Start Flame
------------------
Dear:

  [ ] Alleged Primate         [ ] Lamer           [ ] AOLer
  [ ] "Me too" er             [ ] Pervert         [ ] Geek
  [ ] Spammer                 [ ] Nerd            [ ] Elvis
  [ ] Fed                     [ ] Freak           [ ] Punk
  [ ] Fathead                 [ ] "Expert"        [ ] Irritant
  [ ] Psycho                  [ ] Nut             [ ] Wacko
  [ ] Windows Zealot          [ ] Other:

 You Are Being Flamed Because:
  [ ] You posted a "test" in a newsgroup other than alt.test
  [ ] You posted warez in pieces LESS than 5000 lines
  [ ] You posted a binary in a format many readers can't use
  [ ] You posted something asking for warez sites
  [ ] You posted a binary in a non-binaries group
  [ ] You quoted an ENTIRE post in your reply
  [ ] You posted in ALL CAPS
  [ ] You posted an ad in an inappropriate group
  [ ] You continued a long, stupid thread
  [ ] You started an off-topic thread
  [ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message
  [ ] You said "me too" to something
  [ ] You don't know which group to post in
  [ ] You suck
  [ ] You brag about things that never happened
  [ ] Your sig/alias/server sucks
  [ ] You made up slang then used it in a message
  [ ] You posted a phone-sex ad
  [ ] I don't like your tone of voice
  [ ] I think you might be a fed
  [ ] You're an idiot
  [ ] You're a moron
  [ ] You're an imbecile
  [ ] You can't recognize sarcasm
  [ ] You posted in eLiTe CaPiTaLs
  [ ] You contributed nothing
  [ ] You contributed less than nothing
  [ ] You posted concerning a subject you know nothing about
  [ ] You posted a pyramid scheme
  [ ] You pretended your pyramid scheme was legal
  [ ] You are trolling

 To Repent, You Must:

  [ ] Give up your AOL account
  [ ] Bust up your modem with a hammer and eat it
  [ ] Eat your caps lock key
  [ ] Jump into a bathtub while using an electrical appliance
  [ ] Actually post something relevant
  [ ] Read the FAQ
  [ ] Be the guest of honor in alt.flame for a month
  [ ] Post your tests to alt.test
  [ ] Stop sucking
  [ ] Never post again
  [ ] Die
  [ ] Go away
  [ ] Stop using your father/mother/older sibling's account
  [ ] Invent a time machine, go back in time, and
        [ ] stop yourself from spamming
        [ ] stop your parents from conceiving
        [ ] stop your grandparents from conceiving
        [ ] stay there
  [ ] Get a life
  [ ] Talk to someone of the opposite sex (other than 1-900-BIGTITS)
  [ ] Calm down
  [ ] Watch Full House (if this seems like a reward, please do all the
      above)

In Closing, I'd Like to Say:

  [ ] Blow me
  [ ] Who cares?
  [ ] Fuck yourself
  [ ] I pity your dog
  [ ] Go to hell
  [ ] Never breed
  [ ] Yer momma's so fat/stupid/ugly that etc...
  [ ] Take your shit somewhere else
  [ ] Learn to post or fuck off
  [ ] Do us all a favor and jump into some industrial equipment
  [ ] See how far your tongue will fit into the electric outlet
  [ ] All of the above

End Flame... Thank you...  Drive through.
------------------

• 1 to change the light bulb and to post to the mail list that the light bulb has been changed
• 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently.
• 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.
• 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs.
• 53 to flame the spell checkers
• 156 to write to the list administrator complaining about the light bulb discussion and its inappropriateness to this mail list.
• 41 to correct spelling in the spelling/grammar flames.
• 109 to post that this list is not about light bulbs and to please take this email exchange to alt.lite.bulb
• 203 to demand that cross posting to alt.grammar, alt.spelling and alt.punctuation about changing light bulbs be stopped.
• 111 to defend the posting to this list saying that we are all use light bulbs and therefore the posts **are** relevant to this mail list.
• 306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique, and what brands are faulty.
• 27 to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs
• 14 to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly, and to post corrected URLs.
• 3 to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to this list which makes light bulbs relevant to this list.
• 33 to concatenate all posts to date, then quote them including all headers and footers, and then add "Me Too."
• 12 to post to the list that they are unsubscribing because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy.
• 19 to quote the "Me Too's" to say, "Me Three."
• 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ.
• 1 to propose new alt.change.lite.bulb newsgroup.
• 47 to say this is just what alt.physic.cold_fusion was meant for, leave it here.
• 143 votes for alt.lite.bulb.

On Tue, 01 Jan 2002 17:47:47 -0500, Linda wrote:

> I have recently installed RedHat 7.1 on my computer as a dual boot with
> Win98 on the other partition.
> 
> It is running reasonably well, but just one thing bothers me, the year.
> Now I realise that the christian year is the one most accepted and
> burned into the BIOS, but I personally (and most likely a LOT of others)
> prefer to use something else. My personal preference as an agnostic is
> the Roman years, this being 2755 AUC.
> 
> I would really like my RedHat to recognise and use this year, but being
> a newbie, I have no idea on how to implement it.
> 
> Can anyone help me with this please?
> 
> Linda.

