Netiquette 2007-08#1

New reader? Great! Welcome! Here's how to make best use
of this newsgroup and get yourself a slice of the best help
available. Now read on ...


TESTING YOUR CONNECTION


Errm, first a delicate point. Often users accessing a forum
like this for the first time don't realize that posts don't
show up immediately, certainly not for several minutes, and
maybe not for some hours. In the old days, it took as long
as the camel bearing the news took! So they tend to post
"test" messages. Please don't!

It really is a netiquette faux pas; it gets on the regulars'
nerves and will get you flamed. It's much like switching a
light switch on and off would get on the nerves of the people
in the room!

Just sit back and wait for the post to show up, or be subtle
enough to post something that at least looks like a sensible
post, not just a "hello, testing, testing"! And if you
really want to post "testing, testing" messages, post to the
approved test group next door or above in the news hierarchy.
Those groups include at least:

alt.test gnu.gnusenet.test misc.test

By all means, experiment and test - in the proper place.



YOUR POST


You may notice that we get many hundreds of posts a week here.
That's a lot of posts, and a lot of reading for the people
who read these groups, who, after all, are the people who are
going to answer your questions. So it's in your interest to
reduce the amount of reading they have to do. Often, you can
get an answer faster without posting your question at all!
Before you post, you should try:

a) Reading the manual for your system.

Some day you will encounter the phrase "RTFM", which stands for
"Read the Fine Manual" (except 'F' doesn't really stand for
"Fine"). If you ask someone a question and they tell you to
RTFM, it's an indication that you haven't done your homework
and you should look harder (or for the first time!) at the
material they indicate.

By the way, when these people use terminology like "read(2)",
they are referring to the man page in section 2 of the manual
which deals with the "read" command, and you would access this
page by the command "man 2 read", typed at a command line. Yes,
there is a command line. Let's not go through that just now ...

By the way, regular posters use a lot of acronyms. "BTW" means
"by the way", BTW. Try "The Jargon Lexicon" as reference:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/lexicon.html

b) Searching the archives.

Your question almost certainly has already been answered in the
past, because you are not alone in the universe! Other people
have used the same software as you. Other people have bought
the same hardware. Go here, fill in the search field with
likely words, hit return and see what comes up:

http://groups.google.com/

What? No answer? You're ET. Naw ... you need to practice using
search engines. Use words that are likely to get a response,
and repeat the search refining each time the keywords you use
until you get just the responses you want. It's a very good
idea to let "linux" be the first of them! For example

linux debian faq

should pull up references to this FAQ.

Still no success? OK. Then you're down to

c) Posting on the newsgroups.

To which newsgroup should you post?

A comprehensive overview of 159 Linux newsgroups:

http://www.linux.org/docs/usenetlinux.html

Don't ask why there are so many. Perhaps it's part of Linus's
"World domination" plan. Who knows? ;)

If you are unsure, try in comp.os.linux.misc or alt.os.linux
and with a little luck, some wizard will answer your question
or/and direct you to the proper place.

How should you post? Here is what the technical experts want
to see;

i) data, data and data, but not your impressions. That is,
no "narrative description" but instead an exact reproduction,
by copy and paste with the mouse, of each and every datum that
you are basing your ideas of what is going on on. Do not trust
yourself to type! Use the mouse. You will miss data of great
significance to others that will mislead (and annoy!) them,
such as a space, a capital letter, a digit instead of a
letter, etc. etc.

ii) This is already implied by the above, but include debug
logs or/and full error messages (repeat, the originals, not
hand copies). Do not "attach" them! Include them in-line
in the text because people need to see them simultaneously
with your commentary, and in the context of your narrative.
Post a reasonable amount of those logs (rows <= 25). You'll
ease up things if you include which distro you are running,
if unsure 'cat /etc/*release', 'cat /etc/*version' or/and
'lsb_release -d' should tell (most distro).

iii) Again, this got implied above, but it's worth emphasizing.
Use ASCII (text) only! Don't use HTML or add any vcards or
alike. Please use a maximum line width of 65-72 (characters),
except where the log line or error message you quote is longer
(it shouldn't usually be), in which case preserve it exactly
in preference to confusing the issue by adding your own line
breaks, no matter how long it is.

iv) Trying to post your question to Usenet from some web-forum or
(especially) groups.google.com significantly lowers the chance of
getting a useful reply. This is because people are starting to kill
(cause their news reader to not see) such posts due to frequent
uncontrolled abuse. If your ISP does not provide access to a Usenet
news server, there are other free and low cost alternatives. See the
newsgroups "alt.usenet.news-server-comparison" and
"alt.free.newsservers" for suggestions.

