[NTLK] [OT] NewtonTalk

James Fraser wheresthatistanbul-newtontalk at yahoo.com
Wed Feb 29 12:24:34 EST 2012


Hello,

ZhengHui97 said:

>Oh, one thing to note - Sorry for the late reply guys! I was really busy - 
>student in the middle of exams - >and as the days passed I only got busier. So I 
>hope you guys accept my apology and understand.

No need to apologize (though it is a nice gesture).  Perhaps I'm speaking out of 
turn here, but I think it's universally understood on the list that people will 
reply on NewtonTalk whenever they can.

One of the things I like about this particular mailing list is the fact that 
there's no time limit for replying to threads.  Some of the mailing 
lists/message boards I'm on don't allow (or at least, strongly frown upon) 
replying to threads that are more than a week old.  While I can -kind of- 
understand the rationale behind such a rule (out-of-the-blue replies to six 
month old threads can be a tad disconcerting sometimes), I'm not entirely 
convinced it takes Real World conditions (like, say, your exams) into account.  


Of course, it's only fair to confess to being old enough to remember a time 
before the Internet was so widespread and people corresponded with other people 
around the world via a medium known as "the post." Writing to someone via "the 
post" sometimes meant (depending on the geographical distance involved) replies 
could easily take a week to receive, and sometimes a good deal longer (no, 
really, it's true; the history books will back me up).  


If you're old enough to remember such times, the ever-pressing, 
ever-accelerating sense of urgency the Internet seems to have created in its 
wake can be a bit baffling, at least on occasion (okay, baffling for me, at 
least).

Olde Tyme reminiscences aside (incipient senility is a terrible thing), it's 
nice to hear back from you. :)


Best,

James Fraser



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