Subject: Re: Newbie on Streams From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 01:03:55 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3229117434637395@naggum.net> * Kenny Tilton <ktilton@nyc.rr.com> | So what? I was looking forward to an answer, I keep wondering what all | the excitement is over gray (Grey?) streams. Research is research, you | go to a book or the Web or to experts live and in color. So do your own research and publish it. Demanding is the privilege of the paying customer, and refunding rather than complying is the privilege of the responsible vendor. | And so what if, in a different circumstance where they are supposed to | write code, a cheater gets an answer and does not learn anything? I | thought that was /their/ problem. "You're only cheating yourself.", | right? One general concept of the free exchange of information on the Net is that people are equals in principle and that their differences are the nothing more than accidents of time. The whole deal is to save people time, just like science is supposed to let people avoid re-discovering everything on their own, philosophy is supposed to let really smart people sort out the really hard problems so average people can just use the solutions, etc. The whole point with the ability of human beings being able to learn from the experience of others is to save time. When this is not longer true, when the sharing actually wastes time, some people are causing damage to an important part of the fabric of the Net and of the value of sharing experience in the first place. I mean, on IRC, I recently had the immensely curious experience of helping a guy through a problem, but he did not quite understand it. I had fetched my good old Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, et al, and worked through some of the algorithm with them, then asked him if he had any algorithm books. He had Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, et al, right beside him. So I told him, in no uncertain terms, where to find the answer. He _still_ managed to ask me what it said. (Unlike some people here, he did in fact understand that he had done something wrong, and apologized and appreciated the help he had received, arguing by way of explanation that it had been so much easier to ask me than to read the book.) | Meanwhile c.l.l. comes off like a bunch of finger-wagging | holier-than-thou school marms. I forget, did we want Lisp to be more | popular or less popular? Start funding people to further your goal, and you gain the right to complain that your goal is not shared by those you have funded. If you do not want to do this, what do you do to help? Why are you not simply researching the question and answering the guy himself? All of us learned this by study, but faced with people who refuse to study and still demand help, you tell us that you could not learn it unless one of us could help you. That means that you are no longer an equal, accidentally ignorant by an accident of time -- you would be helpless without our specific sacrifice of time for you. This is generally not worth anyone's while, and many people get pissed off by whining losers. | I have had hard technical questions completely ignored here, but presumed | cheaters bring a deluge of wise guys either spanking the evil-doer or | posting hilarious (not) obfuscated solutions. Seems like a lot of folk | (not you, Barry) get their rocks off pissing on cheaters but get damn | quiet when help is sought in good faith. Why do you complain about it rather than do something about it? Generally, though, students should go ask their teacher when they are stuck. That way, the teacher can better adapt his lecturing/teaching to the actual needs of students, rather than working with false positives. It is not just the cheater who loses if this is widespread. | Well, I gotta go google up on gra/ey streams.... You do that. Hint: Gray is a person's name, used adjectively. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief. Post with compassion: http://home.chello.no/~xyzzy/kitten.jpg