| Date: | December 1, 2010 / year-entry #331 |
| Tags: | non-computer |
| Orig Link: | https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20101201-01/?p=12143 |
| Comments: | 17 |
| Summary: | As I've mentioned a few times by now, the way to get me to show up at your event is to invite me. The easiest (i.e. cheapest) way is to hold your event in the Seattle area so that my travel expenses are effectively zero; I just use my bus pass. The folks at TechEd... |
As I've mentioned a few times by now, the way to get me to show up at your event is to invite me. The easiest (i.e. cheapest) way is to hold your event in the Seattle area so that my travel expenses are effectively zero; I just use my bus pass. The folks at TechEd China 2010, on the other hand, had to fly me all the way out to Beijing, which is where I've been this week. Preparing these talks is a lot of work, because each one is different. It's not like I have a "stock presentation" that I give over and over. So even if you invite me, I may decline because I simply don't have the time to write up a new presentation for your event, and if your event is outside the Seattle area, I may decline because the travel would take me away for too long. (The TechEd China folks actually invited me last year, but I already had accepted an out-of-town invitation and couldn't really afford two out-of-town presentations in one year.) Anyway, if you can read Chinese, then you can check out the TechEd China 2010 Web site — nobody told me that crossed arms was the official speaker pose of TechEd China 2010 — my speaker biography and the talk description. I can't read Chinese, so I'm trusting the translators to have done a good job. I've found that a good way to salvage content that I've deleted from the queue (because the topic draws out flame comments) is to use them in talks and presentations instead. It turns out that the people who actually show up for a talk are much more polite than those who just post snarky comments from their mother's basement. I think the fact that you have to be snarky in person removes the veil of anonymity and makes you more accountable for what you say. And since I know you're going to ask:
[Raymond is currently away, but he wrote this entry just now.] |
Comments (17)
Comments are closed. |
I quite enjoyed Raymond's speaker profile from that site, translated courtesy of Chrome: "Raymond Chen is a Microsoft programmer, involved in the development of multiple versions of Windows program fifteen years. His blog "The Old New Thing" focused on the development of Windows and the Win32 programming, programming community is respected. The website also published the book named 'The Old New Thing' (Chinese title: Windows Programming Revelation) (Addison Wesley 2007). While Raymond is also a columnist for the Microsoft TechNet article. Raymond Chen Ruimeng Chinese name, although not speak Mandarin, but can understand the basic Taiwanese, and now are trying to learn Cantonese."
If you speak Mandarin but don't read Chinese, copy-paste into Word and then add ruby ("Phonetic Guide" — appears next to "Clear Formatting" in Word 2010). It's actually pretty smart since it can distinguish between different pronunciations of the same character.
Unfortunately, this won't help Raymond since he doesn't speak Mandarin.
The speaker bio uses somewhat more formal language than the Google translation conveys. I imagine this is a cultural practice?
For what it's worth from some anonymous guy on the internet, some of us actually appreciate what you write, and in the event that we come across as "snarky" it's usually our own failure to communicate clearly, rather than a desire to offend. On the other hand, welcome to the internet – trolls moved here after being kicked out from under their bridges and we still haven't managed to do anything about that.
We would rather you delete the snarky comments instead of deleting the interesting posts.
Sure, people will grizzle that you're violating their constitutional rights, but you work for Microsoft – if you cured every form of cancer, they would still complain that you didn't cure every other disease as well.
Or… or you could use them in a future book! Ok that's more work, not less :)
Maybe then post them as new bonus chapters for your book! Not in the "Old new thing", no comments, no problems!
I still haven't managed to finish your book by the way. English not being my native language, I've found that I must not be tired when I read it if I want to enjoy it. And I am always tired when I am home now… I have to wait for the storm to pass.
The issue with that is that Raymond's full-time job would turn into removing all the bad comments in an attempt to leave a post up.
Perhaps you could just leave the snarky comments alone? That way we'd at least get to read your posts (which are quite interesting) even if the comments would be of no value.
[The problem is that the snarky comment leads to a flame fest and soon the comments end up overrun with arguments about something completely tangential to the article itself. -Raymond]
While I respect your choice as the author, this makes me wonder: Why do you feel that your articles take a back seat to the comments? Surely people come here primarily to read what you write and not to see the deranged ramblings of a bunch of anonymous half-wits (including yours truly, of course).
"I've deleted from the queue (because the topic draws out flame comments)"
That made me very sad. Now that i think about it, i've not seen a flame war in this blog in a long while (perhaps the flamee have all grown up?)
Then again i don't often read the comments.
Raymond, i'm interested in this queue, is there a way to see what is queued up ?
PS / BTW: Did you miss my question about your C++ scratch program a few posts ago ? Others have also asked questions about it. Will these questions ever get answered ?
"I think the fact that you have to be snarky in person removes the veil of anonymity and makes you more accountable for what you say"
Just as much as it makes fanboys and developers-doing-evil-changes accountable for what they say or do in-person than doing it from their website's garage. :P
"will already be" confused me. What you're trying to say is that your posting schedule is equivalent to 11:00 PM China time, so this is the last post before the event.
@Sam:
So, first you express disappointment about Raymond deleting posts due to flame/off-topic comments, then you REPEAT an off-topic question? (I realise the two are not quite in the same category, but still…)
Anyone else dazzled by the irony here?
@Falcon:
Read the blog post again, raymond doesn't say anything about off-topic comments.
He's only concerned about flame comments and comments that cause a flame war.
"…but you work for Microsoft – if you cured every form of cancer, they would still complain that you didn't cure every other disease as well."
Not only that, but the U.S. government would start an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's monopolistic attempt to put doctors out of work.
Europe would sue them for bundling their lung cancer cure and colon cancer cure into the same product.
Random trolls would complain to Raymond that Microsoft should provide the cure for free.
Oh, I read it, I assure you. Flame comments can certainly be off-topic. Recent example – post mentioned Windows Error Reporting and commenters complained about digital certificates, even after being explicitly warned about it. In fact, the warning may have fuelled the fire!
And note this response from Raymond:
"[It's not the complaining that I object to. it's the off-topic complaining. -Raymond]" ("off-topic" was underlined)
In any case, it seems to me that including an off-topic question doesn't really strengthen your argument about not removing posts from the queue. Just an observation…
Wow, so you're learning Cantonese? Impressive. :D
Regading the talk description, I think "经常应用程序也没有，有的只是stack traces和heap dumps" should be "需要调试的应用程序经常什么也没有，有的只是stack traces和heap dumps" instead. I think they may break phrase/sentence in different place so the omission of key words is kind of awkward there. However, the sentence can be understood after some thought.
Anyway, yea it is frustrating that the attempts to create an "Off-Roading the Old New Thing" Google Group failed.
"but you work for Microsoft – if you cured every form of cancer, they would still complain that you didn't cure every other disease as well."
Different people are mad at MS for different reasons, and to lump them all up together as irrational is dishonest. I know MS gets some undeserved flack but there are TONS of things where it does deserve it. I'm sure that more than a few MS employees secretly despise the product teams that routinely ship buggy bloated crap. The real annoying people are those who in face of criticism directed at MS turn around and say – but MS ships some nice stuff too..these people are just whiners and would whine about anything MS does.