Thomas said:
I think as a first-time poster he failed in multiple ways. If he would
have read the group a little bit before posting, he would have find out
that
people here don't want to hear about Microsoft's VM. And that it is
maybe not a good idea to ask here. Like it is not a good idea to ask
about push-bikes in a biker bar.
Eh ? Since when has it been *legitimate* for behaviour like that to pollute
this ng ? I know it *happens*, but that's because there are a number of
f***wits who would rather sound off than either help or discuss issues. This
*isn't* a biker bar, and it's not supposed to be like one.
He also failed to provide background information about the problem at
hand (reason, size of the problem, type of the applications, etc.). It
is his responsibility to provide all necessary information. It is not
our job to squeeze it out of him.
Leaving aside** the question of how he is supposed to know how much information
is necessary to solve the problem when he doesn't know how to solve it himself,
I think this is over the top too. At least he provided enough info for *me* to
make a first cut at the problem and decide that I didn't know how to solve it.
(As an aside, I was surprised to learn that there are *any* applications using
MS's JVM) What information would *you* have needed over and above what was in
the original post in order to offer a useful suggestion ? Specifically ?
He also didn't provide any information
about the things he already tried. Maybe he didn't try anything, so he
appeared as being a bit lazy.
You seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel here. At least I -- as I've
said -- can't think of any workable approach, so if *I* had this problem then
I'd have to ask for help without trying anything first. I don't consider
myself either lazy (in this respect ;-) or incompetent, so why should I ascribe
either of these things to him in this situation ?
[**] the general problem that anyone always faces when asking for help. Some
people seem to think that the best approach is to produce a brain dump of every
detail of the problem (most of which will prove to be irrelevant), plus 10K of
code, plus their granny's social security number. I've seen other posters
criticised for not doing this -- which I find staggering (though I don't stay
staggered -- that's what killfiles are for). Usenet is after all an
*interactive* medium, it is in no way difficult for a would-be helper to ask
for the *specific* extra info that is needed. I, for one, will only rarely
bother with the brain-dump type post -- why should I spend minutes reading long
posts, stuffed with irrelevant (probably) detail and badly written code, just
to tell whether the question is even one that I can answer, or is interesting
enough for me to want to ? A succinct and clear overview of the problem, with
as much detail will fit in that envelope, is what I think posters should aim
for.
Maybe other people think differently, but for me this is a *discussion* group,
not a free tech-support line. The reason that people often provide help is
that they find discussing these matters interesting. We aren't volunteer
support staff, we aren't here to provide a free service, we're here because we
(occasionally) enjoy the discussions. So the "please help" questions that *I*
consider appropriate for this ng are the ones that will provoke or require some
interesting discussion to solve. Problems that fall into the "post full
details upfront, ask humbly, and some nice person will probably provide an
answer out of their boundless generosity" category seem to me to belong in
c.l.j.help (which I don't read -- except for bloody cross-posts). IMO, the
questions that belong here are much more likely to have the underlying form
"hey gang here's some meat to chew on" than "please, please, help this
miserable newbie". Of course, I'd hope that the resulting discussion will
usually help the original poster too.
So, getting back OT, I didn't find the content or tone of the OP in any way out
of place.
-- chris