you wouldn't use your real name online
in a million years, except in private (preferably *encrypted*)
communications with a handful of people that you trusted, if even
then.

Not that the multiple-nicknames thing does him that much more good than
using a single one, since everyone just calls him "Neo", and anything
bad said *about* him can be found with a single search.

Yeah, but ... see above.

On the other hand, that same search will find a truckload of irrelevant
trivia. Matrix movie nonsense plus things relating to however-many
zillion other people all jumped on the "Neo is a cool handle" bandwagon
because of the trilogy.

That's the idea. Plus, it's a cool handle. :)

So maybe we should all use a single pseudonym each, but make it a widely
used one that is unique in this one forum but will not be anywhere close
to unique otherwise.

Trinity, Morpheus, Akira, Ranma, etc. come to mind. Add on numbers if
necessary. A random first name that is your gender but isn't your real
first name, with a number instead of a last name. Use common names.
Any well-known fictitious figure -- King Lear, Hamlet, etc.; anything
that will confuse the hell out of Google. That makes your pseudonymity
stronger, and helps to better insulate one part of your life
(especially online) from another.

Because really, you never know. You could post something innocuous
here and one of the nuttier of this planet's six and a half billion
inhabitants who *doesn't even post, so you don't know he's reading it*
decides it's a secret decoder ring that actually means that you're
about to move into the final phase of your plot to take over the
planet and enslave the population, not to mention that you've got
tentacles and six eyes. Then he comes after you with a hunting rifle,
army-surplus night-vision goggles, actual working hand grenades, and a
crate of .30-08 ammo one night. (Women have more to fear from your
garden variety rapist, though, I'd expect.)

Certainly I do not recognize it to the extent of
posting such a response to every perceived slur, rather than (at most)
intermittently when some especially egregious slur is made.

The last time I looked, there's a quite successful multi-billion dollar
industry whose business model is predicated on the belief that endless
repetition of even a silly, inane, or downright wrong message will
eventually cause people to at least half-believe it more or less by
default, and induce in them a desired knee-jerk reaction to seeing the
message of the subject somewhere, e.g. on store shelves.

Holy ***! George scores another hole-in-one! I thought I was the only
one who'd made that particular connection, between the unreasonable
effectiveness of smear campaigns and the unreasonable effectiveness of
annoying, intrusive television advertising. :P

[lots more of what ought to be common sense but seems instead to be
damned rare deleted]

Right on.

The one remaining question is: Which equal and opposite message would
you prefer? A steady series of comments denying that there's any truth
to your slurs, or a steady series of counter-slurs sullying *your* good
name?

I don't think mutual assured destruction works as a deterrent to these
guys. They're cracked. Completely and thoroughly cracked. They
wouldn't even blink; they'd just keep coming and the hell with the
consequences to themselves. They're *obsessed*. About me, and
therefore probably about you if they continue to think you have
anything to do with me. They may even think you have tentacles and six
eyes. :P

I think you're currently getting the better deal, from me if not from
Neo. But that can change in a hurry, if I feel you have done something
"especially egregious" to deserve it...

I've tried it all, you know. Nothing will convince them to leave me
alone, not arguments from moral imperatives, nor arguments from their
own self-interest, nor anything else I thought of. And in all
likelihood, anything you can think of, I already did; my IQ was tested
once and found to be at the limit of their ability to measure. If I
haven't found a solution to this other than the slow, grinding
stalemate of insult and counter, insult and counter, then it's
unlikely that anybody will, save a specialist who manages to diagnose
one of these goons and cook up a cure for whatever the hell it is that
they have. And a bunch of burly orderlies to strap them down and
inject them with it, since I doubt any of them would take it
willingly, though they'd thank them for it afterward, if it really did
work. :P

Furthermore, while posting some response to even most such comments
might not be unacceptable (I am honestly not certain), cutting the
comments themselves out in the way that you have been doing would still
be just as rude.

If someone calls me an idiot, say, I am obligated to either silently
assent to the charge or else to repeat it and thereby give it double its
original exposure? According to what insane rulebook?

These clowns make the rules up as they go along, and always interpret
them so as to favor themselves. When actual rulebooks (or RFCs, or
newsgroup charters/FAQs, or ISP terms of service, or fucking Emily
Post for that matter) are pointed out to them, they completely ignore
anything in them that doesn't favor their cause, which is continued
harassment no matter the cost. :P

I've actually seen much worse than this particular example of
stupidity and making up rules to favor themselves. Much, much worse.
Their "children should be seen and not heard" act is almost *cute*, in
a certain quaint Victorian way, compared to some of their more
egregious purported rules.

