[CentOS] Thanks, good bye, and an observation from a newbie.

[Lamar Owen]

On Monday 17 October 2005 12:07, Craig White wrote:
> Now - when you turn to what is apparently your biggest peeve - differing
> advice from different people - that's what you get from open source
> support lists - I mean, we can't all wait for Alexander Dalloz to give
> us the likely best and most correct answer.

Not exactly my point, but close.  What I got aggravated about was something 
that Ill call the 'I got Slashdot first post' syndrome.  It seemed that some 
people raced to see who could be first the 'answer' the question when they 
didn't really know the answer and got angry when corrected to current 
behavior.  And they would do it more than once, even after being corrected 
more than once.

> Part of the art of using 
> Linux is learning to solve your problems, where to get the information
> and how to use the information that you get - which sometimes includes
> bad advice.

Sure, of course.  No advice (including mine) is suitable for all possible 
situations.  However, the newbie does need more of a response than 'RTFM!' to 
get them going.  

> IIRC, he was told to use sixth field of an fstab entry on 
> his vfat formatted partition with a '2' which clobbered it - ya takes
> your chances and bad advice as well as useless advice is always possible
> from this or any other list.

And that points to my argument: if you aren't sure you're giving good advice, 
don't give it.  I think some people try to give advice (maybe even exhaustive 
advice) as an ego trip; saw plenty of that in my five years as PostgreSQL RPM 
maintainer.

> I don't think we need to endless wring our hands on this subject.

Nah, what needs to be done is less talk, not more.  But I will say to those 
who have already replied to me in private that agree with my assessment, 
thank you!
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu