[ic] Credit Card Info

Jim Balcom interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Sat Dec 15 18:41:00 2001


On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, David xxxxxxx wrote:

DS>>Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 09:08:25 -0600
DS>>From: David xxxxxxx <dxxxxxxx@cyber3dnet.com>
DS>>Reply-To: interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
DS>>To: interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
DS>>Cc: music@labyrinth.net.au
DS>>Subject: RE: [ic] Credit Card Info
DS>>
DS>>Hey guys,
DS>>
DS>>I sent this a week ago but haven't heard from anybody.  Do any of you know

From: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Copyright © 2001 by Eric S. Raymond


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents
Introduction
Before You Ask
When You Ask
How To Interpret Answers
On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Questions Not To Ask
Good and Bad Questions
If You Can't Get An Answer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction
In the world of hackers, the kind of answers you get to your technical
questions depends as much on the way you ask the questions as on the
difficulty of developing the answer. This guide will teach you how to ask
questions in a way that is likely to get you a satisfactory answer.

The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems
and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't
be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be
grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions
help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not
have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, "Good question!" is
a strong and sincere compliment.

Despite this, hackers have a reputation for meeting simple questions with
what looks like hostility or arrogance. It sometimes looks like we're
hostile to newbies and the ignorant. But this isn't really true.

What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be
unwilling to to think or do their own homework before asking questions.
People like that are time sinks -- they take without giving back, they
waste time we could have spent on another question more interesting and
another person more worthy of an answer. We call people like this "losers"
(and for historical reasons we sometimes spell it "lusers").

We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer
questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter
ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear
to be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more
efficiently, on winners.

You don't want to be one of the losers. You don't want to seem like one,
either. The best way to get a rapid and responsive answer is to ask it like
a winner ^× to ask it like a person with smarts, confidence, and clues who
just happens to need help on one particular problem.

(Improvements to this guide are welcome. You can mail suggestions to
esr@thyrsus.com.)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before You Ask
Before asking a technical question by email, or in a newsgroup, or on a
website chat board, do the following:

Try to find an answer by reading the manual.

Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.

Try to find an answer by searching the Web.

Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.

When you ask your question, display the fact that you have done these
things first; this will help establish that you're not being a lazy sponge
and wasting peoples' time. Better yet, display what you have learned from
doing these things. We like answering questions for people who have
demonstrated that they can learn from the answers.

Prepare your question. Think it through. Hasty-sounding questions get hasty
answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate that you have put
thought and effort into solving your problem before asking for help, the
more likely you are to actually get help.

Beware of asking the wrong question. If you ask one that is based on faulty
assumptions, J. Random Hacker is quite likely to reply with a uselessly
literal answer while thinking "Stupid question...", and hoping that the
experience of getting what you asked for rather than what you needed will
teach you a lesson.

Never assume you are entitled to an answer. You are not. You will earn an
answer, if you earn it, by asking a question that is substantial,
interesting, and thought-provoking ^× one that implicitly contributes to the
experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding
knowledge from others.

On the other hand, making it clear that you are able and willing to help in
the process of developing the solution is a very good start. "Can someone
provide a pointer?", "What is my example missing?" and "Is there a site I
should have checked?" are more likely to get answered than "Please post the
exact procedure I should use." because you're making it clear that you're
truly willing to complete the process if someone can simply point you in
the right direction.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When You Ask
Choose your forum carefully
Be sensitive in choosing where you ask your question. You are likely to be
ignored, or written off as a loser, if you:


post your question to a forum where it is off topic

post a very elementary question to a forum where advanced technical
questions are expected, or vice-versa

cross-post to too many different newsgroups

Hackers blow off questions that are inappropriately targeted in order to
try to protect their communications channels from being drowned in
irrelevance. You don't want this to happen to you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Write in clear, grammatical, correctly-spelled language
We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers
are usually also careless and sloppy thinkers (often enough to bet on,
anyway). Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not
rewarding; we'd rather spend our time elsewhere.

So expressing your question clearly and well is important. If you can't be
bothered to do that, we can't be bothered to pay attention. Spend the extra
effort to polish your language. It doesn't have to be stiff or formal ^× in
fact, hacker culture values informal, slangy and humorous language used
with precision. But it has to be precise; there has to be some indication
that you're thinking and paying attention.

Spell correctly. Don't confuse "its" with "it's" or "loose" with "lose".
Don't TYPE IN ALL CAPS, this is read as shouting and considered rude. If
you write like a semi-literate boob, you will probably be ignored. Writing
like a l33t script kiddie hax0r is the absolute kiss of death and
guarantees you will receive nothing but stony silence (or, at best, a
heaping helping of scorn and sarcasm) in return.

