OT: The sig flame war starts here (was Re: [Gllug] Microsoft 'tnef' files)

Simon Stewart sms at lateral.net
Wed Jul 10 11:54:53 UTC 2002


On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 12:11:37PM +0100, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> On Wed 10 Jul, Simon Stewart made the following spurious claims:
> 
> > sig itself should be no longer than 4 lines long, each at most 72
> > characters wide.
> 
> Yes and these ideas were invented back when we sucked our Internet
> bandwidth through long straws across the Atlantic (Pacific where I
> was).  At the time all of Australia was serviced by a 64k satellite
> connection to the University of Hawaii (and we STILL played MUDs).  It
> made sense at the time.  These days my toaster has more bandwidth.

So that's a compelling argument for having more sig than message?
There are a lot of people who view short sigs as a part of basic
netiquette, and many of these people are on technical mailing
lists. Why not follow this netiquette when posting to one of these?
Waving the chicken of "bandwidth is cheap" at me is nothing short of a
red herring. And a non-sequiter.

> If you want to complain about the length (of some) of my sigs, you'll
> also have to complain about the people who add weird, completely
> unneccessary headers to all their emails on this list.

Most mail readers don't display all the headers. Most mail readers
_do_ display all the message.

> > You mentioned Hitler! Deliberately, I warrant, so the thread may
> > continue. :)
> 
> I thought Hitler meant "end of thread".

Also, on the one hand ignoring usenet traditions, and on the other
relying on it is a somewhat foolish way to win an argument.

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/Godwin's-Law.html

Cheers,

Simon

-- 
Handy phrase: "Why did you do that?"


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