rights.
But not all George's replies follow that pattern. Many of them ask new
questions in the same uninformed way as the original post, but these
new
questions are generally related somehow to the explanation given. This
could be nothing more than a full-text relevancy rating I suppose.
This is real fun - if George is a real person, I hope he is entertained,
and not offended by this (and perhaps he might learn something about how
others view his questions here at the same time).
I agree some of his questions follow suspicious Elisa-like pattern "You
said XXX, can you please explain it more?", and it is suspicious he is
mostly not answering questions like about what newsclient is he using,
but at least in one case I have posted a sample code, which he analysed,
made some comments and modified the code in a sensible way to make it
work slightly different. I may be mistaken, but I do not think any AI bot
is capable of this.
The thread I am referencing to
ishttp://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.vc.language/browse_thread/thread/35cdf48db03a246d/60a80c6e2568f700
My opinion still is George is a real person, albeit somewhat confused,
and what makes it more confusing for us is he is using some strange way
to send posts to the newsgroups, which means his intial post are always
replicated to other groups. The replicated posts can be easily recognized
by being marked as George George, and it is those posts he is not
reacting to.
Gosh .. I would never think I would dedicate so much time to an issue
like this, instead of simply setting ignore filter to both George and
George George posts. :)
Cheers
Ondrej
----------------
Ondrej Spanel
Bohemia Interactive Lead Programmer
http://www.bistudio.com
Ben Voigt [C++ MVP] napsal(a):
"Brian Muth" <bmuth@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:ujenRtEZIHA.5208@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
This sounds like a variation of the Turing test
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test)
It's interesting to re-read old posts and see how much deep research
has gone into answering some of George's questions.
Of course, George doesn't seem to analyze the responses very well, and
often not at all. This has often led to frustrated exclamatives from
the poster. George often then placates the poster with a "Thank you,
<Poster>! My question is answered!".
But not all George's replies follow that pattern. Many of them ask new
questions in the same uninformed way as the original post, but these new
questions are generally related somehow to the explanation given. This
could be nothing more than a full-text relevancy rating I suppose.
It's interesting how we build up a image of George in our mind's eye:
someone you are inclined to help because he is grateful, and because
the questions are generally easy to answer, but someone you are
thankful doesn't work in your company; he uses the lingo but is lost in
the understanding.
Of course, there is the emotional response of dismay about possibly
being duped. It reminds me of a Eureka moment when I was five years old
looking at my stuffed animals.
Brian