On Sat, Mar 22, 2003 at 04:18:55PM -0800, lazarus <lazarus33pjf at cox.net> wrote: > >The dynamics on a mailing list are different -- mainly in that > >you have to download the message before you can filter it out on > >the subject line, and off-topic messages still sit in mailboxes > >until deleted, taking up quota space and so on. As a result, > >it's not necessarily ideal. > Ah, I hadn't thought of that. My newsreader, Agent, can be set up to > automatically delete based on filters like that, but I understand > there are many ways of reading the list, including digest form, which > can't be filtered at all. It's not so much a software limitation in mail readers as it is a difference in the design of the mail protocols vs the usenet protocols. Usenet is pull-oriented, mail is push-oriented. One of the disadvantages of push-oriented formats is that you can't readily choose not to receive a particular message until after you have already received it (and thus paid whatever associated cost). -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp