Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!rpi.edu!rodney
From: rodney@taac.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Signature files (LONG)
Message-ID: 
Date: 18 Aug 89 02:19:42 GMT
References: <15046@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <549@buster.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@rpi.edu
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Image Processing Lab, Troy NY
Lines: 55
In-reply-to: rli@buster.UUCP's message of 16 Aug 89 07:17:55 GMT

hmmm.. What a complete bunch of statistical nonsense.

Why is it that each of these 1000+ sites requires a phone call?
Where does the number 4200 come from?  What about all these internet
sites which also store the file on disk?  Don't we count?

Ten dollars per megabyte??  Outrageous.  Is that per megabyte-month or
megabyte-hour or what?  Or are you just making this up?  Thirty
dollars to store a file on the entire usenet seems extremely cheap to
me.

If you are REALLY concerned with wasting other people's money
transfering excessive things, why not restructure your signature:

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. SNAIL: Buster Irby                      usenet:   {buster,nuchat}!rli
            13019 Naples Lane
            Stafford, Texas 77477

first off, why the 79 hyphens?  That's $3 to $6 dollars of disk space
and $0.22 worth of telephone charges to tell us that your signature is
starting.  The two hyphens that your posting program put in say that
and only cost eight cents to store and one half a cent to send.

Continuing, why would we want to know your home address everytime you
post something?  Couldn't you just put that in if you were actually
expecting mail?  You see, most people would mail you and ask for your
address if they wanted to send a package. But since you've mailed it,
I'll add it to my rolodex.  Thanks.  That only cost another 86
characters (not including NL's which would be there anyway).  So we
give AT&T another $0.22 cents or so and eat another $3 in disk space
every time you send out your address.  I won't count the 22 spaces to
put the mailing address over there on the right (to make the signature
less than 4 lines no doubt.  Humorously adding 21 additional
characters!)

Why not make your signature be something like this?

--
Buster Irby
{buster,nuchat}!rli

(of course the mailer or posting program puts in the two hyphens)
That's 33 chars which do the job just fine.


   If you are concerned with line charges and storage space, this
would be a rational thing to do.

  Personally, I don't like long signatures simply because they are
really annoying.  But then, they do let you pick out the personality
of the poster and that's probably a useful thing.
--
Rodney