How better to prove you are smarter, better, more of a hacker, whatever than to make people jump through hoops to provide they have what it takes.
For the most part I tend to agree with your post but I think you're generalizing software a little too much, especially the above statement.
I mean for end user apps the idea of user friendly, even your grandma will think it's easy is a good idea. Even complex things like video editing or burning cds is probably worth making easy for everyone.
But with servers and software meant to be used in business there is something to be said about "making people jump through hoops". Out of the box, instantly configured and already on servers/services have proven to be a terrible security risk and an embarrassment to MS in particular.
Making a user read a manual or at least a quick start guide is a way of reinforcing the fact that if you are new at something you should take the time to understand it before you go diving right in. And if you do read the manual or guide or do a little digging but still get stuck there *are* people that are happy to help you at the point. You tried, you speak some of the terminology and are probably going to be comfortable and grateful for even a slightly vague but correct answer. You've made it a lot easier for someone to help you without explaining the wheel to you first at that point.
I believe for the most part TFA and it's anecdotes are reflective of forums/discussions centering on software like apache*, the kernel*, database servers*, etc. Developers and even day to day admins and sysops in these forums probably do get tired of newbie questions and are slightly irritated by the fact that they spent a lot of time reading manuals, code and config files to get where they are now but others think they are entitled to demand it from them because they tried their software and had a problem with it.
I'm not saying that the guys described in TFA aren't total dicks. They sound like they are. But the posts around TFA seem to have generated into a long series of "yeah I was trying to compile my kernel back in 97 and no one would tell me what a module was" posts.
If someone in the Ubuntu or OO.org forums is acting this way towards new users asking questions then they are truly doing a diservice to the community. And even when a total n00b comes into a development forum for device independent foo drivers and asks where he can download his copy for Windows there is no reason to be rude. I can, however, imagine it sure is iritating... But, let's face it, there are a hell of a lot of forums, HOWTOs and doc sites for linux and OSS in general. They range from encyclopedic to horrible. But there are plenty to choose from. If answering a newbie question irritates you then just point them to the correct place to ask their question or find a ready answer. Politely.
*not trying to say anything about any specific forum, official or otherwise
I'm a small company IT guy so performance isn't the issue for me. What I need to know is my ROI and my TCO going to be better on Linux or Windows once I get infected.
Charts, graphs and lots of PR-speak laced "facts" would be most welcome.
Right on. And even sadder then the evidence of such a lack of security that this uncovers will be the cries of "It's all Google's fault. This appliance is a major security risk!". Just like with Google Desktop.
I've gotten that too. It's very strange. I'm looking in the Wiki because I don't know the answer. When I see the answer isn't there, I'm not the person you want to edit it. What am I supposed to do, write down how I'd *like* it to work?
Actually that's not a bad idea. If you can leave an inteligent edit that asks an intelligent quesion on the Wiki then it may just get picked up and edited again by someone who knows the answer.
Something along the lines of:
"In my experience I was able to get foo installed without an issue. But when I tried to set up the IPC between foo and my installed bar server my logs just filled up with error messages. Here are some examples:
foo: error trying to establish connection to bar at/tmp/bar.sock: permission deinied.
foo: unable to contact bar server. exiting.
I'm not sure why at this point so I am hoping by posting my experience here someone could explain it to me."
I know you won't get the instant result you're looking for but you may get an answer sooner then you think. If nothing else you may trigger something that helps users later down the road by getting an answer posted to the Wiki, or even better, added in a clearer way to the docs.
Either I was lucky, or polite enough or I showed that I had spent time trying to figure it out on my own before resorting to pestering someone else with it.
In my experience you hit the nail on the head right there. While the first two are great and important respectively (lucky, polite) it's the third item on your list that gets results. Show the person you are asking that you made a good faith effort to find the answer in the usually voluminous documentation available either with the software itself or on the web. While not all of it is the same in terms of quality and usability there is *tons* of it and a little patience and perseverance generally will find what you need.
