OT, but it just occurred to me. Y'all here are mostly politically-moderate advocates of civility and dialogue, whereas I am an extremist crank who believes that flame wars are a good thing. In your situation I would have asked Deignan to fuck himself right at the beginning, escalating from there.
So how come you guys have all the nice flame wars? Is there something deep that I've failed to understand? Should I be reading my Bible or something?
Which burns hotter -- paper or charcoal?
Keeping discussions more facially civil and temperate allows for long-drawn out conflicts with multiple levels, factions, long-held grudges... If you go straight for the 'fuck-you', everything burns out before you've had the chance to really enjoy the fight.
And ogged -- you come back for this? We're bored, we want new posts.
I didn't even realize this post was by Ogged. I forgot he existed.
There's an article at Inside Higher Ed about the whole affair.
You know what I hate? When you're eating at a restaurant and your server (often without asking) pours more coffee into a half-drunk cup of coffee. If you're someone who drinks coffee with cream and sugar like I do, it messes up the whole cream/sugar/coffee ratio. And it's hard to rectify; how should I know how much extra cream I need for half a cup of coffee?
Pisses me off.
OK, no discussion of p-diddy whatsoever on this thread. That'll show 'im.
Um, Maureen Dowd: Hot or Not?
I was going to say something to that effect. But this is the Blog of Civility.
Boy, I suck.
I'll bet you say that to all the pretty boys, Ben.
We still don't know if, or to what extent, Deignan is serious.
But what would it be like if he were not? So he declares at the end: this has been a joke. He's still saddled with the worst Google history in the world.
Granted, if someone else is using Paul Deignan's name...
this is the Blog of Civility.
And cock jokes, of course. The Blog of Civility and Cock Jokes.
Talk of Deignan is clearly non-cockjoke-condusive.
But what would it be like if he were not? So he declares at the end: this has been a joke. He's still saddled with the worst Google history in the world.
It's as if the punchline of the Aristocrats were that the family turns accusingly to the agent and says "I can't believe you just sat there and watched us doing all that. We wouldn't seriously put on an act like that. You are such a pervert." Whatever the motivation for what P. Diddy's been doing, put on or not, he still looks pretty awful.
There's an article at Inside Higher Ed about the whole affair.
w-lfs-n, your sense of humor is so notoriously poor that I can't tell if this was meant as a joke or not. And, "I suck," doesn't help; you suck because you missed the prior post or because you aren't funny?
But what would it be like if he were not? So he declares at the end: this has been a joke.
Yeah, that's what I mean about it doesn't matter anymore if it was just performance, because it's become real now.
(I can't believe people think there aren't cock jokes to be made out of the Deignan affair.)
w-lfs-n, your sense of humor is so notoriously poor that I can't tell if this was meant as a joke or not.
Um, what? My sense of humor is awesomely great. You must be thinking of ogged.
whoever changed the hovertext on the unfogged logo, job well done...
Is that the first ogged comment since the "hiatus"? I haven't been paying too close of attention. If so, I say to you, pwn3d.
Ah. I knew it wasn't the first post. But stooping to comment, to converse with the lowly-blog readers, is the next level.
Yeah, that's what I mean about it doesn't matter anymore if it was just performance, because it's become real now.
Hmm. I thought you were saying something slightly different; that Deignan's actions had consequences for others because people assumed they were serious. Sometimes I can just barely see why Leiter hates continental philosophy.
22: He commented ta ast LB to e-mail him.
(I can't believe people think there aren't cock jokes to be made out of the Deignan affair.)
Perhaps some would regard cock jokes as redundant when discussing this matter.
ta ast
How well can you dance, exactly?
Yeah, originally it was going to be "he ast LB ta e-mail him" but then I thought it was necessary to include "he commented" and the whole thing kind of went to hell. (Um, I'm not sure this actually answers your question.)
How well can you dance, exactly?
Ask not how Weiner dances, but how you may dance for him.
New topic: the grad student union is on strike and picketing, correspondingly they have e-mailed and/or fliered pretty much every student at NYU to ask us to a) try to persuade our professors to teach class off campus (and the Union has offered help in providing facilities for this) or b) if our professors won't do that, not attend class. Assume I think the union is basically right in their underlying dispute, what should I and (everyone else do)?
Not relevant to the question, but as far as I can tell, everyone is still in class. I tried asking about this on another blog, in a thread actually about the strike, but got no love.
