tmanos@aocgl.UUCP (Theodore W. Manos) (03/18/88)
[ The following text was originally written by me as directly to Rich Salz,
in response to a note he sent me. After a fair amount of further discussion
between us, we felt that it might be worth posting to the net. So here it
is...in full un-edited form. Ted ]
Hello Rich. After my blood pressure returned to normal (only took a few
seconds though :-) ), I sat there and said to myself, "What is he REALLY
trying to say to me?" After having been on the nets for a few months, and
not recalling you being in the habit of flaming people arbitrarily, I felt
that I owed it to BOTH of us to think about it. Yes, I agree that on a one
or two line article, the .sig IS a bit overwhelming, but I see that type of
thing all the time. Besides, I don't have a choice of .sigs, just one or none.
Is it the monetary aspect that he's refering to? Yes, it may take a whole
additional second to send my sig (assuming that both UUNET and Tymnet are
functioning the way they SHOULD be! :-) ). At that rate, I might spend an
additional WHOLE DOLLAR a month. Jeeze, he's joking, right? I spent $325, and
spend another $30+ a month for UULINK and access to UUNET, just because I want
to. I'm gonna worry about $1 a month??? Get serious! What the hell DOES he
WANT? I already chopped 5 or 6 lines out of my .sig after his last letter, and
I wouldn't have even thought about it if it had come from many other people.
Does he just not like me or my sig?
Then it hit, or at least I THINK it did. Hell, it's not MY money that he's
worried about, but everybody else's money. I tend to get a bit pissed off
when I see an article that I consider to be bullshit running around the net. I
don't care from a personal standpoint. $10, $20, $50 a month isn't going to
mean much to me one way or the other. But when it starts propagating around
the whole bloody net, as full as the bandwidth has become, it starts to have
an impact! Well hell, that's not REALLY any different than my sending a hundred
or two extra characters all over the damn net in my sig, is it? He's not
telling me to save MY money, he's TRYING to tell me to save EVERYBODY ELSES! I
have no REAL need for such a signature, it's just that VANITY got the better
part of me when I created it, coupled with what has APPEARED to become the NORM
on the net, instead of the occasional RUDE exception. And it IS rude, isn't
it? Subjecting those thousands of people to the excesses caused by MY vanity.
Spending THOUSANDS of dollars a month of OTHER people's money for my own self-
aggrandizement!!!
Do *I* really NEED to tell people, in the .sig on an article, who I work for?
What my U.S. Mail address is? What my phone numbers are? What my user ids on
other non-net systems are? What I consider to be a profound statement or
thought? Do I even really need a disclaimer? No! Most people really couldn't
give a sh*t! And for those that do, well, all they have to do is send me a
note and ask me. Isn't the disclaimer necessary? Now that I think about it,
no. Almost everye "official" USENET document you read states that the
views expressed by people on the net are THEIR views, and not the views of the
net, or of the company they work for. Besides, ANY idiot SHOULD know that.
So, in the interest of, and out of respect for, OTHER people on the net, I
submit for your comment my NEW .signature:
Ted Manos tmanos@aocgl.{UUCP,uunet.UU.NET} or ...!{uunet,mcdchg}!aocgl!tmanos
I hope you like it. I think it says everything that REALLY needs to be said.
Ted
Ted Manos tmanos@aocgl.{UUCP,UU.NET} or ...!{uunet,mcdchg}!aocgl!tmanos