> Please now explain where this baseless implication comes from.

One thing, before I quote an e-mail I received from Jason: Upon reflection, it
was probably a mistake to include that line in my post. No matter what the
response might be, it can only continue this, which isn't what I want. Also, I
said that I had reason to believe this, not that I am convinced of it. For him
to accuse you of removing his posts would not be proof enough for me, but
would instead be a further descent into this rather nasty subject. Here are
two quotes from an e-mail he sent following my first post in this thread:

>Any
>attempt I have made to post publicly to the newsgroup in response to
>this matter has been thwarted as well it would seem - my posts are being
>deleted.

...

>I am shamed, hurt, embarrassed, and humiliated because of this, and
>I am extremely remorseful for the people my words have offended
>because of the public posting of what was meant to be a private
>exchange of e-mail (albeit a sorry work it was).  I hold no value that
>believes "The American Way" prevails over any other way of thinking,
>speaking, and even spelling.  I desperately wish I could communicate
>that to the people who have flamed me, spammed me, macro-mail
>bombed me, etc, but I fear I would be writing personal apologies for
>the next 6 months.
>
>As such, I don't have any intention of making any further public replies
>to this matter, since any attempt I've made has been censored.

I will e-mail him to see whether or not he would object to letting me post his
entire e-mail, since it's not exactly possible for anyone else to see it,
right now... but this would be my reason. However, I shouldn't have mentioned
that in my post, and for that I apologize. I have no first hand evidence that
you have done so, merely Jason's word. Since he has e-mailed me, without me
e-mailing him, I can only suppose that he has been following the thread, and
if he has, than it's a reasonable to suppose that he has tried to post an
explanation, but that too is far from solid evidence. I would like to explain
that I don't mean to accuse you (or any of the team) for acting so unfairly.
But that I have to consider it in the first place is unfortunate. Again,
please accept my apologies for that sentence, I should not have written it.
That was a mistake on my part.

-Mark R.

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I think the original e-mail was posted here as a catharsis.  I imagine they get a
lot of mail that is rather silly and it can be mentally draining to have to sort
through it for legitimate problem reports.  The tone of the e-mail also seemed to
be taking a shot at the work of the POV-Ray Team, so a little bitterness over it
is understandable.

If it's true that people went after Jason with mail bombing and such I think
that's reprehensible.  As far as his problems posting to this newsgroup, it sounds
like a software problem.  Otherwise he would have seen it right after sending it.

I agree that this thread has gotten out of hand, but I think it's also succeeded
in making the point that you should think about what you are going to say before
writing a 'bug' report.

-Mike

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>We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
>speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
>Americans changing the language in the least

If we exclude the English and the Americans then we are left with the Kiwis,
Aussies, Irish, Welsh and the Scots. Any one who has heard those
interpretations of English should have little to say about American English.
American arrogance is another matter entirely...

Tom

Post a reply to this message

>>attempt I have made to post publicly to the newsgroup in response to
>>this matter has been thwarted as well it would seem - my posts are being
>>deleted.

This is not so. He has never (to our knowledge) posted to this server. His
accusation that his posts are being deleted are false (unless someone has
forged cancel messages for his posts, which would then be visible in the
'control' group of this server. We don't see any there.)

We ourselves have never deleted any message sent by him.

A scan through DejaNews DID indicate that he has posted a single message (that
we can find anyhow) to povray.general via news.xmission.com.

Before proceeding, let us say that the implication (that we read from the above
message) that we had sent an email to him containing expletives is false. Nor
did we indulge in 'American bashing', though we left him in no question as to
the fact that we don't like having our intelligence questioned as he so clearly
did in his report to us. But that's beside the point.

His main problem is that he apparantly posted to news.xmission.com. Why he did
that we have no idea. news.xmission.com is not news.povray.org (no surprises
about that we would expect). There is no way that any posting from xmission.com
is going to get onto this server since news.povray.org is not connected to
USENET (unless someone posts it manually). We do NOT take in articles from the
world (see http://www.povray.org/groups.html for an explanation as to why).

And we had our way, articles would not get out, either. Until about 24 hours
ago we were unaware that several sites had been feeding articles from this
server out into the world (this had been done without our permission).

So Jason's posting - far from being deleted, as he claims (wrong yet again,
Jason) - simply never even made it to this server, and thus to the bulk of the
POV-Ray user community. Had he wanted to reply to this thread he would have
been best off doing exactly what everyone else does, and that is to post
directly to news.povray.org (the existance of which is documented in the povwin
help file).

If he wants we will delete the entire thread (and any related threads), lock
stock and barrel, from this server, such that there is no record of it ever
existing (at least not here). That way he will receive no further emails from
users who don't think much of the tone of his bug report.

If he doesn't want that then fine, it'll say there. It doesn't bother us either
way. And if he chooses to followup here in the newsgroup then that's fine, too.
[IMO however, it wouldn't do much good since we would be obliged to reply to
it, and then there'd be replies to replies and followups and so forth, and the
thing would drag out all over again. As it is the thread has more or less died
out. But if he wants to he's welcome, as he always has been.]

