[GTALUG] top posting [was: Re: Blockchain, the solution to nothing]

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: ac via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| I practiced with my first top post in 2006, before it became
| fashionable :)

It has been gauche for a lot longer than that :-)

It can make sense in business correspondence where a precise record of
what you are responding to is important.  This was not such a case.

It can make sense when you are dealing with folks who only know how to
do mail on smartphones.  This was not such a case.

It can make sense when your time is more valuable than the readers'
time.  This was not such a case.  It is almost never the case on a
mailing list.

| From: ac via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| It was one fine spring day, at least over 180? (it may be 280 or even
| more) something full moons ago that i realized that Mutt simply sucks at
| threading, so I disabled it. Since then, I also thought that some/ALL
| Linux console users probably also battle and struggle with threads (and
| the worth/value which the unwashed places in threads) I congratulate
| you on the fine prowess of your "mail reader" but it is probably not
| console based? (or maybe it could be? is it Pine? not looked at Pine
| in decades...hmm, maybe?) 
| 
| As you said "almost all others" it certainly is not any? console users,
| unless Pine or something else has turned me into an ignorant dino...

I don't understand this.  But I'll respond to a couple of things that
I think I've gleaned from it.

I use ALPINE (PINE is dead).  It can do threading.  It works on a
terminal.  What am I missing?

I actually use procmail to sort GTALUG mail into a "folder".  It turns
out that all the messages in this thread are lined up appropriately by
being sorted in arrival order.

I don't often use thread-order.  I use it often enough that I don't
have to look it up.  I guess I might use it more if I didn't
demultiplex my incoming mail.

How do you handle/avoid the deluge of email?  I ask in all humility
since it is a burden as well as a blessing.

If Mutt is broken, fix it.  It's open source.  Or, more likely, you'll
come to understand why it does what it does.

Anecdote:

The second assembly language I learned was PDP-8 PAL.
I was offended by the opcode mnemonics chosen by DEC.
For example, the only add instruction was "TAD" (for Two's complement
ADd).  Would ADD not be better?
But by the time I learned enough to attempt the task, I had started to
think of the operation as TAD.

This is an example of starting out intending to change a tool and ending
up changing me.

Sub-anecdote:

The PDP-8 was a single-accumulator machine.  And there was no
instruction to load a word from memory into the accumulator!  Instead
you arranged for the accumulator to be 0 and than "TAD memory" to add
the content of the memory word that 0, leaving the sum in the
accumulator.  So TAD was a heavily used instruction.  There were only
eight opcodes, but two of them had modifier bits.

The PDP-8 machine language was incredibly easy to learn even if it
wasn't very powerful.  Much simpler than any micro people use now.