From: scott@nic.gac.edu (Scott Hess)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: SEF did it again
Date: 11 Apr 92 07:41:38 GMT
Organization: Gustavus Adolphus College

In article <1992Apr10.074920.7384@darkcube.radig.de> vhs@darkcube.radig.de (Volker Herminghaus-Shirai) writes:
>This is to inform you that our dear member SEF, who we all love so
>much, just behaved like an idiot again. He mailed me the two icons
>back I posted a few days ago. He added some blabla about how the
>message looked like and that tens of thousands of systems have to
>pay for that.

Do you think that he hasn't been doing it all along?  By now everyone
should _know_ that Sean Fagan will be replying to your RTF post.  If
you cannot handle his replies, then don't post RTF.  That's the
point, after all.

But, other than that, why do you call it "blabla"?  Because for those
of us who chose not to run NewsGrazer (for our various good
reasons), the message had very little content.  A couple lines of
meaningless (without the images) text, I recall.  And it _was_ paid
for by tens of thousands of systems.

It's not a matter of being to stupid to decode it.  It's more a matter
of already having enough stuff to do without having to
periodically decode people's posts.  For the most part, when I
receive RTF posts with _anything_ wrong with them (weird
formatting or large sections of blankness where a graphic was) I
just delete them.

>I knew very well what I was doing, that's why I put (RTF) in the header
>line, and placeholders in the ASCII text so non-RTF readers could
>still find out what the posting was about and decide whether they
>want to extract the pictures manually.
>
>If SEF is too stupid to uudecode, uncompress and untar a posting, he
>should shut off and not play net.police? Most other people on
>usenet are intelligent enough for this task.
>
>I think many other people (even those without NeXTs) enjoyed the
>pictures.

You totally missed his point.  The point was that most people simply
don't read RTF files, and don't really care.  Admittedly, your
files were not all that large.  But, if you say that maybe 10% of the
readers could get the graphics portion of the post without extra
work (that 10% is probably not pessimistic, either), then you have
already limited the number of users who have access to your post,
without even considering that you'll take another hit from users
who weren't interested in the first place.  Usually, you just lose
those who aren't interested :-).

>The inevitable flame wars SEF keeps causing usually outscale the
>size of the RTF postings.

I don't know how many people remember when RTF posting first came to
NewsGrazer, but in the week or two after we had a number of very,
_very_ large posts.  I know because I had to abort a couple sessions
where my machine attempted to download many megabytes of
information over a 2400 baud line calling long distance.  All for a
couple stupid color pictures.  I can tell you I enjoyed that.  I
already was paying high enough phone bills for just the basic fluff
on comp.sys.next* without having to also pay for someone else to
have loads of fun posting huge binaries.

Perhaps that activity would have squelched of it's own accord.  I
can help but think that having the specter of Sean Fagan in your
future doesn't help squelch things even more.

I'm not certain which flame wars you are referring to as being so
huge.  There simply haven't been any Sean Fagan RTF flame wars for
many months.  Also, remember that it takes two to make a flame war.  So
far there's you, and now there's me.  This will be my last post in the
thread, which just leaves you.

>I mailed SEF, too, but recently he did the most impolite thing
>possible during a discussion: He set an automatic mail bouncer so I
>couldn't reach him. I assume the bouncer is still in effect.

He reads the mail.  The bounced message basically indicates that
he's no longer interested in replying to your messages.  It's
self-preservation.  I periodically have to cut people off because
they are taking too much of my time in email conversations.  It
seldom happens - and it shows (because I never seem to have any time
:-).  Sean's just automated this.

The point?  Put sounds and images on an archive site and post a
pointer to the information.  The text in most netnews posting is
barely worth the "paper" it's printed on, and that "paper" has the
lovely property that when you put images on it, they are worth ten
thousand words.  Quite literally.  If the information isn't worth
your time to put on an archive, then it's not worth the rest of us
paying to get it.

Later,
--
scott hess <scott@gac.edu>   <A GUI is to a command-line as a TV is to a book>
12901 Upton Avenue South, #326  Burnsville, MN  55337  (612) 895-1208 Anytime!