I was raised Orthodox AFL-CIO, so I'd be skipping class rather than cross the picket line. I'd pick your professors before approaching them -- some might be sympathetic, but not many of them.
I've never quite understood the grad student strikes, at least when striking includes a) not attending class (I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove, really.) or b) not doing marking, because since all of these strikes are about one week long, all that means is you've pushed your marking back a week.
Come to think of it, I would email back and be certain that they're picketing the Law School specifically -- not a lot of grad students are involved in legal education. Now, they might be, but it seems possible that there's a loophole that allows you to evade the issue.
If you're teaching, you could always decide to hold your class in its normal location and give your students the option of cutting with no penalties if they support the union. (Oddly, this doesn't, as one might expect, lead to the whole class cutting.)
Man, I wish that were true: If GSOC goes on strike, that means that there will be picket lines outside of NYU campus buildings. A picket line anywhere on campus means that the entire campus, including the law school, is being picketed, whether there are pickets in front of a specific building or not. As fellow law students, we strongly encourage you to avoid crossing these picket lines if at all possible. If you approach this issue strategically, you can have a major impact in support of GSOC.
My god! A Meinongian population explosion of non-existent pickets!
Re 4: I skipped the first paragraph and didn't realize that ogged had posted this. The style didn't seem un-LABSish.
Re 29: WD, you're a law student, right? Are there grad students teaching law students? Does this apply to you?
The thing I find fascinating is that Deignan's pre-lawsuit comments on Dr B's blog really don't strike me as troll-like. In fact I don't think he was "trolling" at all.
(Maybe I haven't seen all relevant comments. And of course I'm not saying that I agree with the comments.)
So Hettle's email to Deignan's advisers strikes me as really really outrageous. (It's now posted on D's blog -- quite a nasty piece of work.)
And here's the fascinating part: I can easily imagine being driven to act out in impotent rage by the outrageousness of that email. Would I threaten a lawsuit? No, that wouldn't be my schtick. But I can easily imagine doing something just as self-destructively foolish.
And I got my Ph.D. and have a semi-respectable academic career up and running. So I wonder: have I merely lucked out, not happening -- yet -- to have found my Hettle?
We do each have a Hettle, I fear. The questions are merely: when, where, and how publicly?
36 was written before I saw 31-35.
35 - Now someone needs to analyze the pickets as a definite description, right?
LB - It'd be an easy decision for me to skip, except that I've missed class too often this semester for no good reason at all (felt like sleeping in, mostly), and now that I have what I recognize as a good reason, am worried about missing too much.
Ted: I believe quite a few of P. Diddy's comments were removed by BPhD. That may have something to do with why what's remaining doesn't seem trollish.
I don't think he was trolling, either, really. It's hard to tell from the evidence as BPhD hasn't restored his comments and his pdf has been noted as having questionable accuracy. He wasn't doing much more than arguing against imaginary strawmen, but it's the fucking internet. Incoherent idiots who are full of themselves are par for the course.
But everyone's agreed Hettle's out of line. I just haven't heard the chorusing liberal academy cheering him on, advocating that all profs should report conservative students to their advisors.
w/d, just go. If it is like other pickets, they'll probably rally outside some freshman dorms at 7am, and be gone by 10am. Wear a little ribbon or something and say that's your way of supporting the union: a visual, but polite, show of support.
At Cala U the fledgling union has never included the law students, who are too far in debt to be regarded as employees.
Ted, of the comments I saw, I thought some of them were insulting though not obviously over-the-line trollish. Probably I wouldn't have banned him (not that I get anything like that on my blog), but I think bphd was within her rights and comments policy to say "You're insulting me, stop commenting please." Also, some other comments I've seen back up 40.
Now, what Hettle did was way over the line and I agree that that could easily provoke real rage. But what has earned P. diddy his opprobrium is that he's decided to threaten bphd, who didn't do anything to him. (And who he definitely wronged by getting a new IP in order to comment on her blog after she banned him.)
Basically he's gone from trying to twist Hettle's arm by holding bphd's identity hostage to trying to extort some not-awfully-clear tribute from bphd by threatening to out her. (Litigiousness alert: I don't think this actually falls under the legal definition of extortion, I mean a colloquial definition as in "trying to get someone to do something by threatening to do something else that will hurt them.") And even if he's justifiably angry at Hettle, there's no excuse to bring her into this; I think his behavior has shown that he's acting partly out of wounded amour propre over the banning.
