>Subj: [M]: Re: Goto is for beginners...
>Date: 08/16/2001 4:36:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time


Subj: [M]: Re: Re: Re: Goto is for beginners...
>Date: 08/16/2001 6:15:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time

>Subj: Re: [M]: Re: Re: Re: Goto is for beginners...
>Date: 08/16/2001 7:15:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time


Chris (& EVERYONE else who can't seem to stop posting to this thread,)

1. This is not a chat room. Stop trying to carry on off-topic conversations
almost in real time. You're all wasting a tremendous amount of other
people's time and energy by the sheer volume of posts if nothing else. No
one person should EVER post off-topic every couple of hours...or even every
couple of days! Much less on minor variations of the same thread for weeks
on end.

STOP IT!!

2. This thread has gone on for too long, and everyone knows it. It also
started out as a rehashing of two recent threads which I had to intervene in,
to stop them. I'm not fooled, it's really the same thread.

I'll tell a little story which is a good analogy as to how this little trick
is going over with me. Short version: I'm amazed, but not amused.

Long version: While in college in Massachusetts, I had a roomie who drove a
1970 Datsun 240Z, with California vanity license plate ASTUDZ. He loved the
car and the plate, but didn't like parking in the crummy parking lot which
freshmen were assigned to. So he got a lot of campus-police tickets, enough
that his car had just reached the point where towing charges were killing
him. They would tow him and charge him every time. Thankfully, summer came.
The next fall: different school year, different parking lot assignment,
different license plate. He'd gotten just a normal plate with letters and
numbers, to avoid being towed during his sophomore year. So he parks in back
of our dorm one day, and 15 minutes later is yelling "my car was stolen, I
can't &*^#ing believe it!". Then his phone rang, the campus police! Did he
happen to know who owned a 1970 Datsun 240Z, license # such-and-such. "Yes,
did you find it, I think it was just stolen!" But of course they had towed
his car, and gave him the personalized service of letting him know his trick
hadn't worked. He protested that his plate number was clean, the first N
number of offenses shouldn't be towed per school policy, etc. They just
said "You don't think that changing the plate would fool us, do you? We know
you, we know your car, we know your old license plate, we know your new
license plate. We also know Pat's Towing didn't get paid the last time we
towed you there last year, but somehow your car disappeared from their yard.
Do you think they'll recognize the car too?"

Moral of the story: I know the same thread when I see it, and so do the 1300
folks whose time are wasted by this repetitive OFF-TOPIC discussion/trolling.
The towtruck is ready, enough warnings have been given already.

3. Privately expressed sentiment ran 100% in favor of clamping down on these
types of threads. Even the one private post entitled "Censor" which had me
worried for a second, had had enough!!!

4. Bringing other controversial OT topics into any thread will not be
tolerated. Simply put, in the current case I'm sure there are plenty of gun
people on MAPUG, with varying views. But they should go to gun lists to
discuss them, lame analogies to any MAPUG-related topics aside. And there
are general astronomy lists if you want to discuss GOTO vs. star-hopping.

The on-topic part of this debate have been beaten to death here already, and
all that remains is so repetitive and OT as to belong elsewhere.

John H.
MAPUG list administrator
(And FWIW, NCAA letter in Pistol, 1980)

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