@ Watchman Nice sentiments and I agree with you with some points - However, some of the reasons the list contributors would ask for help or air sentiments in such lists or blogs is mostly for time-saving; Eg The other day I had lost 1 week waiting for a hdd to be delivered from Sun - But when the thing arrived I had less than a day to mount and mirror the thing inorder for the thing to be commissioned and accepted by the network.. But when the hdd arrived; I had problems and the 'plug and play' turned out to be a two day affair of 'plugging and praying'. Yes, I know if I read the right books/manuals about RAID, Mirroring, Bios, etc I would have found the answer in there somewhere - But I had less than a day.. ------ So in such and similar cases - Its easier and time-saving to ask around (through a mail-list like this) mabbe somebody out there has an answer that can narrow down reading 10 manuals of hundreds of pages each - and you can move on to the actual work. Same to the "Stanford Dropout" downloader - me thinks the subject head was a means of "attracting" people to read through the thread to generate the help they needed. --- As an example - if my aim is to download Star-Trek TNG torrents to watch them - and our office has a proxy that one has to hop through to use the torrents; I am faced with a few options at this point (1) learn from the wider internet which torrents out of the hundreds can do this and how (2) ask from those already doing this the best way how Which comes to the next questions to ask yourself (1) do i really need to learn and try all these torrents when all I want is just to watch the TNG episodes ? (2) will i ever use these torrents after i get the TNG episodes or its just a one time thing ? Or i could just ask around and find an easier source and just get right to watching them! == My two cents Another Angle '