11/7    Please, please use motdedit.  You're overwriting my posts and creating
        a censorship boogyman for idiots to point at.  If you don't like
        motdedit, I'd really like to hear why.  Are you an emacs user who
        doesn't like to leave the emacs shell?  Specifically, I don't want to
        hear from pro-me people, just the people who don't like it.  Perhaps we
        can make it better.
        \_ Ooh!  This sounds fun!  Guess who I am?
        \_ hey, maybe you should post where motdedit is found, and where
           the documentation is, and then repost it after it's instantly
           deleted a few times.  some of us just don't know where it is.
           ]man motdedit
           No manual entry for motdedit
           \_ /csua/bin/motdedit.
              \_ right.  so there is no documentation, and you have to
                 use EMACS.  fuck that.  I'll just write my own, or
                 stick with vi until someone else writes something
                 better.
                 \_ Not at all.  It tries to use your VISUAL_EDITOR env var,
                    then EDITOR, then emacs as a last resort.  In tcsh, try
                    % setenv EDITOR vi
                    then run motdedit again.
                    \_ ok, that's a start, but there's still no documentation.
                       how do i save without writing over someone else's post?
                       did someone seriously write this thing and write
                       *no* documentation at all?  if so, i'll refuse to use
                       it on general principle, since people like that
                       should have their engineering degrees taken away and
                       be held up for public ridicule.
                       \_ Dude.  /csua/bin/motdedit -h.  Try thinking for
                          yourself. --scotsman
                       \_ If you're using motdedit, the only way you'd save
                          over someone else's changes is if they did not use
                          motdedit.  When you start motdedit, it tries to
                          aquire a lock.  If it's already locked, you have to
                          wait to edit.  Once you edit, it locks so that other
                          people can't edit, unless they are being hosers by
                          not using motdedit and ignoring your lock.
                          In re: no documentation.  It's not very complicated
                          and the code is pretty well documented.
                          \_ "The code wasn't complicated so we didn't document
                             anything". --pre-Y2k programmers around the world.
                             \_ It's just a flame-editing program installed on
                                a single student-group machine.  Best
                                engineering practices are sometimes impractical
                                \_ right. so writing a one paragraph
                                   description of what it does and
                                   how to use it is "impractical."
                                   fuck you and fuck all the arrogant dick
                                   hackers like you.
                                   \_ I was refering to making and installing
                                      a man page.  I'm not root, are you?
                                   \_ There's a 1-paragraph description at the
                                      top of the file.  It's a perl script.
                                      Learn from it.
                       \_ Who let this idiot into CSUA?
                          \_ Who let this idiot into CSUA?  Who not teach this
                             idiot about article part of English, "the"?
        \_ it's another anti pseudo-anonymity feature.  *I* don't smash new
           stuff on the motd but I've noticed that arrogant self righteous
           motdedit users do so I have no sympathy.
           \_ I regularly smash other people's stuff with motdedit. Why?
              Because when vi tells me that the file has changed, in order to
              preserve other people's comments 1) I have to make a copy of my
              comments in some other buffer 2) read the file again 3) paste my
              comments back again and hope that someone else didn't edit the
              file while I was doing all this. And why should I be doing all of
              this?  Just because you're too good not to use motdedit?
              \_ You're a lazy and arrogant prick.  That's exactly what I do
                 as a non-motdedit user.  Why should I be doing all of this?
                 To save the text of some lazy good for nothing asshole who
                 has nothing worth saying anyway?  I do it because it's right.
           \_ I blame it on Clinton
           \_ Nothing on the motd is anonymous anyways, Jeffrey.  With or
              without motdedit, which I notice you don't use.
              \_ Jeffrey?  Heh, try again.  If you're going to name names get
                 it right.  Don't leave yourself looking like a fool.  Your
                 system script fu is weak!
                 \_ I guess yours is better, ecchang? -!op
                    \_ *hah!* wrong again!
                    \_ huh?  - ecchang
                    \_ Dude, it's easy to scp the update into /etc/motd.public.
                       \_ Don't even have to do that.
                       \_ vi myproject.c    then :r /etc/motd.public, edit away
                           :w! /etc/motd.public  then go back to editing your
                           original file for a while, then exit your vi.
                           And of course this is all trivial if you edit the
                           motd in an emacs buffer without starting/stopping
                           emacs.    Watching the motd is near impossible on
                           a busy system, without kernel hacks, if the motd
                           editors are trying to hide. -ERic
                           \_ ERic, are you the author of motdwatch?
                           \_ That's a good one but it really doesn't even
                              require that much effort.