Well, just in case you relent: Howard, I recommend that you see your doctor (not Tim!) as soon as possible; you’ve apparently gone as nutty as a Sammy the squirrel’s favourite collection of nuts! Two weeks piddling about with Google caches, etc.! Please, buy a television, or take up a hobby: at this rate you’ll end up in a padded cell, dining on mashed banana and sedative pills!

True, I might not have written the article if I had clicked on the fifth link, but then again, perhaps I would. You see, you can never tell when someone is going to pull all their work from the net. It looks like I made te right choice after all.

Regarding the, “if you can’t stand the heat”, comment: It was related to this argument. Nothing to do with inciting you to quit publishing. As you know, I’ve been one of the people encouraging you not to quit, but I guess it’s not worth you mentioning that or you wouldn’t be able to twist the argument in your favour.

“Set the record straight”. From your viewpoint. Not most other peoples looking at the comments.

Maybe if you want your voice heard you should start a blog…

Cheers

Tim…

No I didn’t, actually. I pointed out that the article was not original. That a glance at the fifth link on the first page of Google searches on the word ‘rlwrap’ would have alerted him to the prior existence of a work on the subject. Tim agreed that had he clicked that fifth link, he probably wouldn’t have written his piece. So pointing out that is not “passing judgement” on anyone or anything, but merely stating facts. Asserting I have a galaxy-sized ego, however, is not a statement of fact but of personal (abusive) judgement and opinon. You are, of course, entitled to have whatever opinion you like about me -but I repeat my earlier request that before forming your judgements and opinons you should try reading my actual words carefully.

In your specific case, you asked: “Are you really saying that if YOU write an article about how something works, then nobody else has a right to do so, without you crying “Cheat!”?” In the first place I never cried “cheat”. Indeed, quite deliberately and carefully I specifically said that there was no suggestion of plagiarism (i.e., cheating). In the second place, no, I’m not saying nobody else can write about something I’ve written about. I’m merely pointing out that if something has already been written about (by anyone at all), there are more productive things people (in general, *not* Tim specifically and alone) can do with their time than merely repeating the earlier work. Naturally, if the re-writing effort brings new insight, fresh ways of describing things, greater clarity, novel uses… well, those are all excellent reasons why re-documentation **should** happen. But if one is merely going to repeat what has already been said, and even repeat it rather less well than has already been said, then yes: it’s a waste of effort and everyone’s time.

In any case, no, it’s not about “rights”, it’s about productive use of time.

Once again, a Holy Relic of poncy nonesense destined for my museum!

Evidently, you don’t actually want to discuss the matter, but just indulge in some more personal abuse. Andy’s genuine curiosity about why I’ve “disabled my blog” is answered in spades, I think.

And Tim, in answer to your question, “If I’ve abused you what do you think you have been to me?”, the answer is: perfectly polite and proper in the first instance. The original blog piece mentioned your rlwrap piece in passing and used it to make general statements about originality, research, attribution. It said nothing about you personally, except the explicit point that I wasn’t in the least way suggesting you’d plagiarised my work. And similarly, in regard to the “tagging game”, I simply posted a request for you to consider contacting your ‘8′ and ask them to, by all means post their own 8 things, but please not pass it on. At that point, your response was to refuse, which is fair enough -but in such blunt terms I was genuinely surprised. Had the matter ended there, no great harm would have been done, I suppose… but you saw fit to come to my blog and start posting comments that were *all* about me and what you presumed my mood or mental state was, based on no evidence at all.

The worst I have ever said about you is that you can’t write well, your Oracle-related work lacks originality and you don’t seem able to do basic Oracle-related research properly. All of which criticisms are supported by the evidence around us as we read or are at least debatable on the facts, but NONE of which imply anything about your personality, your emotional state, your mental faculties.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

That’s actually quite funny. One minute, you tell me to ‘get out’, but in the next breath, you accuse me of being “so arrogant that you think this gesture [i.e., 'getting out'] is important” Well, I wish you’d make your mind up! Another answer to Andy C, anyway: when you’ve got people telling you to get out of the kitchen, is it any wonder they decide to do so? Maybe not so much to escape the heat as the people in the room whose boorishness they can no longer stand.

I’ve been out of it for a couple of weeks, making sure the site’s locked down, materials are removed from Google’s cache and so on. I would have set the record straight on these points earlier, otherwise. But you should of course feel free to abuse away by way of response, especially since I shan’t be back to read any of it.

I actually wanted to look something up (that I recalled Howard had written about) and a few seconds later, Google very helpfully offered to show me the cached version.

So, whilst it’s certainly Howard’s right to choose to disable his site, the information is still out there for anyone who needs it (at least until Google decides to purge the cache).

John.

Reading your ‘explanation’, it appears that this measure is a punishment to the Oracle ‘community’ for this tag-fest ? This seems like an extreme over reaction and punishes a much wider audience than those who participated in the tag-fest.

Or could it be that don’t you want your blog contaminated by ‘critical comments’ and would rather this lengthy discussion took place here ?

Howard – Why don’t you simply subscribe to the RSS feed from orana.info ? Then, skipping 8**4 articles form people telling you that they once killed a man in the Burmese jungle with their bare hands is as easy as hitting ‘Next’. It sounds like you are actually scanning the orana Web site for relevant articles which, with respect, sounds like madness (even without the tag-fest).

