RadioBanter - View Single Post

February 3rd 04, 08:03 PM

In article , writes:

N2EY wrote:

Yep. But there's also the aspect of "self-training", where the person with
the
question tries to find the information on their own *before* asking.

For that I definitely blame the Internet.

In days gone by when one had to go to the library for information, two
things were different:

1) The world in general wasn't made aware of your ignorance.

2) By having to go through a book you usually picked up some other pieces
of information.

In today's age, the Internet is touted as the grand source of all
information with instant response.

It IS a grand source of information...but takes a few seconds or
minutes to respond. :-)

The Internet is a SUPERB source of information, everything from
simple through complex in technology, from primers in electronics
to vast archives of application notes from leading electronics
manufacturers. I use it regularly.

The home office room my wife and I share has 39 lineal feet of
bookshelving, books packed in literally cover to cover. Good
reference material collected over half a century of time, mostly
mine. Given the cost of textbooks today, collecting all of that
would be prohibitive now.

Hence the huge number of really ignorant questions on USENET and mailing
lists that show the questioner has obviously never bothered to read a book
or manual because anything you want to know can be found through the
Internet just by asking.

Classrooms have always been full of the ignorant. That's why
classrooms exist. :-)

In the days of the old ARPANET (the "grandfather" of the Internet
and "father" of USENET) there were a number of ignorant users.
[been there, done that, got the T-shirts and TTY printouts]

What's even worse is these people don't bother to do a search of archives or
FAQs to see if the question has already been asked, which it generally has.

In olde-tyme days of classrooms, many students never used a
library. So, what else is new?

This mode of operation is by no means limited to amateur radio; it appears
to an epidemic of major proportions.

Shall we call the Center for Disease Control about this "epidemic?"

Unfortunately, I can think of no solution to the problem in general, nor
one specific to amateur radio other than to just accept the situation for
what it is and get on with life. Bitching about it is just a waste of time.

You can always take Corrective Action.

One way is to recognize human beans and not carry on a bitch
session such as the above.

LHA / WMD