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From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: the point of spell(1) isn't spelling
Message-ID: <354@opus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 01:48:57 EST
Article-I.D.: opus.354
Posted: Wed Jan 29 01:48:57 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Jan-86 23:57:21 EST
References: <1048@lsuc.UUCP> <1175@osu-eddie.UUCP>, <2645@amdahl.UUCP> <1541@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 42

On the suggestion to run news postings thru spell(1) and put the poster
back into his editor before accepting the posting:

> Before everyone else responds, too...  No, the point of this is NOT
> to correct spelling per se.  It is EXPRESSLY to make posting *more*
> cumbersome.  The correcting of misspellings is a side benefit.

If it's cumbersome you want, boy have I got some techniques!  (Thoughts of
postnews putting you into a shell that requires IBMish JCL for the command
before it will accept the posting...learning a little JCL is a side
benefit...)

I will not accept that software should be designed so that it is cumbersome
to use.  That's ridiculous, nay, silly.  (Common, perhaps, but silly none-
theless...)

>    The more time one spends on a posting, the fewer posts one sends
> to the net...

The same argument can be applied to most uses of a computer:  Make it hard
enough to use and people won't abuse it.  The argument fails, though:  (1)
If it's hard enough to use, it won't get used.  (2)  You reward
persistence, not valid use.  (3)  You waste resources (both human and
machine).

> It just makes it less easy to flood the net with trivial postings.

No, it makes it more wasteful of the local machine's time, because as soon
as you introduce a nuisance-only feature, someone's going to find a way
around it--such as a suitably clever shell script to take over the
submission while the reader/poster goes on with other news.  Even this only
lasts as long as it takes the SA to get annoyed.

I delayed this posting long enough to bounce up/out of the editor, make a
copy and feed it to the C compiler.  Then I went upstairs and got a glass
of wine...but I came back and posted it anyway.  So what?

Please don't try to protect me from myself.  It may not seem as if I know
what I'm doing, but I've got a better idea than anyone else does.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Worst-case analysis must never begin with "No one will ever want..."