Also, he's had more than enough time to stop fulminating on his blog already, or at least to keep it to Hettle, who's the one who deserves it.
B. has a consistent policy (or so I've gotten the impression) of banning/deleting people for being obnoxious or irritating, at a level well short of what I'd call trolling. While I'd agree with you that P.D.'s initial comments weren't trolling, he was being irritating -- grandiosely vague statements that she hadn't thought out her position. By her standards, while I wouldn't call him a troll, I can see why she considered him bannable. Because of the deletions, it isn't clear what happened with the ban-evasion and 'taunting'.
And of course, Hettle was supremely dickish in emailing D's advisors.
Whoops, I see that P.D. is currently claiming that it is libellous to say that he evaded the IP filter:
[Hettle: He was banned, but used his computer expertise to defeat the ban and taunt the host of the site.]
Deignan: The second paragraph is libelous. I am not aware of any action that defeated an IP filter. No comment I attempted to place was rejected until the last comment at which time I knew that BPhd did indeed ban me.
I have a hard time squaring that with this:
Subsequent comments were not important and mainly had to do with offering BPhd technical pointers on filtering comments with Haloscan (the idea that one can "ban" is silly when one allows unregistered anonymous commenters. I was having a little fun with her over DHCP and subnet masks).
But I'll retract the assertion that he did get a new IP in order to comment after being banned.
Ok, I'm really sorry about this, but I have to admit that I constructed the whole affair to get Ogged to post again. Sorry, B, sorry real-Paul-Deignan's career prospects-- but I did what I thought was necessary. The bear-arousal-with-stick wasn't working, so I moved to something more drastic.
I am not aware of any action that defeated an IP filter.
This looks to me like a hair-splitting denial. My technical knowledge in this area is nil, so I don't know what the possibilities are, but I would surmise that D. did something that evaded B's ban that he considers not to be "defeat[ing] an IP filter".
Matt, My comment (37) was not a defense of PD, so there's no need to convince me that he's in the wrong. I completely agree that he is. I'm merely reporting the source of my fascination. I think it's possible that -- pre-'lawsuit' -- he was trying to pursue a debate in good (or good enough) faith. Then suddenly he gets accused of being a troll, first by Hettle, then by Dr B, then is informed that Hettle has emailed his advisers, and.... well, his response is of course wrong, wrong, wrong. But it's also silly and stupidly self-destructive. And I can imagine being driven by a Hettle into equally silly and potentially self-destructive results.
(In fact it has already happened, as I hope no one remembers. And it was provoked in part, as I now remember, by Unfogged, specifically by ogged, though he was not playing the Hettle-role.)
Wait, you're Paul Deignan?
Worse. He's Wally Hettle.
I don't understand why he would be changing IP and subnet masks if he hadn't been banned. But whatever.
I hope he figures out that 'construed in a narrow sense, technically false' is not the same as 'libellous', but I can't really be arsed to give a shit. If he had BPhD's identity, it'd be out by now.
But it's also silly and stupidly self-destructive. And I can imagine being driven by a Hettle into equally silly and potentially self-destructive results.
You know, I could see being driven into wildly inappropriate rage. The smirking grandiosity he's exhibited, on the other hand -- I can't imagine, whatever the level of provocation, coming up with the idiotic defamation lawsuit idea.
I don't understand why he would be changing IP and subnet masks if he hadn't been banned.
My understanding is meager but as I understand it, if his internet provider is using DHCP (as most big ones do), he'd be assigned a new IP address every time he logged on to the internet. It wouldn't take any real action on his part, other than turning his modem off and then on again.
I didn't say it would be hard, apo, just that in the middle of a conversation it seems somewhat unlikely to do just for the hell of it, especially when earlier he was claiming he wasn't spoofing, no, no, just having fun with DHCPs.
53, well, I think I can see what Ted is saying here--my rage could send me into some self-destructive behavior, but it might manifest itself differently. But yes, the particular smirky way it's manifesting itself (and I think it has caused bphd some distress even if he doesn't have her name) is worthy of mockery as well as opprobrium. Except now though fascinating it's also disgusting--I think what would be best for all concerned is if someone travelled back in time to make sure this never happened.
someone travelled back in time
I guess it has to be w-lfs-n, then.
