[carlosponti]

love the mail room lol. I do like the phrase go back to windows reminds me of forum talk when someone comes in and says only nazis believe that. its become an internet meme sort of to end an argument in a forum by stating hitler also believed that way.

[smolloy]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

I'm playing with the idea of a Mail Room section of my site. I have a prototype up, but I don't want to announce it until I've done some serious discussion. Is something like this mean-spirited? Should I just let these folks' comments drift off into the ether rather than dignifying them with a quippy answer? What do you all think?

Techiemoe.com: The Mail Room

Personally I wouldn't bother replying to these people. Or if I did (cos, for some unfathomable reason, I thought they might be intelligent people interesting in a dialogue) I'd email them personally.

Hate mail rooms are always pretty funny, but normally only when someone goes really over the top with threats, or when their english is so mangled it's a challenge to understand their point.

Perhaps it's best to continue inserting little replies into your rants as you have been doing?

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by smolloy

Personally I wouldn't bother replying to these people. Or if I did (cos, for some unfathomable reason, I thought they might be intelligent people interesting in a dialogue) I'd email them personally.

Hate mail rooms are always pretty funny, but normally only when someone goes really over the top with threats, or when their english is so mangled it's a challenge to understand their point.

Perhaps it's best to continue inserting little replies into your rants as you have been doing?

That's the other side I'm considering. It's just an experiment at the moment; I'm not sure if I'll keep it or not. Keep the opinions coming guys!

::EDIT:: Should I consider posting the positive emails as well?

[smolloy]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

Got another hate mail this morning, regarding OpenSolaris this time. I'm confused, because I wasn't aware OpenSolaris was popular enough to have fan-boys. I guess I was wrong. In my rant I said that it logged me in as a default user named "Jack" even after installing and setting up a regular user. The first time this happened I noticed that I'd forgotten to un-mount the disc (long day, what can I say). However when I unmounted the disc and booted from the harddrive, the problem persisted, so I left it in the rant.

I just re-read his mail, and had a look at your OpenSolaris review (by the way, it's great to see someone reviewing "off the beaten track" distributions, instead of adding to the millions of Ubuntu/Fedora/PCLinuxOS reviews), and I'm not sure I totally agree with you about this guy's lack of intelligence, and him being a fan-boy.

From his point of view, he stumbled across a rant/review of an OS he is familiar with, but spotted (or so he thought) a glaring gaffe by the reviewer. It looked like the reviewer had left his liveCD in the machine -- "what a basic mistake!", he thought, "I should email this guy to let him know and make fun of him". This is understandable enough. Since you didn't mention it, it could have looked like you didn't understand you had to remove the CD. From his point of view, this could have explained the language/keyboard settings not persisting across reboots, as well as the repeated showings of the EULA -- which (if it was due to forgetting to remove the liveCD) *would* have made the review kinda worthless.

Although he was reasonably rude, I don't think it makes him a fan-boy, and I'm not sure if he deserves to be put in a hate mail room. Perhaps you could reply to him, let him know what happened, and point him at the updated review?

Just my two cents.

(and no, I'm not a sock-puppet for Mr J.W. Development)

[carlosponti]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

::EDIT:: Should I consider posting the positive emails as well?

I would love to read what the gnewsense developer wrote as well.

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by smolloy

I just re-read his mail, and had a look at your OpenSolaris review (by the way, it's great to see someone reviewing "off the beaten track" distributions, instead of adding to the millions of Ubuntu/Fedora/PCLinuxOS reviews), and I'm not sure I totally agree with you about this guy's lack of intelligence, and him being a fan-boy.

If all he wanted to do was point out what he considered a glaring error, he could have done it in a much more respectful manner. Since he didn't, and decided to laugh and say "go back to windows" he qualifies as a fanboy, and therefore stupid. You're welcome to have a different definition, but he fits mine.

Perhaps you could reply to him, let him know what happened, and point him at the updated review?

I did address his concern in the rant, but going so far as to reply to him is giving this guy much more respect than he gave me.

[smolloy]

Originally Posted by techieMoe

If all he wanted to do was point out what he considered a glaring error, he could have done it in a much more respectful manner.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by techieMoe

Since he didn't, and decided to laugh and say "go back to windows" he qualifies as a fanboy, and therefore stupid.

Stupid, maybe, but I'm still not sure you're using "fanboy" properly. He just doesn't seem to fit the definition you give on your "Mail Room" front page.

Whatever. I'm just being pedantic. He *was* rude and dismissive -- I'm pretty sure we agree on that. All I'm saying is that (the rudeness of his mail aside) his initial misunderstanding and (incorrect) conclusion that your rant was "worthless" was, perhaps, understandable.

Originally Posted by techieMoe

I did address his concern in the rant, but going so far as to reply to him is giving this guy much more respect than he gave me.

Probably. More than likely you'd only get a snarky reply. Not really worth your time and effort.

[techieMoe]

Originally Posted by carlosponti

I would love to read what the gnewsense developer wrote as well.

I've posted the Mandriva email conversation, but I'm still talking to the gNewSense developer about what he wants me to include. There were some things said in the conversation that weren't relevant to gNewSense (just general ramblings) that I'm going to take out.

[carlosponti]

read the gnewsense liked it a lot. it was a long exchange and helpful to see how things are done behind the scenes as it were.

[smolloy]

The gnewsense emails were fantastic. It's great to hear from someone so reasonable and knowledgable -- not at all as Stallman-esque as I thought he would be.

My respect for that distro has just gone up by orders of magnitude.