On 6 March 2018 at 10:45, Ed Greshko <ed.greshko@greshko.com> wrote:
On 03/06/18 22:30, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   so there's probably more admittedly trivial questions coming, but
> only because i'm being forced to look more closely at things than i
> have in a long time.


OK.  Then I feel compelled to ask the following in the spirit of full-disclosure.

In answering these queries are we contributing information to your knowledge base
that will be incorporated into a course for which you'll be compensated?

Actually, the information could be incorporated into courses by people lurking on the
list or maybe finding the thread using google.  Good questions are in themselves 
useful contributions, so are welcome unless they appear to come from a homework 
assignment.
 
If simple questions can be answered with a simple google query then why are there so
many of them?

Maybe because people have learned that answers to google queries are often 
incorrect.   If there is disagreement over the answer, forums let you see the reasoning
behind different proposed answers.  Some of the discussions in this forum have 
been educational.   

In the interest of a full discussion, there is: 
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/192015/links-in-usr-bin-or-usr-local-bin-hard-or-symbolic

--
George N. White III