1997 album by Champaign's DIY geek heroes Poster Children, considered by many casual fans to be the peak of their career. RTFM carries us from a raw and powerful opening track through a kaleidoscope of aspects of geek and loser culture, ending in bitter acceptance of the state of the world.

As with many of the Kids' albums, there is enhanced material that the Kids themselves have programmed. Unfortunately I can't install the content anymore, but I seem to remember (with the help of some directory exploration) that it's mainly a production diary complete with studio movies and audio clips, some BMP files, and a couple of videos (a strange medley starting with Junior Citizen was the only one I could find, but I seem to remember there being more).

Personnel:

Track List:

  1. Black Dog
  2. O For 1
  3. Music Of America
  4. Dream Small
  5. Speed Of Light
  6. King Of The Hill
  7. 21st Century
  8. Attack!
  9. Sleep
  10. Pearly Gates
  11. Afterglow
  12. Happens Everyday

When instructed to Read the Fine Manual, a user is not always directed at the manual. Rather, the first test in RTFM'ing is Finding the Fucking Manual. For most Unix commands, this is easy - simply type man command at your prompt, and pray that you get the right man page. However, communities also have manuals.

If you're on Usenet, you'll find the canonical source of manuals on rtfm.mit.edu, a SIPB-sponsored service at MIT.

Most web communities have their own manuals, which should be located off of their front page.

RTFB = R = RTFS

RTFM /R-T-F-M/ imp.

[Unix] Abbreviation for `Read The Fucking Manual'. 1. Used by gurus to brush off questions they consider trivial or annoying. Compare Don't do that then!. 2. Used when reporting a problem to indicate that you aren't just asking out of randomness. "No, I can't figure out how to interface Unix to my toaster, and yes, I have RTFM." Unlike sense 1, this use is considered polite. See also FM, RTFAQ, RTFB, RTFS, STFW, RTM, all of which mutated from RTFM, and compare UTSL.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

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