Oliver said:
I was talking about newbies. For example, see this thread:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp...._frm/thread/9fb39f03f5cc066e/f320a2cea44397b6
AFAIK, the OP has only posted twice in comp.lang.java.programmer, and
only once was the post a question. That question got answered.
Then specific questions must raise some peoples' ire.
I reposted my initial question in this thread, and could still see
nothing wrong with it.
(1) It was not clear to me that you would accept the advice pending more
information or evidence.
I didn't explicitly state that I would not.
(2) I don't see any indication that someone considers refusal to accept
someone else's advice as being a crime.
Perhaps "crime" is a strong word, but it is clear that there are some
here who consider anything other than *unconditional and unquestioning*
acceptance of their advice to be worthy of at least somewhat prickly or
scornful responses.
That's not what I'm recommending you to do.
If you would kindly reread the piece directly above that is from your
own earlier post, you will find that you were not recommending anything
less vague than "change your actions". I substituted more specifically
the change that seemed most likely to satisfy the personalities
currently causing problems.
I've posted some recommendations already: Ask direct questions. Don't mention
anything which is not directly related (like problems with your browser). I'm not even
telling you to say "please" or "thank you", or anything like that. I don't
know how you inferred a recommendation for submissiveness from my
recommendations.
I didn't infer anything from those, but then you hadn't said those;
you'd simply said "change your actions". (You may have mentioned those
in a still-earlier post, but there they would have already been
responded to separately.)
It sounds like the only thing you can find fault with was mentioning
browser mishaps in the post announcing that I'd fixed the original
issue, and nothing whatsoever in the post asking the question
originally.
I find it likely that your assessment is not accurate. Of all the parts
of various postings that seem to have produced seriously critical
responses, the browser mishap is actually one of the most innocuous by
that measure. The *only* one to react negatively to that particular
passage was you.
Stop believing that when someone asks you a question, they are not
trying to help you.
I never started to. Not "when someone asks a question" period, as
opposed to differentiating relevant questions from ones that seem to be
prying into why I'm doing something rather than getting more detailed,
relevant configuration info (or whatever).
No. Stop believing that you are capable at differentiating between
questions which are intended to get the information nescessary to help you
versus questions whose sole purpose is some kind of entrapment, or which are
at best irrelevant.
Stop giving me orders like I'm some kind of tin soldier.
Your suggestion above is patronizing, and is the very thing I'm seeking
to avoid *without* it being at the price of meekness of some form or
another. Unquestioning acceptance of any assumption put to me is
therefore right out, as is believing myself inherently inadequate to
decide any particular thing.
I am discussion situations like, for instance,
Me: How do I get some foos to do bars?
Other: Why don't you use baz instead?
-or-
Why do you want to get foos to do bars?
-or-
What is the resulting bar used for later on?
.... etc.
As opposed to response questions like
What version are you using?
Are the foos of the XYZFoo subclass or the base class?
Do the bars need to be fiddlefaddle, or will just ordinary ones do?
....
You can clearly see the difference. The former don't further a goal of
determining how I can get some foos to do bars; they do however further
a goal of questioning whether I even want to get foos to do bars, or
what I want the bars for. The latter, on the other hand, are plainly
relevant to narrowing down the specifics of my requirements and of the
exact tool set I have available with which to do the job, without
questioning my requirements themselves.
The hidden assumption behind any question that suggests that I ought to
reconsider doing what I'm asking how to do is that someone thinks doing
it is dumb, and, moreover, that whoever it is is too cowardly to come
right out and say so.
I've never even read the group charter. But I can tell you, empirically
and statistically, those who answer every question put to them have had a
greater chance of getting the answers they wanted.
Even ones that pry, and appear intended to discover some hint of a
perceived wrongdoing that the questioner can then drag out into the
light to say "Aha! And another newbie is saved from his own stupidity",
pat himself on the back, and thereby have self-medicated with his
personal brand of Viagra-for-the-ego?
Er, thanks, but no thanks. People who get their kicks that way can
kindly go get them from someone else; but it's not my kink.
No, you should not. On the other hand, I've never seen anyone on this
group ever ask anyone for their credit card number, so this has never been a
problem so far.
No; what it was was a _reductio_ad_absurdum_ of your somewhat foolish
claim that I'd be wise to answer *any* question put to me.
Perhaps because it's off topic and no one really cares.
Actually, it had become tangentially on topic, since the answers to
questions like "whether I should have found X with google" were
becoming germane to some of the various attempts at fault-finding that
were developing by that time.
No. I was referring to your "I may have found a bug" post.
*sigh*
I *thought* we were discussing the mess that *this* thread has become.
It's certainly the only one worthy of considering a "problem" and
therefore trying to "fix" at this time.
