iplayer audio to lpcm

Owen Smith owen.smith at cantab.net
Sat Nov 8 14:35:51 PST 2014


I had hoped by saying we'd discussed this before we could avoid all this rant. Apparently not.

The facts as I see it are:

1) David has a VERY entrenched deeply held belief about this
2) almost no-one else on the list agrees with him in principle
3) notwithstanding 2), many agree David runs the list and so sets the rules

Now can we please drop this?

-- 
Owen Smith <owen.smith at cantab.net>
Cambridge, UK

On 8 Nov 2014, at 21:24, David Woodhouse <dwmw2 at infradead.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 2014-11-08 at 14:10 +0000, Jim Lesurf wrote:
>> On 08 Nov, Owen Smith <owen.smith at cantab.net> wrote:
>>> Blasted mailing list, I sent the message below as a personal reply,
>>> AGAIN. I simply cannot get my brain to accept how this list works. I'm
>>> on half a dozen other mailing lists all of which work the other way
>>> round ie. replies go to the list. Mutter.
>> 
>> I've also been a bit puzzled/confused by the list. I'd expected emails to
>> the list to just generate responses via the list. But various responses
>> have come both direct and via the list.
>> 
>> I don't mind cc'ing back when I get direct responses in parallel. But it
>> does mean I am getting duplicatics and will have to set up a filter to
>> ensure these all go to the correct storage 'box' here.
>> 
>> Is this all the norm here, or have I done something wrong? If the latter,
>> my apologies. Not experienced it on other lists where all by default goes
>> only via the list.
> 
> As Owen says, this has been discussed before.
> 
> Your email client — every email client — has (at least) two options for
> *how* to reply to an email.
> 
> First there's the private reply which goes only to the sender of the
> original email.
> 
> And then there's the public "reply to all" which goes to everyone who
> received the original email.
> 
> It is a heinous crime for someone to hack into your computer and hack
> your email software so that when you choose a *private* reply, you are
> actually tricked into replying in public instead.
> 
> Sending a message which was intended to be private, to a *public* forum,
> can be catastrophic. It can ends friendships, jobs, marriages. Granted,
> that doesn't happen often. But it *does* happen.
> 
> Conversely, if someone isn't thinking and accidentally presses the
> private 'reply' button when they meant to reply in public, that failure
> mode is harmless. They get to feel a bit of a muppet because they
> couldn't drive their email program properly, and they can resend the
> mail to the right place. But then again, the *email* they sent when they
> weren't thinking straight might sometimes need editing once they sober
> up anyway. Or might be better of just not sent :)
> 
> When a mailing list abuses the Reply-To: header to redirect *private*
> replies back to the list, that's horrible. I know some people do it in
> the interest of "simplicity", because users are often too clueless to
> press the right button. But for $DEITY's sake this is *simple*. It's
> hardly difficult to know the difference between the private and public
> reply buttons, and *all* email clients have them. By abusing the
> Reply-To: header in this way, those lists are actually *creating* the
> confusion that they claim to be trying to work around.
> 
> Now, if you *do* want to reply in public, there's a separate question
> about whether you should reply *only* to the list, or whether you should
> reply to all and keep everyone in the loop. Again it's useful to look at
> the failure modes. If you reply to everyone, then those who have
> actively participated in the thread will be copied directly. Many may
> want this, but a *few* people will be trivially inconvenienced by having
> two copies of the same email. An inconvenience which does them no real
> harm.
> 
> Now think about what happens if you *don't* do people the courtesy of
> copying them directly. Some people will be cut out of the conversation
> *entirely*, and others will just be receiving it in a delayed form so
> that by the time they're able to reply, the conversation has moved on.
> See http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html for a detailed treatment
> of this, including a bunch of specific cases where the *lack* of a
> direct copy causes problems for individuals or even the entire set of
> subscribers to other mailing lists on which the thread may have been
> cross-posted.
> 
> Seriously, there isn't much of a debate to be had here. Use the right
> button in the mailer. And if you *insist* on replying to the list
> instead of to everyone, your mailer *probably* has an option for that
> too. But be prepared that a number of more technical people will just
> *ignore* you if you do that.
> 
> Seriously, when I start to help someone because I happen to come across
> their email in one of the dozens of mailing lists to which I'm
> subscribed, and they *fail* to reply to me directly, I'm very unlikely
> to see their response. And if I *do* happen to see it and they haven't
> done me the courtesy of replying directly to me, I'll be very
> disinclined to continue helping them. Life's too short to help people
> who make life hard for themselves and me.
> 
> 
> -- 
> dwmw2



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