As an example I find the Debian Reference Manual to be a little sparse on details. But when read as a whole I sat back and realized that the answer to all my questions were in there, even if they were just hints or pointers to go look for other documentation.
One point I'd like to make to the RTFM crowd; I agree with you, telling someone to read the manual can be a bigger help to them then they may realize. Users generally pick up much more then what they were looking for when they take the time to read. But you can tell someone to read the manual *politely*. You don't have to curse at them or belittle them. Just tell them what manual, where they can find it and, this is important, if you can afford to spend a little time helping a fellow human offer to assist them with any questions or aspects of the software/manual that they are unclear on when they finish reading TFM.
As open source developers, who don't generally get paid for the work they do, I can understand a little bit of "don't bug me about it, I just released the source" but there are definitely times when it will pay to help a few people who obviously are a) genuine in their desire to learn and b) have already tried a few other available avenues before bothering a developer. A lot of them will then turn around and start fielding questions in forums, helping others locally and generally improving the "support" available for your software.
As for Windows users that troll forums asking stupid questions in an effort to extract some emotion from an overworked developer and then turn around and tell all and anyone who will listen about the Linux nut they met when they had a question: screw them.
unless you're positing that China and India will increase their CO2 production enough to offset American cutbacks, but ONLY if America makes those cutbacks
Well if what one of the grandparent posts is correct, devolving our economy to meet the restrictions will send jobs overseas so it is possible, even highly likely, that as the American manufacturing machines lower their output third world countries will see an increase in demand for their manufacturing and they will offset our reduction in polution with an increase in theirs.
As far as I'm concerned Kyoto is a joke, designed by countries who are jealous of the fact that American and Western European countries defined the industrial revolution and got so far ahead of the game while they were still squatting down in their backyards to take a shit.
And yes, you "right wing free market capitalist who doesn't belive in any form of government regulation whatsoever" I am an enviromentalist, pinko commie, free software wielding, hippy or whatever else you want to call me to distinquish yourself from me. Just because your politics swing one way or another doesn't mean you can't spot stupidity when you see it.
I also have a Dish Network DVR and I *can* tell it to record all episodes of a certain show. I can set a timer for just a certain time slot/channel (e.g. Simpsons, Sunday night 8:00) or as I like to do with Adult Swim, tell it to find all episodes of Harvey Birdman and record those (Adult Swim is famous for their schedules being out of sync with the guide, which is what my DVR seems to go by when scheduling things).
And my wife, a big fan of 24, set a timer that records all episodes of 24, regardless of time and channel. She get's reruns from A&E (It think, from somewhere anyway) and the new ones on Monday night.
Finally there is a feature called "Dish Pass" that allows you to search for a keyword and then record all related programming. I don't like this one though because it can be a little overzealous if you're not careful. (a search for Venture Brothers turned up Jack Hannah's Animal Adventure for example).
I would guess that I just got mine later the you...
But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system.
So for about two, maybe three weeks "pirates" won't get Aero but the honest guy can't afford to pay full price never gets it?
I agree with your sentiment about the ads. Advertisers on NPR tend to be big financial institutions and foundations though and for my part, even in my position as an executive at the company I work for, I just don't really have much of an opportunity to purchase anything (directly anyway) from the type of companies that generally sponsor NPR. With the exception of some software companies I can't think of any that directly sell anything to me. And as an advocate and user of open source even a lot of the software company ads go right by me without changing how I feel about them. It's not like they get a lot of sponsorship from Wendy's or The Gap like mainstream media companies, or even the PBS (not that I'm complaining about that!).
And as for divesting themselves of gov't money completely, that sounds like a great idea. I'm a pretty firm believer in keeping gov't funding out of most, if not all, business regardless of their for profit status. As far as I'm concerned it's up to the private sector to support charities, foundations and any other type of non profit corporations. I didn't mean to say that the money they receive is justified per se, just that it's a pretty small percentage of their working capitol.
