Xref: utzoo news.admin:14735 news.software.b:8022 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipdc From: aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk (Paul D. Crowley) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <10623@castle.ed.ac.uk> Date: 29 May 91 06:05:16 GMT References: <1991May27.212911.13922@kithrup.COM> <3752@ksr.com> Organization: Put your analyst on danger money, baby! Lines: 78 In article <3752@ksr.com> jfw@ksr.com (John F. Woods) writes: |mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!) writes: |>sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: |>>>Which is more valuable -- the "guarantee" that no old news will reappear, or |>>>the "guarantee" that people's postings will get out to the net? I'd say the |>>>latter. |>> |>>I'd say the former. |>Then you presumably have a rather strange idea of what the purpose of Usenet |>is. | |And you have (a) a rather quaint notion of just how "little" old news there |is, relative to the carrying capacity of poor, overworked little modems, and |(b) a curious notion of the overwhelming importance of 99 44/100 % of what |gets typed to USENET... I'm convinced you've all gone mad. I use MicroEMACS as an editor. If I try to exit without saving an altered file, it asks me if I really want to do that, and sometimes I don't. When I send mail, that mail is bounced back to me if I get the address wrong, and I get a chance to edit it and try again. When I type rm *, I get asked "Are you sure?" If I send news with an incorrect date header, it is silently dumped. No, I tell a lie, it is not silent at all. An error is written in the log file of the dumping site. "Didn't you see the notice?" "Yes, I did. It was at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavoratory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard!'. Ever thought of going into advertising?" --- Douglas Adams, "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy". I don't think there's anything wrong with the attitude "Unfortunately, it's impractical: a thousand sites could try to send errors all at once, and that wouldn't be good." If it's unavoidable behaviour, no problem. The trouble is, no-one wants to look for ways around it, because they feel it's _desirable_ behaviour, to "punish" the user for making a mistake. I can't see why news is an exception to the general rule that software is supposed to be _nice_ to the user, and not deliberately spiteful. Various people don't seem interested in discussing alternatives such as the "control" hack because they get a kick out of the idea of spiteful software -- so long as it doesn't happen to them. At the heart of it is this: |(b) a curious notion of the overwhelming importance of 99 44/100 % of what |gets typed to USENET... (b) isn't an argument for the dumping of random arguments. It's an argument for the abolition of Usenet. If you don't buy it, it's probably because you have some idea of how useful news can be. Look at comp.windows.x, comp.lang.c++, sci.virtual-worlds, and you see discussion which is actually forwarding the craft, and not just for the amusement of the participants. Junk articles every so often out of spite and that usefulness is impaired. Sure, the world would be a better place if software never had any bugs in it, if human users never made mistakes, if everyone understood and adhered to the same standards. Given that they don't, isn't it part of writing half-decent software taking into account the possibility that not everything and everyone you're taking data from is entirely without flaw? ____ \/ o\ Paul Crowley aipdc@castle.ed.ac.uk \ / /\__/ Part straight. Part gay. All queer. \/ "I say we kill him and eat his brain." "That's not the solution to _every_ problem, you know!" -- Rudy Rucker