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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Software Engineering and Dreamers
Date: 1997/06/10
Message-ID: <dewar.865941762@merv>#1/1
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References: <JSA.97May14201336@alexandria> <5mmvgj$61k@squire.cen.brad.ac.uk>
 <dewar.865041126@merv> <19970602.562B58.2B32@ai110.du.pipex.com>
 <5n1261$qj6@polo.demon.co.uk> <19970602.433020.144E5@ai078.du.pipex.com>
 <33983ABE.26B2@sni.de> <19970606.49CA70.12B91@ae124.du.pipex.com>
 <dewar.865813029@merv> <5nfnq1$6ta@mtinsc04.worldnet.att.net>
 <339BA835.6A5C@sprintmail.com> <dewar.865870540@merv>
 <339CA0E7.14AF@sprintmail.com>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-06-10T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


<<But, irrespective of one's kill preferences, a useless or off-topic
thread, especially one that is cross-posted to multiple newsgroups like
this, wastes Internet bandwidth and host resources and just contributes
to the world wide wait. Also, remember that in the case of
comp.lang.ada, everything posted there is echoed on the info-ada mailing
list. If one has chosen to receive digests from info-ada, there's no way
to "kill" threads.
 >>


Cross-posting does not increase bandwidth
The total bandwidth taken up by comp newsgroups is absolutely negligible
in terms of the wwwait compared with the binaries in alt.sex.
If the digesting process cannot kill threads, it is defective.
The ability of people to follow off-topic threads obviously appeals
to a lot of people. As long as a thread is easily killable, I see no
measurable disadvantage.

Finally, the most useless of messages are like yours and this one here,
that waste time discussing whether some other thread should exist or not.
You can never kill a thread by telling people to stop contributing. Instead
you just dd irrelevant junk to the thread :-)