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Leythos

impossible that you could be a troll, because you don't even know how to fish.

I would think that with all the time you spend around law enforcement types, you would know better, but apparently none of it has stuck.

The short lesson is: there are only two ways to get information about a person. One is complicated and time-consuming and only worthwhile in real life when an actual crime has been committed. In small doses, it's no big deal--because curiosity about those we meet is part of the human psyche--but when it becomes an obsession, it indicates a pathological condition.

The other way relies on what it is that makes us human, and it is perhaps the best tool for learning what one needs to know. It is also the best indicator of how one should deal with each individual one runs across in the course of a day or a surf.

In one way, I have no problem with your dogging of Butts, but it *is* stalking, even if you do it for the most benevolent of reasons. Still, if someone is stupid enough to log on, ask a question and blindly accept the answer of an unknown stranger without at least a little inquiry into that person's credentials or history, then perhaps s-he has earned a toasted computer. (Such inquiry, of course, does not mean that one needs to know where ones mentor lives or works or how s-he takes his morning coffee or how many DUI convictions s-he has accumulated. If that person really wants you to know, s-he will tell you.)

I don't think that "permission to post" in the Microsoft groups is a very good indicator of expertise, btw, because there are folks who *don't* post there (whether by choice or otherwise) that I would sooner trust with the fate of my data than all the MVPs and "MVPs-in-training" put together.

But in the end, it's one thing for someone who wants to learn to take the time to read and post and experiment, and quite another for someone to rely on these groups because they're too cheap to pay a professional to help them. At the very least, it's bad for the economy.

IMO, such people are richly deserving of the lesson that Butthead is all too ready to teach.

rl

P.S. I'm putting you back on "ignore" now. I know you really do mean well, but your level of paternalism is too high to endure, and your social blindness makes me tired.

-- Rhonda Lea Kirk

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Robert A. Heinlein