Subject: No Free Time To Help, Esp. For Subscription Changes. DIY From: Time_Consumer@ Sender: Time_Consumer@ I append http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_free_time.txt See Also http://mailman.berklix.org/mailman/listinfo http://www.berklix.org/berklix/lists/ http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/mailman.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_free_bsd_support.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_free_linux_support.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/no_html_format.txt http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/wrong_sender.txt If your company wants to purchase professional computer consultancy, at commercial rates, I'd be happy to discuss what it might cost. http://www.berklix.com http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/cv/ http://www.bsdpie.eu But sorry, I have NO Free Unpaid Time. I'm not a free help desk. My time is Not free to educate help or explain loads of people, & I have far too many acquaintances to treat them all as special cases to help. I Helped numerous before, & the word spread & it avalanched & I had to help loads more, so now I help None for anything I have documented, but I do add new info to documents where appropriate, & point to documents. Please use my free standard replies index, http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/ free help pages index, http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/txt/ free subscription robot: http://www.berklix.org/help/ free club info pages http://www.berklix.org [& free ski booking form] http://www.berklix.org/ski/ My free time is Not available for individuals, but for improving general infrastructure to benefit many people, not just a few. Self Help & Mutual Help Is Your Solution: There's an Awful lot of people on the Internet who don't have much of a clue, & I get an awful lot more exposure (via eg http://www.berklix.org etc) to a lot more people than I can possibly personally help or educate. They need to read & learn from all the free web pages, manuals & How-To's etc. &/or computer book shops & libraries, join local self help computer user groups, eg http://www.berklix.org/bim/ http://www.berklix.org/bim/other_bsd.html http://www.berklix.org/bim/other_clubs.html http://www.berklix.org/techtalk/ http://www.muc-lug.de/ Join support forum mail lists, to help each other ( I'm on many myself). go to night classes, experiment & learn, analyse differences logically, think hard, read manuals, offer to reward a friend/ colleague for help with (beer / pizza / money / whatever it takes :-). Within companies there's also colleagues who may advise, training courses, lectures, support teams etc. A Pyramid Of Help: Self help & mutual help is numerically essential: There's simply not enough experts to help the many less expert, & experts are better left to develop & maintain & debug complex things for the common good, not having their time wasted unpaid, by too many clueless. A Pyramid of help is essential: The most skilled should help those a bit less skilled, who should help others yet a bit less skilled, & so on down. The highly skilled shouldn't be spread too thin supporting too many. Each person should best ask for free help _Not_ from the most skilled people they know, but from people who are less busy & just a bit more skilled. Few Computer Users Bother To Learn Imagine if all car drivers never took driving lessons, never looked at a car handbook, just jumped in, started the engine & shoved the control about ... How many people does that remind you of, cluelessly pushing the mouse about, clicking at random, not stopping to Think ? We All Need To Self Help & Read & Learn from help pages etc. Mail List Subscribers Who Demand Free Help: No one is entitled to my time free of charge. Those who refuse to learn the free robot, http://www.berklix.org/help/ Who falsely claim the robot doesn't work (always false!), Who consider themselves too important / busy to learn, Who try to burden me with demands to waste my time free for them They just waste their own time, They get pointed progressively to http://www.berklix.org/help/majordomo/ http://www.berklix.org/help/majordomo/help.html#stuck http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/std/mailman.txt then ignored & automatically discarded. Rights To Opinions: It's not a democracy if it involves my time to administer my servers, or to explain fundamentals to those subset of the ignorant t who also refuse to learn). People do _Not_ usually have an equal right to opinionate unless equally informed. You may have More right than me, or Less right, but often not an Equal right to an informed opinion on [computer] technology. Some ignorant minority think they have a right to expound an equal & opposite opinion on computer matters, sometimes starting with a foolish arguments about HTML or Word docs, while they willfully remain ignorant, don't research technical & historic roots of issues etc, & never read eg RFCs. Not all people are equally worth listening to. Backgrounds: Mine is a University degree in Computers & Cybernetics, & 30+ years in systems engineering, Unix, & Internet systems etc. http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/cv/ I have an ever increasing backlog of manuals & on line documentation & computer books I should read, & servers to configure & upgrade & code to write/ expand/ learn etc, lectures I should attend to learn, & groups & projects I should contribute more to. Yes, it's not easy learning, but we All need to preserve time to devote to studying documentation to help ourselves. There's more intelligent people with & without degrees, but the above does explain why I won't waste time on some opinionated losers who refuse both to learn or be quiet. Yes, the above could be phrased more diplomatically, That might be counter productive : - Less people might be deterred from asking for my time - free, - Less free time would be available for me for things to help more people: - Bits of source code I write http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/src/ - Writing standard answers for all http://www.berklix.org/~jhs/std/ - Writing web pages for Free Software http://www.berklix.com/free/ (to help others escape the mess of viruses, Microsoft, & Word doc junk). - Administering servers http://www.berklix.net & http://www.berklix.org/help/ Installing & configuring upgrades & new software etc. - Contributing to projects such as http://www.freebsd.org http://softwarefreedomday.org etc - Helping organise club events http://www.berklix.org - + time for business interests http://www.berklix.com & http://bsdpie.eu http://www.berklix.com Computer Consultancy http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/cv/ My Resume - English & German http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/contact/ Contact - German for business also OK. http://www.berklix.com/free/ Free Software http://www.berklix.org Free Organisations & Clubs