From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 93 13:16:37 PDT
To: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: Thurn, Thurn, Thurn (und Taxis, too!)
In-Reply-To: <9308201953.AA23576@netcom.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <9308202012.AA04597@snark.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Timothy C. May says:
> J. Eric Townsend writes:
> 
> >Eric Hughes writes:
> > >      alt.w.a.s.t.e
> >
> >please make it alt.waste, or alt.w-a-s-t-e if you must have seps
> >between letters.  The additional '.' characters will cause a
> >hierarchy:
> >
> >alt.w
> >alt.w.a
> >alt.w.a.s
> >alt.w.a.s.t
> >alt.w.a.s.t.e
> 
> For the first 3/4 of "The Crying of Lot 49," Oedipa Maas thinks she is
> seeing "WASTE" written on boxes and mail drops. It is only later, as she is
> travelling through Berkeley by AC-DC ("standing for Alameda County Death
> Cult"), that she notices the periods, writ very small (.).
> 
> So calling our cyberspace mail drop "alt.waste" would have resonances with
> this Oedipal error, allowing the correcting of newbies.

Yes, Tim, but none the less creating newsgroups with .s used as
puncutation instead of as heirarchy seperators is considered Very
Rude. I think there is no reason for us to do something that is
considered Very Rude even if it is a good joke. Dashes are likely a
good compromise.

Perry