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