Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 12:47:27 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: rick hamell <hamellr@dsinw.com> Cc: otter@tig.com.au, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Very basic questions... Message-ID: <19990510124727.42190@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.990509183540.9185M-100000@dsinw.com>; from rick hamell on Sun, May 09, 1999 at 06:48:20PM -0700 References: <3.0.5.32.19990510111738.007b0150@pop.tig.com.au> <Pine.BSF.3.91.990509183540.9185M-100000@dsinw.com>
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On Sun, May 09, 1999 at 06:48:20PM -0700, rick hamell wrote:
>
> You might want to be looking into another ISP then....:)
Whoah! That's pretty much the way of things here in Australia. People
in the USA can't imagine what it's like for the average Internet user
in other countries. Most commonly we pay so-much a month, say $30-$50,
and for that you get ten, twenty, or some other fixed number of hours
per month. If you go over your time allocation, they impose really
heavy hourly charges for excess time. A few of us have a different
arrangement, where we don't pay for online time, just for each megabyte
received by our system. Or you can get casual access at some places for
around $10-$12 per hour. All local phone calls are charged in Australia
too, while most of our continent's land mass would be a long distance
call to the nearest ISP.
So there's no way someone totally naive is going to waste time
fossicking through the www.freebsd.org web site without some idea of
what they're looking for and how to get there quickly, and the
motivation to do so. A few pointers here would help a lot in this
situation. Searching the mailing list archives is good if you know
exactly what you're looking for and have good searching skills, but
it's hell-on-a-stick if you're watching the clock. In these
circumstances, asking on this list and/or the newsgroup for initial
orientation is sensible. It demonstrates someone taking the initiative
to solve a problem, one of the main determinants of future success with
FreeBSD.
BTW, I'm surprised that nobody has recommended our own Newbies page. It
is supposed to serve exactly this function: to show totally lost
newbies what newbie-relevant online resources they should access first.
Since no newbie has ever complained or suggested a single change to the
page, you must all be blissfully happy with it.
The easiest way to get there is to go to www.freebsd.org (it works fine
without images too) and look for the Newbies link under the
Documentation subheading at the left. That left hand panel, and the
newbies page, will lead you to just about everything you'd be looking
for.
But there's no substitute for one newbie giving another newbie some
words of personal experience and encouragement. I'm not talking here
about how-to, but about how-it-feels. A lot of us have come into this
from a Microsoft background and once wondered if it could just possibly
be within our ability to grasp some of this unix stuff one day. This
leads to questions which do not have technical answers but people
answers, and the right people to answer them are other newbies.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
(`
()
'` <-- a +3 uncursed budgerigar named Einstein
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