Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!philmtl!atha!lyndon
From: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: another nice one
Summary: what's it cost? let's find out!
Message-ID: <1240@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 15 Nov 89 20:58:21 GMT
References: <297@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu.edu> <1544@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <4441@solo8.cs.vu.nl> <20486@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <9@lotex.UUCP> <20515@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <20519@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <11576@smoke.BRL.MIL> <20540@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 41

In article <20540@unix.cis.pitt.edu> yahoo@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L Moore) writes:
>I can't believe that four lines causes any significant problems.  Does
>anyone know how much is paid to recieve my .sig? .000000001 cents?

Let's work it out. Assuming a connection between us and Edmonton (our
nearest feed) that costs 18 cents per minutes, and a 2400 baud link
, in the perfect case we move 240 characters per second. The cost
for one second of LD is .18 * (1/60) = .3 cents to move those three
lines (yes, I'm ignoring newlines, call setup overhead, etc.).

If there are 5000 sites in the same situation, the sum total cost
of moving those three lines around is 5000 * .3 = 1500 cents = $15.00
for every article you post. Most sites pay less to get news, but
some sites pay more -- *substantially* more. See Brian Reid's postings
for a (slightly) more accurate guess as to the actual number of usenet
sites.

>Also, I don't consider it useless garbage. It allows someone to easily
>identify me. That was its purpose and it seems to serve it pretty well.

Except that it contains no information that's already in the header.
The '@' characters serve no useful purpose, other than to make the
signature more visible. In my case, they just give me a headache. I
think this is what everyone else is really complaining about. There
is NOTHING visually appealing about a bunch of BRIGHT '@' characters
on a dark background (and vice versa).

I tend to judge people by the contents of what they write. If I want
to identify you (say, for a reply message) I'll do it by the headers.
Besides, I don't know if I would want to be identified as a
yahoo@ *anything* :-)

Change the '@' to ' ' or something that doesn't mangle everyones
optic nerve and the bitch rate will drop substantially. Or replace
them with an utterly useless saying (see below for example :-)

-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
  {alberta,decwrl,lsuc}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA

                  The Connector is the Notwork.