Okay, so that’s a little dramatic subject line, but I was wondering if anybody knew of a place – a website – where you can just post some question, where the question can be general, such as “Who is God” to “is there a decent substitute for my Apple TV remote?” and get quick (same day, ideally), reliable answers? I know there is Quora. Umm, not my top choice. There are places like answers.com but these are heavily trafficked, ad-soaked places where really, it’s a crapshoot as far as getting a good answer goes.
For example, THIS question. When I thought of places to go to ask “Is there a decent substitute for my Apple TV remote” I immediately thought of Cecil and his hordes – but I don’t want to burden a place like this with these arguably completely frivolous questions.
I don’t mean that the question is frivolous – I really want to know the answer – but I don’t want to hassle good people with such trivial, and to 99.999999 percent of the population, nothing to do with their lives whatsoever (it actually takes a minute amount of energy to click a mouse, another minute amount to scan a subject line, another slug to read a post, and a huge amount of neuronal output to think, type and ultimately respond, so I don’t wish to be wasting anyone’s time) inanities.
Does anyone know of such a place, where one can get reliable, quick and smart answers to pretty much any question a human being can come up with? (Why isn’t a vacuum always absolute 0°K?).
I know that the innumerable legions of Cecil’s minions will do His bidding and answer this poor fool’s pathetic inquiry.
Yeah, it’s kind of like, that’s the kind of place I want to avoid. But I realize this is a tall order. I’m surprised that such a place doesn’t exist yet. Something like a Wikipedia with a group of experts on different subjects – maybe a large pool of volunteers – who willingly respond to people’s questions as they come up.
Maybe something like this place, except to cover stuff that would just be annoying to a lot of people, like “Why are you wasting my time asking me this question? Just Google it.”
Well, I DID Google it, and I got a huge list of completely unhelpful answers.
Well, I see that this question IS annoying already, so, hey, where do you want me to go with it?
Get a free app for your i-Device called “Remote.” I don’t know that I would necessarily describe it as a “decent substitute,” but it works. In many ways it offers much more versatility and utility than the Apple remote, however the drawback is, unless you set your i-Device to never sleep, you need to keep unlocking your i-Device and reopening the app to use it, and that’s fucking annoying.
or
Apple TV has a built-in feature where you can actually use an old TV or DVD player remote to work with your Apple TV: get on your Apple TV and go to Settings > General > Remotes > Learn Remote and follow the instructions on the screen.
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That’s strange. I just went to Google and typed 'subsitute apple tv r", at which point google suggested “subsitute apple tv remote” and I clicked on that. The first response was an article outlining exactly the two options DCnDC gave below.
Not sure how you could do better than that, even with some kind of expert individually replying to your question.
Yes, I got the same results you did, and downloaded “Remote” for my iPad Mini. Horrific, non-intuitive app – not at all like Apple used to be (don’t get me started).
But Apple’s help pages are very clinical, often way out of date and not really very helpful as a rule.
But that wasn’t really why I posted this question – I wanted to know if anyone knew of a place where I could post a question like that, but someone else would post a “What is God” question right after me and would at least get some kind of intelligent response.
Since I know that straightdope is a place where you get near-instant answers from generally a group of reliably smart people (I suppose as opposed to “The Great Unwashed,” or the “teeming hordes” to which Cecil refers) I thought I’d ask here.
Now I’m thinking, if there isn’t such a place – a sort of “Wikipedia” but just for general questions – someone should invent one! They would become insanely rich.
My point is people on this message board with take the most mundane and trivial questions you have heard of and dissect them in excruciating detail. I doubt any question you have will be too frivolous for the Dope.
Too bad http://askmeanything.com is taken, by some computer company. Reminds me of the “survivor.com” brouhaha back when that was a popular program. The people who owned it at the time bristled at the suggestion they give up the name and stubbornly refused.
The guy who owned it is still up and about – I guess he never did give in to the millions of dollars they must have offered him.
A lot of times I go to the product review page at Amazon.com and ask my question there because when you leave a review, questions get forwarded to you and you tend to get people who actually know the answer responding.
Yes, for sure if want to buy ANYTHING, I always go to Amazon to see if it’s been reviewed first. It’s an amazingly dependable resource.
And yes, I know the Dope is a fantastic place for the often ludicrous questions I come up with. (Sorry if I stray off topic, but how can a vacuum have a temperature? I thought heat was when molecules start getting stirred up, Technically, there are no molecules in a vacuum, right? So how could it have a temperature? It must be Absolute Zero. I guess I should pose it as a separate question to the main population! See? I have a trillion stupid questions and I just don’t want to waste anyone’s time with them . . .)
Remember: this is not our job. We do this for fun. So you’re not wasting any time that wasn’t already going to be wasted.
If you ask an interesting well-posed question using decent English you’ll earn the good answers you get by providing entertainment to the folks who like to give good answers.
If you ask a boring or ignorant question poorly using a mix of txtspk and wall-o-text runon senences for haf a paj with relly relli bad splng ferr shur, you’ll earn the hate mail you’ll get back from the self-righteous folks who live for firing putdowns at the drive-by folks who don’t deserve our time.
Either way, you’ve earned your keep and somebody out in SDMB-land will be made happier than before. Usually not the same people for both kinds of questions, but we have a wide user base.
No real vacuum has zero molecules; there’s always a few zipping around. Even intergalactic space has hydrogen gas in it. Only a few molecules per cubic meter, but “a few” is qualitatively very different from “zero”.
As well, space contains radiation. That’s energy. Physicists talk about the temperature of the cosmic background being 2ish Kelvins. They’re referring to radiation, not vibrating molecules.
The vast majority of questions have been asked before, so you can just do a Google search.
The vast majority of forums on the internet are specialized ones so a better solution is to find a specialized forum to ask specialized questions. For example I am a member of a specialized forum for each of the vehicles I own, specialized forums for the business I am in, computer forums, do it yourself forums…
