[comp.unix.questions] First-line-only editing, part 3: Non-technical issues

brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) (10/25/90)

In article <600@inews.intel.com> bhoughto@cmdnfs.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
> In article <10201:Oct2404:23:3890@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> >> Okay.  Use perl.
> >Huh? *Nothing* is going to run more quickly than cat, and programs that
> >do any sort of processing are guaranteed to run more slowly. How about
> >timing these things for yourself?
> Bill Davidsen, who understood your command-list implicitly,
> did.

Yes, he understood what I was saying perfectly. But he mistyped it in
his tests.

> He showed that that little pipe and that little
> semicolon and that little invocation of a subshell make
> your script the loser.

Wrong! Perhaps if you had bothered to read what he wrote, you would have
seen his error.

> >Huh? If you believe this, fine. Drop comp.unix.questions from your
> >system. Someday read Hofstadter's writings on superrationality.
> I still believe it creates lost profit to go digging for
> optimizations when the current model is sufficient and
> market entry would be delayed by the research.

I agree, but wtf does that have to do with what you're supposedly
responding to?

You said that the information you gave was worth far more than the money
you got for it, if any. If you truly believe that, stop responding! Stop
carrying comp.unix.questions on your system: by your own words, it's a
waste of money!

> I wasn't telling the guy *not* to post.  I was merely
> pointing out that the gains he expected were offset by the
> costs of his posting.

I agree with your first-level analysis: news does cost money. But why
waste network bandwidth pointing that out? What was the point in your
article?

> >> The information I imparted is well worth far more than the
> >> money I received for it.
> >Huh? Not to flame,
> Hah!  Too late.

Naw. This article is a (light) flame. What supposed flames do you see in
my previous articles?

> >but I haven't seen a correct technical statement from
> >you in this discussion.
> Your perception is not at issue, here.

Oh? Fine, how 'bout an objective perception? In the first two articles
you posted in the thread, I saw no correct technical statements. I still
don't see them upon a careful reread. If you said something correct, how
about pointing out what it was?

I still don't see why you posted in the first place. Your technical
information was incorrect (which is not what I normally expect from you,
but everybody has bad days), your opinions were redundant given what the
poster had already said, and you think that you're losing money on the
group. Why continue?

> >You gave an opinion, namely that the poster should do what
> >he's been doing---but you could assume that he would do
> >exactly that without any responses at all.
> I gave my assessment that what he was doing was optimal,
> and encouraged him to continue.

Fine, I applaud your commitment to making people feel confident in
themselves. But proper network etiquette is to wait a few days, so that
people who have real *information* to post can do so. If those few days
had passed without a technical article, *then* you post your fuzzy warm
expressions of support. 

---Dan