Post a reply to this message

povray.org admin team wrote:

> world (see http://www.povray.org/groups.html for an explanation as to why).

Sorry for being off topic but I noticed on the above list
you don't have a lising for povray.binaries.programming.
An oversight or omission ?

Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

"Tom Galvin" <tga### [at] dataforgecom> wrote:

>>We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
>>speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
>>Americans changing the language in the least
>
>If we exclude the English and the Americans then we are left with the Kiwis,
>Aussies, Irish, Welsh and the Scots. Any one who has heard those
>interpretations of English should have little to say about American English.

Precisely. So we don't complain about their english, just about the fact that a
few of them rudely complain about _ours_.

This is the whole point, one that some readers have failed to 'get'. We're all
welcome to do whatever we like to our own regional variations of English. But
none of us should go about implying that someone else lacks intelligence (as
Jason did to us) because that other person uses their own, regional, variation
of English spelling (regardless of whether or not it is 'true' English as the
English spell it).

No-one here has said the Americans have it wrong, and the Aussies/Irish/Kiwis
etc. have it right. Just that we're not wrong, either (yes, it's possible for
both of us to be right).

Had I been an Australian user of a software package and had written to an
American firm rudely questioning their intelligence because they spelt minimise
with a 'z' then I would have been just as guilty. But I won't, because I know
that Americans have their own spelling and I respect that fact.

I've never yet personally come across a software package that does menu and
documentation spelling substitutions based on the country settings - not even
Microsoft Word [a likely candidate] does that. [FWIW Word does correctly mark
words such as 'minimize' as incorrectly spelt, and suggests the 's' variation,
when set to British English].

Therefore, software (for the time being) is likely to continue to come out with
its own regional spelling in documentation and menus, and there's little that
can be done about it except just accept it.

Post a reply to this message

Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:

>povray.org admin team wrote:
>
>> world (see http://www.povray.org/groups.html for an explanation as to why).
>
>Sorry for being off topic but I noticed on the above list
>you don't have a lising for povray.binaries.programming.
>An oversight or omission ?

Good catch. I'll add it in next time I've editing that page.

Post a reply to this message

> 
> > Does he even OWN an English language dictionary?
> 
> Because one person is rude does that excuse YOU to be rude towards that person or
> any other ?
> 

Ahhh... but that's the whole catch isn't it?

Someone who reports misspellings without even verifying that he is correct
by consulting a dictionary one can only ASSUME that he doesn't own one,
othewise one would be forced to make rude assumptions as to his intelligence
which of course we wouldn't want to do, OR???

-- 
Best regards,
 _ __                      _    ,   _ _ _
' )  )     /         _/_  ' )  /   ' ) ) )
 /--' ____/___/> __  /     /--/     / / / __,_  __  o _   ______
/  \_(_) /_) (__/ (_<__   /  ( o   / ' (_(_) (_/ (_<_/_)_(_) / <_

Robert H. Morrison                      Tel:   +49 721 9628 167
Software Development, Basis Team        FAX:   +49 721 9628 149
Hitex-Systementwicklung GmbH            Email: RMorrison@hitex.de

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povray.org admin team wrote in message
<361426a9.436588571@news.povray.org>...
>"Tom Galvin" <tga### [at] dataforgecom> wrote:
>
>>>We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
>>>speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
>>>Americans changing the language in the least

>This is the whole point, one that some readers have failed to 'get'.

Whoa Tex!  I think everyone has gotten the point.  I wasn't meaning to bash
anyone.  I was just poking fun at the different dialects of English.  I grew
up surrounded by Brouges and Bronx accents that were constantly harping on
my use of the English language.
    There aint no such word as aint...
    Don't say "me and Joe", it's "Joe and me"
Tom

Post a reply to this message

"Tom Galvin" <tga### [at] dataforgecom> wrote:

>
>povray.org admin team wrote in message
><361426a9.436588571@news.povray.org>...
>>"Tom Galvin" <tga### [at] dataforgecom> wrote:
>>
>>>>We (the collective 'we' here being, I suppose, any non-American English
>>>>speaker, though I can hardly profess to speak for all of them) don't mind
>>>>Americans changing the language in the least
>
>>This is the whole point, one that some readers have failed to 'get'.
>
>Whoa Tex!  I think everyone has gotten the point.  I wasn't meaning to bash
>anyone.  I was just poking fun at the different dialects of English.  I grew
>up surrounded by Brouges and Bronx accents that were constantly harping on
>my use of the English language.
>    There aint no such word as aint...
>    Don't say "me and Joe", it's "Joe and me"

                  bau### [at] thiazicscornelledu (Garth Baulch)
                       Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY
                          (rec_humor_cull, chuckle)

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day about the fact that
in many languages, such as English, a double negative forms a positive, while
in other languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative.
"However," he pointed out, "in no language can a double positive form a
negative." 

A bored voice from the back of the room responded, "Yeah, yeah...."

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