DKIM

[Valeri Galtsev]

On 8/22/21 5:16 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2021 08:28:36 +0000, Cyprian Ambe wrote:
>> If you state something like this, please also state how. The OP might
>> be a beginner and thus not know how to search the repos. Pointing them
>> just to some Google results (why Google btw) or giving them very brief
>> instructions might thus not be very helpful as they might not know how
>> to interpret that.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> it's pointless to discuss this. On some other mailing lists subscribers
> would just quote the obligatory
>    
>    http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before
> 
> to a request as yours.
> 

+1

When I was a beginner, no I still am, I mean really-really beginner, I 
read something like that. People are kind by helping you, but you should 
not abuse their kindness, learn by reading (books, man pages, HOWTOs), 
not by asking like when professor lectures you in class. Ask only what 
you really tried to solve yourself, and hit brick wall. And describing 
what you tried and how it didn't work, helps others to understand what 
your problem might be, and it helped me to actually solve things by 
noticing what's amiss when writing detailed description.

And lastly, if it is your job (you are not a beginner anymore) you do 
have to put fair effort into doing your job, not seeking on mail lists 
who will do for you the job you are paid for. But when you are really 
stuck, it's time to ask for help, - even those of us who don't consider 
oneself an expert sometimes know in detail some specific thing and can help.

> At the risk of bikeshedding I'll play the Devil's advocate. Assuming
> somebody is a "beginner", being in favour of Google rather than another
> search engine makes much sense. It's probably still the search engine,
> able to provide best recommendations, at least to those, who don't have
> the skills to think about ideal search terms. Some alternative search
> engines suffer from weak points, when doing researches by non-English
> search terms.
> 
> Some people are per se against Google for good reasons, but way too many
> people are per se against Google for no good reasons at all. Let alone
> excesses against Google, if people choose something even more bad as
> a replacement for Google.
> 
> A while back on another mailing list "Dissenter" was recommended as an
> alternative to Firefox and especially to Google Chrome or any Google
> Chromium based browser. Actually "Dissenter" is from "gab", see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network) . Avoiding usage of
> Google not necessarily is the better choice.
> 
> I reply by this off-topic and bikeshedding appearing email since I very
> often explicitly mention that FLOSS novices shouldn't replace Google by
> other search engines, as long as they are novices who don't have a clue
> what good FLOSS related search terms to use. Not that long ago a lot of
> people searching for a FLOSS sound server (jackd) for instance got hits
> related to LGBTQIA*, but not related to FLOSS. "Beginners" can stay with
> DuckDuckGo and other search engines for researches related to t-shirts
> or coffee machines.
> 

Hm, I for one "duckduckgo" everything, including really technical 
things, and if I don't find them, like why pf prevents traffic from jail 
to some service on localhost of the host machine, whereas ipfw never did 
block it, then there is nothing to find, not that if I "google" instead 
I will get better results. Just for fun I tested, and this another 
"google" search engine did not better than my regular "duckduckgo" into 
technical part, or even rather did worse towards "t-shirts" and other 
stuff you mentioned ;-)

As far as firefox itself is concerned, I still am trying to part with 
it. There are many annoyances, some are nuisances, but I still didn't 
find fair open source replacement. Sigh.

Valeri

> Regards,
> Ralf
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-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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