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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Computer Networks and Literacy
Message-ID: <900@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Nov-86 13:07:06 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.900
Posted: Tue Nov 25 13:07:06 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Nov-86 21:20:11 EST
Reply-To: dupuy%amsterdam@columbia.edu (Alexander Dupuy)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 28
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <882@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from Alexander Dupuy <dupuy%amsterdam@columbia.edu>
 and was received on  Tue Nov 25 08:54:15 1986
 
Steve North writes:

> ... "The potential of the net" is a joke.  It's mostly a lot of noise and a
> waste of time.  I mean it's great to archive bug fixes from net.unix-wizards
> (bug fixes we would never just install in our kernel because we don't really
> know WHO these people are and if they know what they're doing anyway) ...

    While there are certainly a lot of people on the net who don't know what
they are doing (vis the "bugfix" last year to prevent cat from writing stdout),
there are also a number of people with more experience and knowledge than most
$200/hr consultants, people like Chris Torek, Henry Spencer, and Guy Harris (to
name only a few), who provide advise and bugfixes to the net for free.

    After reading the net for a few months, names like these become familiar,
and from the quality of their postings, their expertise becomes obvious.  While
I wouldn't install a kernel patch from them sight unseen (they are human, and
can make honest mistakes; and they tend to run heavily modified kernels :-)  I
have found their postings far more useful and informative than the information
which one can sometimes extract from so called "technical support" hotlines.

@alex

[it sounds like we're moving back into the information filtering discussion,
 with an emphasis on knowing the source of information.  I think it would
 behoove us to approach the problem from that direction...     -- Dave]