How would such a beast look like? Go to:
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search - Cut&Paste into
"Message ID": uViCr8LlbtmJ-pn2-j4FfJwqUgJxj@poblano + hit return.

USEFUL SUBJECTS


The Subject: line of an article is what will first attract
people to read it. If it's vague or doesn't describe what's
contained within, no one will read the article. They have
better things to do with their lives.

However, Subject: lines that're too wordy tend to be irritating.

For example:

Good Subject:
"xinetd failure Mandriva 10.1, error:"cps time argument
not a number"

Good Subject:
"bind 9.2 FC 3 fails to cache multiple cnames"

Bad Subject:
"Can't dial to Internet!!! Pulling my hair apart,
nothing works! HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Bad Subject:
"HELP!!!! Ftp doesn't work for me at all, how come
!?!?!"

Simply put, try to think of what will best help the reader
when he or she encounters your article in a newsreading
session. Also think about who you want to answer. Do you want
a psychiatrist? No? Then avoid "HELP !!!!" as a subject
line. If you want an expert in oracle databases, then post
"oracle vX.Y on Suse SLES 9. How assign passwd?".

And don't forget - the subject line is NOT part of the article,
no more than the title of a newspaper article is part of
the newspaper article. So don't be shy about repeating the
subject in the article as the first line. It costs you a cut
and paste with the mouse, and saves everyone else an "eh,
what's 'e on about"? Not everyone reads the subject before
reading the article, and even those who do may only be able
to see the first 40 characters or so of your elegant title.

CROSS-POSTING

This is a bit boring, but you really do want to know this.
Put it down in your "advanced posting techniques" file.
Let's go ... Now, the "Newsgroups:" line on your posting isn't
limited to containing just one group; an article can be posted
in a list of groups. For instance, the line

Newsgroups: alt.os.linux,comp.os.linux.setup

posts the article to both the groups alt.os.linux and
comp.os.linux.setup at the same time. More accurately, it
makes the same article accessible from both these different
newsgroups. This is called "cross-posting". It's usually safe
to cross-post to up to three or four groups. To list more than
that is considered excessive and annoying and will earn you
some heat. Let's not get into why. But it's not as annoying as
"multi-posting", which is posting copies of the same article
to several different newsgroups, and you should more readily
be able to imagine why that's likely to win you undying flames.

Anyway, to summarize, cross-posting is infinitely better than
multi-posting, but don't cross-post to more than three or
so groups.

It's strongly suggested that when an article is cross-posted
then a "Followup-To:" header field be included. It should
name the group to which all additional discussion should be
directed to. For the above example, this might be:

Followup-To: comp.os.linux.setup

which would make all followups automatically be posted to
just comp.os.linux.setup, rather than both alt.os.linux and
comp.os.linux.setup.

Why would anyone be cross-posting (or multi-posting, owww!) in
the first place? Presumably because that way they think
they'll get a bigger audience and therefore more answers.
Unfortunately, this is on the way to being about as clever
thinking as posting a spam mail to the whole of hong kong
asking for help with the problem would be. Enough said?

How far along the way on that particular road to infamy you
get depends on whether you cross-posted or multi-posted, and
how many groups you did it to, and whether you at least set
a Followup-To. If in doubt, don't do it at all. And if you're
reading this, you are in doubt, so please don't!


REPLYING & QUOTING & TRIMMING


When following up to an article, many newsreaders provide the
facility to quote the original article with each line prefixed
by > , as in

In article <1232@foo.bar.com>, sharon@foo.bar.com wrote:

>> I think that basketweaving's really catching on, particularly
>> in Pennsylvania. Here's a list of every person in PA that
>> currently engages in it publicly: [..]


