> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Anne Wilson > Sent: Friday, 24 January 2003 23:21 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [newbie] Searching 101 > > [...snip] > A reminder of resources from time to time is useful, but for a newbie > searching is doubly difficult, because often you don't know the > question to > ask or the term to search on. >
I'll pipe in here, as an absolute oober-newbie... I've been lurking here for a few weeks now, trying to get up to speed, and considering this is the "newbie" list, it's all rather daunting. I must say, 99% of the stuff you guys are talking about goes right over my head. I got Mandrake 9.0 on a magazine front cover CD and loaded it on an old machine, just accepting the defaults as it went through. It messed up the video, I just got a bunch of blurry diagonal lines on the screen, like an old TV. There were a few other things too, but I'll spare you the boring stuff - suffice to say it was two machines later before I got a desktop on the screen... But my [small] point is: imagine being confronted with building and operating some machinery you've never seen before, and all the instructions are in Japanese. You have to look up each kanji character in the dictionary, and try to piece together the meaning of each sentence, word by word. I think there was a story of someone doing a similar thing with a legal dictionary. There's an amazing amount of help out there, and a bewildering array of man pages, howto's etc, but they all [the ones I've seen so far, anyway] assume you already have a machine up and running and you know at least how to start and stop it. The first time I managed to get to a command line I thought the machine had locked up - there was no "C:\>" with a flashing underscore. Just one little example. I must say, this list seems much more newbie tolerant than some of the usenet groups, which is why I decided to stick my head up with this post. I'll go back to lurking now, and hopefully some of it will sink in and begin to make sense in a while... :) -- Merlin Zener piano and synthesizer Pattaya, Thailand. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.449 / Virus Database: 251 - Release Date: 27/01/2003
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