Why Phobos is cool

[Chris]

On Tuesday, 30 June 2020 at 21:40:31 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

>
> Calling someone "spoiled" is rude and unprofessional. Period.

I disagree, you know there is such a thing as context.

>
> People who want their message heard need to post in a 
> professional manner. I don't care about the opinions of rude 
> people. I don't care to work with them, even if they are good. 
> I am hardly alone in this - pretty much nobody in the 
> professional world responds to rude messages.
>

That's a bit worrying. So you are saying that you dismiss / don't 
care about somebody's opinion, because you don't like their 
style? This is what I would call unprofessional. You have to 
listen to everybody if they have valid points or good ideas. 
We're talking about technology, a product, not politics.

Note aside: I think the guys who invented / developed the mouse + 
UI at Xerox were a bunch of "non-conformists" and they were fired 
(I think). Steve Jobs took them on (or offered more money? 
Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know the whole story.)

>
> I recommend that anyone who has difficulties understanding what 
> politeness is get a copy of Emily Post's book on business 
> etiquette.

"Honesty" can be used as an excuse to hurt somebody, and 
"politeness" can be used as an excuse to chicken out: "Oh, that 
was a rude question, I don't need to answer to that. (Emily Post 
wouldn't have answered to that either, I'm sure.)"

Now, here's something about Emily Post:

"Emily Post (c. October 27, 1872 – September 25, 1960) was an 
American author and socialite, famous for writing about 
etiquette. [...]

The New York Times' Dinitia Smith reports, in her review of Laura 
Claridge's 2008 biography of Post,[4]

    'Emily was tall, pretty and spoiled.'"


There it is again: "spoiled". :) I wonder is there a link between 
being spoiled and insisting on etiquette?

Anyway, business and technology should not be guided by rules 
laid down by a socialite (a spoiled one at that!). And thanks be 
to God, it hasn't, else we wouldn't have the technologies we 
have. You know, over-insistence on etiquette can also be a sign 
of stagnation (cf. what the USA achieved vs. Europe)

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Post)


> Ill-mannered people find themselves shut out of all kinds of 
> opportunities, and they rarely figure out why.

"Ill-mannered" as defined by Emily Post?