Heee’s baaack…
I used to subscribe to a couple of the W3C mailing lists. Around this time in 2002 a master Troll named Shelby Moore started popping up on some of them trying to bait the innocent with various topics. Finally he got a rise out Daniel Glazman and others at www-style with some Troll Baiting about how inappropriate it was to shoehorn XBL into CSS.
The fun really started however when Ian Hickson took the bait. For the next several weeks Ian and Mr. Moore went toe to toe in daily debate. A gargantuan, often hysterically funny battle of rhetoric. Occasionally Glazman would pipe in with ‘Piss-off, you Wolly’ or words to that effect, with many big names also popping their head out of the fox hole with a wise word or two to diffuse or put an end to the thread only to have Shelby take a shot at them too! Every day held several new episodes of this bizarre serial comedy on Semantics and the Separation of Concerns.
It was absolutely one of the most entertaining Xmas breaks I can recall, like watching Test Match Cricket with the game played continuously for a month. Finally, early in the new year, Tim Berners-Lee himself stepped-in to call an end to it.
What a cack. Every time I hear or see the word Orthogonal I think of that Summer.
He’s back, and so-far Ian has chosen not to take up bat and play. Can he resist… I hope not. :)