I didn't say it would be hard, apo, just that in the middle of a conversation it seems somewhat unlikely to do just for the hell of it, especially when earlier he was claiming he wasn't spoofing, no, no, just having fun with DHCPs.
My guess (pure speculation here) is that he did, in fact, do something of the sort after he was banned by B., and considers what he did not to constitute defeating an IP filter. It's the only story I can come up with that accounts for everything.
My understanding is meager but as I understand it, if his internet provider is using DHCP (as most big ones do), he'd be assigned a new IP address every time he logged on to the internet.
Well, you aren't necessarily assigned a new one. Frequently I've held the same address over many subsequent logins.
AND,
Accusing. Someone. Of. Ban. Evasion. Is. Hardly. Fucking. Libellous. In. Any. Case.
aren't necessarily
True, true, though your specific anecdotal evidence carries less weight than it might otherwise, given your time travelling capabilities.
I didn't say it would be hard, apo
I'll give you 30 minutes to publicly retract that statement, Cala, because I'm a nice guy.
Apo, I think you're threatening me, so I'm going to contact your advisor.
Maybe Cala could give you 30 minutes to make it hard.
I hope it doesn't take that long. It'd be an insult to Cala as well as to Apo.
This just proves my original proposition: liberals have to feel things to make them hard, whereas conservatives get hard just thinking about them.
There is a way to relate Deignan and cock jokes! Hurrah!
conservatives get hard just thinking about them
they have to; feeling things would be immoral.
There is a way to relate Deignan and cock jokes!
According to your theory, Apo, I'm becoming more liberal as I get older, and when I was a teenager I was downright reactionary.
Well, I should probably state for the record that it's actually Deignan's feeler/thinker theory before he sues me for copyright infringement.
And libel.
And trespass to chattel, barratry, and mopery on the high seas.
Um, you may be missing something. "IP Spoofing" and "getting past an IP filter" are very different things. PD is saying that bphd's accusation of IP spoofing is libel. Considering the fact that spoofing is hacking to get unauthorized access to a computer and is a crime, its a bit more serious than getting past a comments ban. To an engineer accusations of IP spoofing are about like a banker or accountant being accused of embezzling.
Not missing anything, Rick. It's just that it's pretty clear from BPhD saying that 'spoofing' is a word that lends itself to casual use means um, 'spoofing' is a word that lends itself to casual use and pretty strongly implies that there wasn't a legal accusation going on. Misusing a word (especially one with many techie meanings, one of which is simply 'attempting to mask one's identity') isn't a crime.
If my sister were to whine to her high school friends "Oh my god, my dad is going to kill me when he sees this report card", she actually hasn't accused him of being a foul father and likely murderer.
Misusing a word (especially one with many techie meanings, one of which is simply 'attempting to mask one's identity') isn't a crime.
And using a word in a conventional sense, as in using 'spoofing' to mean, say, 'attempting to mask one's identity', isn't even misusing it, regardless of whether differing usages of the word exist.
My god! We're having a rerun of yesterday's conversation! Life IS really like the Mandelbrot set!
It's the lawyer in me -- I don't like seeing concessions made for the sake of argument, without an explicit acknowledgement that they aren't necessarily (or in this case, at all) true.
Your point's a good one -- I just get twitchy seeing it made not in the form of "Even if she 'misused the word, which she didn't for this reason'. Of course, I'm being silly. It's not like either (a) this nonsense is ever making it into a courtroom or (b) any concession you make would bind B.
No, you're right -- there is a legitimate usage of 'spoofing' which more or less maps onto what PD's admitted he's doing.
You mean random things said in comment threads aren't necessarily legally binding? Who knew?
Bygones, people, bygones. Anyway, now we know how to poke ogged out of inaction: get Paul to sue somebody.
If you told someone what happened in BPhDs words: "He spoofed his IP to get past my comment ban," I think it would pass the reasonable person test, i.e., most reasonable people would understand what she meant.
Not only that, but the sentence would make no sense using Deignan's meaning of 'spoofed'.
I'm not sure it would pass the "Most reasonable people don't know about banning comments on blogs" test. Which reminds me, during the question period of my talk the other night I think I said something like, "Sorry, I wasn't thinking about your theory, I was thinking of some people I was arguing Gettier cases with on the internet." Eesh.
(I also used this guy's version of the Havit/Nogot case.)
(The talk was called "Teh G00d L1f3," of course.)