>> … with a nod in my direction, via Lutz and Tom, or simply pointed people in the right direction.
Why would Tim nod in your direction? He’s said (several times) that your article was unknown to him when he penned his. You are saying that because you wrote an article, everybody should know about it! Perhaps we should all make Dizwell (or, as I call it, Headswell) our Home Page? Perhaps, too, we should all call for some sort of international… no! interplanetary commission to be instated to look into ordaining you as Oracle Commander In Chief?

>> Try getting your facts right, too. No-one has cried ‘cheat’.
Looked for all the world like it to me.

>> I’ve criticised re-inventing wheels…
Howard, your whole life is one long criticism.

>> It’s got nothing to do with ego, beyond the natural and entirely appropriate desire for due acknowledgement. It’s got everything to do with wanting good quality information disseminated as widely as possible, as efficiently as possible.
Once again, a Holy Relic of poncy nonesense destined for my museum!

“Lutz reminded you”: As I said previously, I saw Lutz using it in a demo at OpenWorld. He didn’t explain how to install or say he had blogged about it. I didn’t see his blog entry until Laurent pointed it out to me. So once again, I credited Lutz for reminding me. I did not credit his blog post for the same reason I didn’t credit your article. I hadn’t seen it at the time of writing the article. For someone so interested in “research”, you don’t seem to be researching your arguments very well. You didn’t get credit because you didn’t deserve it.

Research, blah, blah, blah. You can’t even follow the argument without fabricating facts. Read my previous replies because they more than answer this ridiculous line of questioning.

It seems to me that most of the blogging community are having fun with this. The fact they are all continuing the blog-tag thing knowing you attitude shows they think it’s not detrimental to the community. I am in agreement with this.

“money”: No one said anything about finances. Gain can be judged in several ways. Hit rates being one.

You asked ow you could filter. I gave you an answer.

Switching off your site: Once again you try to attribute a different meaning to suit yourself. I think it’s obvious this was relating to the fact it proves everything everyone is saying about you. It’s my ball and I’m taking it home if you don’t play by my rules. I hope you switch the site back on, because I think you have something to offer. Will life stop if any of us turn off our sites? No. Do most of us believe we are so important that taking such action is a meaningful threat? No. Are you so arrogant that you think this gesture is important? Yes. Grow up dude.

Abuse: If I’ve abused you what do you think you have been to me? If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. The only reason most people can’t be bothered to argue with you is they know they will inundated with the blog equivalent of verbal diarrhoea. Of course, you take their boredom on a topic as a victory. A trait that has been displayed many times over.

OraNA: Get over it. Most of the people who are aggregated on that site will end up tagging. If that’s not an admission of it being fun I don’t know what it.

Cheers

Tim…

“Reinventing them poorly”: Funny that. It works just the way I want it to. If you mean I didn’t include as much information as you did, isn’t that what the original rlwrap website and man page are for. Sounds like you are more derivative than me.

“It’s got nothing to do with ego”: I think it’s pretty obvious to the world that this is a total crock.

Cheers

Tim…

Yes, well, I rather thought you would. The point is: you research your topics before writing about them. That’s all. You obviously have some difficulty doing that, so that’s fine.

the article was a totally original piece of work on a commonly documented technique

Well, it’s original in getting the installation instructions wrong (no mention of root, as I recall). It’s original in not mentioning a search capability. It’s original in not mentioning a duplicate elimination capability. I suppose if you count the absence of information as originality, you could indeed call it original. Like much of your work, Tim, it’s about as original as the man page. It pushes no further than the obvious.

You had no influence in the creation of the article so you get no credit

But by your own admission, I did. Lutz reminded you about it. And Lutz’s blog piece says he was inspired by Tom. And Tom was inspired by littl’ old me. A chain of influence, Tim. Plain as day.

But let’s not let the facts get in the way of a convenient line, eh?

We have no moral obligation to filter our blog entries for the good of blog aggregators.

No you don’t. But you are (allegedly) part of an Oracle ‘community’. And community members have all sorts of mutual obligations to each other, including being aware of the consequences of their actions. That you don’t care about the consequences of your actions in this regard is manifest. It doesn’t make it right, however. I wonder exactly how much money Eddie makes from “skimming” your work, incidentally. Have you asked him?

Better still, use the RSS feed from OraNA and put it into Bloglines or Google reader.

I see. Yes, I can just change the way I use OraNA because you and your silly friends have ruined it. Personally, I don’t see why I should. I’ve used OraNA the way I’ve used it for a long, long time and it worked just fine until this nonsense turned up. I do actually know about RSS readers Tim: I just prefer not to use one. But people other than yourself having preferences that you’ve now denied them don’t count, we can see that.

By the way, I love the fact you’ve turned off your blog.

Well, that says a lot about you, doesn’t it? It’s more than a blog. It’s all the articles and old forum threads, too. And that you love the fact that none of that is now available to those getting started with Oracle is indicative of quite a lot and your attitude toward the ‘Oracle community’.

It’s funny how you feel the need to turn off your blog, a tool for voicing your opinion, yet you seem determined to voice your rubbish beliefs on my blog.

Oh, I see. It’s only you that is allowed to come to my blog and abuse me, is that it?

Well, the fact is, it’s not a question of belief. What you’ve helped do to OraNA is a fact, not a belief. That you don’t care about the effects on OraNA is a fact, not a belief. I can understand you wanting to dismiss those facts as ‘rubbish’. I wouldn’t be too proud of them if they applied to me, that’s for sure.