Anders wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] Juvenile antics on the list' on Fri, Oct 08 at 11:55:
On Friday, 8 October 2004 18.17, Danny Sauer wrote: [...]
I'm all for the "Teach a man to fish" philosophy, but sometimes, you just need a quick fix for something so you can move on and get past it. Don't forget, today's 'noob' is tomorrow's guru.
That "guru of tomorrow" will never attain guru status if he never learns to 1) brush off responses that appear hasty and 2) search for himself before asking for the quick fix. When people ask questions to which the answers could be found in the first couple entries google returns, or by simply reading the man page, then it seems totally appropriate to direct them to google or the man page.
One of my teachers once asked us what we thought the most important thing we had learned (or would learn) at university was. The answer (very correct) wasn't some obscure piece of information, or even some very useful piece of information, it was *how to search* for information.
If you don't know how to look for information, google can be your worst nightmare
If you can't tell a good answer from a bad one (and there are some very bad ones out there), google can be your worst enemy
Perhaps that's why I have people ask me how I manage to use google so effectively. It's always just made sense to me - form a sentence, take out all of the unimportant words, press enter - but maybe others just don't get that? I guess that having a good vocabulary helps. Perhaps SuSE should include a thesaurus with 9.2 instead of all that install documentation. :)
--Danny, who wishes there was a unisex replacement for he/she that wasn't as cumbersome as "one"...
it?
..That "guru of tomorrow" will never attain guru status if *it* never learns.. I dunno, "it" seems almost offensively non-human to me, despite that it is technically accurate.
What's wrong with "one"? It's not as bad as Swedish, our equivalent to "one" actually is "man", so we get crap even if we use the supposedly gender neutral alternative :)
I think my problem with "one" stems from the observation that those who use that term tend to be generally more "aloof" types. The kind who would pay the $50 for Mensa membership in order to flaunt their "superior intellect", not for the social opportunities or other benefits of membership. I don't like to be considered one of "those people", and "one" has that connotation in my mind. Strangely, it only seems that way when I write it, not when I read it - and I do occasionally write it. --Danny, totally offtopic