Since it's Linux and therefore all open source, no problem.  But given
your agnostic bent you'd better provide a little more information:

 1. Will you accept the Gregorian (Christian) algorithm for leap years
    or do you want to use the Roman (Julian) algorithm.

 2. Will you accept the Judeo-Christian 7-day week, or do you want
    the Roman 8-day cycle of Market Days.

 3. Will you accept dates in one of the modern Western formats, e.g.,
    Month & Day, or do you want the Roman Calends/Nones/Ides style.

 4. What to use for the names of the days, given that our current names
    are primarily based on the names of Greco-Roman and Scandinavian gods.
    And the same problem with the names of some of the months.  Or we
    could just number the months (but oops, that's how the Quakers did
    it).

 5. Do you want to display numbers as numerals (Hindu/Muslim) or in
    the old Roman notation, i.e., I, V, X, etc.

 6. I assume you want dates in your style displayed not only with the
   'date' command, but also in directory displays and in applications like
    databases, spreadsheets, browsers, email clients, etc.

 7. I assume you'll accept our current system of hours:minutes:seconds.

 8. Do you accept standard time and time zones, or should everything be
    referred to apparent solar time in Rome.  And do you want to have
    Daylight Time in the summer.

 9. Finally, make sure you're settled on the AUC<-->year AD alignment to
    use, since there are at least two conflicting ones.

 10. Or perhaps you'd prefer to use the French Revolutionary Calendar
    system since it was devised to specifically exclude any religious
    symbolism whatsoever.  Or even simpler, just display all dates
    as Julian Day numbers and forget about years/months/days entirely.
    E.g., today at Noon GMT was JD 2451911.

Regards,
Charles Sullivan

Sending e-mail that's looks good is a reflection of your professionalism. And an e-mail that is properly written not only makes you look good, but is easier for your recipients to read which will win you lots of points with that individual. Finally, if you send an e-mail that looks good, you also look like you know your way around the computer and the Internet.
Here are some tips to writing a winning e-mail:

1. MANY READERS DON'T LIKE ALL CAPS. IT'S HARD TO READ AND SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING!
2. use punctuation its hard to read stuff that doesnt have any commas capital letters periods or apostrophes
3. Usee yur spall chacker. Its annyang to try to reede constent spalling misstakes.
4. When forwarding an e-mail to someone, copy and paste what you want to send into a new e-mail then send it off. This is especially true if you had to dig through tons of "layers" to actually get to the message of the e-mail.
5. Be courteous enough to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) when forwarding an email to everyone in your address book. You don't want the addresses of your friends to get sent around the net.
6. Avoid embedding sounds or using "stationary" in your messages. I know it's cute and we're guilty of showing you how to do it, but they take longer to download and can be annoying to your recipient. Additionally, when your recipient responds to your e-mail, they may have to re-format their text (especially color) in order for it to be readable.
7. Remember that attachments over 50k are annoyingly long to download, possibly causing your recipient's connection to "time-out", or the email could even be blocked. Try to keep those files manageable!
8. Re-read your e-mail message before you send it out. I don't know how many times I thought I had everything just right then found something that was way out of place when I re-read the document.
9. When replying to a message, don't quote back the entire message if you are just responding to one or two points. Just include what you are responding to.
10. Finally, don't use short hand. Stuff like "r u going to stp by ltr" can be hard to read. Don't B lzy, typ th whol wrd.

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss's more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar "stickler." And, like Truss -author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves- I have a "zero tolerance approach" to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job -even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.

Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too," their applications go into the bin.

Of course, we write for a living. iFixit.com is the world's largest online repair manual, and Dozuki helps companies write their own technical documentation, like paperless work instructions and step-by-step user manuals. So, it makes sense that we've made a preemptive strike against groan-worthy grammar errors.

But grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language is constantly changing, but that doesn't make grammar unimportant. Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

Good grammar makes good business sense -and not just when it comes to hiring writers. Writing isn't in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers.

On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing -like stocking shelves or labeling parts.

In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. You see, at its core, code is prose. Great programmers are more than just code monkeys; according to Stanford programming legend Donald Knuth they are "essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms." The point: programming should be easily understood by real human beings -not just computers.

And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil's in the details. In fact, when it comes to my whole business, details are everything.

I hire people who care about those details. Applicants who don't think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important. And I guarantee that even if other companies aren't issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.

That's why I grammar test people who walk in the door looking for a job. Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they're detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.

Kyle Wiens
(v.Harvard Business Review Blog Network, July 20/2012).

By Paul Shawcross

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -American, Russian, and Canadian- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -one wielding a laser- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo -and soon, crew- to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we're building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget