stupid anthrax q: would microwaving your snail mail help?

[Tim May]

On Saturday, October 20, 2001, at 09:13 AM, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> Dare I say it? Another reason to use just 7-bit ASCII.
>
> I'm not particularly religious on this issue, but for text-based
> discussions like the ones we have here, anything else just doesn't
> seem necessary, and can lead to strange results like what we just saw.
>
> -Declan
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 04:13:19PM -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote:
>> Above mistranslates ISO-8859-1 encoded \260 (octal), the degree sign, 
>> as
>> a zero.
>>
>> Temperatures should read 220 F, 270 F, and 280 F, not thousands of
>> degrees.
>
>


As Declan says, and as many of us have said, there are _abundant_ 
reasons to try to stick to 7-bit ASCII on mailing lists and on Usenet. 
It's not surprising to me that it is Karsten M. Self, whom I had to 
killfile, is quoted above in this issue. He was always complaining that 
posts should be "formatted for legibility," via his nags and reposts, 
but then he has MIME encrustations on his posts.

As for the "degrees" issue, confusion about the symbol was one of the 
reasons the scientific community abandoned use of the symbol at least 30 
years ago. 212 F and 100 C are the accepted ways of reporting 
temperature...the degree symbol was redundant anyway and led to 
typesetting problems.

--Tim May



--Tim May
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any 
member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to 
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient 
warrant." --John Stuart Mill