I will not give any slur against me some extra free bonus advertising
space. If you want it repeated, you can do your own damn dirty work and
write it twice.

Right on.

It would, moreover, be significantly more effective in most cases to be
reasonable, open, and relaxed about the matter.

I am "reasonable, open, and relaxed" about most matters. I will not
compromise on questions about my own character or honor, however. You
have no business raising such questions about a non-famous person in
public, especially not in any forum that is likely being archived for
posterity. Famous people become topics of household and public
discussion, and the subjects of sleazy tabloid journalism in
questionable taste. They also make multi-million-dollar salaries, as a
rule, and can hire armies of their own PR flacks to publish counter-spin
and lawyers to pursue libel actions.

Point.

When people are permitted to post slurs about ordinary workaday people
on the internet, on the other hand, they are creating a world in which
no person is free of the ever-glaring eye of tabloid-style journalism,
not even that vast majority that are dependent on the goodwill of
employers, prospective future employers, prospective dates, and so forth
for what quality of life they do enjoy, rather than being able to buy
such things or trade on fame, and who furthermore do not have the
resources to litigate every written, archived, public misuse of their
name or to launch their own PR campaigns in their favor.

Point.

In short, the internet has had the unfortunate side effect of making it
possible for anyone to ruin just about anyone else, and difficult for
"anyone else" to fight back. They can take protective measures, such as
using a pseudonym; I don't think I will be making many more internet
posts under my real name, fairly common though it is, save to defend
myself against any further slurs here. Not after what I've just seen,
and after finding and reading some of Neo's posts where he expressed
similar concerns.

Point. (So, rather than come up with much of this stuff independently,
you've read some of my posts and elaborated on the points I'd made
somewhat. No problem, so long as you cite sources, as you did here,
instead of plagiarize wholesale. :))

In the meantime, it behooves you and everyone else here to act
responsibly and not attack anyone else's reputation, except maybe if
they're a) famous, b) wealthy, and c) deserving of your wrath, so for
instance George W. Bush.

Point, set, match. Game over. The Wanderer loses.

Responding to
accusations of being Neo ([insult deleted])

No. None of the nasty things that The Wanderer has said or implied
about me are at all true.

Here you go again, gratuitously insulting Neo again, while also
contributing nothing either a) on topic or b) worthwhile to this forum.

Sing it, brother.

I have given logical reasons why a) such accusations are wrong and b)
making them is pointless anyway and shouldn't be done. One reason that
in my mind suffices on its own is that it's not on the subject of
Angband, and therefore it's off-topic here.

Sing it, brother. (But your words are wasted on this clown. I doubt
anything short of a medical cure or being forced to recant at gunpoint
will get these goons to change their ways, or their minds about me.
The brass ring I'm playing for is their failing to convince any more
to become like them. I don't know how entrenched their opinions of you
are yet, but if they think you're me ... well, let's just say may God
have mercy on your soul. :P)

impression of you before this thread, so I did not expect you to respond
to that accusation by behaving in that way; I was surprised, and
somewhat disappointed

Then you are wrong about that behavior being "bad". It is not. In Neo's
case, it may be questionable seeing as he isn't posting under his real
name

It is not at all questionable, particularly in light of their attempts
to uncover my real identity. (Not that you could be expected to know
about those when you wrote this.)

but even then, I don't see anything wrong with responding to
insults to debunk them -- it seems more dangerous to let them go
unchallenged, especially in a place where they likely get archived for
posterity. It would be like failing to respond to a gross
mischaracterization that was published in the letters column of one's
local newspaper, rather than like failing to respond to someone casually
badmouthing you in passing in the street or some of your enemies
privately sharing jokes at your expense with one another, out of the
public view.

And George is right once again. Couldn't have said this better myself.

(On the other hand, if people casually badmouth you in passing in the
street, then you're already in deep trouble. Perhaps you failed to
respond in your own defense when badmouthed in the press?)

*shudder* That last bit reminds me all too much of what happened to
that girl that time.

Plainly they are not being effective
when he uses them; why then would [implied insult deleted]

No, The Wanderer is the crazy one.

None of the nasty things that The Wanderer has said or implied about
me are at all true.

