Twisted said:
Oh boy. Another big fire to put out.
Isn't there always when a bunch of primates gather in one place?
No.
Anyway, how else to interpret being treated hostilely as a consequence
of nothing more than a) being present and b) not being submissive?
As I've pointed out earlier, other people have posted here, being
"present", and not being submissive, and they don't get the responses you
seem to trigger. Yet you consistently seemed to be getting these responses.
Personally, I would conclude you must be doing something different.
All
I've "done" is not back down when challenged. (By "challenge" is meant
anything that assumes a demanding, patronizing, correcting, lecturing,
insulting, instructing, or other such tone rather than being
equal-to-equal informative, or actually submissive itself, in case you
are wondering. Basically any parent-child, teacher-student,
bully-victim, or cop-suspect type communication idiom, in which the
first of the two roles is dominant and is expecting the second to be
submissive and becomes angry and hostile if that expectation is not
fulfilled.)
You seem to be missing the point I'm trying to make. You seem to be
defending your actions to me. I'm not challenging them, or deriding, or
anything like that. I didn't say what you did was wrong. I'm saying that
your actions have likely triggered the response you got. If this is the type
of responses you wanted, then great: you're getting what you want. If this
isn't the type of response you want, then you'll probably need to change
your actions. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, only with cause and
effect.
When the question seems to be aimed toward an intent of trying to prove
some kind of perceived inadequacy of mine, rather than toward gathering
information in a neutral way? You betcha.
Okay, so maybe if you STOP doing this, you wouldn't get the undesirable
responses you seem to be getting. What's that english expression? Seeing
trees, but not seeing the forest? Something like that? You might be too
caught up with this discussion to realize what's going on, so take a step
back, and look at the discussion from a distance:
I'm telling you "Stop perceiving things as being personal attacks."
You're responding "But they *ARE* personal attacks!"
Can you see the circularity of this?
I simply wasn't expecting to have to defend all of my design choices
and suchlike in this crowd, that's all.
So just don't defend them. You posted your solution. Someone posts
"Here's a better way to do it." You read it, say "Ok" (either to yourself,
or make an actual post saying just that), and then go on, living your life.
If you reply "Well, no, my idea is better because...", then expect to get
more replies saying "Actually, no, *MY* idea is better because..." and so
on.
I ask for information about a
specific issue, not for lecturing;
You can't control what other people post on Usenet. All you can do is
ask a question. If someone gives you the answer you want, then great. If
not, then hey, you're no worst off than before, right?
and being, as near as I can figure,
involuntarily signed up for some sort of informal remedial training is
downright insulting.
Are you referring to my posts as an informal remedial training? More
specifically, are you getting insulted by my posts? If so, let me know, and
I'll stop replying to you in this thread.
Emotional impact is irrelevant. We are discussing software. Software
sometimes has bugs. If that is somehow shocking to you, then perhaps
you are in the wrong newsgroup. Emotionally-based reluctance to discuss
the facts of a situation candidly is the cause of more disasters in
engineering and in numerous other fields (e.g. medicine) than most
other human foibles *combined*.
Again, you arguing with me using logic. I'm telling you that no matter
how logical your arguments are, that does NOT change the emotional impact of
your choice of words. You're surprised by the reactions you're getting on
this newsgroup, right? I'm trying to explain to you why you got the
reactions you got so that you won't be so surprised in the future.
You can tell me emotional impact is irrelevant, but obviously, this does
not agree with the empirical evidence of the direction that this thread is
taking. You can tell me that emotionally-based discussions are "bad", and
being autistic, I will completely agree with you. It annoys me to no end
with emotions overcome logic, and nonsensical behaviour is exhibited,
whether in real-life or on usenet. You and I are in agreement in that
respect. The difference is that I acknowledge that the rest of the world
isn't like you and me. They have emotions, and their emotions affect their
behaviour. I'm trying to share this revelation with you, so that you will
understand why, although we'd both rather it not be the case, sometimes you
*DO* have to factor in emotions to explain human behaviour.
You're surprised that you had to be on the defensive, right? I'm not. Do
you want to know why? Then listen to my advise. Don't dismiss it out of
hand, because of some perception that I'm with "them" and therefore
"against" you. You don't have to agree with my advise, just listen to it.
Really think about it.
For the things I've claimed are likely (or even just "possible") bugs,
I've noted in each case that changing JRE from 1.5 to 1.6 caused a
change in behavior. Given that new JREs are supposed to be backward
compatible, this is indeed indicative of a possible bug when it occurs.