This example began to quote a horribly long article, but broke
off and indicated the missing text with ellipses "[..]". That's
excellent posting technique! I.e.

When you quote another person, edit out whatever isn't
directly relevant to understanding your reply.

Please, please, remember to do that.

This gives the reader of the new article a perfect idea of
exactly what points you were addressing. By including the
entire article, you'll only annoy your readers, assuming you
get any! Who knows what your "yes, I agree" is referring to
if you quote all 100 lines of the original text! Maybe you
are agreeing that hanging is too good for shoplifters. Maybe
you are agreeing that it's a good morning.

Now here's another part of good posting technique:

Always put your response below and between the quoted text!

That means, as you read through the text you are replying to
in your editor, you remove the bits you are not interested
in commenting on, then when you come to a bit you want to
comment on, you leave the relevant sentence in place, add an
empty line, and write your comment right below it, then leave
another empty line.

Then you carry on through the rest of the text. You
left the quote and your comment nicely framed and easily
comprehensible. Even more importantly, you let somebody new
come in and comment on your comment while keeping the framing
correct.

Why NOT "top post"? Well, here are some answers:

http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html

In this editor's opinion, you have to understand that you are
not writing a business letter to another company's lawyers,
which is about the only real life situation in which you will
affix the entire previous conversation to the end of your reply!
If you think so, then you are mistaking the nature of the medium
you are in - we likely already have access to your previous
post, thanks to the wonders of electronics, but we might not
be bothered to go and look at it or might have forgotten it
and its detail, so we appreciate a little orienting context in
just the right place, but please not the whole flipping thing.


MORE INFO

"What is Usenet?"
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/what-is/part1/

"The Usenet Newbie Project"
http://tgos.org/newbie/index2.html

"Eric S. Raymond (ESR) & Rick Moen:
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way?"
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

"Advanced Usenet Usage"
http://livinginternet.com/?u/ua.htm

"Netiquette Guidelines RFC1855"
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

"How to make killfiles for use with various newsreaders."
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/killfilefaq.htm

"What is a troll, what do they do, why do they do it, and
what can one do about them? (Anti Troll FAQ)"
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killf..._troll_faq.htm

"Google Groups users please read - Summarize what you're
following up"
http://groups.google.com/support/bin...y?answer=46492



DISCLAIMER


This "FAQ" (published under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) has
been assembled/rewritten from various online sources, it does
not claim to be complete, see URLs above, just a quick start.

Special thanks for additional hints, that have been included to:

Bill Unruh, Bit Twister, Sybren Stuvel, Peter Karlsson,
Peter T. Breuer (Complete revision 03/2003), Moe Trin,
Stan Goodman, Rick Moen and sk8r-365

Have a lot of fun...

Michael Heiming
--
If you can't avoid to drop me a mail, remove "www." and put my
first name before the @.

I've been looking around for a simple, straightforward netiquette
document like this. I just started using newsgroups four days ago, when
I found that my ISP has newsgroup servers, so I'm trying to get used to
this environment. I must say that it's not exactly what I expected:
actual news, like the post Linus made announcing Linux years ago.

Anyhow, I don't know if it's proper to reply to FAQ's, but I noticed
that the following URL points to nothing:

> "The Usenet Newbie Project"
> http://tgos.org/newbie/index2.html
> [...]

Horton heard a Who named Ericus Lin saying:
> I've been looking around for a simple, straightforward netiquette
> document like this. I just started using newsgroups four days ago, when
> I found that my ISP has newsgroup servers, so I'm trying to get used to
> this environment. I must say that it's not exactly what I expected:
> actual news, like the post Linus made announcing Linux years ago.
>
> Anyhow, I don't know if it's proper to reply to FAQ's, but I noticed
> that the following URL points to nothing:
>
>> "The Usenet Newbie Project"
>> http://tgos.org/newbie/index2.html
>> [...]

Information about broken links is good to know ... did you miss the
part in the FAQ about top-posting?

