funny, that's how you look to me, the way you invent more and more things
  to accuse me of.  if you had been willing to stick to a single point and
  ride it through, you might make it possible to win or lose, but since you
  try one thing, then try another when it fails, and yet another when that
  fails, it's hard to conclude otherwise than that you refuse to admit to
  have lost at every junction.  and now it is of course my fault that you
  have made a huge stink about your opinion of me (the "With friends like
  Erik" thread of your).  don't you see that you could just shut the fuck
  up with your insane drivel, and nobody would need to respond to you?

  so, instead of pontificating about the motives of others, answer this
  question: why do _you_ keep going on, Raffael Cavallaro?  and please
  throw in an analysis of why your posts contribute to the well-being of
  this newsgroup while you're at it.  I'm looking forward to your insight
  into your own behavior, who has so much to offer about that of others.

<rant>
This whole argument is a total waste of time, energy and
bandwidth. It's perfectly clear that neither of you is going
to convince, or get any sort of concession out of, the other.
No one else is taking much notice. The only effect any article
either of you posts to this thread has is to diminish others'
regard for the person posting it. Give it a *rest*, both
of you.
</rant>

However, even the "Naggum is evil" premise seems ill-founded.

Naggum's language isn't always as easy to understand as one might
prefer.  That difficulty isn't due to a lack of precision, he's
very precise, but to somewhat odd (from a native "American
English" speaker's point of view) construction.  In the worst
case, that construction is an intentional "fool trap", so
tripping it repeatedly is ..., and things aren't better if
some other reason applies.

Yes, Naggum is willing to "fight" with anyone who insists
on fighting with him.  However, even if he had written "people
who need unions are stupid", what's the purpose of the fight?
(That's an honest question, but I doubt seriously that anyone
will believe answers other than "I'm looking for a fight", "I
always attack evil people", etc.)  BTW - "he wrote something
evil in the past, therefore it's fair to interpret <new thing>
as evil" isn't all that convincing, especially when it's
surrounded by a bogus argument.

However, suppose that Naggum is racist scum.  How is comp.lang.lisp
an appropriate place to "deal with that"?  Is it "no place
to hide"?  While the result of that strategy may well be
good, I doubt that that it is intended.

-andy

  I wondered what would make this a true implication.  I came to conclude
  that one would have to dispense with the concept of time, such that I
  could not look back at things past and wonder why without, at the same
  time, being with the people who did it at the time and saying they are
  (present tense) foolish.  with a working concept of time in place, most
  people are able to look back at a time past and wonder why they didn't
  see things differently.  if they dare to examine the causes (which you
  don't, by the way), they may be able to avoid similar problems in the
  future.  passing judgment on the past with future information, knowledge,
  insight or wisdom is so moronic that I don't even consider the option
  that someone is thinking in that mode, but you appear to be lacking a
  concept of time that would make you see it as just that: moronic.

  what we see, historically, is that people grudgingly accept some pretty
  bad conditions, which for some reason continue to appear better than all
  other conditions, even though they aren't with a more objective point of
  view, also when considering the transition costs, and then, after a
  while, when they have realized that a lot of people are just as unhappy
  as themselves, they object in a way that makes a difference.  of course,
  they also overreact a lot, my guess is to make up for the feeling of
  shame for not doing anything sooner, but the whole sequence of events
  suggests that the core problem was not speaking up and letting others
  know how you feel when and as you felt it.

  for the above implication to be true, the concepts of cause and effect
  also need to be dispensed with.  my observation is that people who are
  unhappy with something don't even admit it to _themselves_ unless others
  validate their feelings.  so somebody has to start saying it, for labor
  unions and all kinds of protest movements to work.  to some, this means
  that people will _start_ to feel unhappy and whoever speaks up is the
  cause of the unhappiness, implying that people would have been happy with
  their abysmal working conditions if nobody let them know.  this is
  cleaerly false, but still groups of people need someone to speak up and
  on their behalf.  well, I am that person.  I speak up.  ironically,
  stupid people like Raffael Cavallaro object to the part, yet embrace the
  whole.  what's even more ironic is that Raffael also speaks up, and then
  others too timid or whatever to even think aloud can chime in after
  someone has "dared" to speak up, usually without a clue and usually
  unable to voice a reasoned opinion but stay with "yeah, I agree".

  what bothers me is that those who ignite the masses are so stupid and
  miss the point so often and so often cause so much pointless destruction
  in the process.

| No matter that you run no risk of being beaten, tortured, or murdered, or
| of starving if you express your wants directly to your prospective
| employers.

  no, I don't run that risk, Raffael Cavallaro.  I really don't.  I'm going
  to be labeled a racist by you again, but what the heck: this is not the
  reality of the people I esd talking about.  also, you have to be pretty
  dumb to voice your concerns in such a way as to be beaten, tortured, or
  murdered.  if that's a likely consequence, shut up.  however, the reason
  it so often _becomes_ the likely consequences is that those who protest
  believe it will be, and then choose a form of protest that only works in
  an extremely antagonistic way, like riots.  "oh, my, you really are upset
  about the working hours, aren't you?  now, let's see what we can do about
  that, shall we?  incidentally, would you be so kind as to burn down as
  few buildings as possible while we discuss these matters?" is _not_ a
  likely response to a riot with massive destruction of life and property.
  the problem is of course that when reason doesn't work, (the threat of)
  violence may be called for, but the assumption that reason won't work is
  rampant.  the concept that there is a class struggle and that people
  _can't_ talk across "class lines" is one of the most self-fulfilling
  there is.  it's like certain forms of racism -- the one where you accuse
  people of being racist because you _prefer_ to think it's because of your
  skin instead of examining the many much more likely causes.  keep it up,
  and what you experience will be indistinguishable from what you believe.  

| You deride people who would forfeit their lives and/or their loved ones'
| lives if they stood up to their employers, for not being independent
| consultants.

  this is, again, an insane accusation with no possible link to reality.

| Your post is offensive.

  no, it isn't.  not to you, nor to anyone else.  what's offensive is what
  your disturbed psyche produces when you see certain words or phrases.

| My understanding of it is not faulty, as evinced by the responses of
| others, who pointed out, with no little sarcasm, that the reason such
| people don't stand up to their employers is that they would become
| destitute or dead if they did so.

