06-05-2008, 11:25 PM
ham Wrote:if i were to run circular campaigns like this against every bullshit statement or impersonation or troll cover-up made against me, or on sites i visit(ed), I would have to have nine computer, be logged-on 24-7 and hire eight pakistani typers...
In my view, 'bullshit' and 'impersonation' and 'troll cover up' might all be code names for the internet at large...
The indefatigable nature of Neilist's "campaign" is certainly something. The usual wisdom when someone like this comes along is to just ignore his attacks. The attention supposedly feeds the whole process. Neilist goes on for months at a time without any feedback, however, spouting out streams of anal sex references, AIDS death threats, and so on. What amount of coffee feeds this frenzy I can only imagine.
Four years back, I called him an ELIZA program ... the idea being that I would say something and he would spew back a canned, droning response. All these years later, he still whines about that ELIZA comment. That he has wished me dead, yadda yadda -- means nothing to him -- after all -- I had the gall to compare him to ELIZA.
The constant focus on my supposed elitist bent -- my high IQ society membership -- this seems to really piss him off no end. That's not unlike some of the hostility I have witnessed from certain members of the DL world. I remember a certain sparring partner who brought up my IQ whenever he got hot under the collar.
The "closed list" ...
Ultranet.
http://www.megafoundation.org/Ultranet/
The list is open to members and a certain number of provisional members. I participated on that list from about 2000 to about 2006. It was on that list that James Harris announced at 5:06 PM on 4 May 2004 that Southwest Journal of Pure and Applied Math had accepted his paper. His paper, being on "Advanced Polynomial Factorization" was not in my area of mathematics (adaptive set theory), so I did not read it.
Someone on sci.math discovered that SWJPAM had accepted the paper, and this annoyed a lot of that list's participants, and so emails were sent to the journal's editors. After a noisy few days, the paper, which had been put in the journal magically disappeared, and Harris received a curt email about how it had never really been accepted, that some clerical error had occurred.
This is what caught my interest. Being a member of ACM, I was familiar with the concept of "fixity of work" -- that is -- when something is published in an academic journal, it never gets "unpublished". It's just not done.
http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/#Fixity
A previous draft explains this notion quite clearly:
Quote:9. Fixity of Works
The electronic media provide means whereby readers can attach comments to an author's work and the author can respond. The ACM wishes to encourage this and intends eventually to support this as a service in the ACM digital
library.
ACM subscribes to the general scientific convention that published works not be altered without review and approval by an editor. ACM also considers all reader and author comments formally attached to a work are part of the public discussion and should not be altered by their authors without approval by an editor. If the author or a reader wishes to withdraw a comment after posting, the withdrawn item will be annotated by a withdrawal notice.
(In fact, althought Neilist whines about 1984 and Orwell -- making a paper disappear after publication ... is... well... rather Orwellian.)
The "general scientific convention" appeared to have been stepped upon. If Harris' paper was crap -- the journal should have printed a statement saying "OOPS." Instead, they had it removed, and hoped nobody would notice.
I didn't care if the paper was crap. I didn't care if Beckwith and others had goofed in supporting its findings. All I cared about was that the editor of SWJPAM violated a generally accepted scientific convention and made his mistake just "disappear."
So, while it has been claimed that I had a horse in this race -- in fact the real horse was SWJPAM's. In accepting a shoddy paper without (apparently) reading it thoroughly through -- they had done the author of the paper a disservice, they had done the math community a disservice, and they had done themselves some embarrassment.
By sending a glowing acceptance email to Harris (which everyone on the closed list read), and then by later back peddling and claiming it was all a clerical error, and making the paper just vanish -- the journal messed up.
Neilist started in on me for names, ranks, and serial numbers, and I refused to give in.
Four years later, he goes on and on (on AED) about anal sex and pedophilia, while claiming I am a liar, blah blah. When I find the energy to fight back -- it pisses off Dennis and Larry because they don't like me anymore. ;-) How Neilist finds so much energy in his day, all these years later, to prattle on ... well, it only sings to psychopathy. Where does he find the material for his sexual ranting? It just keeps pouring out of him, month after month. Anal this, anal that....
And what does any of that have to do with an obscure journal that published a shoddy paper?
Neilist is pissed I once called him an ELIZA program -- and he wants satisfaction -- and he's willing to smear my name high and low until he wears his typing fingers to a bloody pulp.
Who births these people?
Neilist makes Levicoff look like a candy striper.