Effectiveness has to be judged based on results. If he's trying to
convince you not to hate him, he's wasting his time, but if he's trying
to defend himself in front of the same audience in front of which he's
being badmouthed, then his behavior makes much more sense.

Indeed. But, then, logic isn't The Wanderer's strong suit, is it? Nor
is honesty. It probably suits him to deliberately assume in his text
that one set of results is the goal even when I've explicitly stated
different goals on multiple occasions and he bloody well knows it.
That I am achieving the real goal isn't something he cares to trumpet;
he'd be saying "Hey, everyone! I've lost another battle and I'm losing
the war!"...so, instead, he pretends my behavior has a different goal
and points out that it doesn't achieve that goal, partly to make me
look stupid, and partly to try to trick me into switching from a
winning strategy to a losing one so that he actually stands a chance.

Now, of course, he will try the same tricks on you, now that you've
gotten onto his target-list somehow. (By resembling me in some way,
apparently.) Be vigilant!

My guess is that you have forgotten that our audience probably is vastly
larger than just the people reading this forum today, particularly for
anyone posting under his or her real name.

Or he conveniently chooses to pretend not to know that, while he's
really intentionally playing to that exact audience.

Don't underestimate how duplicitous and villainous these people can
be. I've been around their type for longer, and I know...

If this were a chatroom where everything disappears five seconds after
being said, then you'd have some valid points; it would be better to let
insults slide, if they weren't too severe and the wrong people weren't
present to see them.

I think sometimes people log chat sessions, too, and misuse the
logs. :P

But then, our phone conversations are not private anymore either. Just
ask Obama, who has stabbed us all in the back on the 9th, a date which
will live in infamy.

(Hmm. You seem to be posting from an Italian ISP. I suppose that last
might not have made much sense to you, then. :P)

(Or are even chatrooms being archived these days? Who can tell? There's
often at least one guy in one that just sits there and doesn't say
anything. Is he really a recorder or camera of some sort masquerading as
a human being? Paranoia ... but then just replace "chatroom" with
"barroom" in the preceding paragraph.)

Yeah. Usually a bot of some sort. Or just people that left it logged
in while they went to go do something else. Any of which might be
logging it, either for private use of some sort or semi-officially in
some sense.

See above. The conversation is supposed to be over, but then someone
writes another slur. THEY are continuing it.

Then that's their problem.

Except that when someone badmouths me in public, especially in a forum
that is probably being archived by Google or somebody, and especially if
they badmouthed me using my real name, then it is also my problem, as
explained above.

The Wanderer either knows this and pretends not to, or is never going
to learn this for much the same reasons that someone of *normal*
intelligence is never going to learn quantum field theory. But you get
an A for effort.

If you have refuted the accusation once, and
indicated that you consider the matter done with, then as long as you do
not see any place to inject further constructive discussion you should
leave them to flail about as much as they want to.

What happens if someone reads only the newer stuff and sees another
stupid accusation but not the refutation that is now collecting dust?
Even someone searching some archive years from now might sort by date
and ignore all but the most recent material; or a recent accusation and
its set of zero replies might come up as highly relevant while an old
accusation and its freight of replies that rebut it languishes somewhere
around result #3,565,578 of 8,331,586 in some Google results.

All good questions, but see above. My opponents, who now seem to also
be your opponents, are for the most part either too stupid or too
dishonest for any of this to be of any useful effect, I'm afraid.

leave them looking like the fools, and you come out looking like the
superior and more mature person.

So you say. Since you were recently calling me names in public yourself,
though, I have a pretty good idea of just how far I can trust you to
have my best interests at heart when suggesting something to me.

And George grabs the brass ring. So many people seem to actually fall
for this buddy-buddy routine, even coming from someone that had just
two hours earlier been sticking the knife in and twisting it, instead
of thinking "Wait a minute -- this guy just attacked me. He's clearly
my *enemy*. Anything he says that seems friendly or useful is bound to
be some sort of a trick. A *real* friend wouldn't have attacked me
earlier!"

Now this entire line of inquiry is both unwelcome and off-topic for
this forum. This conversation is over, and none of this off-topic
nonsense is up for further debate.

Sorry - that is neither possible

Unless someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to write
stuff to post here, it sure as hell IS possible.

Now what part of "this conversation is over" don't you understand?

I am not a public figure. [etc ... deleted]

True, but also: Waste of breath. See various places above.

