Troubleshooting without help from others (was: Failed to open control device /dev/em8300-0)

[Zbigniew Koziol]

On Wednesday 14 March 2007 18:25, you wrote:
> 2007/2/27, Zbigniew Koziol <softquake-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > I thought for a long time that Google is our friend. That we can find
> > there an answer to any technical problem.
> >
> > Thats right. We can find there _an_ answer. In most cases naive and
> > useless. We can hardly find however a solution to the problem.
> >
> > Why?
> >
> > Because most what we find on Google are silly discussions by
> > unexperienced people. Once they find a solution to their problem they do
> > not bother to report back how they solved their problem.
>
> ...
>
> Last summer, a coworker of mine was a software package tester who used
> to be an auto mechanic.  He noted I turn to Google a lot for help with
> problems.  He said it was important to know how to troubleshoot
> without any help from the Web, or mailing lists, or anywhere: to know
> how to track down problems by logical troubleshooting steps.
>
> Is this true?  How important is it, really, to know how to
> troubleshoot independently?

You are perfectly right. It is most important to be able to solve problems by 
ourselves. 

This does not mean that we should not expect Google to work better. And that 
thoughts should not reach this list (besides, what for this list exists for?)

I, btw, solved my problem during that past time. By reading more carefully man 
xine and thinking about what is there. While still I do not quite understand 
what was the reason of the problem I can repeat my original thesis: error 
messages produced by xine (and many other software) are so often meaningless 
and confussing. While the audience around (I mean on the arena that is 
catched up by Google) has mostly no idea what they are talking about.

Best,
zb.


>
> Cheers,
> Jason
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