> Before naming the individual and giving additional details of our > correspondence, I would like to give him some time to analyze the > data I will be sending him. It would be very easy to point out to > him the impossibility of his task, but far more interesting to see > how long he will struggle with the problem before realizing it for > himself. > > I am supposing that one of his fellow co-workers probably referred > him to my challenge, as I cannot fathom that someone would read the > comp.compression faq first and then want to participate after > understanding the futility of the effort. On the other hand, some > people just don't understand information theory too well. > > I'll try to give him a complete explanation of his error after a > week or so, I guess. :)
So Mike is just smug about how clever he is, how stupid the other person is, not even suspecting there might be a loophole in the challenge.
I see no sign of interest in learning what the other person is up to, or even admitting that there might be something to learn.
In my experience, people who set up such tricks do not usually respond well when the tables are turned.
There are some people in the world who take it personally when other people don't understand their area of expertise as well as they do. They get angry and offended at naive questions, and seek to punish the idiots. This is a great way to take an interesting subject and ruin it for everyone.
One of the best aspects of the HN culture is that experts here tend to incline more toward teaching and less toward chastising. It's a nice change from Usenet.