Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.prolog Subject: Re: Arity's so-called upgrade Message-ID: <4988@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Date: 18 Mar 91 07:50:37 GMT References: <11768@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <3609@ux.acs.umn.edu> Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 43 In article <3609@ux.acs.umn.edu>, pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu (J. PUKITE) writes: > In article <4968@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes... > >Again, it is worth going to the vendor FIRST. If you go to the net > >you will get some mix of (accurate information, ravings from idiots, > >disinformation from other vendors). > The PROLOG Vendor Paradox (PVP) > IF > the following mappings apply: > The Vendor => information, facts; > the users => ravings from idiots; > other vendors => disinformation; > THEN > why do the users post messages on the net instead of going to > The Vendor FIRST? If the sea is made of boiling hot turpentine, then why do pigs fly backwards? I read comp.lang.c. It is *very* common for people to ask questions there which are answered either on page 2 of their compiler's manual or in the monthly "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" list. To be brutal about it, "why do users post messages on the net first?" has answers like "because they are lazy", "because they are stupid", or perhaps "because their management won't let them make a phone call but will let them use the net." But I deny the hypothesis of PUKITE's "if": quite often you find people making plain assertions about various products on the net that turn out to be quite false, because the people making the assertions have never used the products. And the people I envisaged as providing straight information on the net were by no means the vendors. Surely it is obvious that the people most likely to HAVE information about a product are the people who made it? And that people who use it may have been misled by a badly worded manual, or by using an old version, or may simply be unable to read well? Note that the poster who started this thread *had* gone to the vendor first. Going to the net afterwards was a perfectly sensible thing to do. -- Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.