Talk:Eric S. Raymond

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ESR on Beto O’Rourke

“Beneath the boyish good looks on which he trades so heavily, his track record reveals him to be a rather dimwitted and ineffectual manchild with a severe case of Dunning-Kruger effect.” - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8456 (Pot Meet Kettle — how can we incorporate this into his article?) - User:Elzair (talk) 17 September 2019 21:51 UTC

BoN

@Spud @David Gerard That BoN edit was made by me, I got logged out of all of my accounts on Firefox and I forgot to log back in. Calling a movement a "cult" just because it's opposed to capitalism is not of much substance and incredibly biased. It's a tactic of false equivocation. — Oxyaena ^Harass 15:40, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Stop edit warring, and stop this anticommunist bullshit too. — Oxyaena ^Harass 20:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@LeftyGreenMario Intervene please. — Oxyaena ^Harass 20:36, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Tinribmancer @Jaydogg1994 Why aren't everything else listed on there called a "cult"? Why only single out the left? — Oxyaena ^Harass 20:38, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

No moderator is necessary to deal with your edit warring unless you continue. The consensus appears to be against you. 2601:241:8E00:1C15:DCB7:E35E:D23F:FD91 (talk) 20:41, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Communism is not Rationalism!!! Stop pulling your communist denialism cards out, stop calling people that don't agree with you Communist views as "centrist" (your "why only single out the left?" is perfect proof of that) stop acting as if you're being "oppressed"!!!! Tinribmancer (talk) 21:03, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

You keep conflating communism with Marxism-Leninism, have you ever heard of libertarian communism? I`m not, I`m just annoyed at people who don't know a single thing about left-wing movements and ideology lecture me as if they do. Rationalism is an epistemological school of thought, and commies aren't fascists. Try actually seeing what commies have to say before forming an opinion on them. — Oxyaena ^Harass 21:41, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not even sure if "Communist cult" is a term that tries to describe Communism as a cult or there's a subset of Communism zealots that would be accurately described as a cult. These are two different things. I'm reading it as "Communism fanboys" more than "the cult of Communism". Can anyone even elaborate? Unfortunately, there's no clarification for that phrase since there's no reference whatsoever, and I'm not familiar with Raymond, so the semantics here is... confusing me. --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 23:25, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

By the way, the entire subsection is just a problem since it lacks references and engages in vague weasel wording. The sentence: "the concept quickly spread to pro-war bloggers"; who? And how are they lumping all these groups together? And look at the examples: they're all specific groups except for the "far-left Communist cults" which has led to confusion. I like to have even one example to what is meant by "far-left Communist cults". --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 23:35, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Tinribmancer Well? — Oxyaena ^Harass 10:46, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Well, what? If you actually were honest, you'd KNOW that you were reverting @David Gerard first and you should KNOW that I was reverting it back in it's original state until further notice. What's your fucking problem with me? That I don't support your believe? I'm not the only one that isn't pro-communism on this site!

You're starting to creep me out... Tinribmancer (talk) 14:42, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

There's also quite a few reds on this site. Tinrib, I'd be fine with you if you didn't consistently revert me on minor fucking changes and not talk it out on the talk page first. — Oxyaena ^Harass 15:02, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Communism is not RationalWiki, nobody minds diversity of views here but the site is absolutely a centrist liberalist project and always has been critical of all forms of communism. It is not personally against u that ur changes are controversial. EK (talk) 15:27, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

RW was in the beginning a site that was founded to mock and spite Conservapedia, which I probably would've contributed to wayback in 2007 if I knew about RW, since Fundies are terrible pieces of shit. Tinribmancer (talk) 16:02, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Are we sure this isn't a case of incorrectly parsing the sentence/simply poor grammar being used in the edit that introduced that wording? Depending on how you'd read the original sentence, you can entirely read it as "David Duke's cult, Lyndon LaRouche's cult, Fred Phelps' cult, far-left Communist cults". I don't think there's much controversy in stating that David Duke and Fred Phelps run cults. Whether communism is a cult or not is a discussion for someone with more expertise on the matter than me (I don't think it is), but in the interest of assuming good faith in the original edit, this seems much more likely and if that's the case, the entire sentence could use some rewording rather than removing Communism entirely from it. I also agree that this statement could use a fact template. The Crow (talk) 16:36, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

