5 ms·

Dude, Linus Torvalds is not a low-wage foreign worker. He has done more to provide you with a job than you have done to get yourself a job. Opensource software

by ceci 16y ago

Dude, Linus Torvalds is not a low-wage foreign worker. He has done more to provide you with a job than you have done to get yourself a job. Opensource softwares have helped the US economy because lots of today's internet giants like Google benefitted from the use of opensource tools. They are paying taxes and employing Americans, ain't they. Linus Torvalds is synomymous with opensource. Mr America, if i might ask, what have you done to provide a job for yourself, because if you can't even provide a job for yourself, how do you provide for others. Make yourself competitive, read more and stay away from TV etc and you will soon land a job.

mike-cardwell 16y ago
It's called a "joke"
- binomial 16y ago
  Perhaps Poe's Law applies here?: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law
philwelch 16y ago
Before you ask, you've been downvoted for failing to grasp irony.
- kiuyhjk 16y ago
  One more thing to consider for any other europeans thinking of moving to America: 1, they don't understand irony 2, they carry guns
  - shasta 16y ago
    Guns are pretty irony
  - jerf 16y ago
    Ah, I think I see the problem. We call that "sarcasm". Quite a lot of us get that just fine, though of course the internet can always turn up at least one person who doesn't. "Irony" is reserved for events that are only ironic in the light of other events; death by drowning isn't "ironic" until it happens to a swimming instructor, for instance. You can't really say something ironic, it has to happen. (And if you say something ironic it is a description of a thing that happened.)
    - kiuyhjk 16y ago
      That's true - should have said sarcasm, but I can't change it because of the guns = irony joke. Now that's ironic.
    - aamar 16y ago
      This is, in part, incorrect. "Irony" is in its original (from Ancient Greek) and primary usage a rhetorical form -- in other words, something intentionally used by a speaker. Experts disagree on whether "verbal irony" and "sarcasm" are the same thing -- sarcasm might require a kind of sharp, biting tone. But the original comment is certainly ironic. A situation like your drowning example is also irony; sometimes to be explicitly this is called "situational irony" as opposed to "verbal irony." I apologize for being pedantic; mostly I just wanted a justified link to Silva Rhetoricae: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/I/irony.htm http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/I/irony.htm (but see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony).
      - jerf 16y ago
        Allow me to be pedantic right back. I did not say "sarcasm is". I said "we call that sarcasm". It's not really to label a description of how a word is used as "incorrect" and use a proscription as evidence. My fourth sentence was a bit regrettably absolutely phrased but the context of my statement should be set by then. I don't even care if that's true of all of us Americans, it's true of enough. (The idea that Americans don't get "sarcasm" is very foreign to me; oh, I certainly know people who don't get it but we seem a fairly sarcastic culture to me.)
  - SkyMarshal 16y ago
    And most importantly, we use periods where you guys use commas. ;p
- demallien 16y ago
  This is actually directed at kiuyhjk's reply, not your's philwelch, but... uh, there's no reply link on kiuyhjk's post in my browser (Chrome 6.0.472.51 beta on Fedora 12) Anyway, kiuyhjk - very funny post, very meta
  - sasvari 16y ago
    HN policy to avoid flame wars, AFAIK: the reply button is delayed before it appears for a specific post. seems to be around 4 minutes, at least for the deepness of this conversation. so, just be more patient in the future ...
    - demallien 16y ago
      Oh. OK, Thanks for that. I wonder how I managed to miss that little detail! And hey, bonus point, I just discovered that when people continue to downvote you, it still hits your karma, even if the visible post count stops at -4. Two things I've learned about HN today :)
- jeffreyg 16y ago
  glad to see the reddit crowd made it over
  - user24 16y ago
