At 11:27 PM 9/30/04 , Chris wrote:

>
>"I only replied on the list so that people searching the archives in the 
>future will know that this is not the correct forum for help with 
>non-NetBSD operating systems."
>
>Hahahaha - and what did you JUST do? Helped him with a NON NetBSD OS.

1) I did suggest a way for him to use NetBSD to try and solve his problem.

2) People are continually drawn to our list because of certain words in the mail archives. I thought it prudent to give additional information that might be useful to them, in the hopes that they would not need/bother to post a question themselves, in the future.

3) He was polite, stated his *actual* problem (needing to i.d. his sound card hardware), gave some specific details, and gave a bit more helpful information about his problem. That's a hell of a lot better help request than I see on most email lists.

>Gimme a break - that question did't deserve any sort of answer except 
>the required flame.

Only if you believe it's necessary to slap a child for overhearing an adult topic and asking a question about it. The guy was just looking for help, and had been pointed here through either malicious intent or ignorance. That doesn't mean he didn't deserve to be educated on his error.

>If you want to take the time to lead someone like this around, do it off 
>list otherwise, expect (and gladly except) the additional flame.

Believe me, I did expect to be flamed for trying to help somebody. I didn't expect that it would be cc-d to the help list, though. Again, I'm only doing so to further explain, and I apologize to those who have to pay for their bandwidth.

>-- 
>Best regards,
>Chris

The same,
Tim