Subject: Top 10 ? Top 20 ?

From: Clint Danbury <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 22:15:05 -0700

I am certain there is a faq for pine.

I have never seen/read it.

I am making a wild, totally-uninformed, totally-uneducated etc.etc. guess
with this assertion:  The faq is a zillion lines long and contains
jillions of questions.

My amazing psychic powers tell me that 90% of the questions posted here in
the newsgroup are variations on a basic pool of, say, 10 or 20 questions.

Now, I once met a graduate from the university which is credited with the
creation/promulgation of pine, and she was a pretty smart human, and I'll
betcha that most of the other folks up there in Washington are also smart.

So,,,,,,,,,

How about preparing, and posting, a list of the *-MOST-* frequently asked
questions.

The answers to the questions should follow this format.......

	Push this key and wait for the such-and-so screen to appear
	Push that key and wait for action-X to occur
	Push the other key and wait for response-Y
	etc.
	etc.
	etc.

On the other hand, maybe I should just buy some pathetically overpowered
monster-chip (e.g.pentium, sparcSomething, whatever) and load it with some
pathetically inefficient software and buy a PPP account.

My current observation on the situation is that the only software
developers who are able to....

		-1- make a guess as to what questions the user is
		    likely to ask

		-2- produce an answer composed of sentences which 
		    are structured with the subject/predicate idea 
		    which was taught back in the 6th grade in 
		    elementary school

		-3- differentiate between various parts of speech
		    such as nouns and verbs and adjectives and 
		    so on which was also taught back in the 6th 
		    grade

		-4- produce a sentence of semantic substance

		-5- use appropriate punctuation in their writing 
		    to clarify concepts when specific parts of 
		    speech (such as nouns) are used as other 
		    parts of speech (such as verbs or adjectives)

		-6- place these sentences on the screen in such 
		    a manner as to facilitate clear written 
		    communication

... are "incapable of" (polite way of saying too stupid and/or lazy)
writing software which will run on a simpler machine.

Conversely, those software writers who produce software which doesn't
require a zillion mFlops (or a gig of ram or 18 hard disks or a clock
speed of a terahertz, etc.) are "incapable of" (polite, again) producing
sentences which meet the 6 criteria above.

Therefore, I will migrate away from those packages which can't explain
their own use, and migrate toward those packs whose authors are able to
explain their use.

Just in case nobody's really following any of this,,,,,

There's a bunch of money and/or fame  to be made from all of this, and
I'm not the least bit interested today (and probably never) in entering
such a market to compete for those dollars.

But,,,,,

If somebody *-does-* have the ability to communicate with sensible
sentences with semantic substance, and that same somebody  can write
software which is not pathetically inefficient (i.e. it doesn't require
the latest fastest machine on earth to run), then,,,,,

		That software and its developer will become 
		famous, and probably make a lot of money.

Assuming, of course, that such a person/company/party did create such a
news/email/whatever package.

That will never happen.  

This post is an entire waste of my time.

The end

;-------------------------------------------------------------------------
;                                                                        -
;                                                                        -
;        [email-masked]     Clint Danbury                          -
;                                 Box 742226                             -
;                                 Dallas, TX  75374-2226                 -
;                                                                        -
;         A Q&A document explaining this project will be emailed to      -
;         any person who convinces me that they really want to           -
;         know what this is all about.                                   -
;-------------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: [email-masked] (Robert Martin)
Date: 28 Jul 1996 18:22:02 GMT

1. Pull the unix manuals for Pine and Pico.

  2. Go to your local library, read the newsreader tutorials in
     the guides published by Paul Gilster, Harley Haun, et. al.

  3. Your questions will be answered... 
--

     Bob Martin
     [email-masked]