how many of your questions get answered and by whom [modified]
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I'm wondering what our collective experience is of getting answers to our questions and who most often answers them. I am not thinking about questions posed here at CP, but outside of CP. If you only ask questions here then you probably need to get a life. My experience is that for non IT questions I get great answers quickly. I put the quote in my signature into a "who said this" site. Within a couple of hours the answer came back, Erwin Schrodinger, Wikipedia link, and a link to the source of the answer - a file of "Sayings" on a ChemEng FTP server at a lesser US university. When I ask questions on MS, Moz, Usenet, CP etc - I rarely get such clear straightforward answers, I often get no answer, and about 50% of the time I end up finding the answer myself, in which case I reply to myself so that it gets recorded. Often I get answers to a different question, ie I don't care what your question is the answer is this - politicians are very fond of this sort of answer. Then there's the Irish answer - chap is driving on a quiet country road in County Monaghan, on his way to Galway, he's lost. Seeing someone who appears to be a local he stops the car to ask "Could you be telling me the way to Galway". Local chap rubs his chin "Well, if it were to Galway I be going, I wouldn't be starting from here, would I.". There's also an Indian answer, but I'll leave that for another day
TUT If you cannot in the long run say what it is that you've been doing then your doing has been worthless - Erwin Schrodinger
modified on Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:35 AM
urbane.tiger wrote:
the Irish answer
wtf?
But fortunately we have the nanny-state politicians who can step in to protect us poor stupid consumers, most of whom would not know a JVM from a frozen chicken. Bruce Pierson
Because programming is an art, not a science. Marc Clifton -
I'm wondering what our collective experience is of getting answers to our questions and who most often answers them. I am not thinking about questions posed here at CP, but outside of CP. If you only ask questions here then you probably need to get a life. My experience is that for non IT questions I get great answers quickly. I put the quote in my signature into a "who said this" site. Within a couple of hours the answer came back, Erwin Schrodinger, Wikipedia link, and a link to the source of the answer - a file of "Sayings" on a ChemEng FTP server at a lesser US university. When I ask questions on MS, Moz, Usenet, CP etc - I rarely get such clear straightforward answers, I often get no answer, and about 50% of the time I end up finding the answer myself, in which case I reply to myself so that it gets recorded. Often I get answers to a different question, ie I don't care what your question is the answer is this - politicians are very fond of this sort of answer. Then there's the Irish answer - chap is driving on a quiet country road in County Monaghan, on his way to Galway, he's lost. Seeing someone who appears to be a local he stops the car to ask "Could you be telling me the way to Galway". Local chap rubs his chin "Well, if it were to Galway I be going, I wouldn't be starting from here, would I.". There's also an Indian answer, but I'll leave that for another day
TUT If you cannot in the long run say what it is that you've been doing then your doing has been worthless - Erwin Schrodinger
modified on Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:35 AM
It's been a while since I had any IT questions to ask - but watch out, I'm about to do a major upgrade on some old websites - but I've usually received fast, accurate answers from very helpful people. Who does the answering varies, as the most active "helpers" seem to change from month to month. Based on comparisons of my questions and those I see foundering for lack of responses, I think the main difference lies in the clarity of the questions. Vague, ill-defined questions tend to go unanswered. But if the question is specific, clearly stated, and phrased in such a way as to make it clear that it's not a homework problem, the people here are delighted to assist. A "Thank You" goes a long way, too, in encouraging future help. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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It's been a while since I had any IT questions to ask - but watch out, I'm about to do a major upgrade on some old websites - but I've usually received fast, accurate answers from very helpful people. Who does the answering varies, as the most active "helpers" seem to change from month to month. Based on comparisons of my questions and those I see foundering for lack of responses, I think the main difference lies in the clarity of the questions. Vague, ill-defined questions tend to go unanswered. But if the question is specific, clearly stated, and phrased in such a way as to make it clear that it's not a homework problem, the people here are delighted to assist. A "Thank You" goes a long way, too, in encouraging future help. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Did you eventually receive my reply to your non-IT question re: the grey area? :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Yup. Good answer... :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I'm wondering what our collective experience is of getting answers to our questions and who most often answers them. I am not thinking about questions posed here at CP, but outside of CP. If you only ask questions here then you probably need to get a life. My experience is that for non IT questions I get great answers quickly. I put the quote in my signature into a "who said this" site. Within a couple of hours the answer came back, Erwin Schrodinger, Wikipedia link, and a link to the source of the answer - a file of "Sayings" on a ChemEng FTP server at a lesser US university. When I ask questions on MS, Moz, Usenet, CP etc - I rarely get such clear straightforward answers, I often get no answer, and about 50% of the time I end up finding the answer myself, in which case I reply to myself so that it gets recorded. Often I get answers to a different question, ie I don't care what your question is the answer is this - politicians are very fond of this sort of answer. Then there's the Irish answer - chap is driving on a quiet country road in County Monaghan, on his way to Galway, he's lost. Seeing someone who appears to be a local he stops the car to ask "Could you be telling me the way to Galway". Local chap rubs his chin "Well, if it were to Galway I be going, I wouldn't be starting from here, would I.". There's also an Indian answer, but I'll leave that for another day
