I was waiting for your reply and couldn't wait anymore. I have to work tomorrow, you see -- I work 7 days a week on Free Software, so I just can't stay up late

I was waiting for your reply and couldn't wait anymore. I have to work tomorrow, you see -- I work 7 days a week on Free Software, so I just can't stay up late. Anyway, I did hit reload one last time and saw your reply, but I assure you this has to be the last one but I welcome you to email me if you'd like. The reason I used that political way of interacting with him was that I have been one of Canonical, Ltd.'s critics for a long time -- back before it was popular to "pile onto" Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu, etc. (I noted that in my blog post in the section I talk about why I stopped; they'll be more on the next episode of Free as in Freedom audcast [0] released next week.) I've found that there are a lot of people out there in the Ubuntu community who really do treat Mark like he is, as his title insists, a Dictator for Life and simply are his proxies out defending him. Again, I'm using a politicians' word -- proxies -- and a politician's analysis. But, the fact is, there are a lot of people out there, and many on identi.ca, who proxy for @sabdfl. I admit that I incorrectly assumed that fellow was one of them. I think you're taking that one conversation and attempting, in a confirmation bias [1] sort of way, to extrapolate that it shows some principle that's always at work in conversations with people like me. Fact is, despite that I suspected the fellow was acting like a proxy, I still engaged with him in multiple threads in parallel, just in case I was wrong (turned out I was), precisely to avoid the very problem you're accusing me of in this thread. Setting aside the fact that you seem upset that I don't really use this site often, and that I clearly don't keep the same sleep schedule and/or am in the same time-zone as you, it seems we're having the type of conversation and discourse you want. Yet, you've framed the conversation to talk about this meta-issue of "I can't talk to you people" rather than have the conversation about whatever it is you want to talk to Free Software zealots like me about. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences in communication with some Free Software hard-cores. I hope I haven't been one. I still don't think, for various reasons I've stated (the most important one being the one you keep ignoring: that there were parallel threads going on), that the one I had with that fellow on identi.ca is an example that supports your claim. I completely believe you that you've had frustrating conversations of that nature with others. I know they happen and I will validate that point for you. I just don't think this example was one of them. I wish you a good $timezone_greeting, but mine is "late in the night" right now for a guy pushing forty-years-old in the US/Eastern time zone, so please do email me if you want to discuss further. [0] http://faif.us/ http://faif.us/ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias