Re: Rumours abounding about a new Gnome Media release

[hobbit aloss ukuu org uk]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2002 at 02:27:47AM +0100 or thereabouts, iain wrote:
> [1] Yes, I copied this off of my slipmats.
> [2] There was a "release" called 1.999999999.0 last week, and to tell
> you the truth, the only thing thats changed is the version number in the
> configure.in file.
> [3] Or any other server that does that sort of stuff. Don't let the name
> fool you.
> [4] AKA The "Your favourite band sucks" principle.
> [5] The mixer formally known as GMix.
...to the current record for footnotes on gnome mailing lists. 

I did enjoy the release announcement, but on the matter of footnotes:

     A  monstrous  variation on the parenthesis is the content footnote.
     What,  after  all,  is  a content footnote but material that one is
     either  too  lazy  to  integrate  into  the text or too reverent to
     discard?  Reading  a  piece of prose that constantly dissolves into
     extended  footnotes  is  profoundly disheartening. Hence my rule of
     thumb  for  footnotes  is exactly the same as that for parentheses.
     One  should  regard  them  as symbols of failure. I hardly need add
     that in this vale of tears failure is sometimes unavoidable.

   Linkname: Paul Robinson, The Philosophy of Punctuation
        URL: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/721833.html

(The whole thing is a great read, even if he's wrong about the
semicolon :)) 

Telsa