  I'm interested in why the same behavioral pattern exists even when the
  chances of being beaten, tortured, murdered, or becoming destitute are
  exactly zero.  explaining the behavior under such conditions is so
  trivial that it has no value to discuss it at all.  it occurs to me that
  some people have not gotten their anger out of their system enough to be
  able to deal with such things rationally, and therefore are concerned
  _only_ with the impossible situations.  not unlike my irritation with
  people who seem to _value_ ignorance and non-thinking and stupidity.

| You deride the opressed just as you deride and abuse posters to
| comp.lang.lisp, because you are a verbally abusive, disdainful person.  I
| believe a very good case can be made that you actively drive people
| _away_ from lisp because of the tone of your posts to c.l.l.  Though you
| have said "lisp is better off without them," I'm sure others believe with
| me, that c.l.l might well be better off _with_ them, and without your
| abusive posts.

  so your _real_ reason for posting insane accusations and other drivel was
  to "prove" how bad I am, is that it?  and now that you have figured out
  that you won't be able to win that way, your real purpose behind all the
  crap shines through, despite the fact that I have been _responding_ to the
  biggest asshole on comp.lang.lisp in a really long time, who has not only
  posted insane accusations, but has shifted his insane accusations around
  every time they were countered and dismissed.

  I have strong disdain for cowardice, too, Raffael Cavallaro, and you're
  the worst kind of coward I have seen in a really long time.  if you have
  been a coward for as long as your expertise in it suggests, it's a pity
  that you have been beaten up verbally for it much sooner, but, hey, maybe
  that's it?  your defense of cowards everywhere to be sneaky character
  assassins instead of doing anything useful and constructive takes the
  shape of accusing others of favoring beating and murdering other cowards,
  and now you, Raffael Cavallaro, the super-coward, speaksup.  hooray!  let
  the masses of cowards be ignited with emotional abandon!

  a likely conclusion from this debacle is "you can't post to c.l.l without
  political fanatics with a coward's agenda attacking you for all sorts of
  irrelevant things."

  I finally understand why you couldn't confine yourself to Lisp, Raffael,
  but had to use all sorts of really stupid tricks to attack me.  if you
  had been brave enough to state your actual opinion up front, it would not
  have made anyone react, so instead of you had to go through all the
  stupid theatrics that only cowards find necessary.  and now I see that
  all the rabid accusations were only means to this end: to be able to grow
  big enough in your anger to be able to say what little wimpering whine
  you had for a real complaint.

  I pity you, Raffael Cavallaro.  I really do.  and what I feel for you is
  not disdain, it's disgust, at such a despicable waste of care and love
  that brought you into this world and to the point where you could get a
  Ph.D to sign your pathetic sniveling posts with.

  he has since made it clear that his real purpose was only to point out
  how bad he thinks I am.  like so many before him, if he couldn't do it
  with facts, he had to try with a whole bunch of his own inventions.  I
  don't think it's a waste of time to respond to false accusations.
  neither is it a waste of time to expose cowards and frauds who play games
  with people's feelings.  in consequence, there never was an argument for
  him to win, it was all for demonstration.  I don't consider having shown
  what a disgusting coward someone is and what that leads to is winning.

If they are forming unions, then it would appear that they are resisting
the poor conditions that they have accepted, and therefore they haven't
accepted them, but merely tolerated them until they found a way out of
them.  My meager knowledge of the industrial revolution and third world
countries in general would indicate that poor working conditions are a
known symptom of industrialization, and if people refuse to accept poor
(by our standards) wages and working environments then they have to turn
to non-techonological advancement or enter into a war in order to manage
their ever-growing population.

I woudl suggest that people do not individually accept horrible working
conditions but instead are placed into such positions by the
machinations of society & economics, adn given a choice they all woudl
have stayed "on the farm" and grown beets (or whatever alternative is
supposedly available).

They can't actually get dynamic behavior in any term, long or short, by
tweaking the source, right?

Open source software is available -- completely available -- to anyone who
has posession any portion of it, regardless of the status of the original
author, publisher, and/or copyright owner.  If the author dies or the
company goes bankrupt, any person using the software is still free to give
copies of it away.  This is explicitly not true for non-open source
software.

I do have to add, though, that all of these advantages (and many others)
can be achieved with _dynamic_ software which is released under a freeware
system (i.e. any distribution and modification allowed, but no source).
But I've never been one of those Open Source fanatics, so I'm not ashamed
to say that :-).

At that point, though, it's hard to see the reason to not publish the
source code as well.

But this kind of system requires that the true global minimum be not
already found.  And clearly, Lisp users have found it.  We're not going
away,

(Also, you've done nothing to show that dynamic software isn't more
"satisfactory" when open sourced than when proprietary.  This
is^H^Happears to be a significant hole in your argument, since even you
agree that open source gives an almost dynamic advantage to closed
source.)