And now I have my answer. By standing on principle, and arguing for that principle, I've been down voted to negative one. When I responded, at length, with an

And now I have my answer. By standing on principle, and arguing for that principle, I've been down voted to negative one. When I responded, at length, with an explanation to someone who raised a vague disagreement, that was down voted as well. Yet the people who have disagreed with me have not made arguments, mostly just drive by comments. Mostly assertion and characterization. And one person even admitted he was down voting me simply because he disagreed. Hacker News is not a place where intelligent discussion can take place, and thus its a waste of time to participate here. I'm tired of getting responses that aren't insightful disagreements, but vague unsupported assertions of partisanship. I'm tired of personal attacks when I make arguments and the fact that it seems most participants on HN are 20 something and very uneducated about the world. (which means you can't' refer to things that should be well known--like the fact that Apple got a license from Xerox for the inventions such as the mouse et al.) Hacker News is a waste of time, and its getting blocked in my /etc/hosts file for now.