Subject: RE: [hackers-il] New poll for hackers-il

From: "Arik Baratz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 19:09:43 +0200

Tsafrir:
> Might I ask who set this pole?

Yes you may. It's me. I've set up the poll, because I thought that we're all MATURE enough to vote on matters that regard the mailing list, and we are TECHNICAL enough to get the fscking yahoo ID and groups email bound togeather.

I never expected this much raving over the simple matter of putting up a poll regarding the group's policy - rave which has exceeded the original posts to the original thread.

No more shall I create polls,
No more shall I answer technical questions on this forum
For I feel lousy after having done so,
For trying to help some guy in need.

BTW, you RTFM-shouting crowd -

If you look at my answer you will see that it just pointed the guy to the right documents - the correct RFC, the libnids manuals, and the TCP RFC. I didn't write his code or anything. Relax.

Arik Baratz
System Engineer
[email-masked]

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---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 19:35:21 +0300

Warning, /me is in pedantic mode. 

On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 07:09:43PM +0200, Arik Baratz wrote:
> Yes you may. It's me. I've set up the poll, because I thought that
> we're all MATURE enough to vote on matters that regard the mailing
> list, and we are TECHNICAL enough to get the fscking yahoo ID and
> groups email bound togeather. 
> 
> I never expected this much raving over the simple matter of putting
> up a poll regarding the group's policy - rave which has exceeded the
> original posts to the original thread. 
> 

What's the connection?

> For trying to help some guy in need.

Sorry, some people do not deserve help. 

> > If you look at my answer you will see that it just pointed the guy
> to the right documents - the correct RFC, the libnids manuals, and the
> TCP RFC. I didn't write his code or anything. Relax. 

He did not deserve an answer, by the simple fact of not having done
his homework *before* posting. 

Now, the real reason I'm replying: kindly trim yer posts at 72 or 80
characters per line. Thank you. You might also want to do something
about the way too long signature, and the nonsensical (automatic?)
footer. 

-- 
The ill-formed Orange
Fails to satisfy the eye:       http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~mulix/
Segmentation fault.             http://syscalltrack.sf.net/

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 20:35:40 +0200

> Warning, /me is in pedantic mode.
Warning, I'm in a good mood.

> > No more shall I answer technical questions on this forum
The connection is that if there's a forum where people behave 
imploitely, shout at newbies, RTFM them to death and get on my case 
becasue I throw them a bone, then I will not answer technical questions 
on that forum. And I hope you will need one answered some day because I 
won't answer it. Try me. I won't. Maybe... No. I just won't.

> Sorry, some people do not deserve help.
Sorry, some people do not deserve to get shouted at and RTFM-ed at, just 
becaue they are newbies and not 31337 |-|4C|<ER like the rest of us. 
It's SOOOO fun to make fun of the knowhow-challenged. Yeah, do it the 
hard way. May everything you do, Mulix, you will do by plain RTFMing and 
never may you get some friendly advice if you ever dare to ask it in the 
wrong crowd. May your teeth rot and fall off. May your children be... 
wait a minute... scratch the teeth and children stuff. Unrelated. 
However, as a maintainer of at least one FAQ that I know of, and a 
contributor to the comunity, you might consider some of the less fortunate.

I wonder if you would have supplied a tip regarding ADSL on Linux if 
someone had asked that, off-topic of course.

> his homework *before* posting.
Well, all I can say is that I wish you find yourself in a situation 
where you will need the help and people will bluntly refuse to answer 
you. You are not 'leet enough. You didn't suffer long enough. Oh, I had 
to pass this and that rite of passage to be on that mailing list and 
have my answers answered, you should too. Listen to yourself. DESERVE. 
Cool it.

> about the way too long signature, and the nonsensical (automatic?)
I shall not trim my lines. As you may not have noticed, every decent MUA 
today already displays long lines. It is even beneficial, because it 
allows your MUA to wrap the lines with regard to the actual screen 
width. If you insist on using an MUA which is very old and/or very 
non-compliant coughmuttcough - write a filter to chop long lines. Things 
change. Deal with it. Either go with the flow or stay where you are, but 
don't complain. If  Pine 4.33L2 can read it, there's no reason why your 
MUA won't. BTW I can't read email sent with Mutt using JawMail. Tough.

As for the long signature, my answer is pretty much the same. The 
internet has evolved since you have last read the nettiquete, and 
4-lines-max-signature is rarely the fashion today. Not is it necessary 
due to some small bandwidth requirement. I do intend to cut it. It does 
appear only on new mail that I compose, BTW.

