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In lugnet.general, Jeffrey Findley wrote:
> Is it legal to sell "reverse engineered" copies of LEGO stickers? Such as here:
>
> <http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=Onideus>
>
> This guy is claiming that because they're "reverse engineered" from the
> originals that they're not "copies" and are therefore exempt from copyright
> protection.
That guy who calls himself "Onideus" on BrickLink is Matthew Moulton. Enough
said.
Adr.
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moulton
(score: 0.456)
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In lugnet.admin.general, Leonard Hoffman wrote:
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Chris Magno has been suspended indefinately
...
Terry P has also been suspended indefinately
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Wow.
I could see maybe a few days or a week or something, because I agree that some
things were said that probably shouldn’t have been. But indefinitely? Do Chris
and Terry really rank up there with Matthew Moulton and Richard Marchetti, who
were almost constantly devisive? With all due respect to the Lugnet
administration, it sounds like tempers are ridiculously hot on both sides right
now and that this reaction (regarding “indefinitely”) was potentially more from
anger than good cause. I sincerely hope rather than awaiting a grovelling
apology that most likely won’t come, that posting rights will be reinstated when
things cool off.
DaveE
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moulton
(score: 0.339)
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(Speaking of sugar coating... After reading through this post again I can
see that there's bits in here to offend probably every single person who
reads it. What can I say? I can only advise the casual reader that if you
find yourself strongly offended then you're taking me a lot more seriously
than I deserve.)
-----
In lugnet.general, Tim Courtney writes:
> People communicated emotions just fine, and still do, without the need for
> emoticons. It's a good thing LUGNET provides an outlet to those who want
> communication where words speak for themselves, and there's no frills on the
> side.
Well like I said, I'm not real fond of emoticons either, I'm just saying
there are certain things you can communicate with ascii text and certain
things you can't. At the risk of being completely tactless, I've noticed
that a certain minority of the Lugnetters I've met are only able to
communicate on an ascii level, even in person. I can remember a number of
conversations that would have been greatly facilitated if I'd just thought
to bring a couple of signboards with basic emoticons on them, so that I'd
have something to hold up when even the most blatant nonverbal cues were
just not being received.
I'm getting off-subject, but I think that Lugnet by nature tends to attract
people a little further towards the autistic end of the spectrum than your
average population sample, because you have to be into both Lego and the
internet to end up here; it's a combination of two powerful nerd influences.
One of the hallmarks of the functional autistic is that they have a very
difficult time imagining any form of communication other than explicit
words. As such, it may be that Lugnet's text-only format is ideally suited
to the mentality of the stereotypical AFOL.
I hope nobody's offended by me saying that we're all a bunch of nerds in
here, but I'm assuming that everybody already knows. Doesn't matter how
cool you are on the outside world, once you're in this community you're a
nerd and there's no getting around it.
> That said, I'm not totally understanding your last sentence. I feel strongly
> that having text only as a medium promotes intelligent conversation.
Well if your definition of 'intelligent conversation' is 'rational
discussion,' then sure. I was going to concede that text-only messages tend
to be more intelligent than the stuff you see on the emoticon boards, but I
get piles and piles of e-mails from addresses ending in "@aol.com" that
prove that people can be twits in any medium.
In a more esoteric sense, rational discussion engages such a small portion
of the brain that I hesitate to hold it as an ideal of 'intelligent
conversation.' Just taking hold of someone's hand introduces levels of
depth and nuance to a conversation that text can't touch. And there are
plenty of conversations where a good solid kiss or a good solid haymaker are
infinitely more intelligent conversational options than even the most
brilliant verbiage. Taking that long drawn-out ordeal with Matt Moulton as
an example, that conversation would have gotten a hell of a lot more
intelligent a hell of a lot faster if one or two of us had had responses
other than text at our displosal.
Emoticons when well-used can reintroduce the emotional content of a
conversation that in person you'd normally pick up from facial expressions
or body language. They give people the option of making themselves more
'present' in a conversation without having to make themselves the subject of
the conversation. I don't see how that aspect of communication is
inherently less intelligent than the more cerebral world of text.
Again, don't get the wrong idea, I really do loathe emoticons and, by
admittedly unfair association, the people who use them. I'm just not going
to claim that that makes me smarter than them.
> We've seen a couple negative incidents in the past couple weeks, too. There
> was the point where Tom Stangl very bluntly chastised Nick Crocco for
> complaining that no one cared about his creations (due to a lack of
> response).
>
> In the first incident, individuals were upset at Tom for his harshness,
> while they didn't totally accept Nick's apparently whiny attitude. Nick
> admitted fault, Tom persisted with his claim.