    indeed. Sadly, above your comment is the start of a pun thread. The first I've seen on HN, and regrettably doubtfully the last.
  - lanstein 16y ago
    "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - gruseom 16y ago
      Not an illusion in this case: that deep hierarchy of one-liners dominating the top of the thread is unmistakably Redditesque.
    - jeffreyg 16y ago
      granted. but in my 276 days since creating my account (I've been reading for over a year), this is the first thread I've actually been let down by, where there are highly upvoted posts which add zero value to the discussion.
      - amackera 16y ago
        Man, it's the Internet.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Ugh. Yeah, that wasn't the set of comments I expected to generate either. Sometimes I post a comment that I personally expect to be genuinely worth 27 points. That wasn't one of them. You have my sincere apologies.
- alinajaf 16y ago
  That wasn't irony. THIS is irony (i.e. that the person who called out the other guy for not understanding irony, happens to not actually know the difference between irony and sarcasm himself) :P
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Sarcasm is a subset of irony.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      What? I didn't say anything outright wrong, though it's a subject of some controversy. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony_and_sarcasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony_and_sarcasm More specifically: Some psycholinguistic theorists (e.g., Gibbs, 2000) suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony.
  - ewjordan 16y ago
    ewjordan's Law of Irony: in any Internet discussion of sufficient length where the word "irony" is used, someone will call out the poster for using it incorrectly. This is true whether or not the original usage was proper or not, and with high probability the original complaint will be followed up by a comment on the irony of the critic not understanding the definition of the word "irony". Bonus points are awarded based on how many levels this back and forth continues. Alanis Morissette will be brought up in at least 50% of these cases, though the precise frequency depends inversely on the level of sophistication of the forum members.
    - reinhardt 16y ago
      Oblig. oatmeal link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  Few crimes deserve a harsher sentence.
geebee 16y ago
The irony here is obvious, but I'm not exactly sure what to infer from it. I've always felt that this one of the big problems with irony in debates that merit serious discussion - they allow someone to mock an opposing point of view, but not really (really?). I suppose that this is part of the purpose of irony as well, to keep people on their toes, and make them think about things in new ways. Irony can also be used to put a clearly stupid sentence into someone else's mouth, and then claim, when that other person objects, that they just don't get irony. I'm not sure what the intent is here, but the way I read it, the post may have been intended to mock people who believe that large scale employment-based visa programs (like the H1B) have had some negative effects, displacing some US citizens in the tech job market and deterring other Americans from entering the field altogether. The post suggests that these people would oppose the presence (and naturalization, I guess) of extremely talented foreign nationals or immigrants. All I can say is that even the most ardent opponents of the H1B visa (such as Norman Matloff) strongly support a substantial number of visas for talented people (I think his ideal figure was 15,000/yr). So aside from the true bozos on various discussion forms, there's pretty much nobody in this debate who would make a statement like this (oh, but nobody did, it's irony. Right? Or is it?) Clearly, this was an extremely popular post (over 100 karma points), and I suspect that's because it goes to the heart of what has made a lot of people so frustrated with the current H1B/employment immigration system. And if you feel this way, you probably see the post as kind of brilliant, rather than a cheap shot. To me, this has always been the problem with bringing irony into a debate that is actually pretty complicated and nuanced.

