Jun 072010
 

To all the smartalecs on support forums out there: what the hell is wrong with you? If I ask someone with a map about the route from town A to B, I expect them to tell me directions, not question my sanity for wanting to drive to town B in the first place. Similarly, if someone posts a question in the form of, say, “I have device A giving error message B under operating system C, how do I solve this problem?”, the one thing they are absolutely, positively NOT interested in is lectures such as “Why would you be using device A?” or “What kind of a moron still uses operating system C?” and the like. If you don’t know the answer, can’t you just shut up and not pollute Google searches with your asinine remarks?

For instance, today I was trying to use a floppy disk. (Yes, people still need floppy disks sometimes. Not because they live in the stone age, but because they may be using a floppy to update a motherboard BIOS, for instance.) I ran into a problem. I searched Google, and found a support forum where a similar problem was discussed. There were a few helpful answers. But then, look at this little exchange:

>>> The other thing is - why do you need it?
<<< I need the floppy to run the Western Digital program to test
<<< the drive [...]
>>> If you're getting lots of bad sectors, then the drive has
>>> problems and you should be getting it replaced under warranty
>>> warranty, not attempting to 'fix' it. [...]
<<< yes, but the thing with western digital is before you can send
<<< the drive back you need an error code [...]
>>> But what error code could possibly be worse than a bad sector?
>>> Tell them the "error code" is  xxxxxxxxxxxx bad sectors!

How bloody helpful. This really told the guy how to fix the floppy disk problem that he was seeking help for.

 Posted by at 4:28 pm