I am not sure[ ;o) ] , but probably a dumbo's point of view is, that when 'she' asks the same question to a windows support tech and a Linux support tech the difference in the reply recevied is staggering!
Yes, the difference is staggering. But there are many reasons for that. A lot of it is cultural. Not much of it can be generalised totally but maybe to some degree.
Let me ask you something - have you seen beggars at the traffic points in Delhi? You must have seen that there are two kinds of people - one who gives alms to these beggars and ones who do not. Now those who do NOT give alms to the beggars are again of two kinds - ones who do not want to give their money to somebody, and ones who feel that giving money to these people will only make these people get dependent on this as a way of living.
Let us consider this second class of non-paying people and those who pay.
Why do the paying person pay? Because there is a sense of instant self-gratification. The person feels good for having helped the beggar through his/her misery and feels good from the thank yous that the beggar might give in return. However, this person doesnt care to think a bit more about the beggar. He doesnt care to think that ok - he provided money for the beggars lunch/dinner/etc. Then what? Where does the beggar get the next meal from? Obviously begging, because now that seems the easiest way out.
The person who doesnt pay doesnt get any form of self-gratification. The beggar might make pitiful faces at him. His wife might call him an insensitive clod, maybe even a miser ;). But he knows inside that what he did was in the long-term interest of the beggar. If tomorrow the beggar finds that begging is not paying off, he will try to earn money in some other way - maybe take up pottery or something. If during this endeavour he needs an initial set of customers to help him start his profession, I am sure that this second kind of people would be happy to help him out there because they know that this beggar(who is no longer a beggar) is making an effort to get out of their situation.
I am sure that you can draw the analogy, ofcourse I hope that you dont get offended by the comparison of beggars and newbies.
There are good windows tech sites and mailing lists, but go look through the archives of most windows user groups (if such a thing exists) and linux users groups. The cultural difference is staggering.
Linux community encourages (rather pushes for) self learning, because people here know that if there is something really important for newbies to learn, it is to find out how to extract information from the wealth of documentation that there is on the web and on the operating system itself!
When this newbie is stranded on a weekend at his/her office and most LUG people are sleeping over the weekend, this culture of self-help is what is going to help the newbie.
There is also the fact that the process of self-help causes the newbie to learn a lot of things on the way that he/she did not intend to learn at that time ;) but would definitely help in the future. A lot like the man-on-the-moon project that India wants to get into - there is not any presently tangible benefit that India can get from it, but the technological advances required to get there might have far more significant spinoffs .. like advances in the field of launching mechanisms and satellites.
- Sandip
P.S. Bless you if you have read this far :D
-- Sandip Bhattacharya http://www.sandipb.net sandip at puroga.com Puroga Technologies Pvt. Ltd. http://www.puroga.com
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