[MPlayer-users] DISCREDITED VOICE

[Daniel A. Nagy]

Dear everyone,

Frankly, this debate is getting ugly and disgusting, not to mention that it
is terribly immature. I think, it should be obvious that the WV guys
committed a mischief that is very unethical and largely illegal, but they
backed up fairly quickly after their dirty deeds have been discovered.

Now, Gabucino maintains a "news" section on mplayer's homepage which is, to
say the least, hotheaded and offensive. Especially so for foreigners, as they
are probably unfamiliar with the Hungarian hacker culture that flourishes in
High Schools (kozepiskolak) and Colleges (foiskolak). Language like that
(offensive, heavily loaded with (sometimes improperly used) slang, in broken
English) is commonplace there, but you should take it with a grain of salt:
of course noone wants to kill or torture anybody, and the excessive usage of
dirty slang does not mean that these folks are undereducated morons. Without
going into psychological explainations, that's how things work on large
parts of the Hungarian hacker-scene. Get over it, don't flame back.

For the non-Hungarians: please don't pass premature judgement on the Mplayer
team in particular, and Hungarians or Europeans in general. Strange things
happen, but they're nice folks otherwise.

For the Hungarians: Ami Magyarorszagon siman elmegy, azzal kulfoldieket nagyon fel
lehet neha bosszantani. Bizonyos szavaknak egeszen mas sulya van idegen kulturakban,
plane, ha (soxor hejtelen modon :-) angolul mondjuk ki/irjuk le oket. Nemzetkozi
porondon bizonyos dolgok nagyon nem szalonkepesek, amik belfoldon elfogadhatoak.

For the Russians: Rebyata, davajte zhit' druzhno! Vengry mezhdu soboj vedut
sebya ne sovsem po nashim normam, i inogda zabyvayut, chto oni ne odni. Ne
nado na nih serditsya, i tem bolee v goryachke zabyvat' elementarnye pravila
anglijskogo yazyka. :-)

As for the rest of us, let's remember that first impressions reinforced by
preconceptions and urban legends are often (almost always) wrong. No,
Hungarians are not morons, and no, Russians do not accept or excercise
plagiarism on daily basis. The fact that we are communicating in a language
that is not our native one, aggravates the problem further.

Please, please, please, excercise more mutual respect, tolerance and
patience. Be extremely careful about what and how you write in a multicultural
environment, in a foreign language.

I apologize for the long rant. In order to avoid further flame-wars, please
flame me in private. If your native language happens to be Russian or
Hungarian, use it, as my English sucks big time and there's no need for
another source of misunderstanding. Nonetheless, I hope I managed to convey
my message in my broken English.

Greetings from Canada!

-- 
Dan

PS: Despite the small cultural differences, we're all hackers. There's more
to unite us, after all, as our common language is C. :-))