On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 12:13 AM, David Hilton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > How about this? > http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Ah, good ol' esr. The other day one of my co-workers and I were trying to explain to someone who had come into our office for help about our motivations behind owning Macs and still wanting to tinker with hack-intoshes. I referred him to esr's "how to become a hacker" for guidance. If only he knew what kind of legacy he created... On the other hand, I think there is a disconnect in the growing population of Linux users between those like myself who read esr on my own, and those who are just trying to use a computer and don't care about figuring it out or improving it to their tastes. While I'm all for a gentle reminder to new users to ask smart questions, I think there is a growing segment of our target-audience who don't care about the difference between a smart question and a dumb one and just want to watch a video or listen to an mp3. I had a few less-than-gentle hints from certain folks on the list when I was a newbie, and because my goal was (and is) to become a real hacker someday these "hints" helped me become a better fledgling hacker. For those whose goal is using their computer only, that could have a reverse effect, again because they have zero interest in understanding their computer and lots of interest in the mundane use of it. In this instance, I think the tendency to "moderate" responses to questions coming to the newbie list completely validates the existence of that particular list. -- Alex Esplin -------------------- BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ The opinions expressed in this message are the responsibility of their author. They are not endorsed by BYU, the BYU CS Department or BYU-UUG. ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
