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Is Linda A Comedienne?

BillyJoe

Penultimate Amazing
B
Joined
Aug 4, 2001
Messages
12,531
Dear fellow posters,


Every week, Linda sends out emails with a link to Randi's Commentary.
This week Linda sent out this email:

Come visit our updated website to see Randi’s latest commentary....
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No link.
Apparently several posters notified her about this. But what does Linda do. She sends out a second email with the missing link of course. Wrong! This is the email our dear Linda sent out....

I neglected to include the website address when I sent out the notification earlier today with Randi’s newest commentary. Thanks to all of you who pointed this out. The address is www.randi.org.
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Still no link. Just the name of the website (as if we didn't know).

Is Linda trying to be funny?
Or does she need some serious help?


interested,
BillyJoe
 
Well, when I quote Linda's email it comes up as a link. :D
In the actual email it definitely did not.

BJ
 
BillyJoe said:
Just the name of the website (as if we didn't know).
Click to expand...

No, she did right. Always try to lead people to the top of the website.

/C
 
Re: Re: Is Linda A Comedienne?

CFLarsen said:
No, she did right. Always try to lead people to the top of the website.
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Okay, but what I'm trying to say is that she didn't include an actual link like this. Just the name of the website like this.
 
Look- she works at JREF, where an advanced sense of the ridiculous is a survival trait.
Those interns you read about? They come in every year, lean, hard, mentally tough, straight out of psychological training camp.

Six months later, Linda ships 'em out in a straitjacket to the Skeptics Charity Home for the Bewildered. She spits a plug of tobacco juice in the brass cuspidor , opens the window and hollers "Next!"

You know she used to be a Navy SEAL?
 
SS,

Soapy Sam said:
Look- she works at JREF, where an advanced sense of the ridiculous is a survival trait.
Click to expand...
Or, perhaps, she just made a simple error?

BJ
 
Is this the first time the link didn't work? Because I did it the same way I do it every week, and I've never gotten complaints before that it didn't work. And it did work for me...I tested it before I sent it. So I'm confused. And I've never claimed to be terribly computer literate, so if I'm doing something wrong, I won't have my feelings hurt if I'm corrected. Just don't call me stupid, please.

And I don't chew tobacco!:D
 
Billy Joe, maybe your mail reader is the problem. Send an email to yourself with "www.randi.org" (minus the quotes) in it and see what happens. Most mail readers will parse that as a link. If it doesn't it isn't Linda's fault. If it does, perhaps Linda left out a surrounding space or something.
 
I have been recieving notification from Linda of Randi's commentary coming on line every week for a couple of months now (at least I think it's a couple of months) and the link has always worked before. I know because I have been accessing his commentary through that link ever since the emails started arriving.

Last week, Linda forgot to include the link in her email and then issued another about two hours later after someone had pointed this out to her (or so she said in the email). But this second email contained only the address, not an actual link. I have checked it again just now and there definitely is no link there.

Did no one else have this problem?
Have I been singled out?
And why do I deserve this treatment?
Should I pack it in, then??
Is that the message I should be reading??

But seriously, I thought Linda was having a joke, but it seems that was not the case.

BJ
 
You weren't being singled out; there was no link. Somehow, the mail was sent as text instead of HTML. It may have been the listserv that did it.

However, if there had been a link, you wouldn't have had all this entertainment, now would you?

You should be thanking Linda for the diversion.

And, as a friendly warning. Never taunt Linda. She has an army of Wee Forest Folk at her command, and she's not afraid to use them. Her avatar is merely the advance guard.

bronners_1852_49810261
 
It seems we little mouses are too small to pay any attention to.
I received no email at all from Linda this week.

:(

BillyJoe
 
bruto said:
Billy Joe, maybe your mail reader is the problem. Send an email to yourself with "www.randi.org" (minus the quotes) in it and see what happens. Most mail readers will parse that as a link.
Click to expand...
Correction:

Most mail composition programs will parse it as a link, and create the appropriate <A HREF=...> HTML tag around it. Then, on the receiving end, the HTML renderer in the receiver's mail reader will render it as a link.

But, of course, it's not as simple as I've just described. When a message contains any kind of marked-up or styled or otherwise specially-formatted text, the mail composition program typically creates a message containing 2 MIME sections: one containing the message body as HTML, and one containing the message body as plain text. This is so that older mail readers, which cannot handle HTML, will still be able to display the plain text MIME section and get the basic content of the message across to the recipient. (In fact, messages containing ONLY an HTML MIME section, with no plaintext MIME section, are often treated as spam by some spam filtering programs.)

It may be that Billy Joe's mailreader is displaying the plaintext MIME portion of Linda's message, rather than the HTML MIME portion.
 
BJ- I have also been expecting a reply from Linda on another matter entirely. Not wildly urgent, but I'm surprised I've had no reply, as Linda is generally very quick to respond to PMs.

I wonder if she's simply snowed under with the TAM registration stuff, or if there may be an actual PM problem.
 
tracer said:
Correction:

Most mail composition programs will parse it as a link, and create the appropriate <A HREF=...> HTML tag around it. Then, on the receiving end, the HTML renderer in the receiver's mail reader will render it as a link.

But, of course, it's not as simple as I've just described. When a message contains any kind of marked-up or styled or otherwise specially-formatted text, the mail composition program typically creates a message containing 2 MIME sections: one containing the message body as HTML, and one containing the message body as plain text. This is so that older mail readers, which cannot handle HTML, will still be able to display the plain text MIME section and get the basic content of the message across to the recipient. (In fact, messages containing ONLY an HTML MIME section, with no plaintext MIME section, are often treated as spam by some spam filtering programs.)

It may be that Billy Joe's mailreader is displaying the plaintext MIME portion of Linda's message, rather than the HTML MIME portion.
Click to expand...

Mozilla Thunderbird, like its Netscape predecessors, parses plain text links when it finds them, with or without the "http//" portion, even if the mail is sent as plain text without embedded HTML . However, if you send a message in HTML mode and the "http://" portion is not included in an embedded link, it will not work.

The reader is what does the parsing of plain text, though.
 
tracer,

tracer said:
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that
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In this case, it seems, the truth is rather simple. Linda, poor thing, has made at a few errers/omisions and Randi has packed her off for a little rest. I'm sure she will be back on track again next week. :)

Now, let's see if I can remember how to get to this weeks commentary.....

BJ
 
I heard she was last seen boarding a flight for OZ, carrying a blunt retort.
:p
 
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