Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!mts.rpi.edu!Garance_Drosehn
From: Garance_Drosehn@mts.rpi.edu (Garance Drosehn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: proposal: comp.sys.mac.NeXT
Message-ID: <Q!%^|6^@rpi.edu>
Date: 9 Nov 90 04:24:34 GMT
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.
Lines: 44
References:<15460@slice.ooc.uva.nl> <1990Nov8.201931.16106@athena.mit.edu> <J4$^X0$@rpi.edu> <1990Nov9.000143.16647@cs.ucla.edu>

In article <1990Nov9.000143.16647@cs.ucla.edu> 
           lange@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Trent Lange) writes:
> As several people have said, a lot of people are learning about both Macs
> and the NeXTs in these discussions, with a lot of false impressions being
> corrected.  For many people, these are very valuable (and interesting)
> discussions.
> 
> But for those of you who *aren't* interested, all you have to do is
> learn how to use your KILL file, and you never have to be bothered
> by discussions about the NeXT or Amiga again.  A single "K" in rn
> would have zapped the whole "Another NeXT defector" subject line,
> for instance.

Some people aren't running Unix.  Just because we're in a newsgroup 
talking about Macs does not mean that we must be looking at it from a Unix 
system (as hard as it might be for you to believe, at least a few of the 
people who own Macs do not run Unix).  We're looking at it because we were 
under the silly impression that the newsgroup would be a place to learn 
how to use the Macs we own, and not a place to be pummelled with 
advertisements for a machine we do not own (and perhaps couldn't afford to 
buy if we wanted to).

The NeXT is a fine machine in many ways, no doubt.  That does not mean it 
has to be discussed in this newsgroup, any more than it needs to be 
discussed in alt.rec.music.  We first saw a stream of messages in here 
about Amigas, and now we're in the process of more than half the traffic 
in this newsgroup being "the correction of false impressions" of the NeXT 
box.  I suppose next week it will be Sun's turn, explaining why Sparc 
stations left all 680x0 machines in the dust, and the following week we'll 
have IBM to explain why the only *real* machine is a RS/6000.

Every one of them can fly the banner of "we're just innocently trying to 
help dispell some myths", or "we're only here to help you all", but the 
point is this newsgroup is for Macs.  It ain't for every box out there 
which wants to advertise to Mac users.  What point is the usenet heirarchy 
if we're all running into each others newsgroups to advertise the things 
that we happen to like about the areas we happen to be interested in?  
Sure, all the Unix gurus can just do their "k"s and skip it, but why carry 
on the charade of a heirarchy in the first place if no one intends to 
honor it?

Garance_Drosehn@mts.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY.  USA