From: Soren A. <so...@bl...> - 2007-12-10 19:18:13
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On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 Bo Yang wrote: > Ah-oh, maybe you are right. I should Google before I ask simple > question. But I think the mailing list is always better than Google > if I do not need get the answer fast. There are always some kind > people who will say something about the topic and I get more than > just Google the answer. You could be correct about "there are always some kind people who will say something ...". I'll make a couple observations about this, now. I've been involved in hacking (as defined correctly by Eric S. Raymond, not by CNN) and the Internet for over 10 years. I've done a lot of communicating or just reading on all the technical media: USENET, mailing-lists, Web fora/Bulletin-boards, IRC chat, the works. One thing that I've noticed is that more than 50% of the time, the actual motivation for answering a question is *NOT* "kindness." It's ego-satiation. It's the craving to see one's own words. And there's a rough inverse correlation between how much a person actually knows and how much they tend to give in to this simple childish impulse. The wider and deeper a person's understanding of a topic, the more they have real expertise in it (won through their own effort and, yes, probably the kindness of others), the less likely they are to respond to people like Bo Yang merely to "see and be seen." In other words, its been observed often in general that first-class people in *any* field are people who understand a bit more than average about the workings of ego and are less likely to be frequently ensnared by it. Understanding how much this wastes of ones finite resources (temporal, intellectual and spiritual), they'll tend to speak only where it will promote real furtherance of knowledge and capability of a potential contributor or advancement of a project. I've been silently observing Bo Yang's misuse (imho) of this list and had already decided weeks ago that I'll not be one of the suckers who falls into the trap of replying to him. I've started to learn the distinction between kindness and foolish wastefulness and intend to fully apply that understanding to this user. My humble prediction is that Bo Yang will wind up receiving replies only from the least clueful users (when he gets any at all) and so will end up having (in some cases at least) half-correct or less information. That's one way that karma works, I guess. I won't follow-up to any responses to this posting on-list (it's not my intention to start an off-topic juggernaut or a flame war). My respectful salutations to all the mingw contributors here and apologies for the brief detour. -- "All unaccompanied children will be given espresso and a free kitten." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Get a free email account with anti spam protection. http://www.bluebottle.com/tag/2 |