by ceci 16y ago

mike-cardwell 16y ago

It's called a "joke"

binomial 16y ago
Perhaps Poe's Law applies here?: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law

philwelch 16y ago

Before you ask, you've been downvoted for failing to grasp irony.

kiuyhjk 16y ago
One more thing to consider for any other europeans thinking of moving to America: 1, they don't understand irony 2, they carry guns
- shasta 16y ago
  Guns are pretty irony
- jerf 16y ago
  Ah, I think I see the problem. We call that "sarcasm". Quite a lot of us get that just fine, though of course the internet can always turn up at least one person who doesn't. "Irony" is reserved for events that are only ironic in the light of other events; death by drowning isn't "ironic" until it happens to a swimming instructor, for instance. You can't really say something ironic, it has to happen. (And if you say something ironic it is a description of a thing that happened.)
  - kiuyhjk 16y ago
    That's true - should have said sarcasm, but I can't change it because of the guns = irony joke. Now that's ironic.
  - aamar 16y ago
    This is, in part, incorrect. "Irony" is in its original (from Ancient Greek) and primary usage a rhetorical form -- in other words, something intentionally used by a speaker. Experts disagree on whether "verbal irony" and "sarcasm" are the same thing -- sarcasm might require a kind of sharp, biting tone. But the original comment is certainly ironic. A situation like your drowning example is also irony; sometimes to be explicitly this is called "situational irony" as opposed to "verbal irony." I apologize for being pedantic; mostly I just wanted a justified link to Silva Rhetoricae: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/I/irony.htm http://rhetoric.byu.edu/figures/I/irony.htm (but see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony).
    - jerf 16y ago
      Allow me to be pedantic right back. I did not say "sarcasm is". I said "we call that sarcasm". It's not really to label a description of how a word is used as "incorrect" and use a proscription as evidence. My fourth sentence was a bit regrettably absolutely phrased but the context of my statement should be set by then. I don't even care if that's true of all of us Americans, it's true of enough. (The idea that Americans don't get "sarcasm" is very foreign to me; oh, I certainly know people who don't get it but we seem a fairly sarcastic culture to me.)
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  And most importantly, we use periods where you guys use commas. ;p
demallien 16y ago
This is actually directed at kiuyhjk's reply, not your's philwelch, but... uh, there's no reply link on kiuyhjk's post in my browser (Chrome 6.0.472.51 beta on Fedora 12) Anyway, kiuyhjk - very funny post, very meta
- sasvari 16y ago
  HN policy to avoid flame wars, AFAIK: the reply button is delayed before it appears for a specific post. seems to be around 4 minutes, at least for the deepness of this conversation. so, just be more patient in the future ...
  - demallien 16y ago
    Oh. OK, Thanks for that. I wonder how I managed to miss that little detail! And hey, bonus point, I just discovered that when people continue to downvote you, it still hits your karma, even if the visible post count stops at -4. Two things I've learned about HN today :)
jeffreyg 16y ago
glad to see the reddit crowd made it over
- user24 16y ago
  indeed. Sadly, above your comment is the start of a pun thread. The first I've seen on HN, and regrettably doubtfully the last.
- lanstein 16y ago
  "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - gruseom 16y ago
    Not an illusion in this case: that deep hierarchy of one-liners dominating the top of the thread is unmistakably Redditesque.
  - jeffreyg 16y ago
    granted. but in my 276 days since creating my account (I've been reading for over a year), this is the first thread I've actually been let down by, where there are highly upvoted posts which add zero value to the discussion.
    - amackera 16y ago
      Man, it's the Internet.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Ugh. Yeah, that wasn't the set of comments I expected to generate either. Sometimes I post a comment that I personally expect to be genuinely worth 27 points. That wasn't one of them. You have my sincere apologies.
alinajaf 16y ago
That wasn't irony. THIS is irony (i.e. that the person who called out the other guy for not understanding irony, happens to not actually know the difference between irony and sarcasm himself) :P
- philwelch 16y ago
  Sarcasm is a subset of irony.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    What? I didn't say anything outright wrong, though it's a subject of some controversy. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony_and_sarcasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony#Verbal_irony_and_sarcasm More specifically: Some psycholinguistic theorists (e.g., Gibbs, 2000) suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony.
- ewjordan 16y ago
  ewjordan's Law of Irony: in any Internet discussion of sufficient length where the word "irony" is used, someone will call out the poster for using it incorrectly. This is true whether or not the original usage was proper or not, and with high probability the original complaint will be followed up by a comment on the irony of the critic not understanding the definition of the word "irony". Bonus points are awarded based on how many levels this back and forth continues. Alanis Morissette will be brought up in at least 50% of these cases, though the precise frequency depends inversely on the level of sophistication of the forum members.
  - reinhardt 16y ago
    Oblig. oatmeal link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony
mkr-hn 16y ago
Few crimes deserve a harsher sentence.

geebee 16y ago

The irony here is obvious, but I'm not exactly sure what to infer from it. I've always felt that this one of the big problems with irony in debates that merit serious discussion - they allow someone to mock an opposing point of view, but not really (really?). I suppose that this is part of the purpose of irony as well, to keep people on their toes, and make them think about things in new ways. Irony can also be used to put a clearly stupid sentence into someone else's mouth, and then claim, when that other person objects, that they just don't get irony. I'm not sure what the intent is here, but the way I read it, the post may have been intended to mock people who believe that large scale employment-based visa programs (like the H1B) have had some negative effects, displacing some US citizens in the tech job market and deterring other Americans from entering the field altogether. The post suggests that these people would oppose the presence (and naturalization, I guess) of extremely talented foreign nationals or immigrants. All I can say is that even the most ardent opponents of the H1B visa (such as Norman Matloff) strongly support a substantial number of visas for talented people (I think his ideal figure was 15,000/yr). So aside from the true bozos on various discussion forms, there's pretty much nobody in this debate who would make a statement like this (oh, but nobody did, it's irony. Right? Or is it?) Clearly, this was an extremely popular post (over 100 karma points), and I suspect that's because it goes to the heart of what has made a lot of people so frustrated with the current H1B/employment immigration system. And if you feel this way, you probably see the post as kind of brilliant, rather than a cheap shot. To me, this has always been the problem with bringing irony into a debate that is actually pretty complicated and nuanced.