From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 17:20:15 -0400 From: Dan Cross To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] the futility of #plan9 on irc Message-ID: <20050524212015.GA18538@augusta.math.psu.edu> References: <20050523233359.GD14127@xware.cx> <20050524210721.GA2250@xware.cx> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050524210721.GA2250@xware.cx> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Topicbox-Message-UUID: 52bc67ce-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 07:07:21AM +1000, Chris Collins wrote: > Of course, if you had actually bothered to hang around and listen, you > would have had heard the prior case (SCSI support) corrected at the > very least. (I was online to see that one myself). The thing is, there's a temporal quality to information in a medium like IRC that affects the total accumulation of data. Unlike a mailing list, where you can be relatively assured the subject will receive updates to incorrect information, IRC has no such guarantee. One might answer a question incorrectly, and the person who asked might say, ``great, thanks, bye!'' and immediately log off. Then, it doesn't matter if the correction gets made. Because the data isn't accumulated over time, the damage done by the bad data remains done. The correction is never applied. - Dan C.