If you are asking questions in a forum that does not use your native
language, you will get a limited amount of slack for spelling and grammar
errors ^× but no extra slack at all for sloppy thinking (and yes, we can
usually spot that difference). Also, unless you know what your respondent's
languages are, write in English. Busy hackers tend to simply flush
questions in languages they don't understand, and English is the working
language of the net. By writing in English you minimize your chances that
your question will be discarded unread.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Send questions in formats that are easy to understand
If you make your question artificially hard to read, it is more likely to
be passed over in favor of one that isn't. So:


Send plain text mail, not HTML.

Don't send mail in which entire paragraphs are single multiply-wrapped
lines. (This makes it too difficult to reply to just part of the message.)

Don't send MIME Quoted-Printable encoding either; all those =20 glyphs
scattered through the text are ugly and distracting.

Never, ever expect hackers to be able to read closed proprietary document
formats like Microsoft Word. Most hackers react to these about as well as
you would to having a pile of steaming pig manure dumped on your doorstep.

If you're sending mail from a Windows machine, turn off Microsoft's stupid
"Smart Quotes" feature. This is so you avoid sprinkling garbage characters
through your mail.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Use meaningful, specific subject headers
On mailing lists or newsgroups, the subject header is your golden
opportunity to attract qualified experts' attention in around 50 characters
or fewer. Don't waste it on babble like "Please help me" (let alone "PLEASE
HELP ME!!!!"). Don't try to impress us with the depth of your anguish; use
the space for a super-concise problem description instead.


Stupid:
HELP! Video doesn't work properly on my laptop!

Smart:
XFree86 4.1 misshapen mouse cursor, Fooware MV1005 vid. chipset


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Be precise and informative about your problem

Describe the symptoms of your problem or bug carefully and clearly.

Describe the environment in which it occurs (machine, OS, application,
whatever).

Describe the research you did to try and understand the problem before you
asked the question.

Describe the diagnostic steps you took to try and pin down the problem
yourself before you asked the question.

Describe any recent changes in your computer or software configuration that
might be relevant.

Do the best you can to anticipate the questions a hacker will ask, and to
answer them in advance in your request for help.

Simon Tatham has written an excellent essay entitled How to Report Bugs
Effectively. I strongly recommend that you read it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Describe the problem's symptoms, not your guesses
It's not useful to tell hackers what you think is causing your problem. (If
your diagnostic theories were such hot stuff, would you be consulting
others for help?) So, make sure you're telling them the raw symptoms of
what goes wrong, rather than your interpretations and theories. Let them do
the interpretation and diagnosis.


Stupid:
I'm getting back-to-back SIG11 errors on kernel compiles, and suspect a
hairline crack on one of the motherboard traces. What's the best way to
check for those?

Smart:
My home-built K6/233 on an FIC-PA2007 motherboard (VIA Apollo VP2 chipset)
with 256MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM starts getting frequent SIG11 errors about
20 minutes after power-on during the course of kernel compiles, but never
in the first 20 minutes. Rebooting doesn't restart the clock, but powering
down overnight does. Swapping out all RAM didn't help. The relevant part of
a typical compile session log follows.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Describe your problem's symptoms in chronological order
The most useful clues in figuring out something that went wrong often lie
in the events immediately prior. So, your account should describe precisely
what you did, and what the machine did, leading up to the blowup. In the
case of command-line processes, having a session log (e.g., using the
script utility) and quoting the relevant twenty or so lines is very useful.

If the program that blew up on you has diagnostic options (such as -v for
verbose), try to think carefully about selecting options that will add
useful debugging information to the transcript.

If your account ends up being long (more than about four paragraphs), it
might be useful to succinctly state the problem up top, then follow with
the chronological tale. That way, hackers will know what to watch for in
reading your account.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Don't ask people to reply by private email
Hackers believe solving problems should be a public, transparent process
during which a first try at an answer can and should be corrected if
someone more knowledgeable notices that it is incomplete or incorrect.
Also, they get some of their reward for being respondents from being seen
to be competent and knowledgeable by their peers.

When you ask for a private reply, you are disrupting both the process and
the reward. Don't do this. It's the respondent's choice whether to reply
privately ^× and if he does, it's usually because he thinks the question is
too obvious or ill-formed to be interesting to others.

There is one limited exception to to this rule. If you think the question
is such that you are likely to get a lot of answers that are all pretty
similar, then the magic words are "email me and I'll summarize the answers
for the group". It is courteous to try and save the mailing list or
newsgroup a flood of substantially identical postings ^× but you have to
keep the promise to summarize.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prune pointless queries
Resist the temptation to close your request for help with semantically-null
questions like "Can anyone help me?" or "Is there an answer?" First: if
you've written your problem description halfway competently, such tacked-on
questions are at best superfluous. Second: because they are superfluous,
hackers find them annoying ^× and are likely to return logically impeccable
but dismissive answers like "Yes, you can be helped" and "No, there is no
help for you."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Courtesy never hurts, and sometimes helps
Be courteous. Use "Please" and "Thanks in advance". Make it clear that you
appreciate the time people spend helping you for free.

