[mythtv-users] Inconsistent treatment of starttime/endtime vs runtime

[f-myth-users at media.mit.edu]

    > Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:53:36 -0700
    > From: Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com>

    > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:43 PM,  <f-myth-users at media.mit.edu> wrote:
    > >    > Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:59:59 -0700
    > >    > From: Robert McNamara <robert.mcnamara at gmail.com>
    > >
    > >    > You may disagree with him, but his opinion and his contributions to
    > >    > myth outpace almost anyone's.
    > >
    > > So you're saying that if he poisons the well by misunderstanding the
    > > problem and then uses that misunderstanding to berate me instead, no
    > > one who actually has commit access gets to voice an opinion?  Loudest
    > > and first wins every time?

    > I don't recall his berating you-- did I miss an e-mail somewhere?

[I hesitate to get into this, since it was -not- my intention at any
time to talk about anything but fixing a bug.  I wrote & then sat on
this message and the others today overnight so I could think about it.
I also don't feel comfortable talking about someone in the third
person when they're standing right here, so to speak, though
apparently the IRC channel doesn't seem to care about such niceties.
Please also don't assume that I think I'm perfect, blameless, or
without sin---nothing could be further from the truth, and I think in
-that- you'd and many others would agree with me! :)  I am not, repeat
-not-, trying to get into character assassination here (again, unlike
the comments I see about me in IRC), but since you don't seem to see
why, -in my opinion-, I've been "berated", here's my impression.  So,
in an attempt to clear the air so we can get back to the code:]

You didn't miss an email, but I found his tone, and the attitude
behind it, to be both passive-aggressive and belittling.  He seemed
to be setting up a strawman and then to be taking great pleasure in
demolishing it for all and sundry, while getting in as many digs as
possible about why I was clearly unfit to even be raising the issue.
His last message to me yesterday was the same thing again, on steroids.
I could point out each individual passage to support these statements,
but what would be the point?  You and many others no doubt would
disagree with my interpretation, and presumably anyone else who
-does- agree wouldn't want to get into a public dustup over it.

Now, I may be the only person who feels this way.  Clearly you don't
see it this way at all.  I see him apparently engaging in this sort of
behavior frequently with other users, and perhaps again I'm the only
person who gets this impression.  In fact, I've been noticing that it
seems to be getting more and more frequent over the last year or two;
again, maybe I'm just more and more inclined to notice it.  Perhaps
others get it, too, but Mike himself doesn't see it.  Or perhaps he's
engaging in it quite deliberately while claiming the purest of
motives.  Given the sheer number of times he winds up answering the
same question(s) that users might have been able to figure out on
their own, and the time, aggravation, and mental toll such behavior
must exact, I can certainly see why he could get quite testy at times
about doing so.  But perhaps you can see that if what -I- see is the
same sorts of sarcastic, often hostile, blame-the-user responses (even
though they might be trying their best) over and over, I might be
quick to conclude that he's doing exactly the same thing to me, and
decide that enough is enough and I'm going to call him on it.

Despite the above, I bear him (and you!) no ill will, and perhaps I'm
the only one on the list who thinks this way.  But if I'm not, or if
there's a good possibility that others are seeing those sorts of
messages in negative ways, then maybe it'd be a good idea to take a
step back and maybe tone them down a bit.

    > > Meanwhile, you've completely ignored the actual meat of both my
    > > message -and- the issue under discussion, and turned this into
    > > an issue of personalitiies, rather than the actual code.

    > Not at all.  From some fairly thorough discussion of your post on
    > Freenode, I (and others, devs included) have simply come to the same
    > conclusion Mike did.  So that information stands and I didn't see a
    > need to restate it.

Well, you were assuming that I was following along on an IRC channel
instead of in the medium I thought we were having a conversation in.
Surely you understand that, if you take the discussion to a new venue
and don't tell me, I might assume it never happened at all.

So since you said there was a thorough discussion on IRC, I took a
look at the logs, and found quite a bit of adolescent behavior and
insulting namecalling, all directed at me personally, including even
dredging up years-old history in order to sling some more mud.  I hope
you'll understand why I decided at that point that I had better things
to do with my time, and stopped investigating.

Nonetheless, I'm still curious whether there are insurmountable
-technical- issues with autoextending recordings (especially since
that's what I'd do if it was just me), or whether it's just an
insurmountable user-support issue instead.  So if the actual technical
discussion (sans insults) can be pointed to in a compact way, I'd be
interested in seeing it.  Of course, I have no idea whether it
happened on a channel with logs, or one that doesn't have any.  (I
don't expect you feel like spending the time, but whatever.  I figured
I'd at least tell you where I'm coming from here.  Maybe someone would
like to post only the technical stuff, without any insults or
namecalling, if they think it would further the discussion.)

    > 			 As Mike was the only one courteous enough to
    > write you a thorough, thoughtful answer and you decided to respond so
    > negatively,

Here again, I believe that reasonable people may disagree.

Mike's response did not seem courteous to me.  It seemed like an
opportunity to score points, enter a pissing contest, or just get
in a good rant.  In addition, others felt that he'd misunderstood
me and hence didn't actually answer the question I asked.

By the same token, though, my response was not intended to seem
negative to him or anyone else.  I'm guessing that you think it was
negative because of my "you're not a developer" comment.  As I said to
him in response to one of his recent messages, that was not meant to
make him defensive or to denigrate him in any way.  I simply felt that
he'd (a) missed the point, and (b) wasn't going to be any sort of
final authority anyway on which patches get committed---so I asked
for a second opinion, preferably from whoever it might be who'd
actually be looking the patch over if it came to that.  [Remember,
he's made a big deal in the past about saying that he doesn't speak
for devs in any way, precisely because he often acts like he does.]

In short, and as I've described in one of my other messages to him,
I was still plugging away on a process question, namely, "which way
do I go on this patch?"

    > 		I wouldn't anticipate getting the "developer only"
    > response you're hoping for in this thread.

As I said, his response looks---to me, at least---like he poisoned the
well.  He jumped in first, quite directly implied that I was an idiot
for even asking the question, and attempted to slam the door on getting
anyone else's opinion.  That's a classic bully's strategy.  The fact
that we're even -having- this conversation shows how far off-track
things have gotten.

    > > Let's try to stick to the technical merits of the bug here, please.

    > That would be a great deal easier were there merits to the purported
    > "bug," technical or otherwise.

[Stolen from my other message to Mike:]
At this point, I'm unsure exactly what the nature of your disagreement
with me is.  Do you think:
(a) I'm incorrect or lying about the correlation?
(b) The correlation is, in fact, not actually a bug at all?
(c) It's a bug, but it's insoluable without
    (1) hairing up Myth's code unacceptably?
    (2) hairing up Myth's -support- unacceptably?

I take it you're in branch (b) here?