The footer only serves to indicate in a human-readable form that some 
scanning operation has been performed on the mail message. It only 
appears once, because it will not be added if it already exists. It 
serves a purpose, although to you it may not matter. It is a product 
that my company develops, which makes sure that company documents won't 
be sent by email. I'll be happy to elaborate if you wish, and also point 
you to our web site, http://www.vidius.com.

-- Arik

---

From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 20:57:19 +0300

> Warning, I'm in a good mood.

Warning, this is going to be a long one. 

> becaue they are newbies and not 31337 |-|4C|<ER like the rest of

No, no, no. You are sorely misguided. I shall elaborate, further
below. 

> contributor to the comunity, you might consider some of the less

Dear Arik, I hold hackers-il (and implicitly, its members, in the
highest regards). I expect material posted on the list to have a high
S2N ration, and to be relevant to the list's charter. To see why the
original poster's, and by association, your response, should not have
been sent to the list, read on. 

Contrast hackers-il, with, for example, gnubies-il. I am equally
active (helpful?) on both lists, as google will gladly show. Consider
this simple question: 

"Hi, how do I do set up ADSL on linux?" 

On gnubies-il, I would reply with a URL to the howto and a friendly
note saying that if anything is not clear, to not hesitate to contact
me in private. On hackers-il, I will reply with a flame the likes of
which have not been seen yet (*)(**), simply because asking such a
question on hackers-il shows a disregard for the list and its
members. It shows that the poster did not invest three fscking seconds
researching the subject. It shows a complete lack of manners or any
regards for *my* time. Since it shows all that, why should I take the
time to respond?

(*) Not since MV's days, at least. 
(**) I would flame, but I would also point to the HOWTO, most likely. 

I hope I made my point clear. There is a time, a place and a mailing
list for each subject under the sun. Asking on a list which is clearly
the wrong one is disrespectful. Disrespectful people do not deserve my
help. 

> someone had asked that, off-topic of course.

See above. 

> you. 

Never happend to me, because I always ask on the right forum, which
stems from the fact that I do my homework BEFORE posting. If, however,
I make such a gross error of judgement in the future, I hope to be
flamed harshly and immediately, so that I may know beter next time. 

> width. 

Having the receiving MUA do the wrapping is wrong, because it means
that some of the original formatting will be lost. 

> If you insist on using an MUA which is very old and/or very 

Why not? As it happens, I use mutt. 

> appear only on new mail that I compose, BTW.

Some rules have a point. Most netiquette is grounded in common
sense. Your willful ignorance of both is your perogative, of course. 

> scanning operation has been performed on the mail message. It only 

I see its time to brush up on procmail. 
-- 
The ill-formed Orange
Fails to satisfy the eye:       http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~mulix/
Segmentation fault.             http://syscalltrack.sf.net/

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 07 May 2002 23:26:55 +0300

On Tue, 2002-05-07 at 20:57, Muli Ben-Yehuda wrote:

> ...

This is very true, but it is not the whole truth. By giving him the
answers he wanted I would have given him a fish. By insuling him and
making him go find the answers he wanted himself I would have taught him
to learn by himself and thus given something far more precious: a
fishing rod. 

The way I see it, he should have thanked me for my grandmotherly
kindness... ;-)

Gilad.

-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
http://benyossef.com
"Hail Eris! All Hail Discordia!"

---

From: Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 09:56:38 +0300 (IDT)

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Arik Baratz wrote:

> Yes you may. It's me. I've set up the poll, because I thought that we're all MATURE enough to vote on matters that regard the mailing list, and we are TECHNICAL enough to get the fscking yahoo ID and groupsemail bound togeather.
>
> I never expected this much raving over the simple matter of putting up
> a poll regarding the group's policy - rave which has exceeded the

Putting the pooll there created the noise. There was no point in pputting
a poll on something on which there is no debate.

You first have to debatee things, and only if there is any point in that,
bother the list with a poll.

> No more shall I create polls,

Please don't conclude that. The polls are useful, when used properly.

> No more shall I answer technical questions on this forum

This is indeed a conclusion: this list branched off a rather technical
list. Technical discussions belong to linux-il. This is not a list for
technical support.

I have nothing against technical discussions, if they are interesting, but
some people see a list named "hackers-il" and think that this is a good
place to get support.

I don't want this list to become a support list. And if flaming is what it
takes (it took flaming, as private mail did not help) then flaming should
be used.

> If you look at my answer you will see that it just pointed the guy to
> the right documents - the correct RFC, the libnids manuals, and the TCP
> RFC. I didn't write his code or anything. Relax.

Indeed.

