Nothing wrong with llamas - just that you don't expect to find them in the lobby.
And the hate mail - hey I've been accused of stomping out freedom of expression and stifling people. Everyone is welcome to read what the fellow wrote. In, you know, the name of free speech and all.
This is going to be a summary - my blog my rules.
I am not proud that I called the guy names - but he irked me.
Profanity ahead if that offends.
The first message was sent to the info@ mailbox. What he was irritated about was that he posted a pseudo 30s era gangster post into the Forum. It was accidentally blown away when we thought it was spam. Mind you we didn't know this at the time.
message: what a bunch of lying dicks.
you say you allow disagreement.
but you pulled my 'organized crime'
forum post.
let me set aside the 1930's chicago
gangster accent.
you are a bunch of lying criminals
mooching off lazy-ass government
welfare programs. Your stupid-ass
ideas are bullshit, and anybody
with the slightest amount of engineering
brain can see it as such.
Enjoy your $95/hr, but in the end,
you are all scum and losers and ought
to be ashamed of your ugly faces
every time you look in a mirror.
Crooks. Con men. I've seen your
kind many a time before. Just because
the government is in alignment with you,
that only proves it all the more.
The government is crooks, just like you.
Space ribbon my ass. Dumbfuckers.
- Norm Hill
Design Engineer
University of Washington
BSEE 1985
near Seattle
Fuck you criminal con-men
unprincipled investigator
welfare-bum assholes.
I replied back thusly
Norm Hill wrote:
Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
Norm Hill (analogee@gte.net) on Sunday, October 09, 2005 at 12:50:19
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
message: what a bunch of lying dicks.
you say you allow disagreement.
but you pulled my 'organized crime'
forum post.
let me set aside the 1930's chicago
gangster accent.
Your post was deleted because one of the moderators glanced at it,
thought he recognized a spam attack he'd seen before and did what he is
supposed to do - remove spam from a message board.
Clarification - the spam he (thought) he recognized was a well known
attack using slang to foil the anti-spam measures that recognize buzz words.
We have had in the past needed to delete posts from the Forum. Such has
been needed due to advertising, blatant off-topic posts and so on.
I'm hard put to see this as quashing dissent. It is commonly accepted
that a well-maintained online forum is moderated to prevent abuse, quash
flame wars and to keep a forum on-topic. Removing a single
somewhat-funny post is hardly denying your ability to dissent.
you are a bunch of lying criminals
mooching off lazy-ass government
welfare programs. Your stupid-ass
ideas are bullshit, and anybody
with the slightest amount of engineering
brain can see it as such.
And so on. Do you speak to your mother that way? A vile trend I've
noticed is the tendency to treat the pseudo anonymous communication
afforded by email, IM, chat rooms and so on as an opportunity to be
odious and hurl insults with an abandon that you would not consider in a
physical setting.
Coarse language cheapens the context, causes ill feelings on both ends
of the conversation and, in the end, does nothing to contribute to a
meaningful exchange.
At the last, your privilege of course. But I've always felt that
intelligent people can express themselves without recourse to locker
room language. You may have proven my point.
And a normal dialog started. I sat on a single email (sent on 10/13) for no other reason than, you know, I'm busy and this hit my mailbox;
Gentlemen -
You don't reply. Its offensive.
You haven't responded to even a single question,
which YOU ASKED FOR ME TO SEND. I've numerous
polite follow-ups, and again, no relies.
Your space-rope can be slain (literally) by the simplest
of analysis of any of:
* electric discharge causing severing of the rope
* atomic oxygen erosion
* space debris impacts
* inability to "uncoil" and place the rope, esp when starting up
* invalid ideas about pulse-response if trying to pull the rope
to and fro and avoid space junk
* inability to power the elevator up the rope.
* uselessness for mid-height orbits, such as low earth orbit.
etc etc etc
This is a fantasy. You know it. You are milking for money
exactly as I said.
