Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu.edu!bu-cs!xylogics!world!bzs
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: How to delete a file with ^? chars in the name?
Message-ID: <1990Jan17.051508.2531@world.std.com>
Date: 17 Jan 90 05:15:08 GMT
References: <1221@kl-cs.UUCP> <8000004@hpopd.HP.COM> <1990Jan15.055728.25410@athena.mit.edu>
Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die
Lines: 43


From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
>  The number of unnecessary postings, many of them wrong, about "How to
>delete a file with ^? chars in the name?" is really, really getting
>irritating.  Can people just *stop* posting, please?  And if you *are*
>going to post about it, then post about the *real* question, which is
>how to deal with files that have the eighth bit set in characters in
>their names.

Although your heart's in the right place you're missing the point. I
would bet that most people who post dumb/repetitive questions are new
to the list so they won't see your pleas.

I used to like to stand up in front of a class on the first day of the
semester, look out at the audience confused and comment "didn't I
explain all this stuff *last* year? What's your problem?"

Probably some of these questions are unleashed between "frequently
asked questions" postings although on USENET these sorts of things are
supposed to be archived and somehow the new user nudged toward them. I
must admit that such helpful hints are getting so large as to be less
than helpful.

On my system I have well over 1,000 newsgroups, imagine if even 10%
had a few pages of "frequently asked questions" or equivalent, no one
would read it, hundreds of pages. It's bulky already with frequently
asked questions, emily_postnews, netiquette, group descriptions, etc.

Here's an evil idea:

Let's put a hook into the mail readers which ignores all postings on
unix-wizards which doesn't, oh I dunno, have a subject line ending
with a period, or exactly two blank lines at the beginning, something.

Then explain this requirement at the end of frequently asked questions...

heh heh...:-)

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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