Re: Giving an application a window icon in a sensible way
<nebulous99@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1164303197.726441.19280@j44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
[...]
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.
This is actually pretty standard on most comp.* newsgroups I've been to.
And again, I recommend that you do answer questions of the form "Why don't
you use baz instead?", "Why do you want to get foos to do bars?", and "What
is the resulting bar used for later on?". Again, in my experience, those who
do this are more likely to get the answers they want.
[...]
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?
I think it never occurs to those posters that the questions being posed
of them might be some sort of trap. They just answer them, and then they get
their own questions answered, and everybody is happy.
[...]
What if one of
them asks me for my credit card number -- I suppose I should trust them
with that, too?
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.
Yes, in retrospect, it was a foolish blanket statement in theory, but it
seems to work in practice, given that the "What's your credit card number"
questions never seem to get asked in practice.
[...]
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.
The (paraphrasing here) "Obviously, a Google search for 'ant' wouldn't
give me any results related to the Ant software in question" and "Well, if
it does, then Google has a lot to learn from me." posts are pretty arrogant,
IMHO.
[...]
Is your 2-3 day figure a general figure for your average-case
newsgroup?
It's sort of a minimum. For low traffic newsgroups, I'd raise the
estimate to maybe a week or more. Java is a big topic, and there are a
experts in this newsgroup, but typically, they are experts only in a
particular subdomain (e.g. J2EE, or concurrency, or networking, etc.), and
not an expert in all of Java. Also, I consider myself to understand the
basics of Java pretty well, so that my questions typically aren't so called
"newbie" questions that the vast majority of posters here could answer.
Therefore, when I ask a question, probably only 5 to 10 people actually know
the answer with good certainty.
Chances are, these 10 people aren't reading the newsgroup during the
same period that I'm making the post. Some of them may only read the
newsgroup from work/school, and have gone home for the day, for example. In
that case, I'd probably have to wait until the next day for them to come
back, assuming they check the groups everyday. Personally, I tend to check
the groups (but don't bother to read every single message in them) every
weekday, but I don't access them on the weekends. Others may have different
access patterns. This is how I arrived at the 2-3 day figure for "busy"
newsgroups, and "7 days or more" for the less busy ones.
7. The immediate response (in much less than one hour) is clearly and
strongly disapproving of the method you used, and by extension of you.
It mentions an alternative method that you know relatively little
about, with the implicit assertion that you should know all about it
too and if you don't already then you're probably a moron. Implied is
that you should immediately rewrite your code to use their suggested
method, even though the code currently works, with the vague impression
that the so-and-so telling you this believes that if you don't change
it right that instant your computer might catch fire or something.
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??
I've read most of them, yes. Certainly, I've read all the posts to this
thread that were made over 24 hours ago (though I skimmed through some of
the longer ones). I think the problem here is that you consider the
statement "the immediate response is clearly and strongly disapproving" to
be objectively true, whereas I consider it to be subjectively true at best,
and false at worst.
Without getting too metaphysical, I'm saying there may be a difference
between reality and your perception of reality.
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.
I disagree.
What do you do?
Post my questions.
Well, there you go. I guess I'm absolved of guilt then, since that's
also what I did. :P Not that it helps me much.
Well, guilt... it's a loaded word. As I've said before, I don't think
this has anything to do with right or wrong. Did you do something "wrong"?
The word "wrong" is meaningless in this context. I think it has more to do
with cause and effect. There was an effect. Did your post participate in the
cause that effect? Yes.
So I don't know if you want to call it "guilt" or not. Personally, I'd
avoid using that term to describe what happened here.
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.
You drew attention to people no saying anything about obtaining ant,
why? Is it because you wanted to know how to obtain ant? If so, you should
just ask directly. If you not, then perhaps because you wanted other people
to change their behaviour? If so, recall the fable on changing others versus
changing yourself. If not, then you had some other reason which I am unable
to currently guess, so I have no further recommendations.
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).
I guess I was wrong about people not liking offtopic posts then.
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.
It's only a lie of omission if people are interested in the information,
and you purposely do not support or deny the information. I don't think
anyone is interested in whether you actually think what you have found is a
bug or not. Rather, they are only interested in what you've actually found
itself. They will judge for themselves whether it is a bug in their opinion.
But again, I might be wrong about that. I've been wrong about guessing
what other people on this group think before.
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.
This was what you suggested. Basically, "Assume that everybody else in
the world is right and you are wrong whenever you don't agree with
someone else".
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.
Ok, so don't take my advice.
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?
Not in my opinion.
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?)
