From: Clive D.W. Feather (clive@demon.net)
Date: Fri Mar 01 2002 - 05:06:15 CST
Russ Allbery said:
>> Thanks so much for pointing out where my paraphrase was wrong, or how
>> the argument I made based on it was wrong.
> I'm not interested in correcting your paraphrases after the fact. I'm
> interested in not having my e-mail messages rewritten into a completely
> different tone and argument and then put forward as something that I
> believe.
Let me second this.
In fact, let me give an example. I initially wrote:
| I'd like it to be clear that "entity" doesn't mean "a specific human
| being", because that's about the only valid point I've seen John Stanley's
| stuff produce.
John replied with:
| So you'd like it specified that "entity" cannot be a human being just to
| spite me?
When I challenged it, he wrote:
| You don't seem to understand what
| the consequences of those words are, but they come straight from you.
and:
| "Entity" can mean any one of several
| things, one of which includes "human being".
Firstly, I didn't ask for something to "spite" John. I was actually
saying that this is the one place where I think John is *correct*: the
draft uses wording that could lead people to believe that an injector must
magically determine who was sitting at the keyboard and whether two
unrelated email addresses are being used by the same person. Since this is
a nonsense interpretation, the draft should be reworded to say what we
actually mean. By raising this point, John did do us a service. Pity he had
to drown it out with his other comments.
If anyone else can get "spite" out of "valid point", I'd like to know how.
Secondly, I did not say that '"entity" cannot be a human being'. If John
goes back to "the tape" he'll see what I actually wrote. In particular, I
used quote marks around various phrases: to native English speakers these
normally indicate that the terms are being quoted from another source.
For the hard of thinking, I am not stating that the term "entity" cannot
include human beings, either singular or plural. Rather, John's arguments -
to me - appeared to be based on the assumption that the draft was referring
to a specific human (see comments on "magically" above). At earlier points
in this thread I used the term "entity". My request is that, whatever term
the draft uses, it should be made clear that that term is *not* a textual
macro for "a specific human being".
Does anyone else need me to explain this in more detail ?
-- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 Thus plc | | NOTE: fax number change