Additionally, I haven't actually claimed to have found a bug -- only a
"possible" bug.
I don't have much to add. I just want to point out that it's not
unlikely that you may have found a bug. Once again, I'm have no disagreement
with this. 1.6 is in beta, and so it probably has bugs. If I were King of
Usenet, I'd say everyone is allowed to claim that they found bugs if they
wanted to, and no one is allowed ot hold that against them.
But I'm not King of Usenet. I can't control how people react to your
post. But I can observe it, and share my observations with you. My
observations is that people don't react well when you claim you've found a
bug. You can argue that this is completely irrational, and you may be right.
However, this does not change the fact that people do not react well when
you claim you've found a bug. Want to know how to avoid triggering this
irrational backlash? Simple: Don't claim you've found a bug.
This appears to be regarding communicating with the developers of a
product, rather than with other users.
Abstract the details, and the advice applies to this usenet group as
well, IMHO.
My manner of thinking is affected by the behavior I observe. Those
whose responses to me are confrontational in any way begin to be
treated as a "them" I'm "versus", because they are evidently treating
me that way. Those whose responses seem collaborative, rather than
competitive or outright combative, are not treated that way.
So do you think I'm "against" you, or "with" you? Either way, you'd be
wrong. I'm neutral. I'm providing what I consider to be good advice to you,
just like I try to provide what I consider to be good advice to everyone
else who posts on comp.lang.java.programmer and for which I believe I
actually know the solution. And I don't particularly care whether you accept
that advice or not, just like I don't particularly care whether anyone else
in this newsgroup accepts the advice I give them or not.
You are free to ignore them if you perceive them that way.
Thank you.
That may be frustration at broken behavior of gmail leaking out. I have
yet to find anywhere to actually render feedback about such things that
actually goes anywhere but into a black hole, or anywhere to discuss it
with other users that doesn't require registration.
Tried e-mailing google?
Don't push your luck.
PofN?
That's the username they post under.
Almost as effective as not making any, I presume?
Well, if your goal is to insult someone, then probably not making
insults is not very effective in doing that. There's a lesson in Zen
Buddhism posed in the form of a question:
The teacher tells the story of an old man who walks down a road with
lots of small sharp pebbles, and as he steps on these pebbles, they cut his
feet and cause him pain. The old man has some sheets of leather, and if he
places this leather between his food and the rock, the rocks aren't able to
penetrate the leather, and thus cannot cut his feet. Unfortunately, the old
man does not have enough leather to cover the entire road. What should he
do?
The student is supposed to respond that he could wrap his feet in the
leather, thus making shoes. And this is supposed to teach the student that
it is far easier to change yourself, than to change the world around you.
People are insulting you, and you don't like it. You could try to
convince everybody to stop insulting you, or you could just ignore the
insults. Both solutions work, but one requires much more time, energy and
effort than the other.
That's a curious impression, since no emprical evidence for such a
claim existed -- nobody had provided it.
I can explain to you how I arrived at that impression: You are
criticizing the "standard" solution, citing your solution as being superior.
Therefore, I think it's reasonable to conclude that given the option to
choose between either solution, you'd probably choose your own.
This seems to miss the point. It seems to be purely on the coding side
-- I could get that much by plugging ClassLoader.getResource into
Google or tracking it down in the JDK API docs. It's questions about
placing the files so they aren't mixed in with object code and keeping
the build process automatic that I had. Someone else seems to have
answered them recently; if their answer proves to work, this aspect of
the discussion can be considered concluded.
Why does anyone here bother to sling it liberally around?
If you really want to know why, first I advise you to read some of the
other posts, and see if you agree with me that most of the time, people
don't sling disapproval around so much. It seems to happen mostly to your
posts. If you agree with me on that, then consider that you maybe you're
doing something different compared to all the other posters. Then, try to
identify what that is, and see if it's something you're willing to change.
Maybe they
shouldn't -- it can't serve any useful purpose after all.
You're right. They shouldn't, and it probably does not serve any useful
purpose.
But does that mean they'll stop? Probably not. So once again, I'm
suggesting that it's far easier to just shrug off the disapproval than to
try and convince everybody who's disapproving to stop doing it.
It seemed to suggest, without quite stating it outright, a belief that
I might be an "idiot", or something closely similar. As such, I can't
simply let it slide. It seemed like the kind of remark that occurs in
certain adversarial situations where the one who makes the remark and
others on their "side" then chuckle into their hands or after you
leave, and you know they did/will, but you can't quite prove that
you've actually been insulted.
Well, that wasn't the intent.
- Oliver
(Kind of the way half the current US patent