To be honest, this isn't as important as (and cannot substitute for) being
grammatical, clear, precise and descriptive, avoiding proprietary formats
etc.; hackers in general would rather get somewhat brusque but technically
sharp bug reports than polite vagueness. (If this puzzles you, remember
that we value a question by what it teaches us.)

However, if you've got your technical ducks in a row, politeness does
increase you chances of getting a useful answer.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Follow up with a brief note on the solution
Send a note after the problem has been solved to all who helped you; let
them know how it came out and thank them again for their help. If the
problem attracted general interest in a mailing list or newsgroup, it's
appropriate to post the followup there.

Your followup doesn't have to be long and involved; a simple "Howdy - it
was a failed network cable! Thanks, everyone. - Bill" would be better than
nothing. In fact, a short and sweet summary is better than a long
dissertation unless the solution has real technical depth.

Besides being courteous and informative, this sort of followup helps
everybody who assisted feel a satisfying sense of closure about the
problem. If you are not a techie or hacker yourself, trust us that this
feeling is very important to the gurus and experts you tapped for help.
Problem narratives that trail off into unresolved nothingness are
frustrating things; hackers itch to see them resolved. The good karma that
scratching that itch earns you will be very, very helpful to you next time
you need to pose a question.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How To Interpret Answers
RTFM and STFW: How To Tell You've Seriously Screwed Up
There is an ancient and hallowed tradition: if you get a reply that reads
"RTFM", the person who sent it thinks you should have Read The Fucking
Manual. He is almost certainly right. Go read it.

RTFM has a younger relative. If you get a reply that reads "STFW", the
person who sent it thinks you should have Searched The Fucking Web. He is
almost certainly right. Go search it.

Often, the person sending either of these replies has the manual or the web
page with the information you need open, and is looking at it as he types.
These replies mean that he thinks (a) the information you read is easy to
find, and (b) you will learn more if you seek out the information than if
you have it spoon-fed to you.

You shouldn't be offended by this; by hacker standards, he is showing you a
rough kind of respect simply by not ignoring you. You should instead thank
him for his grandmotherly kindness.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you don't understand...
If you don't understand the answer, do not immediately bounce back a demand
for clarification. Use the same tools that you used to try and answer your
original question (manuals, FAQs, the Web, skilled friends) to understand
the answer. If you need to ask for clarification, exhibit what you have
learned.

For example, suppose I tell you: "It sounds like you've got a stuck zentry;
you'll need to clear it." Then:

Here's a bad followup question: "What's a zentry?"

Here's a good followup question: "OK, I read the man page and zentries are
only mentioned under the -z and -p switches. Neither of them says anything
about clearing zentries. Is it one of these or am I missing something here?"


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Not Reacting Like A Loser
Odds are, you'll screw up a few times, on hacker community forums -- in
ways detailed in this article, or similar. And you'll be told exactly how
you screwed up, possibly with colourful asides. In public.

When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the
experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies,
scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's
employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do:

Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate.

Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by
people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all
criticism should have been conveyed via private mail: That's not how it
works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when
someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views
differ. Those are loser attitudes.

There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of
hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any fault-finding with
another's posts, and told "Don't say anything if you're unwilling to help
the user." The resulting departure of clueful participants to elsewhere
causes them to descend into meaningless babble and become useless as
technical forums.

Exaggeratedly "friendly" (in that fashion) or useful: Pick one.

Remember: When that hacker tells you that you've screwed up, and (no matter
how gruffly) tells you not to do it again, he's acting out of concern for
(1) you and (2) his community. It would be much easier for him to ignore
you and filter you out of his life. If you can't manage to be grateful, at
least have a little dignity, don't whine, and don't expect to be treated
like a fragile doll just because you're a newcomer with a theatrically
hypersensitive soul and delusions of entitlement.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Questions Not To Ask
Here are some classic stupid questions, and what hackers are thinking when
they don't answer them.

Q: Where can I find program X?
Q: I'm having problems with my Windows machine. Can you help?
Q: I'm having problems installing Linux or X. Can you help?
Q: How can I crack root/steal channel-ops privileges/read someone's email?
Q: Where can I find program X?

A: The same place I'd find it, fool -- at the other end of a web search.
Ghod, doesn't everybody know how to use Google yet?

Q: I'm having problems with my Windows machine. Can you help?

