I'm a slob, and have had enough of it.

[Andy Leighton]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 23:48:50 +0000,
David Martin <[email protected]> wrote:
> half_pint wrote:
>> Most prople use OE,
>
> What proportion of posters to U.R.C have used OE this week?

But most posters hereabouts aren't prople.

Nor does the use of OE mandate top-posting.

--
Andy Leighton => [email protected]
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_

 

[half_pint]

I am using OE which prefers top posting, as does google, so that
covers 95% of posters

"David Martin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> half_pint wrote:
> > "Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news[email protected]...
> >
> >>On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 02:18:02 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
> >>wrote:
> >
> >
> > WEll if you read the tread from the top, as is normal,
> > you will have read the item which was being responsed to
> > lass than a few seconds ago, it your short term memmory is
> > shorter than a couple of seconds then you should see a doctor,
> > you may also have a sense of deja vu.
>
>
> I get it, you are not using a newsreader, you are using a forum, where
> all the messages are on the same page.
>
> Or you are reading them all in one go.
>
> Just for your information, many people do not use cyclingforums.com, or
> do not read all the messages at one sitting. They may also be
> participating in many threads, have messages appear in a different
> order, and be distracted by doing things in Real Life.
>
> It is normally intended that a message should be a self contained as
> possible, which includes quoting the relevant parts of the message to
> which one is replying to set the context.
>
> ..d
>
>

 

[half_pint]

Well I suggest you learn how to read a thread in OE, google or whatever.
It really is so much easier, and you will waste less time reading threads.


"James Hodson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:13:27 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >if your short term memmory is
> >shorter than a couple of seconds then you should see a doctor,
> >you may also have a sense of deja vu.
>
> Well, not quite as bad as a couple of seconds but my referral with a
> neurologist is set for Wednesday. Do you have anything in particular
> you think I ought to mention to him, half_pint?
>
> More seriously, my memory isn't too good for periods longer than a
> couple of days. Being able to read bottom-posted replies and more
> importantly snipped comments certainly helps me.
>
> James

 

[half_pint]

83.362%

"David Martin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> half_pint wrote:
> > Most prople use OE,
>
> What proportion of posters to U.R.C have used OE this week?
>
> You do *have* data to back up your claim, don't you?
>
> ..d
>
> >
> > PLOnk
> >
> > "Alistair Gunn" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> >
> >>half_pint twisted the electrons to say:
> >>
> >>>I disagree, I much prefer top posters it is much easier to read a
> >
> > thread.
> >
> >>No, you do it because you are :-
> >>[a] lazy - you claim not to need any indication of what previous
> >> message you are replying to, so why include any of it?
> >> using an ill-designed piece of client software, namely Outhouse
> >> Excess.
> >>
> >>So, all in all ...
> >> <plonk>
> >>--
> >>These opinions might not even be mine ...
> >>Let alone connected with my employer ...
> >
> >
> >

 

[half_pint]

You said 100 meters.

I beleive GPS is only accurate to within meters, yes it would differenceiate
the ends of a narrow boat but it is not precise.

"David Martin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> half_pint wrote:
> > Well I can remember that from yesterday.
> > I don't think GPS is actually that accurate, infact rather to
> > inaccurate for measureing 100m, I believe the margin of
> > error is several meters.
>
> If you hadn't snipped what I was replying to, then you would have seen
> that the distance is of the order of ten to twenty kilometers. As my
> in-laws found the GPS sensitive enough to tell them which end of their
> narrow boat they were on (always useful to know which end should be
> going forwards), I think it should give a reasonable approximation on
> 1000 times that distance.
>
> ..d
>
>
>
> >
> > "David Martin" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:BDE85446.5EBA%[email protected]...
> >
> >>It is quite an assumption to presume that the 100m markers are actually
at
> >>100m. Better to use a GPS to monitor the exact distance.
> >>
> >>(And if you want to see what I was replying to you only have to remember
> >
> > the
> >
> >>thread, or click on the previous button)
> >>
> >>..d
> >>
> >
> >
> >

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:55:36 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>Bottom posting is the hardest to read.

Except for all the other styles, to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:07:46 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>Wy dont you lok them up you lazy c**t?

