Subject: Re: What is fraud?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/01/15
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3125419787055738@naggum.no>

* Felix Winkelmann <felix@anu.ie>
| I think you are a bit too fast in accusing people of fraud who are just
| making suggestions or asking harmless questions.

  feel free to volunteer all the information you want.  why haven't you?
  maybe it's because you don't care about that, either?

  fraud -- an intentional perversion of truth for the purpose of inducing
  another in reliance upon it to part with some valuable thing belonging to
  him or to surrender a legal right.  a  false representation of a matter
  of fact, whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading
  allegations, or by concealment of that which should have been disclosed,
  which deceives and is intended to deceive another so that he shall act
  upon to his legal injury.  anything calculated to deceive, whether by a
  single act or combination, or by suppression of truth, or suggestion or
  what is false, whether it be by direct falsehood or innuendo, by speech
  or silence, word of mouth or look or gesture.

  that's Black's law dictionary introducing the concept.

  I view time as a valuable asset, answering a question with technical
  answers that any conscientious person would know are wrong as false
  representation of a matter of act, and posting under false pretenses as
  concealment of that which should have been disclosed.  asking others to
  help you when your real purpose is to avoid doing your homework, is
  fraud.  not making sure you know that what you have posted is correct,
  yet make it appear that it is, is fraud.  inducing somebody to help you
  when you will not accept the responsibility of learning from it, is fraud.

  in a world where information is becoming a currency, there are a lot of
  counterfeiters who can't understand that what they are doing is wrong.
  are you one of those?  it looks that way from my point of view.

  a dejanews search on your fairly unique name returns 5 messages.  may I
  ask why you get so excited about my article that you had to post your
  message to begin with?  you seem to care about meaningless issues, but
  not about any serious issues related to this newsgroup or the Common Lisp
  programming language at all.  yet you have the right to question why
  _others_ care?  I think that is basically fraudulent of you, too.

#:Erik