Please cleanly separate discussion germane to this thread from
irrelevancies that properly belong in their respective threads.
In this particular thread, it does not seem that there was anything
faultable in any of the earliest postings I made (those being the ones
that count vis a vis deciding how this got started, as opposed to how
it continued at some later point or whatever, since the latter would
have been moot if it'd never gotten started anyway.)
The only thing you seem to have taken issue with from *this* thread now
is the browser bit in one of my earlier postings, and that is the only
thing that *nobody else* seems to have taken issue with, so it *can't*
be the problem.
I remain convinced that the problem isn't in *any* of my posts to this
thread whatsoever. If you believe otherwise, marshal some real evidence
please.
"Thanks. I'll keep your solution in mind for next time."
I've said things equivalent to this on several occasions.
I usually expect a 2-3 day wait before getting a reply, but that doesn't
mean I'll stop my google search, so this is starting to stretch it, but
fine.
This group generates replies usually in well under an hour -- to the
point that I now can't catch up on just this thread, since by the time
I've read everything new as of X:00, it's then X:20 and there's five
completely new posts in just that time (besides any by myself), and so
forth.
Is your 2-3 day figure a general figure for your average-case
newsgroup? That would closely ffit my own, but I fit my expectations in
a particular case to the known history of the particular newsgroup,
when there's enough data points.
Not too hard ot imagine.
Probably what I would do, yes.
Well, then, you would potentially land in an identical pickle. Because
in this particular instance, it all went pear-shaped right after that
point without any further intervention from me!
Except this hasn't happened, neither to you, nor to me.
*goggles*
What, are you blind? Did you not read the early part of this thread at
all? Did you also not read the bits I reposted in the message to which
you just replied??
So it's quite a
stretch of the imagination now. What would have likely happened to me (and
what has actually happened to you) is that someone saw your post, thought
their solution was better, and posted it. No implication of being moron, or
anything like that.
That's a damned charitable interpretation of even the early returns,
nevermind some of the later ones, and you know it.
Well, there you go. I guess I'm absolved of guilt then, since that's
also what I did.
Not that it helps me much.
I'd probably make my question explicit. E.g. instead of "Nobody is
telling me what Ant is!", "What is Ant?" Instead of "Obviously, a google
query for 'ant' would not turn up anything useful", "Where can I download
Ant?", etc. I probably also wouldn't mention the inadequacies of search
engines. I'd probably keep my post under 5000 words. I'd probably answer the
questions asked of me.
These are mischaracterizations. For instance, I actually knew what ant
was, for starters; what I asked was what the advantages were for a
project of the small scope in question. Also, when I noticed that
everyone was virtually raving about it but no-one was saying anything
about obtaining it, I drew attention to that fact, not so much to
locate it (which I would probably have been able to manage without too
much difficulty anyway) but because I thought it curious that everybody
seemed to assume that I would already know.
The search engine thing seems to have bugged you, but like the browser
thing, it seems to have bugged no-one else -- it's one of the things
that drew the least criticism at that point (in fact, there zero
replies to that bit, all told).
You seem to be irritated not merely by different things than the ones
who actually get somewhat nasty, but in fact only by some of the things
that didn't bug them at all (and vice versa).
No, the link I quoted gave an example of when it's okay to claim you've
found a bug.
And that example was actually applicable to the cases where I did.
Except that I didn't; I just claimed that I'd found a "possible" bug.
None of these situations qualify, IMHO, and in the opiniong of the FAQ
author.
This flatly contradicts what you said earlier. You quoted directly from
that FAQ that observing a regression against a previous version
specifically *does* qualify for an exception. Furthermore, that FAQ
stated *nothing* about what, if any, loosening of conditions occurred
when "claim to have found a bug" was changed to "suspect you may have
found a bug". (I might add that it also stated nothing whatsoever in
the way of a rationale for these rules. You seem to regard them as
fairly inflexible, perhaps even as actual laws, but I don't recall any
legislative process being mentioned, nor any representatives debating,
nor any elections for said representatives at which I might cast my
vote, nor any judiciary, constitution, or similar to limit and
interpret with will of that deliberative body! Rather, they look to
have been pulled out of somebody's hat and then stated as absolute
without any supporting reason.
Saying "I'm having problems with listeners. Here's my source code.
Here's what behaviour I'm expecting. Here's what behaviour I'm experiencing.
How come they differ?" is not dishonest.
Lies of omission? Also, this seems to be most germane to the wrong
thread.
Nowhere in my advice does it ask you to assume everyone else in the
world is right and you are wrong.
No; instead, your advice merely implies it. What it explicitly asks me
to do is to acquiesce to everyone else's judgment, from which one
infers that I'm to consider that judgment to be superior to my own,
from which what I inferred follows easily and elementarily.
