I hate the Elite

[Plu]

Maybe it's different in academia, but I've not really run across this attitude in software development. Programmers generally love sharing ideas and knowledge and code and everything with each other. Only managers work hard to restrict access to the programmer's work. (For obvious business reasons.)

As long as you approach programmers with the right attitude, most don't mind pointing you in the right direction. It's just that sometimes the destination is years away, and there are no shortcuts you can take.

[Jason78]

If he's not willing to do the leg work to make sure that he's set up the software correctly in the correct environment, that's not elitism, it's just laziness.  The knowledge is out there and freely available. There's nothing secret about bitcoin mining.  In fact, its success has been attributed to how open the system is.

Not all software comes as a MSI package that's easy to install.  Mediumaevum doesn't have the skills to implement the software and demands to know the secret knowledge that will enable him to get it working.  The only way he will get it working is to acquire those skills himself.  I can't tell him the magic button to press to make everything work, because it doesn't exist.

And to cap it all off, he doesn't understand how bitcoin mining software works, or how hard the problem is in front of him, or the amount of computing power he's going to need at this point to generate anything of value.


It's not that people wont help Mediumaevum, it's that he wont allow himself to be helped.

[Jason78]

It's just that sometimes the destination is years away, and there are no shortcuts you can take.

THIS!

[Jason78]

Would you do something like that? Let's say someone you met on the net wanted to learn something you know. If you had time, would you offer him to teach what you know without any gain just for the sake of giving what you have?

I do that all the time.  I'm quite happy to teach to those willing to learn.

Edit:

There are people with every kind of resource who wouldn't move their finger to give something to a willing person and there are people like Plu who can invest time to teach someone thousands of miles away -who cannot add 2 with 2- about his profession from scratch just to carry his knowledge to a person, to help her personal development without any gain. This is also about the culture of the individual you are interacting with. Some people are developed some people are not doesn't matter how talented, intelligent and educated they are.

So yes all special circumstances aside, there is an elitist attitude in sharing information and knowledge in human culture.

Hang on.  You've just divided the whole of the human race up into those that will teach and those that wont and branded the ones that wont as having an elitist attitude.  You're painting with such a broad brush there that what you are saying is meaningless.

[Jason78]

Ah, I must have misconstrued what it was that you meant by "there is an elitist attitude in sharing information and knowledge in human culture."

[zarus tathra]

I understand your frustration with software, and I think most of the drama in software development could be eliminated if we'd switched to better programming languages back in the 80's instead of sticking with c. You know the Ada programming language? It was made for the military, and for a while, the military thought that all of its software was going to be made in Ada and LISP because Ada was so resistant to software bugs. And then they started relying on Microsoft for all its software and their technology was set back by 15 years and never recovered.

[Jason78]

Hey!  There's nothing wrong with C!

[zarus tathra]

Using ada leads to 50% lower development costs and 80% lower maintenance costs.

[Plu]

Ada sounds really interesting. I'm probably going to put that on my todo list after I'm done playing around with Python.

[zarus tathra]

If it's good enough for military helicopter control systems, it's good enough for practically anything.

[Jason78]

Using ada leads to 50% lower development costs and 80% lower maintenance costs.

Look at you with all your facts and studies!

[Sal1981]

OP is using an equivocation of elitism with knowledge gaining. They're not the same.

Elitism is a cultural phenomena of basically cliques and exclusiveness. It's more of an attitude than keeping some piece of knowledge hidden.

As others have pointed out, if you don't want to invest the time and effort in getting this knowledge, don't expect people to understand it for you, that's impossible.

As for elitism, OP has nothing to do with it. It's just complaining of failing to get a bitcoin miner to work. Only place I've seen genuine elitism has been in an MMO, deriding the "noobs" who don't have the equipment or levels that they have.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Ahh crap! Wasted all this time reading this entire thread just waiting for the AHHAH! moment where someone gives away the secret to instant, push button riches and you elitist fucks are keeping it from the rest of us! :-k: :-D

I knew there was a catch before I bothered clicking the thread. :)

I guess I need to save up for my instant push button riches button. :-k

[zarus tathra]

Like I said, don't even bother with bitcoin. After the next gen of ASICS comes online, even 1 terahash will get you like $2000 a year. And even if you use the current gen, which completely devastates any cpu/gpu combination you can think of, you won't make any money.