A Note on Peter Seebach’s Vicious Little Tirade
Peter Seebach and Clive Feather have written attacks on a computer author, Herb Schildt, characterized by a strikingly unethical misuse of logic and a complete misunderstanding of rhetoric construed as how we say things to be understood. For the complete picture, see below.
One of the most astonishing passages in Peter Seebach’s vicious little tirade about Herb Schildt’s work is this:
I am missing several hundred errors. Please write me if you think you know of any I’m missing. Please also write if you believe one of these corrections is inadequate or wrong; I’d love to see it.
Currently known:
This is followed by a grand total of 20 errors.
That is, Seebach is using McCarthyist and Stalinist tactics in this document. He presents 20 errors, some of which are trivial, and others of which are matters of interpretation. He then apes Senator McCarthy, who waved an empty sheet of paper in a Senate hearing on “Communists in the US government”, making reference to a “list”.
Seebach’s statement makes no sense, because he says at the end that “here are the known errors” [emphasis mine] but above he says “I am missing several hundred”.
This can only logically be construed to mean that “there must be hundreds but I do not know what they are, and I’d like you to join me in this cybernetic lynching”.
Little did I dream you could be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
…
Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?– Joseph Welch, Army-McCarthy Hearings 9 June 1954
Spinoza1111's Blog 
October 28, 2009 at 8:19 am
And you seriously “invite” Mr. Seebach to comment on an article like this, after calling him “unethical”, “vicious”, “using McCarthyist and Stalinist tactics”, and “aping”?
October 28, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Yes, I do.
Collegiality, Sunshine, should not in my opinion be confused with not speaking truth to power. Seebach, I believe, abused his quantum of power by initiating, as a “voting member” of the C99 standards effort, an attack on an individual. It was based on a poorly drafted and random set of trivial claims of “errors” made by that individual.
People who are unpopular on the Internet for a variety of reasons including the perception of their gender or race, or in my case the ability to write more complex prose, are in fact attacked brutally and in a completely uncontrolled fashion.
Seebach does not usually do so, although he has said unwarranted things about Schildt and others. Instead he’s more of an “enabler” whose authority is cited so often as to seem more than it is.
Furthermore, Seebach has stated that he has not taken ANY computer science classes whatsoever, and I was shocked by this. It makes the attack on Schildt a form of speaking outside of his professional competence and even more heinous because a person was harmed.
I have been repeatedly exposed as has Schildt to the foulest kind of abuse on the Internet. Ignoring it only enables it.
October 31, 2009 at 7:36 am
Goodbye, “John Smith”. Welcome to the spam queue. And if you would like to stop being yourself unemployable, stop wasting people’s time with “humor” that’s nothing more than transference.