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Re: Mysterious gdb behavior


On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Paul Derbyshire wrote:

> On 29 Jul 2002 at 23:02, Christopher Faylor wrote:
>
> > You latched onto this concept when someone suggested it and are
> > apparently unable to actually verify for yourself if this actually is
> > your problem or not.  As I said, what a strange strange thread we're on.
>
> If a doctor told you you had disease X you'd "latch onto" and be
> "unable to actually verify" that. You'd also be pretty ticked if it
> turned out to be a misdiagnosis. But until you heard otherwise or
> otherwise had reason to lose faith in the doctor's ability to
> diagnose, you wouldn't question it either.
>
> I'm not an expert on Cygwin internals. Thus I assume what the experts
> say is wrong is what's wrong, until proven otherwise. (And if
> everyone posting to the list is expected to be an expert and make
> their own diagnoses, please remind me what this list is for, because
> I *thought* it was mainly for users to ask for help with problems and
> get advice, but *obviously* I was wrong...)

Paul, I hope you don't consider this an insult, as it is not so intended.
However, there is one point here that I'd like to respond to (I've deleted
all but the relevant parts of the message above).

You contradict yourself.  On one hand, you seem to think that everyone who
answers a post on the list is an expert.  On the other, you acknowledge
that some people are here to ask questions, rather than answer them.
What you don't seem to realize is that there is no clear division between
the two categories.  People answering a question may be (and probably are)
other users who are not experts, but vaguely remember hearing something
about a similar problem, and are genuinely trying to offer helpful
suggestions.  Viewing these suggestions as the holy scripture is not going
to result in anything useful for your original purpose, i.e., getting a
correct answer to your question.

The difference in opinion about the cause of your problem is just that -
different people offering their theories on what caused your problem.
This is not easy, as the symptoms you describe don't seem to be
reproducible, even by the experts (and Chris Faylor is one).  It's your
right to prefer one theory to another, but the scientific method also
requires trashing theories that are not substantiated by facts, and
experimenting to determine the validity of any particular theory.
Experiments, I may add, that other people have suggested, and that you
don't seem to have performed (e.g., trying the same sequence of actions
from a directory with no spaces in the name, or varying other parameters).

Please remember that there rarely are ready answers to complex problems.
People on this list try to help, but they (even the experts) are not
omniscient.  Neither are they infallible.  It's possible that some
suggestions for possible causes and solutions don't pan out.  The thing to
do is try again, not to take it out on the person who suggested the wrong
thing, as it was done with the best of intentions.  It also sometimes pays
to pursue several avenues of research, since some problems have multiple
causes.

In short, few people on this list are experts, and most (if not all)
aren't experts in EVERYTHING (by definition).  There are bound to be some
questions that nobody knows how to answer, and therefore the best you get
are guesses.  Since every machine configuration is unique, the best you
can do is help people figure out which guess is correct, so that others
can search the mailing list and learn from your experience.

I hope this rant is taken in good humor - by everyone. :-)
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

It took the computational power of three Commodore 64s to fly to the moon.
It takes a 486 to run Windows 95.  Something is wrong here. -- SC sig file


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