That was actually the incident that threw me into enough of a spin to post
to this discussion. Basically, I totally agreed with Tom's position, though
actually saying so would have been as politically incorrect and ill-advised
as Tom's post was in the first place. And from offline conversations I know
that more than a couple of people had exactly the same reaction to Nick's
post that Tom and I did, and about the same reaction to his
morally-high-handed 'admission of fault' as well. Tom's posts were
definitely very much appreciated even while we all agreed that they were
horribly inappropriate nad no sane person would have thought it was a good
idea to post them.
Now I don't have anything against Nick personally, he seems like a perfectly
nice guy with a perfectly nice site. It didn't seem like there was anything
in that conversation even worth worrying about, just two guys each taking a
string of events a little more personally than they should have, the kind of
thing that works itself out after both of the involved parties have had a
chance to blow off some steam. The only point at which it became a strongly
negative experience for me, believe it or not, was when you "hear hear"ed
Nick's "your comment isn't appreciated by anyone," changing it from simple
bickering between two guys to suddenly being a community endorsement of the
censorship of negative opinions. (That was just gut-reaction though, I'm a
little sensitive about people claiming moral superiority to tell other
people their opinions aren't valid, and so I originally saw the exchange in
only those terms.)
> Neither of these incidents were really positive things, but both were
> arguably growing pains in the community. Not saying they shouldn't have
> happened - cause in a community you get the good and the bad, the positive
> and the negative.
And this is really the crux of my argument, that negative experiences aren't
some kind of unfortunate and unavoidable side effect of growth, but in fact
are a crucial catalyst for growth to occur. Without internal conflicts and
external threats a community is robbed of opportunities to find its sense of
'self;' stresses are necessary for a community to measure itself against so
it can mature and define its qualities and values. Same as for individual
people.
> He is known for writing blunt posts which several have been offended
> by.
Which happen to be exactly the kind of posts I like best. People are too
easily offended around here.
> The chastisement I have participated in [4] and have witnessed was for the
> betterment of the whole of the community.
In my opinion, the betterment of the whole of the community would be better
served by chastizing the whiners than by chastizing the people who tell the
whiners that they're whiners. Obviously that's not the prevailing opinion
on LUGNET, and probably if confronted I'd have to admit (eventually) that
it's not even the correct opinion, so good thing I'm not in charge.
> Note, I said the future of the 'LEGO community,' not the future of the
> 'LUGNET community.' Of course, the LUGNET community will exist primarily
> online :-)
Yeah, I caught the distinction, I was just saying that LUGNET is probably
the *only* part of the community that will exist primarily online (ignoring
other 'lugnet-like' communities like FBTB). All the important stuff will
take place offline for the simple reason that you can't share the experience
of the physical Brick over a modem.
> [1] Frownies(R) are a registered trademark of Despair, Inc.
> http://www.despair.com/demotivators/frownonthis.html
LOL
- Mike
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moulton
(score: 0.274)
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In lugnet.general, Tim Courtney writes:
> In lugnet.general, Thomas Main writes:
> Yes, there are unwritten rules here, but violating them isn't the end of the
> world.
>
> > These people want to talk about everything _except_ the LEGO model I posted
>
> That's a perennial complaint. I've got a fairly strong opinion about that
> one, which I don't wanna share in this thread :-)
My personal feeling is that there are some unwritten rules that strongly
*discourage* talking about a LEGO model that someone posts. I certainly
have the impression that no matter how well-intentioned, if there is a
single sentence in a comment that isn't perceived as the most sugary-sweet
encouragement then there are more than a couple LUGNET mainstays who will
stomp the poster's throat for it.
There are plenty of models that I was fascinated by and would have liked to
post about, but it always seems to be a choice between holding myself to
that kind of Disney superficiality, or having any of the points I was trying
to raise get lost in the static of all the
"friendliest-place-on-the-internet"-nazis yelling at me afterwards. As a
result, I don't make public posts about models, period. Whether the LUGNET
community is worse off for missing my opinions is debatable of course.
With that in mind, let's take the 'LEGO community' question to a concrete
example: Matthew Moulton, a member or no? He seemed to be a fan of the
brick, had a lot of 'ideas' to contribute and made a pretty hefty effort to
promote them, participated like crazy (albeit in a wildly dysfunctional
way), and certainly made a big impact on the evolution of LUGNET culture.
I'll grant that in the present sense he's not a member of the LUGNET
community; I'd guess that he still fulfills the basic requirements to be a
member of the LEGO community (unless his experiences here turned him off the
Brick or something).
> I like the norms we have on LUGNET, simply because they make discussing a
> whole lot easier. Let words speak for themselves, no silly emoticons, font
> colors, sizes, crappy animated avatars, etc. Yet, to some, that's a turnoff,
> and an elitist attitude.