It's disingenuous to call communism a "cult" because it isn't, and I think fascists are a much bigger threat than fundies are. — Oxyaena ^Harass 17:57, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Communism is not a cult, sure, but it does have several warning signs of one so criticism on that line is not unwarranted. A dogmatic, black and white worldview, a weakness for personality cults, a tendency to dismiss the fact that the majority finds you laughable with concepts like "False consciousness," or "Satanic Brainwashing," using the No True Scotsman fallacy to dismiss things that look bad as "State Capitalism," or "Heresy," a regrettable association with mass murder, believing that a future inevitable catastrophe will vindicate all of their views and create a utopia(like world revolution or the end times), and finally that adorable ideological narcissism that assumes in a time of crisis everybody would rally behind them and realize they were right all along.Flandres (talk) 18:20, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

That's Marxism, and you underestimate how popular radical left-wing movements have always been among the marginalized and working class communities. There's a reason for that. — Oxyaena ^Harass 18:25, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

@Flandres Can you explain to me why that is? — Oxyaena ^Harass 18:30, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

How do you define "Radical Left?"(bear in mind I am an American) If you mean that thin line between Socialism and Social Democracy that is not as radical in Europe, I could grant you that given how Bernie Sanders is in a (admittedly weak) second place. But if we are talking about Ideologies that prefer armed revolution and see capitalism as bad as fascism(Marxism, Left Communism, most forms of anarchism, and Revolutionary Socialism), that is actually a rather small group, and that's before sorting them into actually marginalized" and "Upper Middle champagne socialists". Hell, most people, at least in America(I am trying not to speak outside of my experience as a working class american) would not even know what left communism is and think all communists are Marxists, and see Anarchism and Anarchy as synonyms. Most self described socialists in the developed world in positions of electoral influence are actually just social democrats who may have once been more radical left but have been dragged to the center because of what someone like you might call "Capitalist Realism." I think you are overestimating the popularity of your own personal views.Flandres (talk) 18:52, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I mean look at how big the IWW used to be, and how Eugene V Debs, a known socialist, at one point received 20% of the electoral vote. Radical leftist movements almost always seem to come from marginalized communities, and there's a reason for that. — Oxyaena ^Harass 18:57, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

First off, let me apologize to everyone else for tasking this off track, and let me say I think Crow has the solution here in just making that line better worded, and while I think communism is well intended but too utopian to be workable, it shouldn't be listed with the likes of David Duke or Fred Phelps. Second, which election was that? Third, the era you were describing was about a century ago when socialism did not have to deal with the atrocities of the communist regimes following it wherever it went. While people like you are not people like the Bolsheviks their take on radical leftism is the most well known, and that has cursed all leftist movements with this giant ball and chain few have been able to break. finally, yes most Radical Leftists in the devolved world are disadvantaged but judging by the electoral success of Liberals and Social democrats most disadvantaged people are not Radical leftists, and the Radical Left is still a fairly small movement.Flandres (talk) 19:22, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

That's the kind of nuance I was looking for. Thank you, Flandres. — Oxyaena ^Harass 19:32, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

The whole discussion on whenever Communism is a cult or not is missing my question: what is "far-left Communist cults" referring to? Communism as a cult? Cults adhering to communism? --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 20:35, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

The only "cult" I can think of is the Jim Jones one. — Oxyaena ^Harass 20:51, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Have these "pro-war bloggers", whoever they are, conflated anti-war groups with the Jim Jones cult? --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 20:54, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking more like those New left remnant groups centered around people like Lyndon Larouche, Bob Avakian and Fred Newman(the social therapy guy). So to answer your question, its "cults adhering to communism." ^{— Unsigned, by: Flandres / talk / contribs}

That's what I thought too. Anyhow, we really need references to that whole section, examples of what cults we're talking about. --It's-a me, 🎄LeftyGreenMario!🎄 21:47, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Raymond on Jeffrey Epstein

What to do about this steaming pile of dung? (An archived version was here, I have not compared them. It also seems to be taking time to load now.)