TUT If you cannot in the long run say what it is that you've been doing then your doing has been worthless - Erwin Schrodinger
modified on Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:35 AM
Most of my questions don't get answered. Primarily because I spend a lot of research and ask specific questions. Many times both on forums and in-person people will offer me answer to questions that I did not ask and then some how get offended when I remind them that they did not address my question. In person I can understand because maybe I am not a clear communicator but when I ask a question online and spend the entire first paragraph stating what I have tried and explicitly stating which answers I don't want I find I still get the crap answers from people who are so eager to answer a question they fail to take the time to consider if they no the answer. I think I heard a quote from someone to the effect, "A wise man knows when to keep his mouth shut" or yadda, yadda. I used to think that it was restricted to I.T. because in this field there are a lot of opinions and not facts. So a disagreement by an idiot can often be interpreted by management as another valid opinion that should be weighed based on seniority and tenure. But then I started taking pilot's lessons and I realized that a lot of commercial pilots are not only arrogant but ignorant and they pass their misconceptions as Knowledge and indisputable facts to the upcoming pilots. Ok, so my post doesn't go into a long winded tirade that barely addresses your question: I rarely if ever get a useful answer from people in any field and am left to do independent research.
Need a C# Consultant? I'm available.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway -
I'm wondering what our collective experience is of getting answers to our questions and who most often answers them. I am not thinking about questions posed here at CP, but outside of CP. If you only ask questions here then you probably need to get a life. My experience is that for non IT questions I get great answers quickly. I put the quote in my signature into a "who said this" site. Within a couple of hours the answer came back, Erwin Schrodinger, Wikipedia link, and a link to the source of the answer - a file of "Sayings" on a ChemEng FTP server at a lesser US university. When I ask questions on MS, Moz, Usenet, CP etc - I rarely get such clear straightforward answers, I often get no answer, and about 50% of the time I end up finding the answer myself, in which case I reply to myself so that it gets recorded. Often I get answers to a different question, ie I don't care what your question is the answer is this - politicians are very fond of this sort of answer. Then there's the Irish answer - chap is driving on a quiet country road in County Monaghan, on his way to Galway, he's lost. Seeing someone who appears to be a local he stops the car to ask "Could you be telling me the way to Galway". Local chap rubs his chin "Well, if it were to Galway I be going, I wouldn't be starting from here, would I.". There's also an Indian answer, but I'll leave that for another day
TUT If you cannot in the long run say what it is that you've been doing then your doing has been worthless - Erwin Schrodinger
modified on Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:35 AM
I've been haunting many other forums for gardening being off for the summer and attempting to tropicalize a good part of our acreage and grow a wide variety of bamboo. I started at a general purpose site then quickly realized all the action is on the highly specialized sites for specific things like cold hardy palm trees, bamboo, cold hardy bananas, cannas, ginger lilly's, cold hardy citrus etc etc so I have about half a dozen sites I frequent now. Gardening forums are amongst the nicest of all to visit, everyone is usually super helpful, there are nearly never any flame wars of any kind and they honestly don't care if you post in the wrong forum or ask a stupid question. As far as programming questions I've sort of given up on asking them because these days they are usually highly complex and situation specific questions that I've already researched high and low and whenever I post them they are met with a thundering silence. I think every programmer reaches a plateau with existing technology eventually where there just isn't a lot of people that can answer the top 1% of the problems that you face at that point. Then new tech comes along, everyone's a newbie and the whole cycle starts again.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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I've been haunting many other forums for gardening being off for the summer and attempting to tropicalize a good part of our acreage and grow a wide variety of bamboo. I started at a general purpose site then quickly realized all the action is on the highly specialized sites for specific things like cold hardy palm trees, bamboo, cold hardy bananas, cannas, ginger lilly's, cold hardy citrus etc etc so I have about half a dozen sites I frequent now. Gardening forums are amongst the nicest of all to visit, everyone is usually super helpful, there are nearly never any flame wars of any kind and they honestly don't care if you post in the wrong forum or ask a stupid question. As far as programming questions I've sort of given up on asking them because these days they are usually highly complex and situation specific questions that I've already researched high and low and whenever I post them they are met with a thundering silence. I think every programmer reaches a plateau with existing technology eventually where there just isn't a lot of people that can answer the top 1% of the problems that you face at that point. Then new tech comes along, everyone's a newbie and the whole cycle starts again.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
