Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Re: OT: Safe Riddles

E

Ed Murphy

Jan 1, 1970
0
You need to justify bottom posting with something. If all other things are
equal, and top posting is more convenient, then it is necessarily more
appropriate.

This is a straw man. The method I'm advocating is neither top nor
bottom posting, but interleaved posting.

I admit to sometimes being lazy and bottom posting. Pretty much the
only time I top post, though, is in business communications - the other
parties routinely top post, and diplomacy requires that I hold my nose
and follow their convention.
it is easier to trim quoted material with top posting over that of bottom
posting. That's another advantage it has. With top posting, it get's
muddied trying to look through the attributions so that there is only a
certain depth of quoted material. With top posting, the attribution is
directly above the material quoted from that message, so it's very easy to
trim.

This is true of both top and bottom posting, but doesn't really excuse
the need to scroll back and forth between original text and the quoted
material to which it refers. If you really need to refer to this many
levels of quoted material, then you should consider the fourth option
of trimming *all* the quoted material, replacing it with your own brief
paraphrases, then referring to those. (None of the options are clearly
ideal at this point; it's a judgment call on the author's part.)
It is only appropriate because most posters (myself included) are lazy,
and prefer interleaving to creating multiple posts in response.

This implicitly assumes that multiple posts *would* be better than a
single interleaved post. I question that assumption.
 
R

Rhyanon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Surely you didn't think I was that inexperienced?
Hehehehehe.........
--
"Don't worry, us witches will always be alright, dear. Remember, we happen
to other people..."

~Nanny Ogg~
--

"Locals call it Bear Mountain. This is because it was a _bare_ mountain, not
that it had a lot of bears on it. It was about as bare as a mountain could
be. Most trees gave out halfway to the top, only a few pines hanging on to
give an effect like that of a couple of pathetic strands teased across his
scalp by a baldie who won't own up. It was a place where Witches met. A fire
gleamed on the very crest of the hill. Dark figures moved in the flickering
light, as the moon coasted across a lacework of clouds. Finally, a tall,
pointy hatted figure said, "You mean _everyone_ brought potato salad?"
 
R

Rhyanon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Aunty Kreist said:
Then why is it everytime you participate in a long thread, one has to wade
thru five or six posts and responses in order to find your two sentences?
Snippy, snippy, my little bippy.

He never said he *would* do it, he was just giving reasons why one
could......
 
R

Rhyanon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Parse Tree said:
L
e
t
'
s
p
o
s
t
s
i
d
e
w
a
y
s
i
n
t
h
e
m
i
d
d
l
e
!
!
!

Because everybody's bottom posting! Anyway, aren't you one of those
folks that interleaves and leaves quoted material beneath your last
response? Pfft!
 
R

Rhyanon

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bah! Too much effort. If someone doesn't know what's going on or being said
in a thread, they should **** off.
 
C

Clarence_A

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rhyanon said:
Bah! Too much effort. If someone doesn't know what's going on or being said
in a thread, they should "Rhyanon" off.

Generally I just delete top posters, "no intelligence there!"
 
B

Boris Mohar

Jan 1, 1970
0
I met an engineer at the SFO Hilton bar (when it was still there) who met
the gang. Yep, Alice looked like Alice, and Wally... The PHB had been
transferred to remain anonymous, but according to him still worked at PB.

...Catbert reminds me too much of some senior management some years back.
*scarry* stuff.

I met Wally everywhere I worked. He even looked like Wally.



Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see:
Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs (among other things) http://www.viatrack.ca
 
A

Aunty Kreist

Jan 1, 1970
0
Parse Tree said:
Because everybody's bottom posting! Anyway, aren't you one of those
folks that interleaves and leaves quoted material beneath your last
response? Pfft!


Sometimes. :)
 
C

Charlie Gibbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
You need to justify bottom posting with something. If all other things
are equal, and top posting is more convenient, then it is necessarily
more appropriate.

More convenient for whom? The original poster, who is too lazy to
scroll to the bottom of the quoted material because his newsreader
is too broken to put the cursor there by default? Or the thousands
of potential readers, each of whom must scroll back and forth to
make sense of a thread which is effectively written umop-apisdn?

That answers my question. Thanks.

Especially when the reply is a single "me too" line. If all you're
going to do is express agreement, liberal snipping (or even a one-line
summary of the quoted text) is quite enough for you to follow up to.

