Ashesh Datta wrote:
I suspect Mr David Pye is living in the past, still hankering for Britain's long lost colonies, but he should harbour no such hope about Iraq (Churchill tried that in the 1920's but had to give up despite gassing the Shiites in the South and putting hapless Indian troops on the ground for "policing on the cheap" who were killed by their hundreds - a bit of history for you Debian aficionados in the English list).
Oh please. It's pretty well-accepted that unless specified otherwise, a mailing list is assumed to be English speaking. There are mailing lists for other languages, but this mailing list is (pretty obviously if you subscribe, or look at the archives) English speaking. I don't think it's unreasonable for people who want to participate in this, or any other mailing list, to be expected to follow basic 'netiquette. If you want to relate his complaint with the former British colonies, or the monarchy, or whatever, take your diatribe to Usenet, bring up Adolf Hitler and/or Nazis, and let Godwin's Law take its due course.
End rant. And I'm not going to state an opinion on whether it's right or not that 'netiquette assumes (properly, in this case) that the list is English speaking - that's just the way it is.
-- Derrik Pates dpates@dsdk12.net