Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 Fluke 1/4/84; site fluke.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!mgnetp!ihnp4!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!fluke!inc From: inc@fluke.UUCP (Gary Benson) Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: ALL RIGHT ALREADY!! Message-ID: <315@tpvax.fluke.UUCP> Date: Mon, 16-Jul-84 16:08:55 EDT Article-I.D.: tpvax.315 Posted: Mon Jul 16 16:08:55 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jul-84 02:39:12 EDT Distribution: net Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Everett, WA Lines: 89 SHEESH! What a bunch of grumpers, anyway!! I sent out my first flame a few weeks ago, just a timid little thing, hardly more than a spark of static, and I'm getting endless gripes, rather than the "Welcome Aboard" messages I thought I'd be getting. Well EXCUUUUUUSE ME!!! From the approximately 10,000 lines of responses I have recieved, I have concluded: Fact: "PATH" is not a universal unix command. I just happen to be one of the lucky three people in the whole world to have it. So sorry to Spaff on his cloud (whatever that means) and all you other poor sods who have to muddle through 3000 pages of nroff-formatted garbage to locate short paths. (Does net.admin know how pathetic the distribution and use of "PATH" is? Do they care?) Fact: The Usenet Directory that I mentioned as having regular distribution is incomplete and inaccurate. Well, have you filled out *your* updated listing yet? Fact: My bitch about the 8 lines of path infomation was totally misdirected, when I myself was using *5 FULL LINES* to give a CSO, identify my employer, my physical location, and enough path for anyone who wanted to trouble themsleves to find the shortest path between their machine and fluke. I have shortened that to 3 lines (see below), and hope that is better for the rest of the network, who apparently operate at 300 baud, and who need complete paths. It is really beyond me, though, how all these replies got here if it was *that* much trouble to locate me! Fact: At least the primary person I was flaming against (moriarty here at fluke) showed a bit of humor by signing his next article to net.jokes with what must be the world's longest signoff: Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc. {princeton,ulysses}!allegra -\ {decwrl,qubix}!sun -\ {akgua,gatech,harpo,purdue,uf-crgl}!sb1 -\ {cornell,decvax,ihnp4,sdcsvax,tektronix,utcsrgv}!uw-beaver -- !fluke!moriarty {hplabs,megatest,nbires}!lbl-csam -/ {microsoft,ssc-vax,telmatic,teltone,uw-vlsi} -/ ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA 11 lines, folks, ELEVEN!! Thats 480 *BYTES* !! Can you imagine sitting there at 300 baud and waiting a full 1.6 seconds for that to scroll onto your screen? (assuming optimal throughput, that is -- the people operating at 300 baud are probably using a Brand-X terminal that does a full handshake with error-checking and inserts a few wait states between each received character.) Fact: We were all new on the net once, and have all at one time or another requested information of the sort: -How do you find the shortest path somewhere? -How do you decode rotated jokes? -How do you reply to an article, send a followup, or start one up? -What does (nf) mean? -Who orphans responses, why do they do it, and how can I send them? -Is there really a newgroup called "net.????". What do they discuss? -Why does everybody pick on New Jersey? -How does a new user get started on the network, anyway? These and other like questions are perrenial, and is one of the things we must put up with in a growing network. After all, system administrators are far too busy installing line-eater bugs, 4.2bsd and such like to deal with getting someone going properly. As a result of having learned all things, I want to apologize to all the fine, polite people who who have courteously helped in my education. Now that I know the facts, you can bet your N-key rollover it won't happen again. I have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Gary Benson {ihnp4!uw-beaver}{sb1!allegra}{ssc-vax} John Fluke Mfg. Co. *- ALL INPUTS GLADLY MULTIPLEXED -* !fluke!inc Everett, WA, USA {decvax!microsof}{ucbvax!lbl-csam}{sun}