And note that phrase "follow up". That implies that your reply should
follow the quoted text, not precede it. Unless you normally read the
last chapter of a book, then the previous one, until you reach the
start.
it is easier to trim quoted material with top posting over that of
bottom posting. That's another advantage it has.

Only if, as I mentioned above, your newsreader is broken.
(Microsoft products fit the description "broken as designed".)
With top posting, it get's muddied trying to look through the
attributions so that there is only a certain depth of quoted
material. With top posting, the attribution is directly above
the material quoted from that message, so it's very easy to trim.

So interleave your attributions. Or trim things so that there
aren't so many levels of quoted material. There's seldom any
reason to quote more than three or four levels deep. Again,
it all comes back to laziness on the part of the poster, whose
minuscule time saving is consumed many times over by readers of
his message, each of which has to go through various gyrations
to sort out the sequence of the various quotes.
It is only appropriate because most posters (myself included) are
lazy, and prefer interleaving to creating multiple posts in response.

Multiple posts aren't necessary. You just address each point in turn.
The flow of the thread is left undisturbed.

I take my philosophy from the same Lewis Carroll passage I used to
use as a rebuttal to the Structured Programming zealots who wanted
to chop programs up into little subroutines jumping all over core:

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin,
please your Majesty?" he asked.

"Begin at the beginning, the King said, gravely, "and go on
till you come to the end: then stop."

That sounds like a heck of a good way to write something;
it's certainly the natural way to read it.
 
E

Ed Murphy

Jan 1, 1970
0
I take my philosophy from the same Lewis Carroll passage I used to use as
a rebuttal to the Structured Programming zealots who wanted to chop
programs up into little subroutines jumping all over core:

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin, please
your Majesty?" he asked.

"Begin at the beginning, the King said, gravely, "and go on till you
come to the end: then stop."

That sounds like a heck of a good way to write something; it's certainly
the natural way to read it.

While zealots tend to run afoul of the "X is good, therefore more of X
is better" fallacy, *some* amount of chopping programs up into little
subroutines is appropriate:

1) When a routine is used in more than one place, there should be only
one copy of it, and calls to it from each place.

2) Sometimes, you only need/want the Big Picture view, and sane use of
subroutines gives you that view. Here's some sample pseudocode that
closely approximates one of my current projects.

main:
for each client
gosub calculate_setup_fee
gosub calculate_monthly_fee
gosub calculate_hold_fee
next
return

! Stop here for a minute, and think about the above section. Does
! it give you a decent Big Picture view of what this program does?

calculate_setup_fee:
if not(calculate_setup_fees) then return
! some logic omitted for brevity
gosub write_transaction
return

calculate_monthly_fee:
if not(calculate_monthly_fees) then return
! some logic omitted for brevity
gosub write_transaction
return

calculate_monthly_fee:
if not(calculate_monthly_fees) then return
! some logic omitted for brevity
gosub write_transaction
return

write_transaction:
! some logic omitted for brevity
return
 
P

Parse Tree

Jan 1, 1970
0
Agreed. That's why there are other posts to begin with.

Quotes are a reminder, not a history lesson.
 
P

Phoenix

Jan 1, 1970
0
/\\|//\
/ o ^ o\
~oO=====Oo~.... Hahahaaaarrrr..It is I!.. syntetic cluepons?
 
C

Charlie Gibbs

Jan 1, 1970
0
While zealots tend to run afoul of the "X is good, therefore more of X
is better" fallacy, *some* amount of chopping programs up into little
subroutines is appropriate:

I figured someone would take that bait. :)
1) When a routine is used in more than one place, there should be only
one copy of it, and calls to it from each place.

2) Sometimes, you only need/want the Big Picture view, and sane use
of subroutines gives you that view. Here's some sample pseudocode
that closely approximates one of my current projects.

<code example snipped>

Good points. I was referring, of course, to those fanatics who
regard the number of subroutines as some sort of figure of merit,
and who wind up writing dozens of two-line subroutines which brought
early virtual memory systems to their knees by inducing so many page
faults that they thrashed themselves to death. Although they prided
themselves on eliminating all GOTOs, the result was hardly any better.

Since a subroutine call is nothing more than a GOTO paired with a
"come from", a True Believer can still write spaghetti code; he's
just running double strands, and can have a mess that's nearly as
tangled as the undisciplined use of GOTOs would give.

I decided that the trick was to minimize the number of labels; not
only does that take care of the GOTO problem, it also encourages
good block-structured code.
 
P

Parse Tree

Jan 1, 1970
0
Charlie said:
More convenient for whom? The original poster, who is too lazy to
scroll to the bottom of the quoted material because his newsreader
is too broken to put the cursor there by default?

