[ale] I am so tired of Linux Fanatics

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, 2010-07-07 at 21:29 -0400, jrtroberts wrote:
> I don't want to spend 3 days to 3 weeks reading about the OS.  I want
> to be doing things with it. 

I think that it is this sentiment that drives people to be jerks.  And
I'm not _necessarily_ saying that your point of view here is bad or
wrong.  However, it is almost as if people these days don't want to
learn how to fish, they just want to have someone that knows how to fish
hand the fish over to them---for free.

Of course, there are plenty of people in any field that are willing to
help out and do so gratis.  But I think that people who receive help are
all to often taking the same point of view that you have expressed above
and taking it to an extreme.  Well, if they got help once from someone
and didn't have to spend some time actually learning, then they can get
help from that someone again, right?  And again and again and so forth.

On the other side, it is often the case that spending that day or two
reading and learning and digesting the information will allow you to get
to a point where you can not only answer your immediate need, but you
will be able to reuse that information in some totally different way to
solve another problem later on.  For example, if you go somewhere and
ask how you block connections to your local port 25 from China, you
could get a variety of answers:

 * A pointer to an IP blacklist and a series of shell and iptables
   commands to use it (which is what most asking for help would
   expect, truth be told).
 * A pointer to the iptables documentation and a hint that you'll
   need to use a list of some sort, pointing also to the list and
   _possibly_ prodding you that you'll need to use a for loop or
   something in your shell to evaluate the blacklist and run the
   iptables commands once for each IP address.
 * A suggestion (or demand!) that you RTFM and go the hell away.

Of course, you could get other answers as well.  Personally, I'll
probably answer with the middle one and expand upon it to explain a bit
about why one would do that and hopefully the recipient will care enough
to learn about the tools involved.  Then the next time that they want to
do something involving the shaping of traffic, they might think, "oh,
hey, I seem to recall that iptables can do that, I just need to look it
up to find out how," and that means that they won't be coming back to
fetch another free fish.

I don't mind giving out free fish, myself.  Just as long as people don't
expect the free fish, and certainly not in any particular time period.
And if someone doesn't show even the slightest bit of interest in trying
to learn for themselves, I'm far, far less likely to give them the free
fish.  To invoke another common phrase, I'm only willing to help those
that are willing to help themselves.

I also think that there are better ways of dealing with people than
being an ass about it.  Not that I always employ them; anyone here can
go look through the archives and see that I've been the ass on the list
on one or more occasions (right, Aaron? ;-)).  What I am saying, though
is that I think that there is something of a rationally understandable
explanation for why people who support people in various environments
are bitter.  No, it doesn't help, but I don't know that it is ever going
to go away---especially when people damn near demand free and
near-real-time support.

	--- Mike