Hope you're getting plenty of rain or have accessible ground water, those bamboo's have reputation for liking a drink. I think your experiences parallel mine. It's the "IT insfrastructure questions" that I most often need to get answers on. Like now, after rebuilding my system after a nasty viral attack, I cant get auto signon to work anywhere. Is that a firefox problem, does my password keeper formfiller application have a problem or is a site issue (it which case all sites have a problem) - I dunno. I've asked in a couple of forums - not here as it's not a development issue. I recently got flamed at MS for putting something in the wrong forum - when I pointed out that I'd apologised for that in the actual post - but there was no place for MS Hardware issues in Technet - stony silence. BTW re the Irish Answer, I heard the joke from a Catholic Brother, my English teacher, when I couldn't answer a question he used the joke to illustrate how one could bide for time by giving a thoughtful but stupid answer to a question - he was a very funny man.
TUT If you up your bandwidth from slow DSL (<=512Kbps) to fast DSL (>15Mbps) then make sure your shields are robust, you'll probably be visiting places you would not have been before
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It's been a while since I had any IT questions to ask - but watch out, I'm about to do a major upgrade on some old websites - but I've usually received fast, accurate answers from very helpful people. Who does the answering varies, as the most active "helpers" seem to change from month to month. Based on comparisons of my questions and those I see foundering for lack of responses, I think the main difference lies in the clarity of the questions. Vague, ill-defined questions tend to go unanswered. But if the question is specific, clearly stated, and phrased in such a way as to make it clear that it's not a homework problem, the people here are delighted to assist. A "Thank You" goes a long way, too, in encouraging future help. :-D
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
you wrote - "if the question is specific, clearly stated, and phrased ...". When I get to that stage I usually find the answer is either self evident, or I know the individual who most likely has the answer - eg if its a WPF question then I would ask one or two individuals directly. Actually I'm not advanced enough in WPF to ask any questions - the many articles have all the answers I need. However WPF's s a hard slog, unlearning is a lot harder than learning, especially if its old learning, sometimes you have to break it up with a gelignite and that makes your brain hurt.
TUT
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Hope you're getting plenty of rain or have accessible ground water, those bamboo's have reputation for liking a drink. I think your experiences parallel mine. It's the "IT insfrastructure questions" that I most often need to get answers on. Like now, after rebuilding my system after a nasty viral attack, I cant get auto signon to work anywhere. Is that a firefox problem, does my password keeper formfiller application have a problem or is a site issue (it which case all sites have a problem) - I dunno. I've asked in a couple of forums - not here as it's not a development issue. I recently got flamed at MS for putting something in the wrong forum - when I pointed out that I'd apologised for that in the actual post - but there was no place for MS Hardware issues in Technet - stony silence. BTW re the Irish Answer, I heard the joke from a Catholic Brother, my English teacher, when I couldn't answer a question he used the joke to illustrate how one could bide for time by giving a thoughtful but stupid answer to a question - he was a very funny man.
TUT If you up your bandwidth from slow DSL (<=512Kbps) to fast DSL (>15Mbps) then make sure your shields are robust, you'll probably be visiting places you would not have been before
urbane.tiger wrote:
Hope you're getting plenty of rain or have accessible ground water, those bamboo's have reputation for liking a drink.
They like it but they will live with very little. Mostly you need to water them regularly if you want lot's of growth which we do. Many people erroneously believe bamboo to be a wetland or swamp plant but it's actually a forest dweller in nearly all varieties and will die right away if it's roots are kept in water at all. Only two species of bamboo can actually even survive in moderately damp ground through an adaptation of hollow rhizomes. Not a problem though, rain is *not* an issue in these parts 2/3 of the year and for the driest part of summer we have a well fed by an underground spring and a pond fed also by an underground spring that bubbles up in the neighbors and flows through ditching we put in last year into our pond.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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urbane.tiger wrote:
Hope you're getting plenty of rain or have accessible ground water, those bamboo's have reputation for liking a drink.