I agree that it is more convenient for the original poster.

If the cursor is put there by default, then why bother having the quoted
material above in the first place?
Or the thousands
of potential readers,

The participants are the first concern. Then the actual readers and then
the potential readers.

Regardless, people wanting to read a thread would read the thread, not a
single post. The quoted material is there just in case.
each of whom must scroll back and forth to
make sense of a thread which is effectively written umop-apisdn?

No. In the majority of cases you'd just have to scroll up. In the few
cases when there is more than a page of info from a single respondant
then you'd have to scroll down and then up. Fortunately, that rarely
happens, and is a good signal that people should be snipping.
That answers my question. Thanks.

You're welcome.
Especially when the reply is a single "me too" line. If all you're
going to do is express agreement, liberal snipping (or even a one-line
summary of the quoted text) is quite enough for you to follow up to.

Lack of snipping is a problem with both top and bottom posting. However,
bottom posting makes it easier to snip, because you can snip everything
that is exactly a certain post count back by simply deleting everything
that apppears after a certain point. Bottom post snipping is slightly
more tedious.
And note that phrase "follow up". That implies that your reply should
follow the quoted text, not precede it.

No. The use of the word follow is in reference to it following it time,
not coming after it in space.

It is a follow up because it is a response that happens after the
initial post, not because it is spatially located lower on a page or
whatnot.
Unless you normally read the
last chapter of a book, then the previous one, until you reach the
start.

Carrying the book analogy further, then everyone would have to read the
quoted material because you shouldn't really be reading the middle of
the novel without reading the chapters before it.

This is clearly a false analogy. You are not reading the thread. You are
not reading the quoted material unless you forgot what has been
previously posted.
Only if, as I mentioned above, your newsreader is broken.
(Microsoft products fit the description "broken as designed".)

No, it's easier to trim regardless. With top posting it is arranged as
such. I'll use } as the quoted character, because I don't want to mess
up people reading it with the >'s and whatnot.

John:
} Jill:
} } Betty:
} } } John:
} } } } Betty:
} } } } } I am a bitch.
} } } } This is some stuff.
} } } Here is some more stuff.
} } Etc.
} Post!

And here is my response. Now to trim the responses that happened over
two messages ago, you have to go into the main body and match the
indenting and whatnot. This is especially problematic when people have
newsreaders that break the quoting (either by a crappy newsreader,
crappy settings or whatever).

Now with top posting.

John:
} Post!
} Jill:
} } Etc.
} } Betty:
} } } Here is some more stuff.
} } } John:
} } } } This is some stuff.
} } } } Betty:
} } } } } I am a bitch.

You just have to go to Betty and trim everything that happens after her.
It doesn't matter if someone has their reader to respond with very short
lines because it will still be quite clear who said what.
So interleave your attributions.

Is there a reader that actually does that automatically?
Or trim things so that there
aren't so many levels of quoted material.

Why exert yourself when top posting solves these problems more easily?
There's seldom any
reason to quote more than three or four levels deep. Again,
it all comes back to laziness on the part of the poster,

The poster is always going to be lazy. You can go right ahead on that.
Personally, I think it's far easier to get them to do something that
requires even less effort than they're currently exerting.
whose
minuscule time saving is consumed many times over by readers of
his message, each of which has to go through various gyrations
to sort out the sequence of the various quotes.

So if you read a paragraph somewhere on a page, you have a great deal of
difficulty moving your eyes upward to read the paragraph above it?
Reading the quoted material in a top posted manner is not difficult or
time consuming.
Multiple posts aren't necessary. You just address each point in turn.
The flow of the thread is left undisturbed.

The thread is never disturbed because we're talking about a single
message within the thread, and not the thread itself.

However, addressing each point in turn leads to a lot of redundancy and
whatnot.
I take my philosophy from the same Lewis Carroll passage I used to
use as a rebuttal to the Structured Programming zealots who wanted
to chop programs up into little subroutines jumping all over core:

The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin,
please your Majesty?" he asked.

"Begin at the beginning, the King said, gravely, "and go on
till you come to the end: then stop."

That sounds like a heck of a good way to write something;
it's certainly the natural way to read it.

You don't write all the quoted material. Your write the original
content. And the original content is all read from start to finish in
the thread. So what are you going on about?
--
/~\ [email protected] (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

Speaking of tradition, I believe the standard format for a sig is two
-'s followed by a space.
 
Top