• Eric S. Raymond is being, at best, exceedingly pedantic about the meanings of words.
• He cites General Semantics - a fringe theory.
• He claimss that the "Left" has "a long history of triggering conservatives into self-discrediting moral panics" - then citing “Rock and roll is the devil’s music” as an example. (Wasn't crusade against rock music started by conservatives?)
• He is willing to split hairs in describing Jeffrey Epstein's behaviour (while admittedly conceding that Jeffrey Epstein should have been prosecuted for statutory rape).
• There is an extremely disturbing sentence that begins But women that age - the use of "women" makes it read as sailing very close to normalising Jefrey Epstein, while condeming him in the previous sentence. (Maybe Eric S. Raymond doesn't realise what it sounds like he's saying.)

Autarch (talk) 20:00, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Note - in a couple of places above, I give a more charitable interpretation of events, just to be fair to the subject - on the other hand, I'm alarmed by Eric S. Raymond's "reasoning". (For instance, he's being very charitable to Jeffrey Epstein,). Autarch (talk) 20:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Raymond on George Floyd protests

Not content with his previous steaming pile of dung he now wants to shoot him some commies. Autarch (talk) 21:54, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

It's gotten even worse, with some threats of terrorism. Some of his comments in the reply section are even worse: "I’d like to see that ugly fascist Whitmer shot or hung"; "Whitmer arrested and thrown in a Federal prison is not much compared to what she actually deserves, which is to be strung up on a lamppost by enraged citizens pour encourager les autres". Oh, and then there's the unhinged rant that got him kicked off the OSI list. He's gone from "a bit strange" to "rather cooky" to "full on batshit crazy". What a shame. I'll see if I can find some time to update this article. Carpetsmoker (talk) 05:11, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

giflib/gpsd

A quick check from my package manager (arch linux, so pacman repos) reveals that giflib is used in the following tooling: emacs fbida fbv fontforge gdal imlib imlib2 intellij-idea-community-edition jre-openjdk jre11-openjdk khtml kodi-tools-texturepacker krita latex2html leptonica lib32-giflib libgdiplus libwebp mencoder metapixel ming mplayer mtpaint mysql-workbench openscenegraph pycharm-community-edition root root-cuda tesseract tracker-miners vice xplanet ziproxy. Most of these are fairly commonly used software, which means that I'd say it's still widely used. GPSd is actually used on Android from what I can find from version 4.0 onwards. Look, I know ESR is a kook, but this is at least something somewhat objectively verifiable. Reverted that specific edit. Techpriest ^{(I am Alpharius! / / / )} 14:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Do you have a reference for Android and gpsd, beyond ESR's own claims? There's nothing in https://android.googlesource.com/, where it would normally be in platform/external/gpsd, and I've never seen a gpsd process on any Android phone.

As for giflib, there's a huge gap between being used in a few packages and “everything with a screen”. In fact, if you don't run Java, you're unlikely to have _any_ of those packages installed on a normal desktop system; in particular, the dominant desktop browsers don't use giflib. ^{— Unsigned, by: 95.34.225.113 / talk / contribs}

GPSD - A search for site:android.googlesource.com gpsd reveals tons of references in sepolicies and device specific variants. From what I can gather, it's not in the OSS list since it's just binary usage, meaning that OEMs add it on release, meaning Google likely didn't modify it.

Within regards to Java... well, "3 Billion devices run Java" is the tagline Oracle uses (even if it's a tad of an overstatement). Beyond that, mplayer is a really common video player, emacs is a great operating system but a bad editor :p, and giflib is used in a ton of libraries, and finally it's directly used in a couple of KDE packages. It's also used on Anrdoid, one I can find directly on platform/external, so I'd argue it's used quite a lot in a lot of places, even if not neccessarily in desktop browers. Techpriest ^{(I am Alpharius! / / / )} 15:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

But here's the thing... all of those hits are for really old devices, around 2013 or 2014. And the device policies from 2014 are generally marked “deprecated”. It appears to have been shipped in a few phones around that time (one comment even says “only used by Flounder”, aka the short-lived Nexus 9 tablet, but it looks like it shipped in a few more), and then ESR goes all hyperbole with “GPSD POWERS YOUR PHONE”. Really, there's no gpsd in an Android phone these days; fire up Maps and then look for it in the process list yourself. It just doesn't do anything that's very useful for a phone (it exists mostly to open a serial device and multiplex the NMEA onto a network socket). As for mplayer being a “really common video player”… well. It was in its heyday. Now it's just dead. (I should know, I had commit access.) But I'll certainly give you that giflib is used; just not on “anything with a screen”, or remotely close to it. ^{— Unsigned, by: 95.34.225.113 / talk / contribs}