Re: 4ol 4rt files:
On 1/27/06, Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl> wrote:
> Our list comes up as the first hit if you google "remove 4ol 4rt files"
> or "removing 4ol 4rt files". (You have to spell it correctly of course;
> I do not want to increase our Google rank any further with this mail.)
> This explains how this behavior gets perpetuated, but I cannot for the
> life of me imagine how the first one of them came to the conclusion that
> it would be a good idea to ask a Linux mailing list about an 4ol issue.
Some creative Googling shows that as early as 1998, posts appeared on
debian-user containing the words "4ol" and "4rt". The former either
came from email addresses or complaints about that ISP's spam policy.
The latter either came from a person's name (4rt Lemasters) or
references to things such as ASCII 4rt. In 2000, someone specifically
asked a question on d-u about viewing 4ol 4rt files on linux. A
similar question was asked in 2002. 2004 seems to be the first year
in which questions about removing these files started appearing in the
current annoying (and inappropriate) form.
If you're interested in checking out this history for yourself:
"site:lists.debian.org 4ol 4rt 1998" is the sort of search string to
use.
--
Michael A. Marsh
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~mmarsh
http://mamarsh.blogspot.com
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