[vworld-tech] Database usage - apology

ceo ceo at grexengine.com
Tue Feb 10 12:17:57 PST 2004


Brian Hook wrote:
> My guess is that the opportunity to be a sanctimonious arrogant prick 
> was too good to pass up.

I'm sorry it came across that way, it wasn't intended to, and I regret 
any phrasing that made it look like that; I occasionally write posts or 
mails (about once a year) which come across completely the wrong way, 
and I do try to avoid it, but I still have problems.

The only intention was to suggest you *might* get more useful answers 
more quickly by putting more info into your questions. I was sure you 
were aware how vague the questions were, so I attempted to skip 
explaining that. You said yourself that you were a newbie in this area, 
even going as far as to say you got someone else to do your DB schema 
for you (even though that would normally be practically a no-brainer for 
DB's in this area). I feel most of your questions would require much of 
a book to answer usefully, given there's so little constraint offered, 
other than "MUD / v-world"; personally, I have read something like 50+ 
papers alone on the subjects you mention directly, and know that's 
barely covered the tip of the iceberg.

e.g. "What kind of performance issues should I start stressing about?" - 
Do you have all day for a simple overview??? Or do you want a lawyer's 
answer: "Well, it depends..." which says nothing, and ultimately asks 
you to explain the situation in more detail.

e.g. An analogy: I wouldn't expect much success [i.e. any practically 
useful responses] with posting to a 3D engines list with a question such as:

   "How many polygons can I avoid drawing (due to PVS etc) per second?"

with no further info as to e.g. what the environment is (interior, 
exterior), how many polygons I expect in the scene before and after 
subdivision, whether I test occlusion on a per-polygon basis or a 
per-object basis, etc etc.

Perhaps I should instead have made clear why I felt the questions were 
too vague to help you, or asked you first why you were asking questions 
phrased in this way? Or would this still have come across as offensive?

P.S. Even re-reading my post and attempting to take offence, I think the 
vehemence of your response was somewhat extreme. If you even think I'm 
being that offensive in future, please just contact me directly and let 
me know - I can pretty much guarantee it's just bad phrasing on my part.

Adam


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