Now see here. In my country, we have these nifty fellas called
"lawyers".

Oh, boy. Here come the legal threats. Unfortunately, I don't think The
Wanderer will be intimidated by that any more than he'll be convinced
by reason. In fact, it's quite possible he's located somewhere where
it won't be easy for you to prosecute, no matter how strong your case
against him may be.

[libel litigation threat deleted]

Technically, he's violating libel laws left and right, of course; they
all are. Unfortunately, enforcement of these on the internet seems to
be lax, and will probably remain so until several prominent
politicians in several countries have been massively libeled online
and discovered that it's just as deadly as sleazy tabloid journalism
in a print paper, and even harder to fight back against.

Actually, scratch that. Politicians are always being badmouthed and
respond with spin and spam, and most of the nasty things said about
them are true anyway. Substitute the rich, but private, individuals
that happen to own some of the biggest corporations then. They're used
to being out of the limelight and quietly going about their business,
usually near some very expensive and exclusive set of 18 little holes
in the earth or another. When some of *them* get this kind of tabloid
treatment from some stinker on Usenet, or some blogger who craves a
higher technorati rating, or a bunch of clowns on a webboard, or
whatever, *then* the *** will *really* hit the fan...

This lets the other person have the last word
if they want to; that is, frequently, the only way to actually stop the
conversation.

Well, then, if you want it stopped, you know exactly what to do, now,
don't you?

And The Wanderer is pwn3d once again.

I have done this before many times, for inflammatory and offtopic
threads alike; it is frequently painful to not respond to the responses
other people make to such posts, but it is effective.

Perhaps it is when you are using a pseudonym, as seems to be the case
for you. Even so, perhaps someone will put your pseudonym together with
your real name somehow, some day

They've already tried. And, so far, failed. (Though one of them
*thinks* he's succeeded. :P)

Perhaps they'll find the badmouthings believable. Perhaps they're in HR
somewhere you submitted your resume, doing background checks -- no job
for you. Perhaps they're women considering dating you seriously --
that's your love life down the toilet.

Someone has indeed seen the light here. Too bad it wasn't anyone with
the power to actually make these goofballs shut up.

I did another google for Neo, and saw places where he (or someone using
that name, anyway) was accused on the 'net of various perversions. Most
likely, poor Neo can't get a date anymore, at least not from anyone who
is able to connect those accusations somehow to his real name, whatever
that is.

Fortunately, nobody can connect those accusations somehow to my real
name, and I had a strong enough potential legal case against that
particular *** that I did manage to get them to shut up (or maybe
I got their ISP to shut them up); mostly I haven't seen any insults
quite that bad directed at me since. There's been the odd homoerotic
overture or other suggestive implication, probably intended less to
convince anyone of anything than to simply rattle my cage, but no more
outright flat accusations for years now.

Of course, none of those nasty things that were said or implied about
me are at all true...and I'm hetero, thank you very much.

Given the viciousness of some of the things said about him I
can definitely see where he's coming from. It's a shame you can't, and
it's a shame you apparently feel none yourself when you post more slurs
against yet another person.

He probably can, but doesn't care. I guess I can't fault you for being
charitable, since these clowns are nearly complete strangers to you. I
know them, and others elsewhere like them, well enough to say that the
die-hard ones range from sleazy, dishonest jerks who think nothing of
viciously harassing anyone they don't like and couldn't care less
about morals, rules, decency, or civilization, to outright sociopaths
that I fear might physically harm me if they ever succeed in
discovering my real name or where I live. :P

(One of those sociopaths is the guy that's still fixated on a wrong
guess. I fear for his wrong guess -- he might even now be being
stalked, offline, by this creep and not even know it. I hope he knows
kung fu, or has a permit to carry. I hope the sociopath in question
gets what's coming to him, and winds up in the hospital, in jail for a
long time, or in the fucking morgue, in increasing order of
preference. Society is not safe with one such as he prowling the
streets.)

This is a forum about Angband. It is not supposed to be used as a
no-oversight registry of offenders of any sort, and particularly not as
a no-oversight public registry of alleged sex offenders. It's shameful
to see people willing to despoil this forum by using it as such, and
furthermore by asserting some supposed inviolable right to do so and to
blast anyone who tells them to shut up and get back on topic.

Seconded.

Now if everyone is finally done insulting me, I think I'll shut up and
get back on topic. :)
.