Jorgen said:
I can only name one or two which are better, and several newsgroups
which are far worse than comp.lang.c++.
We must obviously visit different newsgroups.
Take a look on comp.unix.solaris. Numerous people ask questions on there, which
are covered somewhere in Sun's documentation. Usually others will answer the
question, and take time to find the relevant Sun document if they know how best
to find it. They then post a link. Sometimes (quite often in fact), it is not so
easy to find the right document.
In the case here, a Google of C++ and FAQ returned 800,000 links, and even the
one that looked like it was related to the newsgroup, was not helpful.
I think people here are
generally helpful, if you have questions which interest them.
If I only ever answered questions which interested me on newsgroups, I'd answer
a lot less than what I do. I will often answer questions for which I know the
answer, even if the subject is not high on my list of interests.
If someone wants to find out what release of Solaris they are running, it is
hardly of great interest to me. But I will tell them to type
$ cat /etc/release
No doubt the answer can be found on Sun's web site, but I would not say "look on
docs.sun.com" or the even less helpful "look at Sun's documentation".
The
problem is, your two questions have been asked here over and over for
decades, and they tend to be followed up by whiny "but standards
should be *free*!" complaints[1] and general confusion.
There is a reasonable argument that *some* standards should be free.
In the case of the 17th Edition of the IEE wiring regulations, it is clear the
only people that need that standard are professional electricians. It is not
unreasonable they pay for the standard.
Likewise for standards regarding aircraft maintenance, medical electronics, and
numerous other subjects. (I'm excluding students, who will probably have access
via their uni/college).
In the case of POSIX, C and C++ standards, the standards bodies should realise
that a lot of people that could usefully access those standards are developing
open-source software, for which they do not get paid.
It's also clear there is some pretty poor software written, which might to a
certain extent be improved if people had access to the final standards - not
just drafts.
In that light, I think the "down the hall" remark was pretty mild.
Personally I find it a bit rude.
Dave
--
I respectfully request that this message is not archived by companies as
unscrupulous as 'Experts Exchange' . In case you are unaware,
'Experts Exchange' take questions posted on the web and try to find
idiots stupid enough to pay for the answers, which were posted freely
by others. They are leeches.