Aside from your atrocious spelling (although with the presumably
unintentional comic by-product of inviting the rejoinder that it is
evidently you who should be locked up in this case), I think you will
find that the regulars in urc, as well as preferring interleaved
posting, tend not use that particular word, as it is known to be
thought especially offensive by many women.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:13:27 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>WEll if you read the tread from the top, as is normal,
>you will have read the item which was being responsed to
>lass than a few seconds ago, it your short term memmory is
>shorter than a couple of seconds then you should see a doctor,
>you may also have a sense of deja vu.

You display a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Usenet.
It is not IRC, it is not real-time, and it is not uncommon to go days
between post and reply. It is also common to search the archives
years later for specific references.

You also display a fundamental ignorance of the way many (probably
most) Usenet users approach a thread. Those who use a newsreader will
normally read unread posts, not follow the entire thread each time,
and Google users will tend to see the newest replies. That's why we
have quoted text in the first place, after all.

Anyone would think you had mistaken uk.rec.cycling for one of the web
forums which use it as a feed...

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:59:29 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>I am using OE which prefers top posting

The old "forty billion flies" argument. Remember, OE was designed by
a company whose desire is always to take open standards, usurp them
and make them proprietary.

This particular non-standard behaviour of Outhouse can be fixed
relatively simply using OE-Quotefix

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/

>as does google, so that covers 95% of posters

In this group? I think not. The majority here do not top-post, after
all.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:01:48 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>Well I suggest you learn how to read a thread in OE, google or whatever.
>It really is so much easier, and you will waste less time reading threads.

There is no need for James to do this as the vast majority of urc
posters have the basic courtesy to post in a style which the group
finds preferable. I can think of one lone exception at the moment...

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Tony W]

"half_pint" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Bottom posting is the hardest to read.

How?

 

[Alistair Gunn]

David Martin twisted the electrons to say:
> half_pint wrote:
>> Most prople use OE,
> What proportion of posters to U.R.C have used OE this week?
> You do *have* data to back up your claim, don't you?

Dunno about u.k.c, but in the last set of statistics for uk.railway I
could find it was the case that OE was the most popular newsreader[1],
however with only ~38% of posts coming from users of OE it would be
something on an exaggeration to claim "Most prople use OE" ...

[1] Obviously in terms of posting, possibly more common than the figures
would imply if we could somehow account for the lurkers!
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 22:38:07 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>However you are still wrong,

....in the opinion of the only one marching in step...

>if you cant find the previous message,
>all you have to do is to look below this message.

But that only works when you are making a single monolithic reply to a
post, not a line-by-line argument.

And it only works at all if everyone else top-posts as well. When you
are the lone offender (not quite: John Shackford also top-posts, for
example), what actually happens is you take a model which is familiar
and functional, and gratuitously break it .

>However that won't work in this case becasuse some idiot decided to place
>his responsse at the end of the file.

As most "idiots" will on this ng, that being the de facto standard
here.

>So it takes longer to scroll down *And* it involves more work for the
>computer, slowing other applications.

On the other hand, as has been pointed out, untrimmed quoting is even
more wasteful of resources. Hence the Usenet model, developed over
decades by people for whom efficiency was by way of being a religion,
of trimmed interleaved posting.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:28:13 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>It should be possible to unravel a post and have it arranged or
>formatted as you like, as either top or bottom posted.
>I could probably do this with a simple UNIX scriipt which
>I could write in a few minutes (a basic one anyway).
>Far harder to do in windows.

Note that no Unix newsreaders, and only one Windows one I know of,
default to the non-standard top-posting format.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Just zis Guy, you know?]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 14:02:26 -0000, "half_pint" <[email protected]>
wrote in message <[email protected]>:

>83.362%

83.362% what? Oh, I see, you were replying to a detailed question in
another post. Now I'll have to work out which question it was....

>> What proportion of posters to U.R.C have used OE this week?

OK, I found that in among the mess of untrimmed quoting your shoddy
excuse for a newsreader encouraged you to crapflood us with, so let's
see how accurate that made-up stat is.

