*sigh*. Newbie. The term immediately is thought of as negative. Why? Because people are just too damn lazy to try to do it right. They always depend on someone else. Everyone seems to be afraid to try something new, especially when it comes to computers.
One area that this is noticable is on HotLine. I've had people come to my server, asking me the stupidest questions. "What does this button do?" Well, dumbass, if you'd click it, you'd know. Its really annoying; most of what I know now I had to teach myself. I didn't have anyone to be a crutch; I had to do it myself. I don't see why they need any help. I've also gotten it about the server; I had one person (actually, it was Rebel/Sphere) ask me stupid stuff, like how you set up accounts, and how put the server on the trackers. It took me, at the most, 5 minutes, to figure that out; all you have to do is just hit the 'Trackers' tab in the Server program. It seems like that is something that most people would be able to figure out, right? Well, I guess not.
Something that would help this greatly is if people would READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!!! This has been my experience on Battle.net (Diablo, of course!) where newbies have come on and immediately started asking questions. Hmm, lets see, if you're too dumb to read the little book that came with the game (you know, those pretty pieces of paper with the staples in them to keep them together?), you're not worth answering. Almost every question that people ask can be found in the manual, in one place or another. The thing is, people are too damn lazy to look; they want the answer right there, right then.
I've tried to keep my cool about them. But sometimes, their ignorance/stupidity is just too much to bear. And of course, they have no idea why you're getting upset; they don't realize that you've probably had to deal with the same shit more than once, or that they could have kept their mouth shut, and figured it out for themselves.
For me, figuring something out for myself is more satisfying than asking someone else. Then I know that I have actually learned something. If I ask someone else, all I have learned is how to ask. If I do it myself, I have learned the exact way to do it, and perhaps a way to do something else.
Another example of this (sorry that this isn't very well organized; I'm just typing, and this is the order that it is coming) is on the Web. Newbies asking about HTML code is perhaps the worst. Doing HTML code is easier than anything else on the computer, with the possible exception of starting it up. All you need is a text editor (BBEdit, for me) and a browser. Well, if you're surfing, you have the browser. If you have a Mac, at the very least you have SimpleText. All you have to do is type the HTML, save, and then load into the browser. Make a change, save, reload. Lather, rinse, repeat. How hard can that be? If you're afraid of just jumping right into the coding scene, at the very least go get HTML for Dummies. Hell, I have a couple of ...for Dummies books, as they actually are quite helpful for learning new code. A note on HTML coding rookies: don't be afraid to try something new. All you have to do is type it, save it, and reload. If you don't like it, just delete it. Thats all. Nothing bad will happen, your computer won't blow up, your HD won't be corrupted, nothing, nada, zilch, zero.
Well, I'm just sorta rambling at this point, starting to type another Rant that I've got planned, so I'm gonna stop. Oh well, its still better than my last one...