HMAUS Signal Supporting Macintosh and Apple Users in Hawaii

This is the help information for the HMAUS-L mailing list and the HMAUS-D digest. It is also sent out occasionally as a reminder.

The HMAUS web site is at <http://www.hmaus.com/>. Official contacts, event calendar, membership details and other information about HMAUS is available there. Although HMAUS-L is open to the public, everybody is encouraged to also join HMAUS, which publishes the SIGNAL magazine and has useful and informative meetings and activities.

If you have list management requests, such as subscribing, unsubscribing, changing your subscription’s e-mail address, switching your subscription between the message version or the digest version, or troubles with or questions about the HMAUS-L list itself, please send an e-mail message to HMAUS-L-REQUEST@lava.net or to HMAUS-D-REQUEST@lava.net, whichever is appropriate. A human will eventually see the message. Please do not send administrative requests to HMAUS-L@lava.net. If you’re requesting a change to your subscription address, please note your old address as well as your new address, otherwise we won’t know which subscription to switch.

There isn’t a need for a ‘temporary’ unsubscribe if you want to stop the flow of messages for a while. You just unsubscribe, then subscribe again whenever you want. You may do this as often as you like. The automatic processor will subscribe and unsubscribe you immediately.

The mailing list exists in two forms: a message-by-message version (HMAUS-L) and a digest version (HMAUS-D). The HMAUS-D digest gathers together all of the individual messages sent to HMAUS-L and delivers them in a single message once per day. You may subscribe to either HMAUS-L or HMAUS-D; the only difference is whether you receive the messages right away or once per day. If you feel that the quantity of HMAUS-L messages is difficult to handle in your e-mailbox, you may wish to switch to the digest version.

To subscribe to the HMAUS-L mailing list, send an e-mail message to HMAUS-L-REQUEST@lava.net with the word “subscribe” on the Subject: line. You will receive messages sent to HMAUS-L right away, as soon as they are processed by the mailing list.

To subscribe to the HMAUS-D digest, send an e-mail message to HMAUS-D-REQUEST@lava.net with the word “subscribe” on the Subject: line. You will receive messages sent to HMAUS-L grouped together in a single e-mail message, called a “digest”, which is usually sent out once per day.

You may remove yourself from the HMAUS-L mailing list at any time. To do so, send a message to HMAUS-L-REQUEST@lava.net (or send a message to HMAUS-D-REQUEST@lava.net if you subscribed to the digest version) with the word “unsubscribe” on the Subject: line. If you are going on vacation or otherwise wish to stop receiving messages temporarily, please unsubscribe, then resubscribe when you wish to begin receiving messages again.

If the HMAUS-L message processor has difficulty sending messages to your account and the messages ‘bounce’, whether due to mail server misconfiguration, mailbox full, disk full, or other problem, it will attempt to send as many as four subsequent messages. If the messages continue to bounce, your account will be unsubscribed without further notice. When the problem on your end has been resolved, you may then re-subscribe using the above procedure.

To send a message to the entire list of HMAUS-L subscribers, send it as an e-mail message to HMAUS-L@lava.net. You may reply to a list message, but if you want the whole list of subscribers to see your reply, be sure to set the CC: field to HMAUS-L@lava.net, otherwise only the person who originally sent the message will see your reply. Please consider making your reply visible to the entire list, as this can begin a dialog among list members as well as help others who are following the topic. However, if your response is not of general interest or is off-topic, please do not copy it to the whole list.

Messages sent to HMAUS-D@lava.net will be rejected; please send all messages intended to go to the entire list of HMAUS-L subscribers to HMAUS-L@lava.net (they will also show up in the next HMAUS-D digest).

HMAUS members may access the HMAUS-L archive on the HMAUS website at <http://www.hmaus.org/list/>. You may view messages as well as search by various criteria.

There are archives of old HMAUS-L messages and HMAUS-D digests available from the HMAUS-L automated archive processor. For details, send a message to HMAUS-L-REQUEST@lava.net (or, for digests, HMAUS-D-REQUEST@lava.net) with the subject “archive help”. The procedure for retrieving archived messages is not for the faint of heart.

HMAUS-L is an unmoderated mailing list. Nobody reviews submitted messages for content before they are distributed; distribution of submitted messages (and the digests) is automatic; and once a message is submitted, it cannot be recalled or its distribution halted. Neither HMAUS, the list manager, nor the list hosting provider take any responsibility for the content of posted messages; responsibility for the contents of posted messages resides solely with the poster.

Attachments and graphics are not allowed in HMAUS-L messages; these take up space on people’s hard disks and are contrary to the point of a mailing list. If there is a binary resource that needs to be referenced, it should be made available on the Internet in an appropriate fashion (such as on a web page or FTP site), and a URL included in the message. Please do not send screen snapshots; instead, put them on your web page and send a URL. Please try not to send messages with styles or in HTML. Not everybody reading HMAUS-L is running on a Macintosh, or even a PC. Some people may not be receiving the messages on their own computer. Attachments and other binary resources, styles and HTML cause problems for some e-mail programs.

