5 ms·

I think it's a combination of the era and of the specific context. I would suppose that your experience potentially had other extenuating factors that caused yo

I think it's a combination of the era and of the specific context. I would suppose that your experience potentially had other extenuating factors that caused you to give the threat more weight. Either way, I don't fault you at all for treating it as serious if you felt it was. It's not exactly a socially acceptable thing to threaten anyone—but at the time, and in this context, I think recipient would have recognized the ridiculousness of the "threat" (killing someone over the change of a command's behavior?) as an attempt at a joke. No longer.

dalke 11y ago
Yes, I would like you to describe what you mean by "specific context", because I can think of many contexts that could be described as a "threat like this". If you mean "threats sent by email", then my experience is a counter-example. If you mean "threats sent to the XCOPY developers" then it's entirely too restrictive to be meaningful. Do you mean "untargeted threats send to unspecified members of a large company"? What do you think was the frequency of such events in the 1970s or 1980s, and the typical response? Without more information, it's hard to make sense of what you mean.
- d23 11y ago
  I think it's obvious what he means, and you're probably just being difficult. It's a joke because it's a threat 1) over something incredibly trivial, 2) over something that is never associated with death threats (i.e. command-line arguments), 3) done by someone who presumably isn't normally associated with death threats (i.e. a nerd), and 4) that was submitted to the microsoft.com feedback form, an absurdly broad audience if this was intended to be effective.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Right, now, how has that changed over the decades? That's the part I'm being "difficult" about.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

5 ms·

I think it's a combination of the era and of the specific context. I would suppose that your experience potentially had other extenuating factors that caused yo

by tillinghast 11y ago

dalke 11y ago
Yes, I would like you to describe what you mean by "specific context", because I can think of many contexts that could be described as a "threat like this". If you mean "threats sent by email", then my experience is a counter-example. If you mean "threats sent to the XCOPY developers" then it's entirely too restrictive to be meaningful. Do you mean "untargeted threats send to unspecified members of a large company"? What do you think was the frequency of such events in the 1970s or 1980s, and the typical response? Without more information, it's hard to make sense of what you mean.
- d23 11y ago
  I think it's obvious what he means, and you're probably just being difficult. It's a joke because it's a threat 1) over something incredibly trivial, 2) over something that is never associated with death threats (i.e. command-line arguments), 3) done by someone who presumably isn't normally associated with death threats (i.e. a nerd), and 4) that was submitted to the microsoft.com feedback form, an absurdly broad audience if this was intended to be effective.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Right, now, how has that changed over the decades? That's the part I'm being "difficult" about.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]