🚀 go-pugleaf

I'd have used email for this reply (as you should have for your flame),
but a public attack like that demands a public rejoinder.

In article <9871@duke.cs.duke.edu>, mps@duke.cs.duke.edu (Michael P. Smith) writes:
> Imagine a discussion on computer science with the summary line "I know
> what I'm talking about" and the reason given was that "I minored in
> computer science."

I'm sorry you interpreted it that way. "I know what I'm talking about."
was a response to some snottiness in an earlier posting by Gene Ward Smith
in which he imputed that I was using the terminology incorrectly.

I had no intention of claiming special access to Final Answers -- and
"if I have seen far, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"
-- Democritus, Willam of Ockham, C. S. Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Alfred Korzybski (to name but a few).

And, BTW, I subsequently got email from 3 netters and (just this morning)
a transcontinental phone call from a fourth congratulating me on "saying
things that needed to be said" in this debate. I guess 'sophomoric tone'
is in the eye of the beholder.

Now: do you have anything constructive to contribute to the discussion?
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond
      UUCP:  {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax}!snark!eric
      Post:  22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355
      Phone: (215)-296-5718