Crackpots are a staple on the Internet. It just wouldn't feel right if anonymous trolls were suddenly stolen away from the mailing lists and forums.
But if you are going to be a crackpot in this day and age, you really need to consider the very searchable and generally timeless archives.
Take for instance, Paul D. Bain. Mr. Bain is a regular troll on some of the DC area LUG mailing lists. From time to time he will pop up with a rant against immigrants in IT. It's all very xenophobic and annoying, but it wasn't until this week that it went over the top.
In
this post, he tells us all about how unemployment will reach 25% followed by a revolutionary war that he has "been waiting for [...] for a long, long time." After several reasonable people react, he goes on to call some LUG members "immigration Nazis" (too quick to be Godwin's law) and to reiterate that "revolutionary war is coming. get over it."
The list archives show us that his instability stems back at least as far as July 2007. It was then that
he wrote:
I have had it with the IT field. I want to move into either IT sales or IT pre-sales (sales engineer).
...
How many of us IT professionals have to languish in the unemployment line before we realize that only violence (e.g., assassinations) will end this immigration insanity?
I suggested that maybe he should make himself more valuable (through education, for instance) instead of chanting the "der takin err jerrbs" mantra. He didn't reply.
Well, I just wanted to help Google out. If you're an employer searching for a prospective hire named Paul D. Bain, you'll probably find this post and that may be interesting for your decision.
