In article ,
"Gord Beaman" ) writes:
(Peter Stickney) wrote:

There's only one problem with that, Mike. Autocollimater's posts are
coming through nntp (Net News Transport Protocol) Server
,
and Art's are coming through nntp server mb-m10.aol.com.
AOL, like everybody else, has their News Servers set up to handle a
particular set of POP (Points of Presense), and, therefore, service a
particular geographic area. The area serviced by an nntp server is
large enough that, say, calling a POP in an adjacent locale will, by
and large, have you posting your stuff through the same server. So
what those message IDs are telling us is that Art and Autocollimater
may well be in the same Time Zone, but they aren't near each other.

--
Pete Stickney

Good try Pete but your last para there is inaccurate.

Those nntp's can be changed around (almost) at will. You may
notice that I use one in New Brunswick instead of my local one
here on PEI because I find it faster. I've even tried several in
Ontario (1000 miles West of here) some work, others don't.

I may have jumped the gun a bit in my attempt to oversimplify.
With the exception of AOL, Gord, I'd say you're absolutely correct.
(Astute header readers will know that despite my living in New
Hampshire, USA, I'm posting through a News Server in Germany.
(Adelphia's not the greatest at nntp connectivity)
However, to the best of my knowledge, AOL's servers are only open to
AOL's customers, and AOL's browser/reader software doesn't give you
the option of switching/selecting the nntp server that you're using.
Theere are some other clues, as well. The header information in
Art's, Auticollimater's, and, for that matter, Gordon's (krztalizer)
posting is incomplete, in a manner characteristic of AOL's software.

That isn't to say that it wouldn't be possible to arrange entry through
a different POP, but that's much more expensive, devious, and time
consuming that opening up a false Google Posting ID, and using that.

Mind you, there can be other ways, as well - I could make it appear
that I was posting from Mcmurdo Sound, if I wanted to bend a few
rules - but the people who are capable of that tend not to be
long-time AOL users.


They're not hard to change at all, so "both of these posters"
could indeed be the "same one". Also, the word Autocollimater is
a 'nonword' but 'collimater' means:

1 : a device for producing a beam of parallel rays (as of light)
or for forming an infinitely distant virtual image that can be
viewed without parallax

Possibly some system inside or related to a bombsight?

Possible, but there are a lot of other collimaters out there, as
well. I'm using a chunk of a Gamma Ray Collimater as a paperweight,
for example. (A chunk of Lead Honeycomb about 4" thick)

Just noodling around here...no accusations forthcoming.

No need for any importance. Until we're all in the same room, our
persona is what we post, warts and all. The impressions we make color
everything we do. In my case, it matters not if Art just happens to
_be_ AC, no matter what my belief. Art may very well be a Crusty Old
*******, and some of his opinions and online mannerisms may be
abrasive as All Get Out, but I value his storytelling of his time in
the nose of a Marauder, and of life in the chaos of immediate postwar
Europe. If Joe Heller had been willing to share his typewriter, there
might have been a different movie made.

Mike, on the other hand, is trying too hard to be Hot Rock Harry,
Roger Rudder's illegitimate brother, that I've really got to question
his judgement. There are times when he seems to really know what he's
talking about, and many other times when he's the Cock of the Walk
with 100 hours under his belt. He does seem to suffer from the
Ultralight version of Short Man's Syndrome, where he's trying so
damned hard to make his ultralight the Greatest Thing since the Moller
Sky Car. If his real life persona is as twitchy and "fangs out" as
his online persona, I fully expect him to show up in the NTSB's
statistics someday, hopefully without killing anybody else. But
that's just his online persona - who knows what he (or any of us) are
in real life.

It's kind of amusing, to think of the possibilities -
John Tarver may actually be a Professor of Thermodynamics and History.
Grantland may actually be a Bantu. Bernardx might be a Rabbi. Denyav
might actually have grown up on Earth. Me, I'm James Bond and Derek
Flint, all rolled into one (and short enough to be an Astronaut,
besides) .


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster