10 Jan
2012
10 Jan
'12
10:34 p.m.
WOW!
I am going to top-post here!
Just because I feel a need to show the exact messages.
I use Outhouse for work stuff, because they DEMAND that, and because of
the crap that I receive. For example, one of our top administrators will
create a one paragraph short document (changing the locaation of a
meeting) using Weird, then print it (on a color printer - it has a single
RED horizontal rule, the college logo, and his signature in blue ink),
then SCAN it, then ATTACH the uncompressed IMAGE scan as a PDF file to an
email whose subject is "FYI", and whose content is "Read this."
Otherwise, it would be VERY difficult to include a horizontal rule that is
NOT QUITE horizontal!
Another administrator sent an 8MB XMAS card to 2000 people in the college
email system.
From another missive on the same day:
"The
state mandate for "Information Competency" doesn't apply to us,
because all of our staff already use the latest version of Microsoft
Office, and are fully Information Competent."
Alas, the campus that I am currently at doesn't have a bell tower.
I also forward Harbor Freight flyers, etc. to that account, in order to be
able to read them using Outhouse.
BUT, for all of MY email (not related to work), I use PINE on a shell
account at my ISP! I haven't changed that in about 20 years.
I often get told that I am "out of touch [with reality]", "out of
date",
etc. and that I REALLY should "get current" . I have to admit that that
is all true.
BUT, . . .
Now I find "modern" clients that reformat the message, including changing
line breaks, altering punctuation (just chevrons in this case), but
nevertheless ALTERING/CORRUPTING the content (which in THIS case was
explicitly using formatting examples!)
And "modern" clients that HIDE the content of the message from the user!
I really need to apologize to the entire list. I had always ascribed lack
of trimming to simple human laziness - we just don't bother, because it
"isn't important". But, we really need to defenestrate the authors of the
"modern" email clients - what they are doing to their own users is
criminal. Gmail has misrepresented Liam (below) as being uncooperatively
snarky (which I may have deserved), when it is actually their software
that is the true miscreant.
BTW, other than his email client not trimming, I've yet to see anything he
has posted that I didn't enjoy.
After examples like these, I may NEVER "update"! I hope that there are
enough other neo-luddites that my ISP (LMI.NET) keeps offering shell
accounts!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
On Tue, 10 Jan 2012, J.G.Harston wrote:
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jan 2012, Liam Proven wrote:
It has had so many chevrons (a name for the
'>' "greater than"
character) prepended that relatively short lines have wrapped.
Even better, my mail client shows quoted sections with coloured lines
on each side of the text, so I get a pretty effect:
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
||----------------------------------------------------------------||
||| I consider BASIC to be an excellent beginner's introduction ||
|||| to "what is a program?", etc., so long as they are exposed |||
|||| exposed to other languages immediately after grasping the |||
||| basic principles. ||
||----------------------------------------------------------------||
|------------------------------------------------------------------|
JGH On Jan 9, 2012 8:33 PM, "Fred Cisin"
<cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
Fair point. I am using Gmail, which collapses & hides quoted text I have
read before. Also, often, I am writing on my phone, which makes block
deletions very hard work. But I must remember that others may not be.
> >>>>>>>>>> I consider BASIC to be an excellent
beginner's introduction
to
>>>>>>>>>> "what
>>>>>>>>>> is a program?", etc., so long as they are
exposed to other
>>>>>>>>>> languages
>>>>>>>>>> immediately after grasping the basic principles.
You might agree with the above;
you might disagree with the above.
(You already know where I stand)
BUT, it is surely NOT so brilliant as to warrant
being quoted by the next TEN respondents.
It has had so many chevrons (a name for the '>'
"greater than" character) prepended that relatively
short lines have wrapped.
(Since people might not trim even THIS, I'm using
shorter lines)
It's nice to have a little bit of context V
"WHO are youagreeing/disagreeing with?".
But, do we really NEED the entire transcript
of the thread repeated every time?
Howzbout: delete what's unnecessary of
what the person you are replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to
quoted of what the person they were replying to.
On [impersonal] your most recent post,
how many lines of unnecessary crap did
[impersonal] YOU delete?
If you want to reply or flame THIS, select a line or two
that best summarizes what you feel needs to be answered.
There are immense chevrons made of chevrons,
as people add their input, but never delete
ANY of the previous crap.
But, it is heartening that due to the prevalence of bottom and
interlinear posting here, at least some of those chevrons are
asymmetrical. (The MOST annoyingly over-quoted stuff is near
the beginning)
There has been an immense amount of VERY useful and important
information buried in the 33K (out of 34K) of extraneous crap