Antivirus Software

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Mackinney (paul@mackinney.net):

> You're welcome. And BTW, please don't be offended (or try to be
> minimally offended) by answers that seemed less than helpful.  For a
> great discussion of this issue, Check out "How to ask questions the
> smart way" by Eric S. Raymond & <gasp!> Rick Moen

Heh.  I was in fact bearing in mind some of the parts of that piece 
that I wrote, such as:

  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.

I certainly intend no offence in any of the above or my posts to this
thread.  To the contrary:  Trying to help someone solve a misdefined
problem does him no favour at all.  The best thing one can do is gently
urge the querent to try again, this time stating the _symptoms_ rather
than someone's surmise about what's wrong.

-- 
Cheers,              First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, for
Rick Moen            verbing weirds language.  Then, they arrival for the nouns
rick@linuxmafia.com  and I speech nothing, for I no verbs. - Peter Ellis