BTW: one word regarrding long lines:

I can read your message properly, but answering to it is quite
problematic. I have to manually break it into lines.

Or else I get a quoted line of the sort:

> a very long line of ttext in the original message does not appear no be quoted after it is being broken, without Tzafrir manually breaking lines and inserting quoting characters.

How does that look in your MUA? in pine? in JawMail?

REgards

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir

---

From: Oleg Goldshmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: 08 May 2002 10:18:31 +0300

Tzafrir Cohen <[email-masked]> writes:

> list. Technical discussions belong to linux-il. 

No. That list is for Linux-related topics. Not everything we discuss
is Linux-related. I am even ambiguous about banning any mention of M$
;-).

At the same time, I think that C++ questions belong to
comp.lang.c++.moderated, emacs questions - to comp.emacs, and UNIX
programming questions - to comp.unix.programming.

That statement, however, is limited to questions *about* C++, emacs,
or UNIX programming specifically. There are many questions related to
those topics that can reasonably be asked here.

"How I use C++ for functional programming" is a question that can
reasonably be asked here. So are "How to define modular code?",
"Are quantum computers Turing machines?", "Hacking rubberbands", and
"Abusing OO languages", to recall a few relatively recent threads.

-- 
Oleg Goldshmidt | [email-masked] 
"We work by wit, and not by witchcraft,
 And wit depends on dilatory time..."

---

From: "Orna" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 17:28:24 +0300

Most shamefully, I use outlook express when reading hackers-il,
and i am annoyed by the long lines, too.
On pine it is just terrible, BTW
 (but maybe there is some way to configure that, I don't know)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tzafrir Cohen" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 9:56 AM
Subject: RE: [hackers-il] New poll for hackers-il
> > a very long line of ttext in the original message does not appear no be
quoted after it is being broken, without Tzafrir manually breaking lines and
inserting quoting characters.

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 14:57:18 +0200

> Warning, this is going to be a long one.
Warning, I have no warning here.

> regards for *my* time. Since it shows all that, why should I take the
It doesn't show that he didn't spend time researching the subject, it 
shows that he didn't understand what hackers-il is all about. And if he 
misunderstood that, than we can politely enlighten him and edirect him 
to the right group.

> (*) Not since MV's days, at least.
Oh, those were the days.

> (**) I would flame, but I would also point to the HOWTO, most likely.
Why flame at all? Just tell the nice man kindly to send all future 
questions of this sort to the proper place.

> the wrong one is disrespectful. Disrespectful people do not deserve my
Or uninformed.

> flamed harshly and immediately, so that I may know beter next time.
Wouldn't you like it better if someone just pointed you in the right 
direction instead of kicked you in the balls?

> that some of the original formatting will be lost.
That's right - it will be, and that's the way it should be. There is no 
uniform 80 cpl limit anymore. My screen is wider. Why should I use only 
part of it? There is a solution for keeping formatting - <PRE> in HTML, 
or just hit enter after each line in plain text email. The whole idea 
about doing correct paragraphs is to allow different MUAs with different 
screen widths to determine where paragraphs end.

> Why not? As it happens, I use mutt.
A bug in jawmail. And I did check your mailer header before I wrote 
that. My point is you can't complain if you use a non-conforming or 
obsolete MUA.

> sense. Your willful ignorance of both is your perogative, of course.
The entire netiquete was written long ago and some parts are obsolete. 
When you read your email with /bin/mail and bandwidth was scarce, a long 
.signature would have pissed me off. Now people attach all kinds of 
multi-kilobyte stuff to their email, or send both plaintext and html 
versions of their mails... I think I'm conservative in comparision. I 
have reduced the size of my signature considerably. Watch my next new 
email message.

> I see its time to brush up on procmail.
Do what you wish to your incoming mail. It's your right. If the 3-line 
footer annoys you THAT much - why don't you.

-- Arik

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 15:02:02 +0200

> to learn by himself and thus given something far more precious: a
Why not just point him nicely to the place where they sell fishing rods, 
and mention BTW that there are good fish yonder? All nicely? I don't 
understand your need of violence.

-- Arik

---

From: Arik Baratz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 15:10:59 +0200

> a poll on something on which there is no debate.
Well, there is a debate. The poll caused it.

> bother the list with a poll.
Well, in this case the poll caused the debate. The poll will hold till 
the end of the week - you can still vote.

> Please don't conclude that. The polls are useful, when used properly.
I don't agree with your definition of 'properly'.

> list. Technical discussions belong to linux-il. This is not a list for
I didn't say technical support.

> some people see a list named "hackers-il" and think that this is a good
I think that TCP reassembly is interesting.