They like it but they will live with very little. Mostly you need to water them regularly if you want lot's of growth which we do. Many people erroneously believe bamboo to be a wetland or swamp plant but it's actually a forest dweller in nearly all varieties and will die right away if it's roots are kept in water at all. Only two species of bamboo can actually even survive in moderately damp ground through an adaptation of hollow rhizomes. Not a problem though, rain is *not* an issue in these parts 2/3 of the year and for the driest part of summer we have a well fed by an underground spring and a pond fed also by an underground spring that bubbles up in the neighbors and flows through ditching we put in last year into our pond.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
Is bamboo grass, like sugar cane is grass - panda's eat bamboo and they live in mountains - sounds like you're ok for water - we've got some bamboo, grows on top of the ridge in rocky soil, we just had a long drought it survived OK - dont ask me what sort of bamboo - if it were up to me I'd rip all the exotics out and just have natives - but then we'd not have much to eat - I guess that's why I'm not in charge of the garden. You can make great furniture from bamboo, got a book on that somewhere. My new virus scanner just kicked in (Kapersky) it chews into the CPU (60% if an E6600), but I'm not feeling any pain browsing, filing my mail and writing blog stuff- just shows how little CPU we actually need for the basic stuff, might try taking VS2008 & Expression for a spin and see how they go with the scanner running, there's some torrents dribbling in & out and winamps playing sarah vaughan. enjoy the rest of your day & life
TUT If you up your bandwidth from slow DSL to fast DSL, make sure your shields are robust, you'll probably be visiting places you've not been before.
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Is bamboo grass, like sugar cane is grass - panda's eat bamboo and they live in mountains - sounds like you're ok for water - we've got some bamboo, grows on top of the ridge in rocky soil, we just had a long drought it survived OK - dont ask me what sort of bamboo - if it were up to me I'd rip all the exotics out and just have natives - but then we'd not have much to eat - I guess that's why I'm not in charge of the garden. You can make great furniture from bamboo, got a book on that somewhere. My new virus scanner just kicked in (Kapersky) it chews into the CPU (60% if an E6600), but I'm not feeling any pain browsing, filing my mail and writing blog stuff- just shows how little CPU we actually need for the basic stuff, might try taking VS2008 & Expression for a spin and see how they go with the scanner running, there's some torrents dribbling in & out and winamps playing sarah vaughan. enjoy the rest of your day & life
TUT If you up your bandwidth from slow DSL to fast DSL, make sure your shields are robust, you'll probably be visiting places you've not been before.
urbane.tiger wrote:
if it were up to me I'd rip all the exotics out and just have natives
Bite your fingers for even typing that! ;) If it wasn't for exotic plants I'd have very little interest in gardening at all other than "can you eat it?" which is what I used to say to my wife all the time before we got our own place and got into landscaping and cold hardy exotic plants.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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urbane.tiger wrote:
Hope you're getting plenty of rain or have accessible ground water, those bamboo's have reputation for liking a drink.
They like it but they will live with very little. Mostly you need to water them regularly if you want lot's of growth which we do. Many people erroneously believe bamboo to be a wetland or swamp plant but it's actually a forest dweller in nearly all varieties and will die right away if it's roots are kept in water at all. Only two species of bamboo can actually even survive in moderately damp ground through an adaptation of hollow rhizomes. Not a problem though, rain is *not* an issue in these parts 2/3 of the year and for the driest part of summer we have a well fed by an underground spring and a pond fed also by an underground spring that bubbles up in the neighbors and flows through ditching we put in last year into our pond.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
John C wrote:
Many people erroneously believe bamboo to be a wetland or swamp plant but it's actually a forest dweller in nearly all varieties and will die right away if it's roots are kept in water at all.
:confused: Actually, I have a bowl of bamboo shoots (the ones you see in feng-shui shops; they _are_ bamboo?), and the roots are always in water...
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John C wrote:
Many people erroneously believe bamboo to be a wetland or swamp plant but it's actually a forest dweller in nearly all varieties and will die right away if it's roots are kept in water at all.
:confused: Actually, I have a bowl of bamboo shoots (the ones you see in feng-shui shops; they _are_ bamboo?), and the roots are always in water...
Nope, not even remotely related to bamboo, it's a Dracaena, a swamp plant and commonly sold with a sticker on it saying "lucky bamboo". Lucky for you it's not real bamboo, if it was it would be anywhere from 4 to 100 feet high in a year. ;)
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
