Geek Violence

Ed Bott really has got his nickers in a twist now. He

“calls BobH on his bad manners”

by saying

Well, Bob, %!@# you. And of course, by “you” I mean the generic “you.” Which is to say, you.

Even after BobH apologised to him and begged forgiveness. Now Ed says he would have punched Bob in the nose, given the opportunity!

Well Ed, your exception taken to Bob, was that he prefaced his comments with a generic “you” that you took personally (Disclaimer: I don’t know Bob).

I see Bob has plastered his same original comment on other blogs too. Perhaps you should go back to reading comprehension class and note that I used the clearly generic “one”, in a hypothetical sense.

The fact that you (specific, not generic) are so obviously pained by these comments suggests that perhaps you do have niggling doubt in the back of your mind somewhere about accepting/keeping/giving away/smashing etc the review unit.

If you truly seek to comprehend what I wrote in my previous comment, then you may notice that I did not mention ethics, but rather reputation and credibility.

Surely it is ethical to disclose that goods or services have been provided free of charge for the purposes of the review. The question for your readers then becomes one of whether or not there is bias in the review.

Would you donate the laptop to a charity anonymously, and not post mention of it in your blog? I doubt it. Somehow the posession of that laptop no matter how brief is likely to be used in way that elevates your social status.

On the question of ethics, would you consider it ethical to accept an unsolicited laptop, even to donate it to a worthy charity and NOT do a review about it, either good or bad?

Whatever…