I like NPR and donate occasionally, as much as I can spare without feeling it. I'm not saying everyone should though, I just realize that there is no way they can continue to run on just the small amount they receive from the government.
It's up to each and every individual to decide if donating is worth it to them and I certainly didn't mean to attack your opinions personally, just noting the fact that they don't get all their money from people's taxes and ad revenue.
They don't show them to please the viewers.
Your definitely correct here and I guess I do my part to screw them in this area, I tend to DVR most of the TV I watch and skip the commercials... So, I'm no saint either.:-\
I already do though, via taxes and watching the commercials
As has been pointed out here already NPR receives very little gov't funding. And what they do receive is through competitive grants that they must work for, competing with other orginizations going after the same funding.
And watching the commercials doesn't exactly qualify as support. How many do you skip while you make a sandwich or use the bathroom? How many do you react to and buy products based on seeing them? Do you tell the vendor that you bought something because of their donation to PR? Of course that's a very subjective argument and the same could be said of most advertising but the point is NPR get's the majority of it's funding through donations.
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How better to prove you are smarter, better, more of a hacker, whatever than to make people jump through hoops to provide they have what it takes.
For the most part I tend to agree with your post but I think you're generalizing software a little too much, especially the above statement.
I mean for end user apps the idea of user friendly, even your grandma will think it's easy is a good idea. Even complex things like video editing or burning cds is probably worth making easy for everyone.
But with servers and software meant to be used in business there is something to be said about "making people jump through hoops". Out of the box, instantly configured and already on servers/services have proven to be a terrible security risk and an embarrassment to MS in particular.
Making a user read a manual or at least a quick start guide is a way of reinforcing the fact that if you are new at something you should take the time to understand it before you go diving right in. And if you do read the manual or guide or do a little digging but still get stuck there *are* people that are happy to help you at the point. You tried, you speak some of the terminology and are probably going to be comfortable and grateful for even a slightly vague but correct answer. You've made it a lot easier for someone to help you without explaining the wheel to you first at that point.
I believe for the most part TFA and it's anecdotes are reflective of forums/discussions centering on software like apache*, the kernel*, database servers*, etc. Developers and even day to day admins and sysops in these forums probably do get tired of newbie questions and are slightly irritated by the fact that they spent a lot of time reading manuals, code and config files to get where they are now but others think they are entitled to demand it from them because they tried their software and had a problem with it.
I'm not saying that the guys described in TFA aren't total dicks. They sound like they are. But the posts around TFA seem to have generated into a long series of "yeah I was trying to compile my kernel back in 97 and no one would tell me what a module was" posts.
If someone in the Ubuntu or OO.org forums is acting this way towards new users asking questions then they are truly doing a diservice to the community. And even when a total n00b comes into a development forum for device independent foo drivers and asks where he can download his copy for Windows there is no reason to be rude. I can, however, imagine it sure is iritating... But, let's face it, there are a hell of a lot of forums, HOWTOs and doc sites for linux and OSS in general. They range from encyclopedic to horrible. But there are plenty to choose from. If answering a newbie question irritates you then just point them to the correct place to ask their question or find a ready answer. Politely.
*not trying to say anything about any specific forum, official or otherwise
I'm a small company IT guy so performance isn't the issue for me. What I need to know is my ROI and my TCO going to be better on Linux or Windows once I get infected.
Charts, graphs and lots of PR-speak laced "facts" would be most welcome.
Right on. And even sadder then the evidence of such a lack of security that this uncovers will be the cries of "It's all Google's fault. This appliance is a major security risk!". Just like with Google Desktop.
good (+), the bad (-), and the in-between (=)
He lost me when he used the assignment operator in place of the equality test operator.
And I've not even touched on vi vs emacs ;)
:-)
You just stop right their mister. We got enough flames going on today.
(Besides everyone knows vi rules!)
I've gotten that too. It's very strange. I'm looking in the Wiki because I don't know the answer. When I see the answer isn't there, I'm not the person you want to edit it. What am I supposed to do, write down how I'd *like* it to work?