>
> But, I've seen where some people either can't, or think they can't discuss
> something adequately without those elements. To me, that just clouds and
> diminishes whatever the person's trying to say, and promotes less
> intelligent conversation.
I'm not a big fans of emoticons etc. either, but rational conversation isn't
everything. If you're in full left-brain mode, hashing out the finer points
of LDraw naming conventions or something, all the personal-expression
accessories are just going to get in the way. On the other hand, I think
there are plenty of areas in which communicating in emotional terms doesn't
makes you less intelligent or diminish your message. You can't really build
a sturdy community without at least some people engaging in the kind of
interpersonal communication in which limiting themselves to rational text
would just cloud and diminish what they were trying to say, and promote less
intelligent conversation.
Not that those kinds of messages really seem to be appropriate for public
LUGNET posts. It's always painful and vaguely horrifying when somebody puts
up some kind of dramatic emotional way-too-personal post around here;
fortunately it's pretty rare. Also fortunately, LUGNET is only one of many
centers for the community and there are plenty of other more appropriate
methods for community members to participate in that type of communication.
> One of the things Jake and I had a side chat about was a point he brought up
> - communities and relationships in them are good and bad. And I'm REALLY
> paraphrasing here, and adding to it. Incidents, discussions, people who
> aren't nice/positive/etc still exist in the community if they're active.
> "Community" in the real world isn't rosy. Neither is it in the LEGO world.
I think that people who aren't nice/positive/etc are crucial to a rosy
community, they're what gives it vitality and depth. Any time people get
together and are allowed to express real opinions there's going to be
conflicts at varying levels and to varying degrees. A community where
people are always nice/positive/etc is denying themselves a huge range of
the human experience; that's about as close to the opposite of rosy as I can
think of without being dead.
> > Is the future of the LEGO community more in face-to-face contact
> > or virtual contact? Both...but I think online contact will be
> > dominant for the foreseeable future. Although I do hope local
> > groups and small face-to-face communities grow (as I think they
> > will).
I disagree. Online contact will be dominant for the LUGNET community, but
there are a lot more people playing LEGO with family and friends than there
are people on LUGNET, and I think the communities of two or three people are
a lot more important to the LEGO experience than our community of several
thousand. I don't expect LUGNET will ever replace that dynamic or should
ever want to.
> I think that remains to be seen. As more ventures start getting the word out
> more and more about the hobby, we'll see some fresh blood and growth here.
It's always good to have fresh blood cycling through, but I'm not sure how
further growth will really make any relevant difference. I mean there's a
big difference between a community with 20 members and one with 2000, but is
there any real difference between having 10,000 people and 20,000? There's
only so many names and personalities you can keep track of before everyone
else just becomes anonymous background noise.
Just my two cents.
- Mike.
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moulton
(score: 0.274)
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Heya y'all,
I don't know if this is old news or not, but a LUGNET search on "brodie"
turned up 0 results. OTOH, it seems there was some discussion about 2 weeks
back about a virus email hitting .space and .castle users...
Anyway, for about a month I've been getting 2-3 emails PER DAY from one "kim
brodie" (Kim.Brodie@unilever.com) offering a hot new Microsoft security
patch attached to the email which, of course, turns out to be a virus. I
ignored this until today, when I checked the headers again out of
curiousity, and it looks like it's specifically targetting LUGNET members.
Addresses I recognize at or near the top of the list includes the LUGNET
news email address, Todd Lehman, Ed Boxer, Bruce Schlickbernd, Joseph
Gonzales, Frank Filz, Jacob Sparre Anderson, Bram Lambrecht, the list goes
on and on. From my untrained eye, I'd guess that the recipient list was
hand-crafted to try to cause damage to prominent members of the LUGNET
community. (1) I say "hand-crafted" since this list doesn't quite
represent the top 100 noisemakers, which kinda shoots down the theory that
the list was assembled by a harvestbot.
I'm personally surprised at the persistence of this "attack" -- I've been
receiving 2 to 3 per day for the past month or so. It's so bloody obvious,
though, that I'd be surprised if anyone was caught by it, but still...
I'm not sure what we as a community can do about this other than the obvious
(ignore and move on), but I was wondering if anyone knows if this Kim Brodie
exists, and if so is he/she aware of what's happening with their email
address, and if so can someone go give 'em a whack with the clue stick?
Cheers,
- jsproat
1. My inner conspiracy theorist kicks in at this point, and shouts the
undeniable reality that this is yet another doofus move by Matt Moulton.
After a brief struggle, my inner consipiracy theorist has been hogtied and
stuffed into the fridge. The world is once again saved.
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moulton
(score: 0.273)
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