Although I appreciate some in the list are finding some aspects of my exchanges distasteful. I reserve the right to reply to insults to my intelligence such as this post. And I would like publicly to thank some who - presumably in an effort not to "feed the flames" -have sent me private messages of a supportive nature. One, indeed, wondered why I was bothering with an evidently futile quest but, after research, discovered that it must be down to my having been a contributor for a little over a year only and hence not to have experienced what have apparently been frequent similar explosions of irritation.
Tom It looks like we are going to have to agree to disagree over the meaning of the word "entire". I carefully copied and compared the posts in question - excepting my two immediately preceding the post to which you refer. My conclusion was that the entire post was *not* quoted. What was missing[1] illustrates the aspect of the sort of negative posts to which I was referring. The post from which I quoted the stand-alone "No." arrived three days after the post to which it referred. It quoted the phrase "So, effectively, does z/OS." I defy anyone - except perhaps you and the perpetrator - to consider that an adequate reference. Simply to have included the full sentence to which the phrase was being, in effect, appended would have been sufficient - and/but I would have been deprived of my example. Your post obliged me to take the trouble to discover what the phrase "So, effectively, does z/OS." was being appended since I certainly, amid the flurry of posts in the list, did not remember. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I was the author of the missing sentence. I hope this sequence will dissuade anyone from imagining I was sulking not to have had my precious sentence - actually rather a throw-away thought in the context of the original thread - quoted. On the contrary, now that you have obliged me to check what gave rise to this aggravation and if I was of a cynical frame of mind, I could suspect that you were anxious to find me at fault in any comments within this thread. I found myself of the following opinion later in the same post where the "missing sentence" can be found: "Contrary to what Tom says, it is also almost certain that the program ran perfectly correctly - according to its own lights - and you have nothing to worry about." But I'm not of such a frame of mind so the negative thought has been banished. I find further support for my contention that the sentence should have been quoted in a post from Tony Harminc. This post arrived within the hour after Phil's post (if Google time stamps are to be believed), also commented on all of the text provided by Phil and took the trouble to include the famous missing, now double-quoted, sentence. I am going to assume that Tony appreciated that a sensible reply needed the sentence rather than just quoting everything. In support of this opinion is that he took the trouble to embed his observations, observations which incidentally, appeared far more relevant and informative than those in the post which took three days to arrive. In fact, as far as I can see, what Tony's post did was expand on Phil's "effectively", expansion in agreement being a characteristic of helpful posts. So much for the "complete response". As for my post not being a complete response or whatever other complaint you are trying to infer, we'll have to agree to disagree again. It was certainly what I had in mind and I would have thought it abundantly obvious that my comment was an "append" to the two previous posts I had just made. What did you imagine "Assuming my posts are being read sequentially, ..." meant if not that the posts should be read together? So you guessed correctly, it was "a good example" of "inadequate quoting" as I have just demonstrated - to my satisfaction at least. Probably I could make a case for it being "a good example" or "a case in point" of what I had commented on in those two immediately preceding posts - but already sufficient energy has been expended on what I have to appreciate is a hopeless cause. As for not bothering to comment on the remainder why should I need to? It was designed to be a terse reference to the nature of the post to be taken in conjunction with the two immediately preceding posts. I quoted just sufficient to highlight the stand-alone "No." and the inadequate context provided for what was being negated. Surely you are not suggesting that what I omitted would have clarified the context. It looks like we may have to agree to disagree yet again. In fact I can't really see any sense in the "No." either by itself or in what is said following. I can just about see what the response is trying to say if the responder is incapable of understanding the word "effectively" in this context. Is there perhaps a semantic gap here so that those close to English soil use "effectively" one way while those who cast the soil off their boots long ago assume a different meaning? I'm at quite a loss to imagine what the alternative meaning might be. Let's try a lighter ending: By chance checking for another thread in another list/group I found a reference to an IBM-MAIN post and, following up, I found it was mine but as part of a thread where the absent object of this discussion was caught in a lighter mood - last February. I had playfully suggested I was not going to insist that points should be deducted because he had forgotten that something supported by VSE was also supported by VM. His playful response was that he accepted the guilt and the loss of points and observed that memory was the second thing that suffered from age plus "I forget the first". This sort-of reminds me of an exchange in a TV police series set in Oxford [2] where the inspector wants to have a word with a professor. The inspector finds the professor in a lecture hall at the end of his lecture. The last comment of the lecture is "I'm told there's a plaque on a house in Germany which says 'Werner Heisenberg may have slept here.'." At the end of their conversation, the inspector adds the question "That joke about Heisenberg, a reference to the 'uncertainty principle', right?" The professor, rushing off, says "I'm not sure." [1] For any still interested readers, the missing sentence is 'Maybe the program was converted from VSE which, in the days when it was DOS anyhow, used an SVC macro to "end the job".' [2] Lewis by himself, not Morse Chris Mason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Marchant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 10 November, 2006 2:50 PM Subject: Re: COND CODE 3592 > On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 04:18:02 +0100, Chris Mason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > >Shmuel > > > >Assuming my posts are being read sequentially, a good example. > > > > A good example of what? > > Inadequate quoting? He quoted Phil's entire post. > Too terse reply? He responded to each portion, the total post was > most certainly a complete response. > > Yours, in contrast, did neither. It wouldn't have been worth a > response except for your complaints about the way others post. > > > > >----- Original Message ----- > >From: "Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > >> In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on 11/06/2006 > >> at 04:14 PM, Phil Payne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > >> > >> >So, effectively, does z/OS. > >> > >> No. > > > > -- > Tom Marchant ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
