Ok, as a flying newbie I can understand what you are trying to say.
As someone more experienced let me just explain that in reality,
flying a plane is very different than driving a car. The physical
skills are similar but the standards of access are quite different.
It's understandable that as a flying newbie, you would think that
handed a set of keys, it would be "up to you" to know how to use
the plane.
It just doesn't happen that way, at least not without hitting the
news, as a declared hijacking.
As a newbie to flying you shouldn't be expected to have a sense of this.
The standards of responsibility are very clearly delineated in flying,
in open source software mailing lists, I'm sorry there is no real
comparison.
The point I was making is that the analogy made of a person not
knowing that a car is started with a key is simply not a good
match to the situation that the analogy was intended to describe,
someone attempting to install QMail according to the instructions.
In the car situation, the person would seem like an idiot to most
people on the internet today. Having difficulty installing QMail
is not an idiot situation, much as the more aggressive folks would
like to maintain.
Installing QMail is much closer to attempting to learn to fly. The
newbies preconceptions are often wrong, and the more experienced
people know it. The newbie flyer is NOT idiotic for not knowing
the difference between the starting an airplane with a key and
starting a car with key. The newbie QMail installer is not idiotic
for not knowing things that are not clearly described in the manual
or presume knowledge that is not in the manual. The driver analogy
was chosen to demonstrate idiotness to a degree which is very very
rare, and comparing it to QMail difficulty which would be far more
common.
My guess is that the population in the U.S. of people who don't know
what they need to know to install QMail as is on a system with a
firewall already installed without assistance, and the population
of people in the U.S. who don't know how to start a Cessna 150 even
when handed a key, without assistance are very comparable.
The population of people in the U.S. who don't know that you need
a key to start a car is extremely small, and if you exclude people
with Alzheimers, or other serious illness, almost non-existent
among adults.
Analogies have to be comparative. To compare something very common
with something very rare is not a good analogy.
My attempt was to repair the poorly written analogy with one that
was comparable in population incidence.
Incidentally, most people would describe their introduction to
flying a Cessna as fun, maybe "the thrill of a lifetime".
Compare that with installing QMail.
Alex Miller
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Racer X [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, July 02, 1999 5:14 PM
> To: Alex Miller; Dave Sill; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Howto
>
>
> > > >Let me ask you this. If you got into an airplane, a Cessna 150,
> > > and I handed
> > > >you a key, could you start it? Is the key what starts it? Should
> > > you turn it
> > > >like a car key? Is there a difference between turning it left or
> right?
> >
> > Technically, if you try to fly a plane, and you don't even know how to
> start
> > the engine, your instructor is an idiot, or you are paying for on a
> > demonstration lesson. They might let you turn the key for the thrill, or
> > even control the plane (mostly), but you wouldn't actually be able to
> start
> > the plane unless you knew the correct procedure.
>
> When you first asked the question, the "instructor" was nowhere in sight
> (unless you are presumed to be the instructor). So let's not call the
> missing instructor the idiot here. If you're not sure if you know how to
> fly a plane, then you clearly DON'T KNOW HOW TO FLY THE PLANE.
>
> If you aren't sure if you know how to fly the plane and you insist on
> attempting to fly it anyway, then you are the only idiot.
>
> shag
>
>
>
