RTFM

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there was this place that children went to called "school."

In school, the children were taught to read and write their native language, and sometimes one or two other languages! Not only were the children taught to read, but they were encouraged to read to find meaning... so when they read the stories, they learned from them. This knowledge helped the children to understand written instructions and recipes later on in life. It was wonderful!

Then the schools changed to a new curriculum. For some reason, someone thought that a "whole language" plan would be more useful for students to learn the language. Parents were expected to read to their kids at home, to help them learn to love reading. But parents frequently couldn't do the reading, because they both worked one or two jobs to support the household. Often, the parents were simply too lazy to read to their kids. Children didn't read for pleasure or instruction any more. If they didn't understand instructions, the teacher would repeat them over and over, until finally, in frustration, the teachers just did the work for the children.

TV and computers quickly became the instructors for children, entertaining them and doing their thinking for them. Why bother trying when the computer can give you the answers? Don't worry if the answer is wrong... or incomplete.

There is a moral to this story. Although there is a huge amount of fantastic information on the internet, literally at your fingertips, never assume the first thing you find is correct. Do not just ask for people to solve your problems for you because you can't be bothered to search for the answer yourself. When you find some solutions to your issues, follow the instructions step by step. That requires actually reading them through from beginning to end, then starting to follow them. More often than not, when someone yells "IT DOESN'T WORK!" they have skipped a step in the process, or followed just the first step of the process then assumed they knew where to go from there.

My daughter (who loves to read) could set up her own port-forwarded, whitelisted, bukkit server with plug-ins ON HER OWN, with the most minimal help from me. (That help was "hey Mom, what website do you recommend to find my external IP address?") Anyone who supposedly can read can do the same. She searched "HOW TO SET UP A MINECRAFT SERVER" and followed links to "HOW TO PORT FORWARD" and "HOW TO SET UP A STATIC IP ADDRESS." Wow. There were multiple webpages she had to go to, yet she managed all by herself.

My kid isn't a techie guru. She occassionally still yells "MY COMPUTER'S BROKEN!" when she's just done something dumb and it needs fixing. But she CAN read and she's willing to try things on her own.

... So what's the matter with all the people on this website who keep screaming "set up a server for me, tell me all the answers because I'm too bloody lazy to go looking for them myself, and god help me if I did because then I'd have to READ."

That is my rant for the day.