--
sk8r-365
I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.
-- Isaiah 43:11

sk8r-365 wrote:
> Information about broken links is good to know ... did you miss the
> part in the FAQ about top-posting?

Of course not. I read through the whole thing, but I also clicked on the
first of the two links below the top-posting section, which mentioned
reading's flow going from "left to right and from top to bottom". I
figured that putting the broken link below my text would make my
sentence flow more. Unfortunately, I only read the first clause below
section 2.3's header, so I didn't catch the part that it's standard and
that people expect posts to be in chronological order. Mea culpa!

Horton heard a Who named Ericus Lin saying:
> sk8r-365 wrote:
>> Information about broken links is good to know ... did you miss the
>> part in the FAQ about top-posting?
>
> Of course not. I read through the whole thing, but I also clicked on the
> first of the two links below the top-posting section, which mentioned
> reading's flow going from "left to right and from top to bottom". I
> figured that putting the broken link below my text would make my
> sentence flow more. Unfortunately, I only read the first clause below
> section 2.3's header, so I didn't catch the part that it's standard and
> that people expect posts to be in chronological order. Mea culpa!

My wager is your posts are gonna be good reads!

--
sk8r-365
Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness
be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.
-- Isaiah 32:15

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
<wIxij.87760$YL5.36577@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net> , Ericus Lin wrote:

>I've been looking around for a simple, straightforward netiquette
>document like this.

Michael posts it to several other groups as well.

>I just started using newsgroups four days ago, when I found that my
>ISP has newsgroup servers, so I'm trying to get used to this
>environment. I must say that it's not exactly what I expected:
>actual news, like the post Linus made announcing Linux years ago.

Who is that... ok it's an actual ISP server (as opposed to one of the
news providers, such as giganews, supernews, or individual.net). You
also appear to be using a web browser to read the news - I can't help
with that. There are a VERY large number of newsgroups. Depending
on your server, there might be as few as the 2290 listed in the
"List of Big Eight Newsgroups" that is posted on the 15th of every
month to 'news.announce.newgroups', 'news.groups', and 'news.lists.misc'
on up through 100,000 or more carried on those servers that like to
claim they have more groups than everyone else. "Announcements" are
generally found on groups like 'comp.os.linux.announce' (there are 58
such groups in the "List of Big Eight Newsgroups", but your server
could carry a lot more than that). You may also find a large number
of Linux groups in the 'alt.linux', 'alt.os.linux' and 'comp.os.linux'
hierarchies - many favoring (or aimed at) one distribution, or similar,
such as

alt.os.linux alt.os.linux.mandrake alt.os.linux.redhat
alt.os.linux.debian alt.os.linux.mandriva alt.os.linux.suse
alt.os.linux.gentoo alt.os.linux.pclinuxos alt.os.linux.ubuntu

The Big Eight groups (which for linux means the 17 comp.os.linux.*
groups) tends to be more distribution neutral.

>Anyhow, I don't know if it's proper to reply to FAQ's,

I don't think anyone is going to shoot you for that.

>but I noticed that the following URL points to nothing:
>
>> "The Usenet Newbie Project"
>> http://tgos.org/newbie/index2.html

Unfortunately, some links seem to disappear after a time. Two of the
links below that one had been off-line for a while, but I seem they are
available again. Hopefully, Michael will look into the problem, and
find a replacement if possible. You may want to scan through the
HOWTOs if you haven't - for example, the Usenet-News-HOWTO may be of
interest.

Old guy

Moe Trin wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
> <wIxij.87760$YL5.36577@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net> , Ericus Lin wrote:
[...]
>> I just started using newsgroups four days ago, when I found that my
>> ISP has newsgroup servers, so I'm trying to get used to this
>> environment. [...]

> You also appear to be using a web browser to read the news - I
> can't help with that. There are a VERY large number of newsgroups.

Hopefully, my initial to, "I can't help with that," is correct:

I am, in fact, using Mozilla SeaMonkey to read the "news." I was
obsessed with using console-only two years ago (I ditched X), and I was
happy with it for a while, doing what I would normally have done before
then. Although applications ran faster than in X, it soon lost its
appeal because I wanted to see the pretty pictures on the Web; I started
using framebuffer. Eventually, I grew tired of having to switch to
another framebuffer console just to watch a video or view images on the
web, so I started using an X/Terminal hybrid.