Not being blessed with a Unix system (unlike a significant number of
regulars here) I had to hack around a bit to get the data, and the
December figures are still processing but the figures for November by
number of postings is Outlook 23%, Agent 19%, Unix/Linux specific
clients 17%, Google 7%, Mac specific clients 3%.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

 

[Carol Hague]

Donny <[email protected]> wrote:

> Paul Rudin wrote:
> > Donny <[email protected]> writes:
> >
> >>Can you do "1200 square meters in acres" in your head?
> >
> > Well - a hectare is about 2.47 acres and there are 10,000 m^2 in a
> > hectare so it's about 0.3 acres I suppose.
>
> Not bad
>
> How about "583 meters in cubits"?

What's that in furlongs per fortnight?
--
Carol
"Mmmmooooowooooff!" - the Moobark, "The Treacle People"

 

[Mike Causer]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:25:39 +0000, Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

> Not being blessed with a Unix system (unlike a significant number of
> regulars here)

Easily solved! I have many magazine cover CDs and DVDs with full Linux
distros on them. Send me a snail-address and the very latest (Fedora 3)
will be yours. If you want to take the performance penalty and run
purely from CD with no writing to your disk, there's a good choice of
those too.

Or, if nostalgia is your thing, and you have the appropriate hardware,
Stored Safely Somewhere (TM) (in the garage I think) I have QIC-11 tapes
labelled "SunOs 1.0 Copyright 1983".


Mike

 

[Tony Raven]

Mike Causer wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:25:39 +0000, Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
>
>
>>Not being blessed with a Unix system (unlike a significant number of
>>regulars here)
>
>
> Easily solved! I have many magazine cover CDs and DVDs with full Linux
> distros on them. Send me a snail-address and the very latest (Fedora 3)
> will be yours. If you want to take the performance penalty and run
> purely from CD with no writing to your disk, there's a good choice of
> those too.
>

Tried that and finally gave up. Tried Knoppix, Mandrake and Linspire
Laptop on my laptops. On the Toshiba they all gave an unreadable screen
so I couldn't get any further as I couldn't read the screen. On my Sony
Vaio the screen's fine but it didn't seem to find the inbuilt wireless
card. I could not work out how to do the Linux equivalent of "add new
hardware" to get it working. All the stuff I read involved going in and
editing bits and pieces of code and required a level of research and
understanding I did not have time to get. So I'm back with Windows
which while maybe flawed, doesn't require a course in computer science
to get it working.

Tony

 

[Mike Causer]

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 21:38:39 +0000, Tony Raven wrote:

> Mike Causer wrote:
>> On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 20:25:39 +0000, Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Not being blessed with a Unix system (unlike a significant number of
>>>regulars here)
>>
>>
>> Easily solved! I have many magazine cover CDs and DVDs with full Linux
>> distros on them. Send me a snail-address and the very latest (Fedora 3)
>> will be yours. If you want to take the performance penalty and run
>> purely from CD with no writing to your disk, there's a good choice of
>> those too.
>>
>>
> Tried that and finally gave up. Tried Knoppix, Mandrake and Linspire
> Laptop on my laptops. [....] So I'm back with Windows which while maybe
> flawed, doesn't require a course in computer science to get it working.

Lapdogs are a special case; the manufacturers modify even the Windoze
hardware drivers to get them to operate, so that trying to install
Windows from Microsoft's own CDs won't work. You must install everything
that drives hardware from the lapdog creator's own CDs. No course in
computer science (ain't science, it's still magic and requires sacrifice
of chickens & goats) will fix the proprietary hardware / proprietary
software problem.

Having said that, the IBM T-series mostly work with Linux, and I have come
across other manufacturers that worked OK-ish provided a proper modem card
was installed, but even then sound was always a b*gger. Toshes are tosh,
and always have been. (Although their phone switches are better IME.)


Mike

 

[Tony Raven]

Mike Causer wrote:
>
> Lapdogs are a special case; the manufacturers modify even the Windoze
> hardware drivers to get them to operate, so that trying to install
> Windows from Microsoft's own CDs won't work. You must install everything
> that drives hardware from the lapdog creator's own CDs. No course in
> computer science (ain't science, it's still magic and requires sacrifice
> of chickens & goats) will fix the proprietary hardware / proprietary
> software problem.
>

Well that wipes out 35% of the PC market. I run Microsoft Windows on
laptops just fine - the generic drivers work most of the time and its
pretty easy to add the drivers for any proprietary stuff from the
manufacturer's CDs or website. Maybe its inexperience but I was no
closer doing that with just one driver after a day on Linux than I was
at the start.

Tony