I apologize in advance to anyone reading this who can’t understand Slovene, but the next announcement is of very local nature and probably of interest only to Slovene speaking people actually living in Slovenia.

Z oktobrom se ponovno odpirajo vrata Kiberpipe in jesen prinaša novost. Spletne urice, serija rednih tedenskih predavanj o spletu in spletnih tehnologijah namenjenih predvsem izkušenim razvijalcem, oblikovalcem in skrbnikom, ki bi radi poglobili svoje znanje, predstavili svoje izkušnje ali pa se preprosto sre??ali in pogovorili z drugimi spletnimi sotrpini.

V sredo, 5. oktobra, ob 19.00 bo na sporedu prvo predavanje. Jure Koren bo v predavanju z naslovom PHP v ??asu terorizma predstavil prijeme, s katerimi se izognemo temu, da bi naša PHP aplikacija bila vstopna to??ka za internetne vlomilce.

Upam, da nas bo tam ??im ve??.

Why is it that we still celebrate national sport teams as demigods and cheer a bunch of guys (or gals) only because they come from the right part of a planet?

Slovenia was caught in a basketball euphoria when it looked for a while that it might actually win a medal. Personally, I have no beef with people playing it. I haven’t done it in a while, but I used to enjoy it a lot. I don’t mind people watching basketball or any other sport either. I rarely do, but I do recognize inherent drama and sometimes amazing display of mastery.

I also don’t mind cheering in general. We’ve all encountered individuals or teams, who exemplified rare qualities we admire and wished them best luck. I do find it a bit repulsive to cheer for a person or a team just because they come from the right town or a country.

It seems rather primitive to pick a side mainly because of nationality or locality; as if our nationality is itself a quality worthy of admiration and pride. They are our lot, our tribe, and that makes them better?

Is it then a wonder that after all this time and relative progress we still have so much troubles with each other? If intimate human relationships can’t survive feelings of personal superiority, how can it ever happen with nations?

I’ve always been attached to this place where I grew up and culture that shaped me to who I am today and I can’t imagine giving it up. But long gone are days when I felt the same about my nationality and I’d be ashamed if they came back.

I was reading Roger Johansson’s blog and came to a post about message quoting. It reminded me of something I wrote last time I observed a flamewar between top-posting and inline-replies proponents. This is a rough translation from Slovene:

> Because it messes up the flow of reading.
> > Why is replying about quotations annoying?

Could you please stop with that? I don’t mean just the author of this message, but the general attitude of forcing people to use one, true way of quoting.

Both approaches, a reply under a short quotation or a whole message about the previous one, have their place and choice should be based on current need. So it’s good to be aware of their consequences on resulting dialog.

Short quotations followed by replies are meaningful when lost context from clipped text doesn’t hurt understanding too much. This means they are useful mainly for short, fact-oriented answers to concrete questions.

They are more or less inappropriate for longer, more involved dialog because they transfer focus from whole text to particular sentences. Lost context just raises probability of misunderstanding.

Endless threads, quarreling about insignificant issues, off-topic threads etc. are a normal and expected byproduct of such discussion. Even a cursory glance over archives proves this.

It’s much better for a dialog, if reply is placed above the message, but ONLY when it’s self-contained and meaningful even without the original message. Attached original is therefore at most a friendly reminder for forgetful minds.

Picking right form is a matter of personal judgment and hence a source of mistakes. But this certainly can’t be a reason to howl down somebody.

I still believe this is true. I find myself using inline replies more often than not, but I do use top-posting when occasions calls for it and I don’t think I’m a lesser being for it.