[mythtv-users] gmail users Re: Chanell changing problem over firewire using sa3250ch

Ken Beal kenbeal at gmail.com
Sun Feb 26 04:51:24 UTC 2006


Hi Isaac,

It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

People will be joining this list all the time.  Your project is successful,
and I believe that it will become more so, especially as Digital
Restrictions Management continues to infect already-deployed consumer
devices (like my TiVo).

People tend to use services like Gmail, which promote top-posting.  Banning
Gmail users will likely greatly reduce the value your service provides, but
it's your call to make.

My introduction to this list was to receive a complaint[1], and a complaint
which not only was missing information (as in, the reasons for the
complaint!), but within a few hours of joining the -dev list, I saw a post
by someone stating twice that the responder had removed information from the
email which would have aided understanding.  Thus my opinion began forming.
(Yours has likely been forming since some time in 2002 when you started this
list; you have more data than me to base your opinion on.)

Your figures show around 50 GB per month being sent out.  Are you paying
extra for that?  I already stated that I will gladly contribute towards your
mailing list overage costs.  (And it truly is gladly: by learning your
system, I will save myself $13 a month once I can abandon the TiVo.)

You gave a good example of unreadable text.  I gave two examples of emails
for which the efficiency of communication would have been improved if the
information that was in the previous email had been preserved (the initial
email I responded to, and one from the -dev list).

Banning someone's input and/or questions simply because of the format of
their communications (or the domain that they are on!) seems very religious
[2] to me, especially when the issue is not mentioned at all on the mailing
list signup page.  Chad's response said that the list will "probably very
quickly" let me know which form it prefers (and it has!), so it makes sense
that text describing this preference should be on the mailing list signup
page, which would eliminate the bandwidth taken up by most if not all of
this thread.

I'm new here, so perhaps I should be lurking rather than saying so much on
my first day.  I want to help, and I want to understand, which is why I sent
my first email (and to demonstrate the point that people [removing
information from emails] had already [removed enough information] from the
thread which was about [removing information from emails], that I had to ask
for clarification).

If you give me your PayPal account, I'll send $20.  And, I will strive to
contribute to more fruitful threads in the future, and will say no more on
this topic unless questioned.

Sincerely,
Ken Beal

PS Please note that I had never been asked not to top-post (you stated
"people have been asked _many_ times to not do it").  I will attempt to
conform in the future, and again I apologize if my (previous and current)
communications were taken negatively, because I do not intend to display any
negativity.  I think MythTV is an excellent project and I want to
financially (and otherwise, including preferred communication methods [3])
support its creator.

[1] I requested to join the list at 5:00 pm.  I replied to the auto-response
at 6:18 pm, and it responded to me during the same minute.  Also at 6:18 pm
there was an email with subject "Jump ahead problem w/ .19", and then at
6:20 pm I received the email from Isaac stating that he could easily ban the
Gmail domain.  So when I say "introduction" it wasn't the first email, but
it was among the first that I read when I came back to Gmail, around 6:30
pm.  (I'm in EST.)

[2] That is, "control for the sake of control"; as opposed to spirituality,
which tends to be enlightening.

[3] But I won't know what they are without asking or being told, hence this
discussion[4].

[4] Terry Pratchett would be proud.  Or amused.  Or not.
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