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Who downvoted this? We should probably have a real conversation about it.

Personally, I'd like to think that if I posted an essay or especially a rant that I later thought was a mistake, and decided to retract it, other hackers would respect my decision and not reproduce it. Sure, it's still cached somewhere, and assholes on 4chan will repost it just to fuck with me. If you really want to, you can probably find a copy. But I'd like to think that our community is classier than to spread it around deliberately, knowing it's something I'd rather not put my name to.

What's the benefit to the community the other way, aside from voyeurism?




"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." - Eric Schmidt


Uh... Wrong-headed as that notion is, it's also talking way past me. How do you see it as relevant to what I said?


We approve of this comment.

Sincerely,

DHS, CIA, NSA, FBI, ATF, and the DEA.


> What's the benefit to the community the other way, aside from voyeurism?

It's one of those fantastic, really wonderful Stevey's rants, on a par with "the emacs problem". I'm really incredibly happy to have had a chance to read it. So yes, it's probably bad etiquette, but OTOH will it hurt Google in any way? Certainly not. So, hey, thanks for the mistake M. Yegge, and continue the good work.




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