Re: white paper - let's try again.

[holmegm -at- comcast -dot- net]

>Google for anything to do with white papers, and you get white papers.
>Precious little _about_ white papers, just white papers. There's a tiny bit
>of information about the history of the phrase in government circles
>(including the word-detective article that Ilona so pleasantly quoted). And
>that _was_ part of my question, but only part.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22white+paper+%22+term+origin+etymology

First result gets you that part of the question.  Yes, I had to tweak the terms
a bit, but it wasn't that difficult.  If you are too generic, you will find the 
most common usage - I don't see how it could be otherwise.

>Regardless, if you're so goddamn annoyed, hit the delete key. Spare me the
>condescending rants (unless that's also "the nature of the profession").

There's a culture that exists, to greater or lesser degree, in most technical
email lists.  It may be off-putting at first, but it actually does seem to
result in the most helpful environment, paradoxically.

However, because of that, *truly* hard to google questions (such as your full
question) do probably need a bit of disclaimer of exactly what you are
looking for, and why it is hard to locate, and what methods you have tried.
Or at least a *civil* followup, with this information.

In other words, if it *looks* like a simple factual question that can be 
looked up, the burden is on you to show that it isn't.  That may not be 
"fair" in some abstract sense, but there it is.

>Useless tits. See ya.

Er, nice talking to you too :)

Greg Holmes