But what really offends me, is the actual people who post
on your chat board. You've got quite a nasty little shark-tank
of vitriolic followers. The most casual of "chat" or technical
ideas (which I have tried to do, briefly, in the vacuum of technical
discussion from you executives) is responded to with the most
amazing and nasty hostility from your vitriolic followers. They
actually think that anybody new who shows up on your forum
must be 'disposed of' as quickly as possible, lest somebody bring
up either of
* a good new idea
or
* a severe technical roadblock that can't be overcome.
You guys can't even sell me any carbon nanotube rope for my sailboat.
So what's the point.
NASA unrolled a few miles of tether from the space shuttle once.
The thing blew apart due to unexpected electrical discharge. Thats
why NASA eschews anything in space that involves lengths of tether.
the real prize would be if you guys were interested in ANY type of
cheap launch capability. For their DO exist aggressive and world-class
efforts into specific equipment, that WOULD yield a cheap launch and
which the Boeing and Martin Marietta's of this world would never,
of their own accord, pursue due to their greedy desire to keep launching
impractical rockets. BUT ALAS, you aren't interested in cheap launch,
you are interested in 'space elevator'.
So this is just a religious cult, topped off by a frosting-layer of
research-grant greed. I know about research grants. They are more
likely to be awarded to things that can never work. This is like a
nasty little den of Amway soap peddlers, except in this case, selling
the soap is PROFITABLE. So enjoy the bed you have made for yourselves.
But what blows me away, is the rudeness of your vitriolic followers
on your chat board, basically thinking its some type of 'road race'
where they have to push the other driver into the ditch. Its as far
from scientific-method as anybody could possibly get. I put up
something polite and something very nasty comes back in return.
The only thing your vitriolic followers are happy with, is a dead
silence on the chat board. They write in a way as to shut down and
impede any normal flow of discussion as might normally occur
amongst normal and intelligent individuals.
I can't be around that, it raises my blood pressure, and its disgusting
(your Dorian Grey carrying on about 'erections' in response to simple
scientific discussion).
So goodbye. Enjoy your gov't research welfare money.
Also, enjoy your snide silence. And enjoy your fantasy.
I have seen enough, and the odds of a space elevator ever being
constructed, is 0000.0000000000000000000000000%
AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.
- Norm Hill
Seatle
And so on. I won't snark on the spelling - but my 8th grade Civics teacher - Mrs. 'Spelling Counts' Robinson - would be disapointed in Mr. Hill. I admit I name called when I replied ..
Norm Hill wrote:
Gentlemen -
You don't reply. Its offensive.
You haven't responded to even a single question, which YOU ASKED FOR ME
TO SEND. I've numerous
polite follow-ups, and again, no relies.
I'm not sure what you expect, really. The replies have been received
and digested. I've marked your emails for a follow-up reply as time
permits. I've written back to you saying so.
What are you on about? In response to a hate filled invective with more
swears and nastiness than I experienced in Marine boot camp you received
at least two polite reasonable letters from people in this company
informing you where you were wrong and so forth.
And now this.
If you can't tolerate the fact that you're not the center of our world,
that some people with far too many assumed roles and an action list
longer than my arm has no time to respond to a nasty git with grandiose
delusions or a bit of give and take on a forum then ... fine be off with
you. The world will be no poorer for your absence.
Which is a shame - you're a bright guy.
AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.
Damn them for not showing more backbone! If only they had the wit and
courage to cast the scales from their eyes! Or you could just be a over
educated buffoon. One of those.
You're more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech and ...
you know .. actually do something about that instead of tossing nasty
emails around. But that might ask for of you than you're capable of.
It's one thing to post asinine screeds in a forum and (as you admit)
throw emails around when someone upsets you.
Doing something with more meaning than bleats on the internet requires a
dash of personnel courage which you lack.
Again - a shame. If the world had more people who were like your
assumed persona we'd be better off.
