Re: The plight of the lone drinker (long rant)

X-No-Archive: yes

In message <sTFZjzS9K7YEFwe1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, jf <jf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

In message <IfqdnVCkk9tPBf_ZnZ2dnUVZ8qOdnZ2d@xxxxxx>, Top Posting with pride <TopPostingWithPride@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

whose principal hobby in the years of his dotage is to harasses newbie top posters in this particular NG, scaring them away from what might
otherwise be any significant contribution. To everyone's loss.

Not true, old son. Just not true. You may have seen a couple of comments from me last year, and two or three the year before. None this year to the best of my memory. This demonstrates what a palpable untruth your 'principal hobby' comment is. On the rare occasions when I have bothered to comment I've always been polite, and only get abrasive if I encounter childish reactions and unsubstantiated abuse.

Your comment about my scaring away posters is also quite untrue. Unless you've conducted a survey, you don't know, and even if you had, the results would not be reliable. The only scaring that went on as far as I can see is the speed at which you dived for a silly persona the moment you realised that you were hopelessly outgunned when dealing with me. One taste of my superior intellect and you came up with the ludicrous 'Top-posting with pride' faster than pig*** sliding off a greased shovel.

Your 'to everyone's loss' comment is also so obviously an untruth that it's hardly worth remarking on. That you feel impelled to enlist the imagined support of others suggests that you lack confidence in your own views. Hardly surprising if you resort to statements that unravel the moment they're shaken. As I've pointed out before, you can speak with confidence only on your own views.

You know full well why I've commented on the silliness of jeopardy posting, or top-posting. As I've pointed out before, apart from it being illogical, it plays hob with the reading software of many blind friends from Redhill, Surrey, who follow this newsgroup with interest. Putting attribution carets in the wrong place by top-posting confuses the JAWS reader. Most people who top-post have immediately corrected their posting style when the problems have been pointed out to them. Here's a plea from John Christopher at the RNIB, Redhill.

BEGIN QUOTE:

From:

http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/gey_chr0.htm

Upsidedown Posting
by Richard Christopher, Dorking, Surrey, UK
Royal National Institute for the Blind (Redhill)

I wonder if I can ask you to spare a thought for your many blind readers who, although they often have guide dogs, are not averse to owning the odd cat or two. Also cats help keep the dogs in order although they tend to take the most disgraceful liberties with the good-natured attitudes of labradors. At this very moment there's a long-suffering labrador getting the occasional biff on the nose from my cat for not being a cat.

JAWS (Job Access With Speech) is a popular newreader with the blind and is a real newsreader inasmuch as it reads out posts aloud. It is configured along AUP Usenet conventions and has no problems with most newsgroups except this one.

Many of you throw JAWS into a state of confusion by posting upside-down. That is, you add your comments at the top of a follow-up and leave the attributed follow-up trailing below. And very often many don't bother to trim the reposted article to salient points. A blind reader has to keep hitting skip when it finally dawns that he or she is being presented with the entire post again without comments at the end.

Please remember that a Usenet post has one writer but many readers therefore it is sensible to cater for the majority when posting. Also, trimming to salient points and adding your comments below is a Usenet convention, contained in the RFC and is invariable included in your server's AUP which you have agreed to adhere to.

Clagging servers with millions of bytes of unnecessary untrimmed reposts doesn't do anyone any favours and invariable leads to ISPs expiring offending newsgroups more quickly than others, as is happening with this newsgroup.

Some of you may argue that Outlook Express is the culprit because it places the cursor at the top of a post when replying. Nearly all newsreaders do this, expecting you to trim the repost before entering your reply underneath. What Outlook Express doesn't do is automatically strip signature files from reposts but that's easy to do yourself. All in all, Outlook Express is a dreadful newsreader - clumsy and bloated. Forte Free Agent is quite good.

So please could we have a little consideration for others.

Many thanks for your attention.

END QUOTE

You, Mr Top-Posting with Pride, appear to be totally indifferent to the problems facing the blind who wish to read this newsgroup. I'm not.

>The very definition of an internet Troll. You will note the James
>Follett footnote to the definition of "internet troll" on Wikipedia.

I confess that this comment has me puzzled.

>And the lack of any entry relating to any of his pathetic ouevre....

With reference to Wikipedia entries, I didn't write their surprisingly long entry on me. It was based on a c.v. written by Dave Williams who runs the website shown below. To the best of my memory, I received an email from a modern authors editor on Wikipedia asking me to check the entry. Again, IIR, my only observation was that I was born in Tolworth, Surrey, not Tollworth.

Sending well-known people advance copies of their entries in planned compendia is normal business practice therefore I'm surprised that you commented on it unless you have little or no understanding of how such matters work. Debrett's send me my entry for comment every couple of years or so. Much the same with other publications.

A word of advice on resorting to lies about me. They're not necessary, old son. When you're rich and famous like me you can use Vivisimo to scour the www and dig up all manner of embarrassing truths. Next time you want to take one of your silly pops at me, email me first and I'll supply you with some real mouth-watering scandal. Ignore the news reports about the girl guide and the vacuum cleaner -- the sodding parrot lied under oath.

Generally relying on lies is foolish because they end up saying more about the author of such nonsense than the intended target of their venom. Also picking on high profile people is financially hazardous. Don't think that hiding in a throw-away account such as Giganews is any guarantee of anonymity -- those days are over. In America lawyers simply add their disclosure requests to daily lists. It's much the same in the EU now.

But take heart; you have nothing to fear from me. Using legal means against you would be like using a high-power laser to eradicate an immature zit. Besides, I'd miss out all the fun of showing you up.

--
James Follett. Novelist. Earthsearch on BBC7 every damned evening.

.