/tmp/bar.sock: permission deinied.
Actually that's not a bad idea. If you can leave an inteligent edit that asks an intelligent quesion on the Wiki then it may just get picked up and edited again by someone who knows the answer.
Something along the lines of:
"In my experience I was able to get foo installed without an issue. But when I tried to set up the IPC between foo and my installed bar server my logs just filled up with error messages. Here are some examples:
foo: error trying to establish connection to bar at
foo: unable to contact bar server. exiting.
I'm not sure why at this point so I am hoping by posting my experience here someone could explain it to me."
I know you won't get the instant result you're looking for but you may get an answer sooner then you think. If nothing else you may trigger something that helps users later down the road by getting an answer posted to the Wiki, or even better, added in a clearer way to the docs.
Either I was lucky, or polite enough or I showed that I had spent time trying to figure it out on my own before resorting to pestering someone else with it.
In my experience you hit the nail on the head right there. While the first two are great and important respectively (lucky, polite) it's the third item on your list that gets results. Show the person you are asking that you made a good faith effort to find the answer in the usually voluminous documentation available either with the software itself or on the web. While not all of it is the same in terms of quality and usability there is *tons* of it and a little patience and perseverance generally will find what you need.
As an example I find the Debian Reference Manual to be a little sparse on details. But when read as a whole I sat back and realized that the answer to all my questions were in there, even if they were just hints or pointers to go look for other documentation.
One point I'd like to make to the RTFM crowd; I agree with you, telling someone to read the manual can be a bigger help to them then they may realize. Users generally pick up much more then what they were looking for when they take the time to read. But you can tell someone to read the manual *politely*. You don't have to curse at them or belittle them. Just tell them what manual, where they can find it and, this is important, if you can afford to spend a little time helping a fellow human offer to assist them with any questions or aspects of the software/manual that they are unclear on when they finish reading TFM.
As open source developers, who don't generally get paid for the work they do, I can understand a little bit of "don't bug me about it, I just released the source" but there are definitely times when it will pay to help a few people who obviously are a) genuine in their desire to learn and b) have already tried a few other available avenues before bothering a developer. A lot of them will then turn around and start fielding questions in forums, helping others locally and generally improving the "support" available for your software.
As for Windows users that troll forums asking stupid questions in an effort to extract some emotion from an overworked developer and then turn around and tell all and anyone who will listen about the Linux nut they met when they had a question: screw them.
And one last thought; is it the "elitism" or the the sandals and ponytails?
I guess tags really are necessary...
Am I only one that thinks this somehow contradicts Google's "Do no evil"?
What, you mean Microsoft is being evil by doing this? While that wouldn't suprise me in the least I'm not sure I follow you...
unless you're positing that China and India will increase their CO2 production enough to offset American cutbacks, but ONLY if America makes those cutbacks
Well if what one of the grandparent posts is correct, devolving our economy to meet the restrictions will send jobs overseas so it is possible, even highly likely, that as the American manufacturing machines lower their output third world countries will see an increase in demand for their manufacturing and they will offset our reduction in polution with an increase in theirs.
As far as I'm concerned Kyoto is a joke, designed by countries who are jealous of the fact that American and Western European countries defined the industrial revolution and got so far ahead of the game while they were still squatting down in their backyards to take a shit.
And yes, you "right wing free market capitalist who doesn't belive in any form of government regulation whatsoever" I am an enviromentalist, pinko commie, free software wielding, hippy or whatever else you want to call me to distinquish yourself from me. Just because your politics swing one way or another doesn't mean you can't spot stupidity when you see it.
I also have a Dish Network DVR and I *can* tell it to record all episodes of a certain show. I can set a timer for just a certain time slot/channel (e.g. Simpsons, Sunday night 8:00) or as I like to do with Adult Swim, tell it to find all episodes of Harvey Birdman and record those (Adult Swim is famous for their schedules being out of sync with the guide, which is what my DVR seems to go by when scheduling things).
