> An alarmist style when posting a serious error is a good idea. "Hey > guys, I found a possible problem..." Does not seem to generate the > needed level of excitement. DOS attacks means that business stops. I > think that should generate a furrowed brow, to say the least.
Obviously people have forgotten past history. The Symbolics guys had _great_ techniques for this that were well documented: It is considered artful to append many messages on a subject, leaving only the most inflammatory lines from each, and reply to all in one swift blow. The choice of lines to support your argument can make or break your case. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % State opinions in the syntax of fact: "...as well as the bug in LMFS where you have to expunge directories to get rid of files....." -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % People can be set wondering by loading obscure personal patchable systems, and sending bug reports. Who would not stop and wonder upon seeing "Experimental TD80-TAPE 1.17, MegaDeath 2.5..."? The same for provocatively-named functions and variables in stack traces. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Know the list of "large, chronic problems". If there is any problem with the window system, blame it on the activity system. Any lack of user functionality should be attributed to the lack of a command processor. A suprisingly large number of people will believe that you have thought in depth about the issue to which you are alluding when you do. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Know how to blow any problem up into insolubility. Know how to use the phrase "The new ~A system" to insult its argument, e.g., "I guess this destructuring LET thing is fixed in the new Lisp system", or better yet, PROLOG. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Never hit someone head on, always sideswipe. Never say, "Foo's last patch was brain-damaged", but rather, "While fixing the miscellaneous bugs in 243.xyz [foo's patch], I found...." -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Idiosyncratic indentations, double-spacing, capitalization, etc., while stamps of individuality, leave one an easy target for parody. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Strong language gets results. "The reloader is completely broken in 242" will open a lot more eyes than "The reloader doesn't load files with intermixed spaces, asterisks, and <'s in their names that are bigger than 64K". You can always say the latter in a later paragraph. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Including a destination in the CC list that will cause the recipients' mailer to blow out is a good way to stifle dissent. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % When replying, it is often possible to cleverly edit the original message in such a way as to subtly alter its meaning or tone to your advantage while appearing that you are taking pains to preserve the author's intent. As a bonus, it will seem that your superior intellect is cutting through all the excess verbiage to the very heart of the matter. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Referring to undocumented private communications allows one to claim virtually anything: "we discussed this idea in our working group last year, and concluded that it was totally brain-damaged". -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Points are awarded for getting the last word in. Drawing the conversation out so long that the original message disappears due to being indented off the right hand edge of the screen is one way to do this. Another is to imply that anyone replying further is a hopeless cretin and is wasting everyone's valuable time. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Keeping a secret "Hall Of Flame" file of people's mail indiscretions, or copying messages to private mailing lists for subsequent derision, is good fun and also a worthwhile investment in case you need to blackmail the senders later. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Users should cultivate an ability to make the simplest molehill into a mountain by finding controversial interpretations of innocuous sounding statements that the sender never intended or imagined. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Obversely, a lot of verbal mileage can also be gotten by sending out incomprehensible, cryptic, confusing or unintelligible messages, and then iteratively "correcting" the "mistaken interpretations" in the replys. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Trivialize a user's bug report by pointing out that it was fixed independently long ago in a system that hasn't been released yet. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail % Send messages calling for fonts not available to the recipient(s). This can (in the case of Zmail) totally disable the user's machine and mail system for up to a whole day in some circumstances. -- from the Symbolics Guidelines for Sending Mail -- (concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca") http://cbbrowne.com/info/emacs.html Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck... ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