A: Yes. Throw out that Microsoft trash and install Linux.

Q: I'm having problems installing Linux or X. Can you help?

A: No. I'd need hands-on access to your machine to troubleshoot this. Go
ask your local Linux user group for hands-on help.

Q: How can I crack root/steal channel-ops privileges/read someone's email?

A: You're a lowlife for wanting to do such things and a moron for asking a
hacker to help you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good and Bad Questions
Finally, I'm going to illustrate how to ask questions in a smart way by
example; pairs of questions about the same problem, one asked in a stupid
way and one in a smart way.


Stupid: Where can I find out stuff about the Foonly Flurbamatic?
This question just begs for "STFW" as a reply.

Smart: I used Google to try to find "Foonly Flurbamatic 2600" on the Web,
but I got no useful hits. Does anyone know where I can find programming
information on this device?
This one has already SFTWed, and sounds like he might have a real problem.


Stupid: I can't get the code from project foo to compile. Why is it broken?
He assumes that somebody else screwed up. Arrogant of him.

Smart: The code from project foo doesn't compile under Nulix version 6.2.
I've read the FAQ, but it doesn't have anything in it about Nulix-related
problems. Here's a transcript of my compilation attempt; is it something I did?
He's specified the environment, he's read the FAQ, he's showing the error,
and and he's not assuming his problems are someone else's fault. This guy
might be worth some attention.


Stupid: I'm having problems with my motherboard. Can anybody help?
J. Random Hacker's response to this is likely to be "Right. Do you need
burping and diapering, too?" followed by a punch of the delete key.

Smart: I tried X, Y, and Z on the S2464 motherboard. When that didn't work,
I tried A, B, and C. Note the curious symptom when I tried C. Obviously the
florbish is grommicking, but the results aren't what one might expect. What
are the usual causes of grommicking on MP motherboards? Anybody got ideas
for more tests I can run to pin down the problem?
This person, on the other hand, seems worthy of an answer. He has exhibited
problem-solving intelligence rather than waiting for an answer to drop from
on high.

In the last question, notice the subtle but important difference between
demanding "Give me an answer" and "Please help me figure out what
additional diagnostics I can run to achieve enlightenment."

In fact, the form of that last question is closely based on a real incident
that happened in August 2001 on the linux-kernel mailing list. I (Eric) was
the one asking the question that time. I was seeing mysterious lockups on a
Tyan S2464 motherboard. The listmembers supplied the critical information I
needed to solve them.

By asking the question in the way I did, I gave people something to chew
on; I made it easy and attractive for them to get involved. I demonstrated
respect for my peers' ability and invited them to consult with me as a
peer. I also demonstrated respect for the value of their time by telling
them the blind alleys I had already run down.

Afterwards, when I thanked everyone and remarked how well the process had
worked, an lkml member observed that he thought it had worked not because
I'm a "name" on that list, but because I asked the question in the proper form.

We hackers are in some ways a very ruthless meritocracy; I'm certain he was
right, and that if I had behaved like a sponge I would have been flamed or
ignored no matter who I was. His suggestion that I write up the whole
incident as an instruction to others led directly to the composition of
this guide.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If You Can't Get An Answer
We realize that there are many people who just want to use the software we
write, and have no interest in learning technical details. For most people,
a computer is merely a tool, a means to an end. We acknowledge that, and
don't expect everyone to take an interest in technical matters.
Nevertheless, our style of answering questions is tuned for people who do
take such an interest.

Thus, if you can't get an answer, please don't take it personally that we
don't feel we can help you. There are other sources of help you can go to,
often sources better adapted to a novice's needs.

There are many online and local user groups who are enthusiasts about the
software, even though they may never have written any software themselves.
These groups often form so that people can help each other and help new users.

There are also plenty of commercial companies you can contract with for
help, both large and small. Don't be dismayed at the idea of having to pay
for a bit of help! After all, if your car engine blows a head gasket,
chances are, you will take it to a repair shop and pay to get it fixed.
Even if the software didn't cost you anything, you can't expect that
support will always come for free.

For popular software like Linux, there are are at least 10000 users per
developer. It's just not possible for one person to handle the support
calls from over 10000 users. Remember that even if you have to pay for
support, you are still paying much less than if you had to buy the software
as well (and support for closed-source software is usually more expensive
and less competent than support for open-source software).


Compliments of
Dan Browning <danpb@mail.com>


-= Jim =-

----------------------------------------------------------------
Jim's Linux-Operated Underground Bomb Shelter

Tagline for Saturday, December 15, 2001 at 18:40 PM:
Puns are bad, but poetry is verse.

----------------------------------------------------------------
This Linux System has been up 483 hours

My web page: http://www.idk-enterprises.com
----------------------------------------------------------------