I recieved TWO replies to this
what is to 'digest' an email. just waht the hell is that.
you never answered the questions.
i have something to say. This is just a vitriolic
"AMWAY" religious cult following. I see the pattern
VERY WELL. The AMWAY types have a very
predictable pattern. Don't say anything to challenge them.
also for your latest round of personal insults towards me.
Remember, YOU are the con-man who wont answer
a technical objection. YOU are the one
who deserves the insults. YOU are accepting money for
a total fucking waste of time. Don't you get ashamed of
not doing anything legitimate for a living? At my most
recent engineering contract, I earned some nasty-ass
"ENRON" type corporation about 6 million dollars for
their bottom line. I did it by paying attention to the engineering,
and succeeding where others would have failed. And by
using common sense!!
Now, it does take the fun out of it, when I know that the only
context of my work, was lining the pockets of grubby-ass
corporate con-men criminals who are too dumb to even understand
that I made them a bunch of money (duhhh, accounting sure is
turning in a fine performance this year, why, the numbers came up
six million higher than projection. Those accountants sure are smart)
BUT I STILL WORKED FOR A LIVING. I worked on
something that is real, that gets built. Too bad if it was only for work
for some nasty ass corporate criminals, but it was WORK.
What you do is just so much lazy-ass armchair freeloading and
egging on a bunch of nasty shark-tank jerks in your little forum
to all agree with each other.
Your fucking elevator will never work, and you
are distracting legitimate people, as well as the gullible
little people, who could be working on something more
legitimate (like mowing their lawn).
You fucking run little electric motors up a piece of
sailboat rope, with varyign amounts of success at
getting paid for the waste of time. FUCKING DUMB.
Worth every swear word and gesture ever seen in
the US Marines Military, yes indeed, if you need
a reply about your concerns of profanity.
Goodbye. I don't like con-men, be they government,
CORPORATE, or research-level "once an honest
academic turned into research crook".
'hey well fookin kill diz guy, well fookin put on da
cement ovashoes and fookin throw him in da bay, yah
all in da name of da space elavata".
- Norm
and
Brian Dunbar wrote:
Which is a shame - you're a bright guy.
and you're too dumb to understand pulse response on
a cable. when I brought up that show-stopper,
you'd have given me a same-day reply about
that if you had the slightest fucking idea what i was talking
about, but instead you are just moving on to the next big scam.
AND its a crying shame there aren't more scientists and
engineers with enough backbone so state it this as I do.
Damn them for not showing more backbone! If only they had the wit and
courage to cast the scales from their eyes! Or you could just be a
over educated buffoon. One of those.
You're more than welcome to exercise your right to free speech and ...
you know .. actually do something about that instead of tossing nasty
emails around. But that might ask for of you than you're capable of.
It's one thing to post asinine screeds in a forum and (as you admit)
throw emails around when someone upsets you. j
Quit fucking lying to everybody, and I won't be upset.
Doing something with more meaning than bleats on the internet requires
a dash of personnel courage which you lack.
call me and the conversation gets more polite, due to human instincts.
but i'll politely call you the lying con-man that you are, to your face,
to your ears. This has nothign to do with email, it has to do with the fact
that you are criminals and nut-jobs masquerading as scientists.
Fucking research con-men exactly as I stated in the first place.
'fook 'em over, fook 'em over, we haz got ta git da money,
gotta fookin' get da fookin' rasoich dollaz'.
Again - a shame. If the world had more people who were like your
assumed persona we'd be better off.
place.
You're just a mafia fucker. And I will tune out now,
lest you send over 'Guido' to twist the head off my cat.
- Norm
And so on. Remeber folks for all your snake oil and mafia needs - see me for the best deal in town.
Seriously - it's more than possible I've slanted this to make me look like the good guy. While it's far too late to preserve the email against tampering (hey I could edit the entire thing and make Norm Hill look really bad, right?) I'm willing to send you - on request - the entire series. I reserve the right to retract this offer if my lawer calls me back and tells me this is a really bad idea.
