I'll link you to what he said. (I'm not sure if you haven't read this particular bit, or if you have and are just trying to make a case for some magical ponies-and-rainbows world.)

I submit that what he said there provides more useful criticism than your suggestion, despite the usage of... well, really not very much profanity at all. (Tallying up everything that could even vaguely be considered "bad language", I get three "crap"s, two "shit"s, one "hell", and one "WTF".)

In addition, your response is more punitive than is probably necessary, considering that the person in question has a history of committing good code normally. You'd seriously operate on a two-strikes policy for bad commits?

So why does he need to yell publicly at this person who screwed up, why not do the yelling in private? The only reason I can think is that he wants to embarrass or humiliate the person, and possibly send out warnings/intimidations to tohers, and that's dickish.

If you do the yelling in private, other people will repeat the same mistake. Basic fact of human nature: we learn best from other people being made an example of.

So, responding to the mistake "publicly" (and keep in mind that far more people read Slashdot than the LKML) is the best way of preventing future mistakes. Whether or not yelling is necessarily the best way of responding is another matter entirely, and obviously is target-dependent. (Based on comments on the mailing list, yelling appears to be reserved for people who really, really should know better. People who don't necessarily know better, or people who actually ask first - like they should - don't get yelled at.)

Really, what this boils down to is that if you're not sure if you're doing the right thing, you should ask first rather than going all cowboy-style and screwing things up. "It's better to ask forgiveness than permission" should not be the guiding principle of, well, anyone who isn't ready to set out on their own anyway.

The thing is, people end up thinking it's okay to retaliate in kind because they see no adverse consequences to it. Which is directly traceable back to the whole "let's keep up a professional front" thing.

If you're going to enforce professionalism, you have to be willing to enforce thought police on everyone there so that nobody even gets to think about backstabbing...

From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).

So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.

Assuming that 90% of people who donate will donate in the first ten days, and that it'll hold its average to date over that time period (through exposure to new people), it's still on track for over $330k. "Half" is not "a tiny fraction" last time I checked.

But yes, expecting less than what Kicktraq is projecting is otherwise appropriate.

I used VB 6 (and VB 3 as well). iTunes is still worse than both the VB 6 IDE and any piece of software I made using VB 6, and I wasn't making anything that could remotely be considered production-grade software with VB 6.

Since the Pauli exclusion principle only applies to particles with non-integer spin numbers, and zero is an integer, the answer is "yes, particles with zero spin are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle".

Three comments:
1) Not everything scales up at linear-or-better rates;
2) Better distribution of anything reduces the impact of failures; and
3) Who the hell said anything about no more power stations anyway?

Ugh. I don't know why they're making that particular claim, because vacuum decay should be a property of spacetime (and therefore shouldn't be dependent upon the speed of light).

But yes, if vacuum decay is limited such that it travels more slowly than the expansion of the universe, you would have a "hole" with the decayed state in it which occupied a progressively smaller and smaller fraction of the universe.

Okay, let's run through your "points" one by one here (note: I don't play EVE, mostly because I've heard the learning curve is an absolute bitch).

* Unlike most other MMOs, it's relatively easy to put a real-world value on stuff in EVE (thanks to, if I'm not entirely mistaken, being able to spend in-game currency on your subscription fee rather than actual cash). The value of the "make-believe spacecraft" is enough currency to pay for X months, which is also how long $3500 would pay for.

* Nearby systems get moved to other servers in their server farm. The options in MMOs in general tend to be "block people every time they try to get into an area on the same server", or this - a temporary disconnection, followed by being on a server that isn't dealing with as heavy of a load. EVE's method, while it's a disruption, is less disruptive to the players than "Sorry, you can't enter this area" over and over and over again.

* The slowed-down time effect is not "a means to keep people from suffering from a slowdown of the servers". It's a means to give people a better chance to evaluate large-scale battles in as much depth as they'd be able to evaluate smaller battles. Or, at least, close to the same depth of analysis.

I mean, I understand that you think the hobbies of these people are inscrutable and not worthy of your time, but... well, what are your hobbies? I'm pretty sure there are people here who think the same thing about yours.

Hyperinflation has a specific definition (50% or higher monthly inflation, so ~12,900% annual inflation).

No, we are not seeing hyperinflation. We aren't even seeing inflation anywhere close to what has historically been "high" in the US, except in the healthcare field! Hell, up until this weekend, gas prices were dropping.

The Tea Party is trying to undo everything that made the country great back in the 50s and early 60s. What do you call someone trying to undermine the country?

And by 2018 North America should be the proud home of at least a dozen new countries, because the Tea stands for treason.

How are you keeping it lit, and where did you find rolling papers that size?

A jump from 900kbps ("around 1Mbps") to 7200kbps ("around 7Mbps") is very much a 700% increase.

The problem is a lack of significant figures here, which means that the "around 1Mbps to around 7Mbps" increase could be anywhere from as low as ~333% (1.5Mbps to 6.5Mbps) to as high as 1400% (0.5Mbps to 7.5Mbps).

This response has been brought to you by the -pedantic switch. Have a nice day!

Think of it this way (warning: sort of a car analogy):

You know those ads where they're like "We've got cars starting at $300, THIS WEEKEND ONLY!", and they'll mention some kind of halfway decent car at a ridiculously low price? That's entirely to get suckers to come in, and when they find out that the really good deal they were hoping for isn't there, well, there's the salesman, trying to talk up a new Honda Accord or such instead.

Hawaii serves the same purpose. It's to draw bidders in. We run it early, sell it to Canada while nobody's really paying attention, and everyone else can stick around for the crap states because people don't like to feel like they missed out on the only worthwhile thing.

(Alternatively, Hawaii was included just as an example so that I didn't get several metric tons of Southern butthurt for only including their states.)