I choose which program to use based on my needs and time. For instance,
I normally use SeaMonkey to browse the web; because it offers the
convenient feature of being able to load its mail/newsreader quickly
when another of its components is already loaded; I use its newsreader.

Sometimes, I need to use my computer to do a quick e-mail check or look
something up on a reference site; I find it unnecessary to change my
default runlevel. If I need something quickly, I boot my computer, which
takes less than a minute, log in, use mutt or lynx to do whatever I need
to do, and shutdown. It's convenient, it's fast, and it fulfills my needs.

Having just begun to use newsgroups, I have not yet found an instance in
which I found it necessary to read my news quickly. Until I find one, I
shall continue to use SeaMonkey.

Thanks for your understanding.

> Hopefully, my initial to, "I can't help with that," is correct:
Correction: "my initial to" -> "my initial response to"

Apparently, I don't proofread last-minute additions...

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
<IjTij.14244$6%.7545@nlpi061.nbdc.sbc.com>, Ericus Lin wrote:

>Moe Trin wrote:

>> You also appear to be using a web browser to read the news - I
>> can't help with that. There are a VERY large number of newsgroups.
>
>Hopefully, my initial to, "I can't help with that," is correct:
>
>I am, in fact, using Mozilla SeaMonkey to read the "news." I was
>obsessed with using console-only two years ago (I ditched X),

Actually, that was referring to the steps needed to get a list of the
available newsgroups from your news server. I also use X, but it's
to provide a lot more consoles - there's 21 text terminals open at the
moment.

>I choose which program to use based on my needs and time.

Which is fine. It is your system.

>For instance, I normally use SeaMonkey to browse the web; because it
>offers the convenient feature of being able to load its mail/newsreader
>quickly when another of its components is already loaded; I use its
>newsreader.

I'm a network guy, so I'm running text for virtually everything.

>Sometimes, I need to use my computer to do a quick e-mail check or look
>something up on a reference site; I find it unnecessary to change my
>default runlevel. If I need something quickly, I boot my computer,
>which takes less than a minute, log in, use mutt or lynx to do whatever
>I need to do, and shutdown. It's convenient, it's fast, and it fulfills
>my needs.

Ignoring work, I still have several computers running 24/7. Different
needs.

>Having just begun to use newsgroups, I have not yet found an instance in
>which I found it necessary to read my news quickly

You may not find such a need. I subscribe to 80 newsgroups at the moment,
and need to be able to scan those groups for interesting things. The news
gives me a "heads up" for job related subjects.

>Until I find one, I shall continue to use SeaMonkey.

As noted at the bottom of the FAQ, I find the filtering capability well
worth while. Some of the groups I need to scan also have significant
troll populations, and the filtering improves the signal/noise ratio.

Old guy

Moe Trin wrote:
> Ericus Lin wrote:
>> Moe Trin wrote:
>
>>> You also appear to be using a web browser to read the news - I
>>> can't help with that. There are a VERY large number of newsgroups.
>> Hopefully, my initial to, "I can't help with that," is correct:
>>
> Actually, that was referring to the steps needed to get a list of the
> available newsgroups from your news server.

Ah, you meant no harm. Honestly, I thought you were just another Linux
elitist. As a Slackware user, I see a lot of bullying when I browse
Slackware-related fora; I jumped to conclusions. Mea culpa again...

> As noted at the bottom of the FAQ, I find the filtering capability well
> worth while. Some of the groups I need to scan also have significant
> troll populations, and the filtering improves the signal/noise ratio.

Ha! Signal/noise ratio. Hilarious... This is true; I could use some
filters. I'm just afraid that I'll miss a topic I would otherwise want
to read. Still, I'm finding cancellation messages annoying, as do the
many, quick, thoughtless posts that litter the politics groups to which
I am subscribed.

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
<vaXij.36021$JD.18150@newssvr21.news.prodigy.net >, Ericus Lin wrote:

>As a Slackware user, I see a lot of bullying when I browse
>Slackware-related fora; I jumped to conclusions. Mea culpa again...

