O.T. Actual airline pilot conversations

: That brings up a question you might be able to answer for me. I've never
: understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing. What am I
: missing?

It depends on the group. Here in USENET world, bottom posting is common.
However in military circles, top posting is normal and most readers would
not see your reply if you posted on the bottom (it is an expedience thing).

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 16:24:49 -0600, "Bill Denton"
wrote:

That's why, if I am going to intersperse comments through a message, I will
always top-post something like: "My comments in text".


For the benefit of those to dim to dope it out by observation?

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:55:13 -0600, "John A. Weeks III"
wrote:

In article , PJ Hunt
wrote:

I've always wondered why people posted the entire message at the top and now
I understand how it all started, but isn't it a bit archaic today? I'm
referring to your explanation about the delays etc.. Personally I have never
seen a response posted before I've seen the original post. If I had then
perhaps this would make more sense to me. Is usenet still this slow and
expensive today and if so, why on earth do people use it?

Because USENET goes places where there is no Internet, like central
Africa and the South Pole.


And the means of propagation without the internet is ...?

"Omega" wrote in message
news:348od.65578$V41.36060@attbi_s52...

: That brings up a question you might be able to answer for me. I've
never
: understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing. What am I
: missing?

It depends on the group. Here in USENET world, bottom posting is common.
However in military circles, top posting is normal and most readers would
not see your reply if you posted on the bottom (it is an expedience
thing).

Does DoD still have any internal newgroups or newsfeeds? My command gave up
their DoD newsfeed close to a decade ago, so I lost visibility of it. Most
of the DoD content I used to get from RN and VN or dialup BBS's (remember
those?) soon showed up on web pages. Speaking of 'remember whens' (in
answer to another posters question about Usenet propogation), does Fidonet
still exist?

aem sends.....
(just another old fart who started on Usenet with a text interface and a
green screen, on a hard-wired dumb vt-100 or dialing in to the UNIX server
on an 8086 with a lightning-fast 1200 baud modem.)

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 01:08:45 GMT, "ameijers"
wrote:

... Speaking of 'remember whens' (in
answer to another posters question about Usenet propogation), does Fidonet
still exist?

I think it does: http://www.fidonet.org/

aem sends.....
(just another old fart who started on Usenet with a text interface and a
green screen, on a hard-wired dumb vt-100 or dialing in to the UNIX server
on an 8086 with a lightning-fast 1200 baud modem.)

Hah! I started on a Victor 9000 8088 and a 300 baud modem in
1984. (Hmm. I'm sure about the Victor and the CPU. Please
don't make me swear in court about the modem.)

How the decades pass when you're messing with technology!

Marty

[NGs trimmed, as I now see an article from PJH in r.a.p alone]

PJ Hunt wrote:

I've always wondered why people posted the entire message at the top ...

In general, that is not (and never has been) the proper way to do it.

The previous text should be snipped (or otherwise summarised) so as to
give sufficient context for the new comment to make sense.

... now I understand how it all started, but isn't it a bit archaic today?
I'm referring to your explanation about the delays etc.. Personally I have
never seen a response posted before I've seen the original post.

Matters of expense, propagation times, and reliability of propagation
are *less* of an issue than they were in the early days of Usenet, but
it remains desirable to provide *some* context, *usually* without
reposting the whole of the previous text.

... just as I'm sure that no one here starts reading a book ... from the
very beginning every they set it down and then pick it up again, I don't
see why they feel we should have to re-read the original message over and
over again every someone post a response to the original poster.

If quoted text is properly marked then it is very easy to skim over any
with which you are sufficiently familiar, but it is readily available to
provide useful context without having to dig out the quoted article,
which *may* not be present on your newsserver, especially if you have
been on holiday for a while.

"I'll see you at Linda's wedding."
"Well, see ya soon."
"Congratulations!"
"Ten thousand a year."
"How much?"
"Got a really big raise this time."
"Sorry to hear it. How's the job?"
"She's not feeling well. Flu, I think."
"Same as ever. How's yours?"
"How's your wife?"
"They painted her purple. They should call her the Prune Fart now."
"Good. Did you hear what Martin and Sheila did to the Sea Breeze?"
"Good, and you?"
"Bill! How the heck are you?"

ShawnD2112 wrote:
That brings up a question you might be able to answer for me. I've never
understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing. What am I
missing?

--
Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics
http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm

(Jennifer) wrote in message . com...
"SYBIL-IZED" wrote in message ...
We will let the Mythbusters settle that matter shall we...LOL

No need, there's been a Snopes entry on it for years

http://www.snopes.com/travel/airline/squawk.asp



But just because it's on snopes doesn't mean it's a fake! Snopes.com
give this an "identifies a statement of indeterminate origin."

p.s. the snopes.com entry has some lines that I haven't seen before.
Scroll to the bottom.

-lance smith

That's just dumb. Can you figure out what this reply is to? Or is it too
difficult for you?

mike regish

"Scott en Aztlán" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 07:30:47 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote:

I just killfile them.

I killfile top-posters, too.

It's easier than trying to piece together whatever it was they were
trying to say.

--
Friends don't let friends shop at Best Buy.

In article qEQod.662427$8_6.443178@attbi_s04, mike regish wrote:
That's just dumb. Can you figure out what this reply is to? Or is it too
difficult for you?

The problem with top posting is:
(a) see witty earlier comment where someone wrote a conversation
bottom-to-top
(b) the vast majority (like 99.9%) of top posters do not trim what they
are quoting. Usenet isn't email, and repeated top-posting leads to two
line comments on top of 50K long top-posted trails of redundant
messages. Now you might say 'well, 50K - big deal' but replicated across
tens of thousands of news servers... not to mention most people STILL
are not on broadband and quote a few still pay for dialup by the minute.
A large NG with many top posted threads can soon add up to megabytes of
untrimmed quotes that a modem user must download (and possibly pay for).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"