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I am going to call you a Waaaambulance. Cry me a river Iran! It was Ayatollah Khomeini who overthrew the Shah! Of course, that idiot Jimmy Carter didn't help one bit. Regarding their war with Iraq, tough! It takes two to tangle

1) If you're going to call people idiots, perhaps you should back it up and not make mistakes yourself. 2) You don't look so smart yourself, as it's clear that the parent wasn't talking about the Shah being overthrown, but the government of Mohammad_Mossadegh. 3) The idiom is "it takes two to tango," not tangle.

You know why Arab states don't like Iran, its because Iranian Shi'a Islam is considered heretical and destabilizing.

That's a stupid reason not to like a country. Other things the Arab states don't like because it's heretical and/or destabilizing: women's rights, infidels (aka: anyone they disagree with on practically anything), beer, etc, etc.

Nukes in India and Pakistan are of no consequence to Iran.

I'm afraid that the prospect of having your neighbor nuked is always cause for concern. Winds and radioactivity don't care about national borders. I suspect that there's some national angst there.

The US is there to remind the little man that we can whip his ass in a heart beat.

Iran is a man now? With an ass to be whipped? You know better than that kind of oversimplification.

Odd, I thought the U.S. was in the region in such force to rebuild Iraq after deposing of Saddam Hussein because he was allegedly violating the terms of the 1991 armistice and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

Your language sounds about as jingoistic as I could imagine. It's not an asswhipping, because it's not a fistfight. It's a war your talking about here -- murder writ large and sometimes a bit of actual self defense.

Iran gets no pity party from me, but its people who are yearning to be free do!

What's the difference between Iran and it's people? Perhaps you shouldn't pity them, but actually work to understand them, and not just the ones who "yearn to be free," but all of the Iranians. I'm not saying agree with them, nor even try to befriend them, but merely to look past Khomeini and friends and view Iran not as a single militant entity, but as millions of different people, many of whom have unjustly suffered at the hands of their neighbors, their religious kin, their government and, sadly, the United States' government.

Cry for them.

Or is this the pot calling the kettle black ?

Arrogant means "Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance".

The ALF terrorists have acted to overbear the rights of Ringbach and all scientists to engage in and receive benefits from research using animal subjects. That's a supremely good fit to the dictionary definition of arrogance.

To assume that you're wrong simply because everybody disagrees with you is called idiocy. I'd rather be "arrogant," than an idiot.

It's not a one-or-the-other choice. Being arrogant is IMHO an act of stupidity - and that qualifies under most definitions as an idiot

Moreover if most people are disagreeing with you, you really need to do better than present an argument that you prefer to be labelled arrogant rather than idiot. Personally, both terms are disparaging, and I'd rather be known as neither arrogant nor an idiot.

One of the best indicators that you are not arrogant - not overbearing the rights of others - and indeed that you are right, is being able to convince others that you are right. That's what the scientific method and peer review are all about.

The debate on the ALF actions is about whether what the they did to Dario Ringach was right or not. It was over-bearing, it was arrogant.

If the ALF had a valid case, they should seek to establish that by rational debate dependent on peer review and objective evidence - and not on arrogant idiotic acts of terrorism.

As for whether the ends justifies the means, what is your evidence that it is an unpopular thought ?

I'm sure it's unpopular for terrorists to believe the ends don't justify the means. But what about the rest of civil society ?

I have a hard time even thinking of one example where ends justifies the means. And even if I could find one, I can think of plenty where the opposite is clearly true (The twin towers, and what happened to Dario are two that come to mind first).

If you were to accept that sometimes the ends do justify the means, how do you define the times where the ends no longer justifies the means ?

I'd rather keep it simple. From the worlds most popular book, "'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Galatians, 6:7)". It's quite a popular thought that the ends do not justify the means.

"And you, sir, just have very bad manners. "

True. Calling you an ass was rude.

"Can you imagine for a minute that somebody like me can have alittle MORE knowledge about how things work there than you? Or are you a universal know-it-all?"

Based upon your the broad assumtions in your initial reply to me, I would say it's you who thinks they are the universal know-it-all.

What was your logic anyway? 'When I worked for WORD (WORD?!) tech support, most people who called were idiots, and therefore this person who says he reported a bug to Micrsoft must be a clueless idiot too.'

You know it actually makes sense to try and limit the amount of bug reports coming in for products that have such large userbases. If Microsoft left a public bug reporting system on their site, they would end up getting thousands upon thousands of redundant reports about bugs they allready know about.

"I was talking about the support for RELEASED software, not beta.

And I never mentioned any specific type of software, yet your post directly assumed that I was a clueless an end user calling the $30 tech support line.

"Just out of curiosity, how much did you pay for your experience?"

Standard business support - a $245 flat fee. One time that 245 bucks got us two Microsft engineers on site. We're currently dealing with them on a very strange Exchange issue. We just has the case escalated beyond their Bangalore monkeys. It appears we've found an obscure bug in Exchange 2000. Ever since they outsourced their Teir-1 support to India (when did they do this?), Microsft's corporate support has really gone downhill - not that it was ever particularly stellar.

"And you should take your head out of your ass, learn to communicate properly and, most of all, learn to behave towards your peers in a respectful and professional manner."

heh

It's free! It's a damn good dbms! I don't care if I don't have the source because I don't have time to look at it anyway.

Ever heard of the idiom "looking a gift horse in the mouth"

Oh boy...

See also, how to beat a dead horse

Seems quite popular in this Ask Slashdot.
It's true. I think that so many of almost the exact same response implies a real underlying point made by many readers. There is always a bit of truth in any humor. Not to mention the fact that so many variations of that particular joke do exist and it is so well known ... ali_bubba and Cliff really hit a nerve with this article. Good stuff. It's great to see the conversation flowing.