Posted by Lalooprasad Yadav here Angela, In order to to stay within the boundaries of the anti-hijacking laws may I have a definition of what is a hijack and what isn't ? For instance if someone were in the process of offering expert advice on seduction to Tintin, would it be legal to speak of pheromones and the effect it has on female cockroaches ? I haven't yet seen a professor who would start off with the intention of discussing ethical relativism and not stray off to remote pacific islands and the breeding habits of mice. Such were the men who stood before us as role models during our formative years, so you could hardly blame us if we were to stray a little from the topic. Nobody ever hijacks a thread on purpose. It is the natural evolution of discourse. This is often misuderstood by some as a hijack. Request to stay within the topic would be considered rude in normal converstion. The only occasion when a dim view of thread hijacking is taken is during formal meetings where time constraints often force the chair to call a rambling member to order. Even in such situations the rambler is given a certain amount of leeway. This reminds me of the incident when Churchill is reported to have rebuked the speaker of the house of commons for rebuking him for rambling. Churchill said "It is my birthright to ramble. I shall ramble on the ground, I shall ramble in the air and I shall ramble on the seas". This reminds me of an island in Samoa where it is illegal to hijack a tribal chief's thread. The hijacker's gizzard is fried and served for dinner. They consider fried gizzard a great delicacy in Samoa. Some people have weird tastes, dont they? Speaking of ethical relativism, what is good in Samoa need not be good in meaningless drivel, besides my gizzard has been rendered unfit for frying by too much whiskey. Karl Marx once said "The phantoms formed in the brain are bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence." That reminds me of what we should be discussing. I think Tintin should try Thinku Mama's pheromone threapy. It might do wonders for him. Cheers Laloo
A hijacked thread would be one whic starts off with someone requesting the advice of some people regarding the state of their love life that suddenly turns into a thread discussing hijacking threads. Which is why I've started this new thread. It's not nice! Natural evolution of discussion is completely different. And it doesn't matter how much you quote Marx, I'll still defend the rights of posters here to not have their thread hijacked! [ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Angela Poynton ]
Pounding at a thick stone wall won't move it, sometimes, you need to step back to see the way around.
Angela Poynton
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I'm not sure who deleted the replies to my post and closed the thread. I'm sure they were well intentioned but I've decided to open it again since i'm perfectly happy to have the subject discussed or even for people to show how a thread can be hijacked.
Question of thread hijacking separated what used to be a united forum. I think, it's time when everybody, everyone should look deep inside him/her self and ask: who are you, on which side of this litmus "thread hijacking" question are you? It turned out that while some of us emphatically against thread hijacking, others feel that it' Ok, and even (sometimes) desirable, and even... Well, let's call things by their name, some feel irresistible inclination to hijack a thread or two from time to time... On the opposite, receiving side of thread hijacking we can also see certain pluralism of opinions and reactions. Some cannot even tolerate the idea that their thread can be hijacked. Yet there are individuals that do not mind hijacking their creatures (I thought I am alone in this category, but Laloo post proves otherwise ). Maybe even... I do not know if I should go so far, but maybe, just maybe, there are some of us that *want* their threads to be hijacked? They just too shy to ask? My main point is that everybody's preferences should be respected and everybody needs should be satisfied. The question is how to organize it better... Thinking about it, and keeping in mind that JavaRanch desperately needs a source of income, couldn't we issue and sell some kind of licenses for thread hijacking? Then we could provide some additional service for hijackers... After all, their efforts should be recognized! Maybe a title of "JavaRanch honored thread hijacker"? On the other hand, we cannot allow just anybody hijack our threads. There was a nice discussion about it in Moderators Only forum, and Jim Yingst came up with a very carefully thought out set of rules for qualified thread hijacking. Maybe we could publish them and then allow only certified hijackers here, in MD? [ February 02, 2002: Message edited by: Mapraputa Is ]
I agree. In order to thwart the amateur hijacker we must have a certification process for hijackers. We thought of calling it Sun Certified Thread Hijacker but for some unknown reason Scott McNealy has vetoed the project. I wonder if we can call it Javaranch Certified Thread Hijacker. Could be a source of revenue for the ranch. I volunteer my services in setting up the syllabus , certification objectives etc. In a preliminary meeting of the Guild of Thread Hijackers it was decided that subtlety is of the essence. The hijacker must appear to be responding to the previous poster's message and apply multithreaded rambling techniques to divert the flow of execution. Directly introducing surprise elements like "Lord Of the Rings" is amateurish and clumsy. It should go something like this <h3>Thread Hijacking Specifications</h3> <h4>Chapter 1 : Hijack Fundamentals</h4> Map's suggestion seems to be a good one and I must agree with her viewpoint but I must express my reservations about her idea of respecting everybody's preferences. Can we really accomodate everybody'd preferences? For example a vast majority of voters seem to be happy with Ken Livingston's performance. He seems have curbed the rising crime rate and eased traffic congestion. But a few dissenters point out that Ken Livingston has not delivered on his election promise to open mobile massage parlours on the tube ? This of course reminds me of a type of giant crab that is found in the Indian Ocean. This creature can grow to amazing proportions. Stevie Kaligis, who often goes fishing in these waters, claims to have seen one that was 130 centimetres from claw tip to claw tip. The natives of these islands say that this crab is able to feed on coconuts by climbing up trees that grow on the seashore and knocking the coconuts down. The crab devours these coconuts after cracking open the shell with it's powerful claws. That reminds me of the time I dined with Chief Mputo of the Washi tribe in inner Congo. The Washis are a distant relation of the Hottentots of southern Africa. After the customary entree of crocodile soup, we were served a kind of meat that looked suspiciously like boiled crab. Inner congo being thousands of miles away from the nearest sea I wondered how these natives had managed to serve boiled crab for dinner. The only body of water that was accessible to the Washi was the Zambesi river. The Zambesi river is known to have no crabs in it. I asked the chief how he had managed to get hold of the crabmeat. "Not Crab. Wife's uncle.Very tasty huh?" he said, smacking his lips. I wowed to myself that day, if I ever dined with the Washi again I would ask to see the recipe before I started tucking into something. I left rather early next morning without saying goodbye. With natives swarming all over the bushes one could never be sure if the chief hadn't been informed that I had given one his daughters a little trinket from Tiffany's the previous night and lured her into my tent. There was a fairly good chance grilled Laloo would be on the lunch menu. That reminds me of something else, I wonder how many years it must have taken the polyps to build these groups of islands such as the Tuamotu. Speaking of coral, the island of Clermont-Tonnere is is very similar to a coral reef, the only difference being that these islands were created by madrepores. Madrepores, is a sort of polyp, it's tissue is lined with a calciferous crust. These tiny creatures live by the millions in these seas and it is the limestone deposit from their bodies that form these reefs, islands and atolls. Speaking of atolls I wonder how Tintin is getting on with his attempts to entice women into going out with him. I remember recommending Thinku Mama's pheromone therapy to him. But will it have the desired effect ? Can Thinku Mama deliver the goods ? Or will Tintin end up being the darling of all the female cockroaches in Greater London ?
I agree. Here's the link: http://ej-technologies/jprofiler - if it wasn't for jprofiler, we would need to
run our stuff on 16 servers instead of 3.
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). Maybe even... I do not know if I should go so far, but maybe, just maybe, there are some of us that *want* their threads to be hijacked? They just too shy to ask?