And my wife, a big fan of 24, set a timer that records all episodes of 24, regardless of time and channel. She get's reruns from A&E (It think, from somewhere anyway) and the new ones on Monday night.
Finally there is a feature called "Dish Pass" that allows you to search for a keyword and then record all related programming. I don't like this one though because it can be a little overzealous if you're not careful. (a search for Venture Brothers turned up Jack Hannah's Animal Adventure for example).
I would guess that I just got mine later the you...
But it's not just pirates who will be blocked from Windows' fanciest graphics. The Aero display also won't be available to those who buy Windows Vista Basic, the low-end consumer version of the operating system.
So for about two, maybe three weeks "pirates" won't get Aero but the honest guy can't afford to pay full price never gets it?
Yep, that sounds like the M$ I know and love...
I think he's just upset because someone else used "Monkey" in their handle.
they try to sell a freakin virus scanner to their clueless users
Well if the default behaviour is for the user to run as root then maybe they will need a virus scanner.
I agree with your sentiment about the ads. Advertisers on NPR tend to be big financial institutions and foundations though and for my part, even in my position as an executive at the company I work for, I just don't really have much of an opportunity to purchase anything (directly anyway) from the type of companies that generally sponsor NPR. With the exception of some software companies I can't think of any that directly sell anything to me. And as an advocate and user of open source even a lot of the software company ads go right by me without changing how I feel about them. It's not like they get a lot of sponsorship from Wendy's or The Gap like mainstream media companies, or even the PBS (not that I'm complaining about that!).
:-\
And as for divesting themselves of gov't money completely, that sounds like a great idea. I'm a pretty firm believer in keeping gov't funding out of most, if not all, business regardless of their for profit status. As far as I'm concerned it's up to the private sector to support charities, foundations and any other type of non profit corporations. I didn't mean to say that the money they receive is justified per se, just that it's a pretty small percentage of their working capitol.
I like NPR and donate occasionally, as much as I can spare without feeling it. I'm not saying everyone should though, I just realize that there is no way they can continue to run on just the small amount they receive from the government.
It's up to each and every individual to decide if donating is worth it to them and I certainly didn't mean to attack your opinions personally, just noting the fact that they don't get all their money from people's taxes and ad revenue.
They don't show them to please the viewers.
Your definitely correct here and I guess I do my part to screw them in this area, I tend to DVR most of the TV I watch and skip the commercials... So, I'm no saint either.
I already do though, via taxes and watching the commercials
As has been pointed out here already NPR receives very little gov't funding. And what they do receive is through competitive grants that they must work for, competing with other orginizations going after the same funding.
And watching the commercials doesn't exactly qualify as support. How many do you skip while you make a sandwich or use the bathroom? How many do you react to and buy products based on seeing them? Do you tell the vendor that you bought something because of their donation to PR? Of course that's a very subjective argument and the same could be said of most advertising but the point is NPR get's the majority of it's funding through donations.
Check their website for more info.
Thanks! That 'il worl. ;-)
Yeah because that worked so well for the Flinstones and Scooby Doo.
Seeing the episode where Homer enters the "Third Dimension" was enough for me... Short, to the point, hilarious.
Subject DOH!!!, Post DOH!!! ?
-1, Redundent.
Oops my bad, I forgot the tags.
I'm afflicted with a deep need to be modded funny every once in a while...
I tend to agree with you...
But what I really wnat to know is who are you calling a ho?
Well this is a bit off topic, so let me see if I can steer these comments back on track...
If I promise not to say "tagging is teh gay" can I still say "that Smithers, he is so gay!"?
It will most likely just be a 1 hour 45 minute version of a typical episode. Probably not worth reading too much into it.
:-)
I, for one, can't wait.
I may actually go see this one in a theatre.
Please see this. :-)
That was my thesis.
:-)
You forgot - "you insensitive clod!"