Re: The ultimate luxury ?

From: Jesse F. Hughes (jesse_at_phiwumbda.org)
Date: 07/31/04 

Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 18:14:29 +0200

I glanced over the rest of your message and found this. I felt
compelled to respond.

jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:

>>Let's face it: Usenet conventions have changed since son-of-1036,
>>sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. We don't use the Summary
>>header much these days, but that seems acceptable in a time in which
>>the difference between downloading headers and downloading whole
>>messages is negligible.
>
> I never download the messages. I always download headers, then
> pick and choose which messages to retreive. Now I understand
> why you're confused.

I am not confused. I didn't say a goddamn thing about what your
software does. I don't care what your software does. I told you what
my software does. You have been arrogant and stupid enough to tell me
that I'm wrong about what my software does without checking what, in
fact, it does. Since I didn't tell you my software solved the halting
problem, this seems a questionable response.

Now, let me tell you a bit more about my software. I can configure my
software to download headers first and articles later if I want, too.
Just like you. Here's the odd bit: If I want, I can tell it to pick
what articles to download *according to the references header*. It's
not hard. It's easy.

And so, this distinction is really utterly and completely irrelevant.

For the record: I use Gnus, an emacs/xemacs package. It's
well-documented and the source is open. If you want to contradict my
claims, do so explicitly. Stop guessing. As someone once said, "There's
a huge difference between what one thinks should happen and what's
really there."

Amazingly, that someone was you. More amazingly, that someone was a
physicist trying to teach a logician this oh-so-subtle fact. Even
more stunningly, this physicist thought the logician was an OS coder
because he posts in a newsgroup with "OS" in the name. One guesses
that this physicist labors under the belief that everyone posting in
sci.physics is a physicist. 

-- 
Jesse F. Hughes
"Well, I guess that's what a teacher from Oklahoma State University
considers proper as Ullrich has said it, and he is, in fact, a teacher
at Oklahoma State University." -- James S. Harris presents a syllogism
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