The Perils of Usenet


If you're a Linux newbie, it won't be long before you'll need help. The Mandrake newsgroup, nntp://alt.os.linux.mandrake, is one of the best places to find help, but beware: if you post a question like...

"I cant figure out how to install the NVIDIA drivers for my Radeon video card dont tell me to RTFM just tell me step by step how to do this."

...or...

Boy this OS sucks! I've been using it for 2 days and I can't find anything. What the hell is a tarball? Or a tar.gz file? Windows XP is so much better than this piece of crap! Can someone tell me how to install a tar.gz program? If you don't help me I'll go back to Windows XP at least it was easy.

...or...

test

...you'd better be wearing your asbestos underwear, because you're likely to see a reply something like one of these, culled from the archived posts of a Mandrake old-timer we call PTB.

Your post makes me want to puke all over you for not troubling to find out what you are talking about but instead hallucinate wildly based on observations which you didn't trouble to check on! It's as annoying as seeing people say "white bread killed my neighbour's dog".


It's really strange how only people who can't write believe that what they are doing is writing well when it isn't.


Thermal runaway! Oh, I see - you think you are sitting in a nuclear reactor. You think the hotter things get, the faster they go, leading to more heat, leading to faster ... Uh, no. Go back to school. Do not pass go..


Sigh. Where do these people come from.


In other words, you have asked a stupid question, that riles me immensely. Try again, this time thinking first, and asking second


And if so, why? What's the point of making a point if you aren't insulting or rude! It's rude to win an argument, because the loser goes away insulted by not winning. If everyone were polite there would be no arguing!


Heck, I'll flame you anyway! You don't need to annoy me first.


Somehow I think the only rational thing to do is not to reply to you. But I'm not very rational. Instead I think I'll ask "what's up with you"? What is up with you?


it's like seeing an aboriginal tribesman reviewing a mobile telephone, and telling all his friends that it makes an absolutely terrible drumstick!


Start engaging your brain and stop imitating Stanley Laurel and then people may help you. But it's not funny to see a real live person say "it doesn't work" when pulling at their nose instead of the "fixme handle"


Being happy makes me unhappy. It gets rid of all goals.


I am telling you that you are up shit creek without a paddle. I.e. you might as well go shoot yourself. Why do you think that is abuse?


Oh boy! The day I start worrying about possible misinterpretations of what I say in ascii, the universe will end!


I'm sorry about the distressing episode with the carpet and the fish. Yes, it's a brave new world out there for all the goldfish, full of unexpected little problems, like breathing.


When I speak up it is to defend reason against unthinking, I hope.


My brain is fuzzy, and my eyes are fuzzy. I have no problem introducing fuzziness on the way from screen to mind. But if somebody wants to put extra fuzziness in first, then I have problems.


Learn to discard your hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence, instead of discarding the evidence!


Allow me to be the first to tell you that your post makes no sense. Or possibly makes sense but is incomprehensible. Hard to tell ...


Don't imagine that you're lost in some weird unpleasant wilderness. The rest of the universe has been here for ages, and expects you to act just like everybody else, and stop asking why the toadstools are a funny color, and stop gawking at the mungobushes.


How have you been insulted? About what? I really think your idea of being insulted is a little on the delicate side! I've seen stronger diatribes produced by a goldfish ... oh, well.


I refuse to believe that people are as stupid as they actually are. I think this must all be a horrible bad dream. Surely people who can't open files to edit them can't walk down a street unaided ... You are crazy, frankly speaking. You have some kind of mental problem.


In case you wonder, root cannot go back in time and kill your grandmother before she met your grandfather. Some things are impossible by nature.


No, you are a retarded idiot, not a "middle advanced student of linux". Try getting that straight and removing your delusions, and you may be able to make some progress in a forward direction for a change.


Stop it. Stop this mindless phreeny preambulatory wibbling wobbly warbling NOW. Before it gets out of hand.


Nothing can run as anything else BUT an executable. As a trouser leg perhaps?


Out of a vague interest in the lackadaisical mental gyrations of a nueron from pluto, how exactly did you expect to compile a compiler without a compiler?