> > a very long line of ttext in the original message does not appear no 
> be quoted after it is being broken, without Tzafrir manually breaking 
> lines and inserting quoting characters.
>
I use Mozilla and it looks just fine. I think pine also handles it well, 
but I'm not sure.

-- Arik

---

From: Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Date: 09 May 2002 16:13:41 +0300

> understand your need of violence.

I'm not a violent person generally. In fact, ever since the elective
brain surgery that implented the blessed electrodes in my frontal lobe I
am a good and productive citizen of society and practicly incapable of
violence aginst another human being. They make sure to test that the
surgery really worked before they let you go out of jail; they can't
bloody well release someone who murdered 79 people with an axe get
released best on a hunch you know...

The problem is that I was one of the early voulenteers and I think they
still haven't gotten of all of the bugs out of the early system they
installed in my brain. Most of the time all goes well, but once in a
while, when someone insults me, I feel the old rage rise in me again and
can taste the blood in my mouth and I can't help myself but.... better
stop here now. [ To self: Calm down. Breath deep. I am the cool and
placid center of universe. I am the cool and placid center of the
universe. I don't have to do what the voices in my head tell me. I don't
have to do what the voices in my head tell me... oh fuck it! where's my
axe?] Be afraid. Be VERY afraid... MUHAHHAHAHAHAHA ;-)

Seriously, now. I don't know of any way to get someone to learn how to
learn by giving them the answers. I have done the ONLY thing I know that
will *really* help him.

I must've had this happen to me a million times and I'm pretty sure the
same thing happen to many others who know how the chick gets out of the
bottle: some newbie comes to you asking some question because you have a
reputation of a 'guru'. You know the answer and so you politely explain.
This might happen a couple of times. Then one day he has yet another
question and again he comes to you for answer but this time you're not
sure of the answer. Maybe you know it but not sure or you really have no
idea. So you look it up in 'man' or google and tell him the answer,
maybe send him the link. This too happens a couple of times and after a
few questions you find out that you don't really give him any real
information yourself but simply look the information for him, because
you yourself don't know it either - what you do know is how to look.
 
Over the time, the newbie learns a lot of information, his question
become harder and harder and although he does not know it, he is not
really a newbie anymore. There is just one more lesson he needs to learn
from you - how to think for himself. There is no way in the world you
can teach him this by keep answering more questions. If you try to he
will simply continue to come back and ask you more question you don't
know the answer to anymore then him. If you want to really help him,
there is only one thing that you can do: stop answering his questions.
Claim you don't know, banish him away and tell him to look for the
answers himself. If he continues to ask, by all means, be rude!

What usually happens is that the poor newbie is completely at awe. How
can he solve the problem if you're not helping him? he needs the problem
solved! he has to finish that ptrogram and it doesn't work and you
completly refuse to answer his questions, what to do? he will be forced
tolook inwards for the answer. He will try and immitate what he saw you
do when you didn't know the answers to the questions he asked: go look
for the answer in the man pages, or the FAQs or google or even, heaven
forbirds! think for himself. And of course, once he does that, it will
work and he will gain confidence in his own ability to solve problems on
his own that will drive him to try and solve the next problem by himself
as well. After a couple of times he REALLY wont be a newbie anymore. He
has learned.

Now, the poor newbie had the real answer all along. He knew how to look
for himself, he just didn't knew he knew. Can you teach him to know that
he knows? of course not, what rubbish! all you can do is deliver a most
shocking blow to his head (metaphorically, of course ;-) and tell him to
stop this nonsense in the hope he will awaken. This is exactly what I
was aiming for.

Gilad.
 
-- 
Gilad Ben-Yossef <[email-masked]>
Code mangler, senior coffee drinker and VP SIGSEGV
Qlusters ltd.

"To err is human. To realy fsck up you need a computer. For
 those really large scale disastears, an SSI cluster is a must."

---

From: "Amir Abiri" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 18:00:22 +0200

From: "Gilad Ben-Yossef" <[email-masked]>

[snip]

> axe?] Be afraid. Be VERY afraid... MUHAHHAHAHAHAHA ;-)

[snip (Man ! that was long...)]

That's nothing ! A good friend of mine had that surgery as well, one of the
first ones two. They probably f**ked something up with him real nasty, since
when he came out he was cumpolsivly sexualy attracted to Amebas. Imagine
yourself the horrific trauma inflicted upon a poor nice Dolphin swimming
around and suddenly seeing a human diver holding a...
I don't want to talk about it.

But he's better now, he's studying marine biology in the Technion.

--
http://abiri-e.com/
"God is a programmer".