On Tue, 2006-08-15 at 09:35 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote: > > I agree with you 100%, Ric! I remember when I first started out in Linux > > in 1997: I got roasted on the Slackware newsgroup for asking a question > > about DNS, and was told to RTFM, and a lot of people just jumped in and > > decided to have a go at me. Well, needless to say, that scared me off > > Even if appropriate, RTFM need only be uttered once per question, > though parallel responses might cause others. > Sometimes a correct response to RTFM is "Where is TFM?". > > > RTFM is a good thing. It was only after reading the book by Cricket Liu > > and Paul Albitz, and the howto by Nicolas Langfeldt that I finally > > learned to setup primary, secondary and caching DNS servers. One of the problems with programs that have been around for decades is that you need to know which, if any, of the available FMs applies to the version that happens to be bundled in the distro. This is especially true when someone hasn't installed an app yet and is asking about its capabilities. So, an RTFM reply without an appropriate link is generally not only an insult, but unhelpful or even misleading if they go on to read the wrong FM. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
