[OT] rant about sharing content wasWiki-wiki-wiki!!!

[Derick Centeno]

> 
> From: Norberto Quintanar <nquintanar at yahoo.com>
> Date: 2005/03/08 Tue PM 06:13:42 EST
> To: Yellow Dog Linux General Discussion List
>  <yellowdog-general at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com>
> Subject: [OT] rant about sharing content wasWiki-wiki-wiki!!!
> 
> 
> --- Daniel Gimpelevich <> wrote:
> 
> > Nobody is disputing that all the info necessary is already on the
> > web, and
> > it's far more complete and accurate than anything concerning
> > Ubuntu. There
> > does not yet exist any method to search what's available that would
> > be
> > one-stop shopping for those that keep asking the same questions
> > over and
> > over.
> 
> I beg to differ, it's called http://www.google.com or any other
> search engine.
>
I would add to Norberto's comment that one cannot assume that everyone on the 
web is similarly skilled regarding searching for resources and references, just 
as a random selection of the audience of a concert or a football game will have 
a wide range of skills to appreciate or comprehend whatever they are viewing.  
It is not unheard of for instance that one attends a play or a concert because 
it is a business obligation as opposed to a personal choice based on one's 
multilingual skills and musical scholarship.  Likewise Linux and it's nuances 
are very unforgiving to nonprofessionals or those who are not scientists, 
engineers, mathematicians, programmers with sufficient will to see a project 
through to completion or doggedly engage in mind-numbing research until goals 
are completed.

The purpose of Wikis similar to the YDL FAQ pages (there are links from various 
articles within the YDL FAQ site to other resource rich sites and articles 
regarding particular issues) is to assist those who actually review the 
articles at the YDL FAQ site and will press on with a better grounding 
regarding whatever they are attempting to do. 

However, who is benefited and who is not depends upon what their skill level is 
in the first place.  As many as have thanked me and others for what is there 
(at the YDL FAQ site and elsewhere), there are as many who don't have a clue as 
to what a CPU is and are quite lost when ANY explanation involving mathematical 
calculations come into play.  This is a problem which no wiki no matter how 
skilled it's authors can overcome, and this is very often the greater source of 
puzzlement for many than any other reason.  

To highlight just one common difficulty many face is a search by a great many 
for software to do partition apportionment because there exist those who won't 
or cannot comprehend what 512 Blocks are!  

>  There is no means of content sharing among the mailing list,
> > the
> > forum, and the FAQ. The object here, unfortunately, is to give
> > someone a
> > fish, not to teach them to fish. 
> 
> I worked through my undergrad years in the archives of the university
> library.  The information can be right in front of someone, but if
> they don't know what they're looking for it'll escape them.  Using
> your fish analogy,  just because you give someone a fishing pole
> doesn't mean they'll catch a fish.  And the best fish are not cheap
> or easy to catch.  Ask any Alaskan crab fisherman.

I agree with Norberto's point here.  To use his analogy not many people have 
taken taken the time to listen to the fisherman or their elementary school 
basic arithmetic or even basic high school geometry or trig.  Again there are 
people who have no concept of what calculating sectors to cross check what the 
software like pdisk/fdisk tells them, means; worse many could care less and 
would rather leave the thinking to someone else.  Yet as many of this group 
come into the Linux community the more they find the most basic calculations 
daunting.  Still few will do the work and work through the process of learning.  
But many prefer to do it once and never more.  And the mathematics issue unlike 
the friendly crab fishman willing to be forgiving, becomes more like Edgar 
Allen Poe's The Black Cat or The Raven to these people as they run in circles 
shouting Nevermore!  But Linux, was not designed that way to attend to those 
who will not think.  And neither were any other Linux systems.

> > YDL has outgrown its current
> > fish-distribution network.....
> 
> Again using your analogy, you can sit around waiting for the fish to
> fall into your lap.  Or you can go fishing for the information.
> 
> PS.  I don't care about Ubuntu, in my original post there was a ;)
> next to my crack about it.  In other words, a joke.

Norberto, kindly omits to mention that there exists just such a probability 
that you can have just such a fish fall into your lap.  If you chose to ignore 
the fisherman instructor and just went your own way to do crab fishing ignoring 
the skills and experience of others and so forth, yes probability still allows 
that you can have that fish or crab either come your way anyway or pop into 
your lap.  It is true that it is extremely improbable but that improbability 
could happen to become probable and actual today. or tommorow but it is very 
much more likely when it does finally happen what may be left of you may be 
bones and dust.  In short, the probability against such an event is so huge 
that more than likely the universe would end first.  But if we view the 
probability from it's context of improbableness or improbability then it is 
merely highly improbable as opposed to probably impossible.

The odds however become a lot smaller and much more within the human range of 
management when mastering what one can master -- in short listening to the 
fisherman, teacher and skilled others and practicing and learning what they 
recommend you practice and research, as they do and have done.

If you want to read up on how improbable probabilities or probable 
improbabilities (not the same thing, according to Quantum Chemistry, and 
Quantum Physics -- Quantum Biology is coming into existence as consideration of 
Quantum Physiology comes into clarity.  Yes, there are such courses.  I don't 
know if Clint or Norberto teaches them but I do remember one such course being 
offered at Rutgers Med. one summer) crop up in life you can't get much better 
than reading the work of Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 
and sequential works.  Another less enjoyable and more difficult work is 
written by a Physicist, that book was called StarWave. 

I've added as much probable clarification as one could, without hopefully 
becoming improbably unclear in the process.

It's been interesting...
Best wishes...