asking smart(er) questions. was: Re: [Pw_forum] k point selection

[Axel Kohlmeyer]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006, Luke Thulin wrote:

hi luke and everybody else on the list,

i hope you're all having a nice day.
i'd like to comment a little on the following sentence
in a more general way, so please people who are not
exactly interested in the detail of this discussion,
please read on anyways.

LT> different k paths?  Sorry if this question has been asked, but I seem to 
LT> be incompentent when it comes to searching the archives.

well, it is not _that_ difficult. if having to find and figure out
the integrated search engine is too much of a hassle to you, you
might try the following trick by (ab)using a more familiar search
enging like google. as the mailing list archives are hosted on
the democritos.it web server, you can search google, but restrict
the search to only this domain. e.g. in your case i would try:

"k points" selection  site:democritos.it

one more thing. as you may have noticed, the people here in this
forum are very open to newcomers and trivial questions (something
i personally respect a lot, since it is not always easy to answer
in a calm and unoffensive way to some of these questions). 
however, you will see after a while the responsiveness will slow
down if you do not demonstrate some significant effort on your
side. which is understandable, since nobody here gets paid to
respond to questions so the currency to 'pay' people here is
mostly respect for their effort, and one way to pay respect to
people is to try asking smarter questions. as stefano already
pointed out, you are not expected to become an expert, but you
have to demonstrate that you at least made an effort. claiming
that you are too stupid, inept or incapable to even try, usually
reduces people's attention span even more.

for a more detailed discussion i recommend looking at:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
which demonstrates the IMHO essential point that the 
'quality' of the response you get depends on the 'quality' 
of your question.  

thanks to everybody that made it this far.

best regards,
      axel.

LT> 
LT> Thanks,
LT> Luke
LT> 

-- 
=======================================================================
Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey at cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
   Center for Molecular Modeling   --   University of Pennsylvania
Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
tel: 1-215-898-1582,  fax: 1-215-573-6233,  office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
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If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.