If you are referring to the alternative group 'alt.os.linux.slackware',
I did try to follow that group for a while, but gave up as there was no
useful posts, and the regulars there delighted in flaming anyone and
everyone in preference to offering help. Apparently, useful posts are
against the newsgroup charter there.

>>Some of the groups I need to scan also have significant troll
>>populations, and the filtering improves the signal/noise ratio.

>Ha! Signal/noise ratio. Hilarious...

A polite but accurate description of the problem.

>This is true; I could use some filters. I'm just afraid that I'll miss
>a topic I would otherwise want to read.

Obviously, choosing the correct filtering rules takes some experience.
A decent newsreader (or spooling tool like leafnode or slrnpull) can
trivially filter on 8 headers (From:, Subject:, References:, Date:,
Bytes:, Lines:, Message-ID: and Xref:), while others (such as
User-Agent:, Newsgroups:, NNTP-Posting-Host:, or similar) take much
more bandwidth, and CPU cycles.

[compton ~]$ grep -vE '^([%\[ ]|Score|$)' /var/spool/slrnpull/score |
cut -d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq -c | column
932 From: 23 References: 2 ~Subject:
2 Lines: 306 Subject:
15 Message-ID: 80 Xref:
[compton ~]$

>Still, I'm finding cancellation messages annoying, as do the many,
>quick, thoughtless posts that litter the politics groups to which
>I am subscribed.

Cancellations probably can be filtered by Subject or From header, but
political groups are bound to be war-zones. The trolls and other
abusers can usually be filtered by the From line, but sometimes the
Message-ID and References headers prove useful.

Old guy

Horton heard a Who named Moe Trin saying:
<snip>
>
> [compton ~]$ grep -vE '^([%\[ ]|Score|$)' /var/spool/slrnpull/score |
> cut -d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq -c | column
> 932 From: 23 References: 2 ~Subject:
> 2 Lines: 306 Subject:
> 15 Message-ID: 80 Xref:
> [compton ~]$

Well, I guess you know who will start to carp that you posted those
results again, huh?

--
sk8r-365
All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him
less than nothing, and vanity. -- Isaiah 40:17

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
<3aSdnU0NwuZmihDanZ2dnUVZ_jOdnZ2d@bresnan.com>, sk8r-365 wrote:

>Horton heard a Who named Moe Trin saying:

>> [compton ~]$ grep -vE '^([%\[ ]|Score|$)' /var/spool/slrnpull/score |
>> cut -d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq -c | column
>> 932 From: 23 References: 2 ~Subject:
>> 2 Lines: 306 Subject:
>> 15 Message-ID: 80 Xref:
>> [compton ~]$
>
>Well, I guess you know who will start to carp that you posted those
>results again, huh?

Let's see, I posted that at ~2000 UTC, and grabbed the spool 18 hours
later...

[compton ~]$ grep 01/16.*alt.os.linux:.*killed newslog | cut -d' ' -f3-6
alt.os.linux: 30/30 (7 killed),
[compton ~]$

Hard to say. But you'll also notice that (other than groups.google.com
and cross-posting), I rarely mention specific rules that are in that
file. I try to be polite. ;-)

Old guy

Thus spake Moe Trin:
> On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux, in article
> <3aSdnU0NwuZmihDanZ2dnUVZ_jOdnZ2d@bresnan.com>, sk8r-365 wrote:
>
>>
>>Well, I guess you know who will start to carp that you posted those
>>results again, huh?
>
> Let's see, I posted that at ~2000 UTC, and grabbed the spool 18 hours
> later...
>
> [compton ~]$ grep 01/16.*alt.os.linux:.*killed newslog | cut -d' ' -f3-6
> alt.os.linux: 30/30 (7 killed),
> [compton ~]$
>
> Hard to say. But you'll also notice that (other than groups.google.com
> and cross-posting), I rarely mention specific rules that are in that
> file. I try to be polite. ;-)
>

<chuckling> You're *so* subtle.

--
sk8r-365
Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me: whosoever
shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake.
-- Isaiah 54:15