Re: UNIX Compatibility

[Michael Witten <mfwitten@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 25 May 2011 06:18:28 +0200, Michael Galbraith wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 18:31 +0000, Michael Witten wrote:
>> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 18:16, Ted Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> > No one ever bothers to deal with issues because they are tiny,
>> > nit-pitcky things that no one other than standards mavens would care
>> > about.  You have to be someone who is extremely anal to really care
>> > about this kind of stuff.  It's really stupid stuff... paper pushers...
>> >
>> > If you want to waste time out of your life that you'll never get back...
>> > ...
>> > ... standards committee, as full of ivory-tower eggheads as it is,
>> > does have some folks who recognize that there is such a thing as
>> > the Real World)...
>> 
>> The world would be a better place if you weren't so needlessly
>> confrontational when sharing your knoweldge, Ted.
>
> Ivory-tower eggheads is common vernacular, a colorful and communicative
> description of a mindset.  Ted's usage added useful information to the
> conversation, unlike the pompous interjection above.

At first I thought you were labeling as `pompous' my suggestion that the
world would be improved by the introduction of a little more civility in
our discourse, and so I was confused.

However, it ocurred to me that you were actually admonishing yourself
for your preceding sentence:

> Ivory-tower eggheads is common vernacular, a colorful and communicative
> description of a mindset.

Common vernacular among whom? Among the leathered-handed thick-necked
hacks bumping around mindlessly in the fog at the base of the ivory-tower?

Oh. Perhaps, though, you are unfamiliar with that particular
common vernacular for colorfully describing a mindset...

Everybody brings a different brain to the task at hand, and it is foolish
to dismiss an entire class of brain, especially by indirectly insulting
a particular person.

Ted just got finished telling Richard that Richard thinks about tiny,
nit-picky, really stupid stuff on which only egg-headed paper pushers
waste time that they'll never get back.

We don't need that kind of thing.

Sincerely,
Michael Witten