Unless, of course, you actually meant that I should acquiesce *falsely*
(i.e. the first thing, acquiesce, without the second, consider my
judgment to be inferior).
Dishonesty seems like it may be a method of fairly early resort for
problem-solving for you, doesn't it?
You don't think any of these people, when challenged, ever said shrugged
their shoulders and said "Ok" (in whatever language they speak), and went on
with their lives?
When it was before an audience? Nope. In private? Possibly (but then
there's unlikely to be any documentation for those instances is there?)
Take Einstein, for example. Don't you think, at one point
in his life, someone told him relativity is the dumbest thing they'd ever
heard of, to which Einstein might have shrugged and said the equivalent of
"Ok.", and then went on with his life, giving presentations and lectures on
relativity to other scientists? Or do you think he got bogged down,
delaying, or even cancelling those lectures, to argue with that one
particular person, who stubbornly refused to believe?
Agreeing to disagree with the person is very different from acquiescing
to their "superior" judgment. But agreeing to disagree takes two, like
any other sort of agreeing. If one side stubbornly refuses to concede a
loss or even a draw, then the other side has to either concede a loss
or keep fighting. And in some cases, the former would be dishonest
(when that side is nowhere near convinced that they're anything in the
neighborhood of "flatly wrong", for instance).
My intent was "don't worry about what others think of you so much". I'll
actually give you an example of this strategy right now. You think I'm
really dumb, right? Ok, fine.
You'd concede a significant point in front of an audience while
(presumably) disbelieving it and where it actually impugns you in some
manner?
Sorry, I won't follow you through that door -- sign says "Masochists
Only" and I fear I might get in trouble if I go somewhere I obviously
don't belong.
Must be that it's they, not you, intending to aggravate people with
acronyms then.
In my opinion, it's not impossible. If you'd like a demonstration, wait
a few days until I've forgotten about this thread, and then insult me out of
the blue, without provocation. I predict that I won't feel insulted.
That's the most illogical thing I've heard since -2197483648
Oops, sorry, looks like an integer underflow may have happened.
Tell me though, if you anesthetize yourself and then someone cuts off
your arm:
a) Does it hurt?
b) Do you still lose the arm?
c) Would you have preferred it the other way around?
It's not forgotten, but disagreed.
What?
OK, time for another mindbender then.
If you put a block weighing 6 newtons on a level frictionless surface,
attached by a spring to a fixed point on that surface, what happens:
a) if the block is left alone?
b) if a rightward force is applied steadily at the center of the left
side of the block?
c) if forces of equal magnitude are applied steadily at the centers of
the left *and* right sides of the block, directly through the block in
both cases?
Why? I didn't actually say those things!
Everyone's free to post in comp.*; even those you deem to be unable to
grasp the most basic rules of logic.
You misunderstand me. It wasn't meant to be interpreted as "Who let
those idiots into the mensa-only club?!"; it was meant to be
interpreted as "What on earth did they come here hoping to
accomplish?!".
Personally, I appreciate their
presence: even if they cannot grasp logic, as you state, they do seem to
know quite a bit about Java. When I ask Java questions here, someone usually
has an answer for me.
An answer from someone whose reasoning capabilities are on that level
is probably worse than no answer at all. What proportion of the answers
you receive tend to work decently and additionally don't come with
either side effects (in implementation) or some kind of lunacy (in the
form of usenet literature) attached?
So read 2000 of them. Or just 20 of them. Or just 2. It doesn't really
matter. Pick a thread you did not participate in, and see if you perceive
the same disapproval there that you perceive here.
I'd like to read about minus fifty of them, since that's what it would
take to counterbalance the time wasted just trying to keep up with
*this single thread*.
I've never been in disagreement with you about that. Like I said, it
really has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's more about cause and
effect.
Well, it was also possible to draw the conclusion that nothing in my
early posts to the thread caused this treatment of me, either -- not
avoidably so, anyway, and not by actually being offensive in any way
either.
It remains true that the two things you suggest doing differently
(browser ... search engine) were two of maybe ten that would definitely
have made no difference whatsoever, since they seem to have been
ignored in all the replies *except yours*.
To help you in avoiding the responses you seemed to not want to receive.
Yes, but at what price?
Another rule of thumb I usually use on Usenet is: If there are two (or
more) interpretations for a given message, and one of them makes you really
angry or upset, but the other one leaves you neutral or even happy, pick the
latter one. You'll end up having a happier life.
That sounds to me like a recipe for disaster. The best-case scenario is
being wide open to being the butt of someone's jokes and having
voluntarily made yourself turnip-dumb enough tto actually like it. The
worst-case scenario tends to involve scams and credit-card numbers...
