May 07, 2003

Mailing List Behavior

Sometimes I worry that I'm becoming one of those grizzly old Unix geeks that gets sick of all the young kids who are invading what used to be great technical mailing lists. Some people just don't get it. There are fairly basic rules that, when followed, go a long way toward making mailing lists useful communities for everyone involved.

I'm considering setting up a standard reply to messages posted by people who obviously need help. I probably won't, but if I did it would contain a few simple suggestions.

  1. Learn how to report bugs
  2. Learn how to ask smart questions
  3. Don't change the Reply-To address when replying. If the person who responded to you wants the traffic to stay on the list, there's probably a good reason for it. When people do this to me (reply directly to me, rather than the list) I simply ignore them. Usually they'll re-post their question to the list. When they do, I answer it.

It's really not that hard. These people just don't realize how much work they're expecting a group of strangers to do for them. In some cases it's downright rude.

Posted by jzawodn at 10:06 PM

The Borg on Enterprise?

Now I'm no Star Trek nut, but what the heck is with this? Borg drones on Enterprise? Doesn't this seriously mess up the story line of The Next Generation? I thought that Starfleet had no contact with the Borg before their encounter.

Hmm.

I mean, I'm the biggest fan of the Borg, but that's just too strange. Maybe this is how they're gonna spruce up the show.

Update: I jumped the gun. I posted that having only seen the first 10 minutes. That was one of the best episodes yet. I take back what I said. The didn't screw up the time line the way I expected.

Posted by jzawodn at 08:20 PM

To the moron at 12.119.251.194

You've been black-holed from my server. You've been fetching the same non-changing web pages over and over for no good reason. Did you think I wouldn't notice?

Posted by jzawodn at 11:03 AM

Going after telemarketers

By reading this story and the associated resources, you can get a reasonably good idea of what it takes to get cash out of your favorite scum telemarketers.

If you don't have the time or energy for that, consider just having fun with them next time they call.

Posted by jzawodn at 08:16 AM