eF=Q*(dA)/fA ..where eF=existence of FAQ and Q=question and dA=difficulty of answer and fA=frequency asked.

See, I loves me some FAQ's. If this is your first time on this interweb thingummie, FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Question, and I believe it's just about my favorite thing on the internet. Yeah, even above porn. FAQ's represent a lot of what I love about the internet, including free access to the best, most experienced minds in any field.

It's easy to forget that the internet isn't just porn and email. Plus that amazing synthesis of the two, porn spam (proving that two great tastes can taste like rancid, runny, shit together). But FAQ's are really what made the internet great. In the pre-dawn days of the internet all we had were the oft overlooked BBS. The BBS (I think it stands for Bulletin Board Site or System, or something) was the web page pre-web. You would get a phone number of a local BBS, ask your blazing fast 36k modem to dial it, and connect using some kind of terminal program. What you'd get would be a text menu that would be something like (and I'm doing this from memory here)

1. info

2. ASCII Art

3. Files

4. FAQ

and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember. Unless you were really into ASCII art (which you can read all about here if you're interested), you'd pretty much go right for the files section. I remember spending a whole day downloading the first Doom demo file. My gf at the time was really pissed because I was tying up the phone. Ah, memories. Anyway, the point is that I remember the first time I found a BBS that had a really excellent FAQ collection. My first thought was "My god! I could learn to do ANYTHING!"


So they're kind of out of style now, what with Google taking the idea and going one better, but I still use and love FAQ's, so here's some of my favorites.


Windows FAQ more useful if you're on the geekier end, but helpful for everybody

DVD FAQ this is actually a lot more useful than you might think

The FAQ of FAQ's oooh, meta!

Game FAQ's Much used and beloved by the wife and I

The Internet FAQ Archive It's all here man, all of it

and finally my all time favorite FAQ:

THE OFFICIAL GOD FAQ


Thank you and goodnight.  ¶ 11:41 AM