Another funny....

[Mark]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 11:47 PM, Basil Chupin <blchupin at iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On 18/11/2010 15:11, Mark wrote:
>>
>> All right, that wasn't as easy as it looked.  I had to google for the
>> answer, and the first conversation up was wrong (well, sort of - it
>> contained misleading information) but it pointed me in the right
>> direction.
>
> Which is why I do NOT propagate the urban legend that "google is your
> friend".
>
> It makes a lot more sense to ask for help about a problem, and get it,
> from either this forum or launchpad or the Ubuntu documentation.
>
> What you get when you "google" is equivalent to using a Usenet newsgroup
> where morons mostly post moronic statements/answers.
>
I respectfully disagree, in part.  Using a search engine to find an
answer to questions, whether simple or difficult, is the best place to
start if TFM doesn't have the answer or one doesn't know how to phrase
the query to TFM to find it.  Sure you can get screwy answers, but as
I pointed out that was just the first one.  Even though the last
poster on that thread was wrong about *one* aspect of the solution, it
gave me a man page to look at that clearly explained what it did and
how.

I agree that one should be wary about search engine results, but
frankly I would rather someone came here with a question *after* at
least making an effort to find the answer, and often search engines
came give them a hint or a pointer in the right direction.  If
anything, the caution I saw felt wrong enough that reading the
associated man-page was the best reference, both for factual
information and the right answer.  RTFM as an acronym was invented and
became rather popular among the wizards because many people never even
bothered to check and I would say that the vast majority of questions
can be answered just by checking first.  Search engines are not a
manual, but the web abounds with good information along with some bad.
 (You get what you pay for....  :-)

I refer to "search engine" here rather than Google because, while I
personally rely on it more than any other, it is not everyone's
favorite and I don't preach about that.  Much.  Yet.

:-)