[From Bill Powers (2008.02.23.0718 MST)]
In other email
environments, I recall that selecting from the top down to the desired
line and pressing Delete wasn’t a big deal, but it’s not even that hard.
Since your reply gives you the date stamp, all you need to copy actually
is the name on the From line, then delete the entire header in one swoop,
along with whatever parts of the message you’re not replying to. Sounds
like you have to delete the header anyway, so that’s nothing added.
Surely scanning down for
From:
and copying the name to the clipboard before deleting the header is less
of a chore than constructing that ID tag.
Whoever you are, you’ve elegantly solved the problem for someone who has
a different mail program. When I click on “Reply,” a new
message window appears with the Sender’s name (not the “From”
name) in the “To” field and my address in the “From”
field. In the message portion, a copy of the post being replied to
appears, preceded by a date stamp without a name. The header itself
doesn’t appear at all. So to retrieve the Name information, I have to
store the outgoing message, retrieve the received message, find the
header line with the name in it, highlight it, cut it, store the message,
reopen my outgoing message, and paste in the name. Or read it, remember,
it, and type it in, which isn’t a lot easier for me.
I notice that your present message on CSGnet doesn’t contain any
information in the text showing whose post you’re replying to. That
information is at the top of the header, off the screen and it’s not
included in the reply.
I think it’s less of a chore to look at the top lines of the copy of the
received message and delete a few characters from the embedded
name-time-date stamp to show the readers whose message I’m answering. And
insert my own painfully-typed 40-character ID stamp, which is very noble
of me because its only purpose is to make life easier for those who reply
to my messages using Eudora or who want to know whose message I’m
replying to.
I agree that software could make it all a lot easier, but I don’t know
how to add my software to Eudora’s.
Not mine to
change, and I suppose I shouldn’t have brought it
up.
Use your own convention, or none. I didn’t say I would ignore posts that
don’t follow the suggested format. And your comments are actually very
useful for me, because they have raised the consciousness of those who
don’t put in their own name-date-time stamp at the top of their messages
in the form
[From MyName (yyyymmdd.tttt)]
and have provided me with an excuse for complaining and suggesting that
they do so. Not that I will consider them any less of a human being for
failing to follow this simple modest request that any normal person would
comply with just to show a scrap of consideration for others. No, no, of
course not.
···
At 06:42 AM 2/23/2008 -0500, you > wrote:
===================================================================
Back on the thread of vicarious conditioning, I came across a photograph
in which a vicarious something-or-other is clearly going on. The occasion
was my birthday (78th) in late August of 2004, attended by children and
grandchildren. I was trying to untie a piece of yarn on the handle of a
bag with a present inside, supervised by my granddaughter Sarah (on the
left) and particularly by Mary (on the right). My daughter Allie took the
picture. I think this is a nice example of how, when one imagines
carrying out a task, some of the imagined reference signals seem to leak
through to the lower levels, which actually start to do what one is
imagining doing.
I don’t know what this “conditioning” nonsense is supposed to
represent. Probably just another aspect of the general idea that the
environment (and especially the behavioral scientists in the environment)
control the behavior of us poor fumbling organisms. Actually, that’s an
attractive theory because it means that other people were really
responsible for all the wrong things I have done. It’s the “Don’t
Blame Me” theory of behavior. Naturally I retain the credit for all
the right things I’ve done, like conditioning other people for their own
good.
Best,
Bill P.