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it might have happened before an
audience. I can easily imagine Einstein giving a lecture on relativity
before an assembly of physicists, and someone standing up and shouting (in
German) "This is all nonsense!" to which Einstein might have replied "Ok, I
respect your freedom to disagree with me. If you do not wish to hear my
theories, feel free to leave the lecture hall, but there are 200 other
scientists here who seem to be interested in hearing about it, so for their
benefit, I'd like to continue my explanation uninterrupted." And then he
goes on, doing what he was doing before the interruption, as if nothing had
happened.
I don't know if this ever actually happened, but if it did, I don't
think Einstein had lost any credibility from doing this, instead of choosing
to argue with that one person.
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.
Agreed.
But agreeing to disagree takes two, like
any other sort of agreeing.
I disagree.
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.
Again, disagreed.
[...]
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?
I don't think there's anything to concede. You claim that you think I'm
dumb. I fully believe that you think I'm dumb. And I have no problem with
that, because I don't really care what you think of me. I personally I don't
think I'm dumb. And I don't think there's any conflict with you think I'm
dumb and me thinking I'm not dumb. Just like there'd be no conflict if I
think vanilla tastes better than chocolate, and you think chocolate tastes
better than vanilla. Different people think different things.
You consider this newsgroup to be in front of a public audience, right?
So here we are. You're publicly telling me that you think I'm dumb, and I
have no reason to doubt that you think I'm dumb. So I'll repeat it in front
of the audience: Twisted thinks I'm dumb.
And now I'll keep on living my life, answering questions posted on this
forum when I believe I can make a useful contribution, and generally proceed
the same way as I would have, had you never told me that you thought I was
dumb.
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.
No need to apologize.
It's actually "PofN", rather than something else that you contracted to
that in the (incorrect) assumption that I'd nonetheless know who you
were talking about and be able to (how? Magic?) reconstruct the long
version?
Come on. I know usenetters, and if there's one thing they love to do
more than baffle you with bullshit, it's aggravate you with acronyms,
half of them made up on the spot and the rest still unintelligible to
most people even with some educated guessing and a google search or
two.
Yes, "PofN".
Must be that it's they, not you, intending to aggravate people with
acronyms then. :P
Well, it's just a name. Names can be anything. I was never really
concerned about what PofN stood for, if anything.
It's impossible to avoid being insulted if the insults are unprovoked,
if "don't provoke the insulters" is what you mean to suggest.
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?
Depending on the quality of the anesthesia, maybe not.
b) Do you still lose the arm?
Yes.
c) Would you have preferred it the other way around?
I don't understand... Prefer not being anesthetize? Prefer being the one
to cut the arm instead of not cutting it?
Eh what? No, you seem to have misunderstood. The options are to avoid
the insults even being said or to rebut them. Ignoring them is
emphatically not an option, since silence implies assent. Or have you
forgotten that part?
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?
Disclaimer: Physics isn't my strong point.
My guess: Nothing.
b) if a rightward force is applied steadily at the center of the left
side of the block?
My guess: The block accelerates to the right, assuming no other forces
(e.g. gravity).
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?
My guess: Nothing.
Here's my mindbender for you:
This guy runs up to you and points at the sky and says "I see a flying
spaghetti monster!" You look around and don't see anything that might match
that description, and so you say "I don't see anything." The guy tells you
"I'm telling you, I see it!"
So you say "Ok", and go on living your life.
What, if anything, did you agree to, upon saying "Ok"?
I am starting to suspect, however, that people honestly believe that I
believe what you are saying they believe I believe,
I'm glad.
Why? I didn't actually say those things!
I'm glad that you're starting to suspect that people honestly believe
that you believe what I'm saying they believe you believe. In other words,
I'm glad you're starting to believe what I'm telling you.
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?!".
I guess they want to talk about comp.*. Specifically, I guess the people
who post in comp.lang.java.programmer want to talk about the Java
programming language.
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?
I think I asked something like 5-7 questions here, but I only remember
the contents (and thus the answers) of 3 of them. 2 of them were pedantic
questions about the Java Language Specification, and they got answered
clearly. 1 was a "I'm having problems with WebStart, here's a sample app. Do
you guys have the same problem?" and they said "No.", thus confirming that
the problem was with my particular system.
So I've had 3 out of 3 good experiences here. I suspect all my questions
got answered to my satisfaction, but I can't recall for sure.
Well, that wasn't the intent.
What was the intent of the "advice" to "just say OK" whenever anyone
accused me of being wrong?
I'm still waiting on that.
To help you in avoiding the responses you seemed to not want to
receive.
Yes, but at what price?
Hmm, interesting question. If it were me in your situation, the cost
would be zero, 'cause I don't really care about what people think of me, and
I disagree that silence implies assent. It seems you do think silence
implies assent, and that you don't want people see you as being submissive,
so the cost may be non-zero for you.
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...
It works for me.
- Oliver