Barley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes on 29 November 2000 at 10:36:32 -0800
> Try to remember that there are a lot of fields of knowledge and that your
> sweeping name-calling, that people are "too fscking stupid" etc is utterly
> absurd. For all you know the people you call "stupid" because they don't
> know about qmail just invented the cure for cancer, or the 100 mpg car.
>
> The carpenter who built your house. Your doctor. Your grandmother. Are they
> all stupid too because they don't know about qmail?
Then again, it's also true that a lot of doctors, and often good
doctors, kill themselves flying airplanes. It's widely believed that
the reason so many do it is the combination of 1) being able to afford
higher-performance airplanes than most private pilots, and 2) being
unable to conceive of being as ignorant about anything as they, in
fact, are about flying.
I'd have to say that when a doctor kills himself in an airplane that's
really more than he can handle, in conditions he's really not up to
flying in, that it's a stupid mistake. It could have been avoided by
a more realistic assessment of his own capabilities.
Now, luckily, even our most aggressive flamers are not good enough
that anybody's life is at stake here. (And I hope there aren't many
places where email systems are life-critical, either). But some of
the principle remains. When you're in so far over your head that you
not only can't see daylight, but can't even tell which way the surface
is, you've probably done something stupid to get yourself there. No
matter how "smart" you may seem to be in other contexts.
Not many people actually need to run their own MTAs. Setting up
qmail, in particular (the only one I know well), requires making a lot
of decisions about how you want to do things, and then implementing
them. Both parts of that are difficult or impossible if you don't
know anything about being a Unix sysadmin. The same flexibility that
makes it adaptable to so many different situations also makes it hard
to write a cookbook for.
My impression here is that people are very willing to help people who
don't understand qmail well, and even people who make the occasional
stupid mistake (as we all do), so long as they show a minimal
competence in the Unix environment (including configuration debugging)
and some ability and willingness to do their research. And sometimes
will help even without those things.
At the same time, we have our share of people who are so frustrated at
the continual string of people needing really basic help, stuff any
vaguely competent sysadmin should be able to figure out for themselves
95% of the time, parading through here that they sometimes lash out.
A number of people on the net, some of them here, seem to have decided
that the disparity of numbers is so large that only full frontal
assault gives them a chance to survive. I don't happen to agree with
them; on the other hand, I'll be a lot of newbies come to understand
the situation much better through reading threads like this one, which
wouldn't happen without all three groups present.
--
David Dyer-Bennet / Welcome to the future! / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SF: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/ Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon/
Photos: http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/