The HMAUS-L charter describes the purposes for which the mailing list was formed, and the general areas that are considered on-topic and off-topic:

“The HMAUS-L mailing list is for HMAUS and other Hawaii Apple user group announcements, as well as general discussion related to the Macintosh, Apple II and Newton, including problems, questions and answers. It is not a forum for advertising or for selling hardware or software. Participation in this mailing list is open to the general public.”

Netiquette suggests that subscribers should refrain from posting off-topic messages. In addition, complaints about off-topic messages are themselves off-topic, and should be addressed directly to the offending poster and/or to the list manager, not to the whole mailing list. Please do not send personal announcements, such as change of e-mail address, to the entire list.

Allowing buy/sell postings was debated before we started HMAUS-L, but with over 200 subscribers, most of whom probably have something to buy or sell, we anticipated that discussion would soon be drowned out by all of the advertisements. There are other places, such as newsgroups, that exist specifically for that purpose and reach a much wider audience. A few newsgroups for buying or selling things in Hawaii are:

<news:hawaii.ads.forsale>
<news:hawaii.ads.wanted>
<news:hawaii.ads.misc>.

The HMAUS web site has a Trading Post <http://www.hmaus.org/tradingpost/>. There is also a website for local Mac for-sale postings: Rob Art’s Island Mac (”All Things Macintosh in Hawaii”) has a “Macintosh Used Stuff In Hawaii” page at <http://www.island-mac.com/used.html>: “Send your used Macintosh listings to Rob Art <mailto:rob-art@barefeats.com>. It’s FREE to buyers and sellers who are Hawaii residents. Keep the ads short and prices realistic.”

The same off-topic posting prohibition applies to job opportunities. There are dozens of websites devoted to matching up jobs offered and wanted. If HMAUS-L doesn’t meet a particular need, such as a place to post job announcements or advertisements, then the proper thing to do is to either join another forum that can meet that need, or to gather others with similar interests and create one.

Hoaxes, chain letters, and off-topic humor should not be posted to the mailing list. Please remember, there are over 200 people who have subscribed to the HMAUS-L mailing list with the expectation of receiving on-topic messages. Off-topic and irrelevant posts do a disservice to our subscribers, and make our mailing list less useful. There are tens of thousands of newsgroups and other mailing lists, several of which are probably appropriate places to post messages that are off-topic for HMAUS-L.

Please do not forward virus or Trojan horse alerts, calls to stop legislative action, or any other warnings that you receive via e-mail. In almost all cases, these are hoaxes. If you feel that this information is important and appropriate for posting to HMAUS-L, then please check appropriate sources and verify that the information is correct before you post; do not ask the mailing list to verify the information for you. Some excellent sources of information are:

CIAC <http://www.ciac.org/ciac/>
HoaxBusters <http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/>
CERT <http://www.cert.org/advisories/>
Urban Legends Archive <http://www.urbanlegends.com/>
Urban Legends Reference Pages <http://www.snopes.com/>

Please respect sources. If you are not the originator of the message or information, please provide an indication of the original writer or source, and where additional information may be obtained. If you are forwarding a news item, please provide a URL to the original article or mailing list where it was found. Rather than posting the complete text of a long article, post a summary and the URL instead. Please do not forward e-mail to the mailing list without permission from the original sender.

Here are several references that describe netiquette and effective participation in mailing lists:

Netiquette
<http://www.albion.com/netiquette/>

Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
<http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html>

RFC 1855: Netiquette Guidelines
<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html>

How to Ask Questions the Smart Way
<http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

TidBITS’ Mailing List Manners
<http://db.tidbits.com/tbserfull.lasso?-search&-
database=TEPArticles&-layout=TBArticleDetail&-
response=FullSeries.html&-sortField=ArticleDate&-
sortOrder=ascending&MemberOfSeriesList=1141>

A local Apple-oriented programming group is HAPA, the Hawaii Apple Programmer’s Association, which hosts an informal mailing list. “HAPA is an informal organization of Apple developers (both MacOS and OS X) in Hawai`i. Our charter is to encourage and aid in local development work related to OS 9, OS X, Yellow Box, and WebObjects. We will not discriminate with respect to processor, programming language, or platform.” <http://kapu.net/hapa/>

Another local organization is Gamma Apple Pi, the Apple User Group for the University of Hawaii. “Our Mission: We are the users of Apple Technology. We promote the learning of Apple-related technology among the University of Hawaii schools and campuses. We do this primarily toward the interest of Apple users and we have fun doing it.” Gamma Apple Pi is free and open to the general public. <http://www2.hawaii.edu/~gapi/>

Hosting of the HMAUS-L mailing list is provided for free, courtesy of LavaNet. Thanks, LavaDudes!

Doug Frick
<http://www.lava.net/~dfrick/>

Posted under Desktop News