Xref: utzoo news.admin:15200 news.software.b:8239 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wuarchive!uwm.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <1991Jun13.141409.9073@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 13 Jun 91 14:14:09 GMT References: <89HF414w164w@mantis.co.uk> <1991Jun12.180726.4461@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Jun13.073739.1131@ibmpcug.co.uk> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 40 In article <1991Jun13.073739.1131@ibmpcug.co.uk> dylan@ibmpcug.CO.UK (Matthew Farwell) writes: >In article <1991Jun12.180726.4461@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes: >> cd $NEWSCTL >> grep ' - <' log.o | \ >> grep -v 'duplicate$' | \ >> grep -v `cat whoami` | mail mathew@mantis.co.uk > >Two, more importantly, encouraging this kind of net.terrorism isn't very >nice, IMHO. We are on quite an expensive link to ukc, so not only will >this mean that we have to suffer, but quite a bit of uknet has to suffer >in a degradation of performance from ukc. > >Before you say this was a joke, I'd like to say that advocating this >sort of thing is not really a good idea, joke or not. I will admit that not all news readers recognize jokes when they see them. That, after all, is how this particular subject line started several centuries ago. But, consider: My "proposal", since it called for modification of news software, could only be implemented by news administrators at sites running Cnews with the latest patches. And even then, it would require some minimal level of technical skills in writing and modifying shell scripts to implement. One should be able to assume that those capable of implementing the "proposal" have a slightly higher intelligence and a slightly higher sense of responsibility than the average netnews reader, and although I have no doubt that there are some exceptions, it is highly unlikely that there are enough to cause significant net traffic. When I wrote that, I did hope it would make Mathew (no, not Matthew) think more seriously about the real implications of what he has been continuously demanding for an interminable length of time. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940