Message 11703 of 39188 in General Discussion

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Sad about the time wasting.

No, we are not expected to expect situations like this, and I'd invite 
everyone to consider the 'nettiquette' advice such as:

A) Sit on your hands and bite your tongue.  Reread the post.  It may be a new 
person to the Internet who has innocently hit your raw nerve.
...
K) "Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game 
because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from 
-- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time." 
 -Neal Stephenson,  Cryptonomicon
http://digital.net/~gandalf/trollfaq.html

Most every internet group in history has had this happen at one time or 
another 
:{

Note, a troll 'victory' is when a regular leaves the board - so please don't 
coz of that. Sounds like you will have better reasons however :}

> Have to admit I 
> have gotten a lot of strange spamming emails (some pretty offensive 
> porno) since posting here ... is that part of trolling too?

Can well be, from the type that will initiate dummy users, however I think 
Pal's system here does a fair job of shielding your email.

Note: another tactic is to draw someone out to the point that they reveal 
enoguh personal info to be snooped by other means. Another reason why 
credential flashing is a bad idea.


PS, my post above should have said 'ignore' them, not 'annoy' - some sort of 
subconscious slip after reading the troll manifesto :) I'll edit it now.

OK, I have a joke (apologies for hijacking the thread back there)
(it's not the greatest, but it's not the dirtiest either - most of the good 
ones I found this week were pretty ugly or techie)
======

A man walks into a bar and orders a 12-year-old scotch. The bartender, 
believing that the customer will not be able to tell the difference, pours him 
a shot of the cheap 3-year-old house scotch that has been poured into an empty 
bottle of the good stuff.

The man takes a sip and spits the scotch out on the bar and reams the 
bartender. "This is the cheapest 3-year-old scotch you can buy. I'm not 
paying for it. Now, give me a good 12-year-old scotch."

The bartender, now feeling a bit of a challenge, pours him a scotch of much 
better quality, 6-year-old scotch. The man takes a sip and spits it out on the 
bar. "This is only 6-year-old scotch. I won't pay for this, and I insist on a 
good, 12-year-old scotch!"

The bartender finally relents and serves the man his best quality, 
12-year-old scotch. The man sips the drink and says, "Now that's more like 
it." 

An old drunk from the end of the bar, who has witnessed the entire episode, 
walks down to the finicky scotch drinker and sets a glass down in front of him 
and asks, "What do you think of this?"

The scotch expert takes a sip, and in disgust, violently spits out the liquid 
yelling, "WHY, THIS TASTES LIKE PISS!" to which the old drunk replies, "That's 
right, now guess how old I am."