Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 18:52:33 +0100
> snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) wrote:
>
> > Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Sn!pe:
> > >
> > > > I don't know about that but, back in the day, "me too" was
> > > > deemed a usage typical of newbies.
> > >
> > > And for a good reason -- to encourage people to contribute
> > > added value and to use arguments instead of "reactions" to
> > > make their point:
> > >
> > > Chris Hennessy (chenness@enterprise.powerup.com.au) wrote:
> > >
> > > The brothers Usas and Senda, despairing of the state of UseNet, went
> > > unto the mountain at the feet of Net.God. "Oh Net.God, there is
> > > confusion and sorrow in your place of UseNet. The people worship false
> > > gods and knowst not your will."
> > >
> > > Net.God spoke unto Usas and Senda. "YOU PLAYETH THE GAME BY NET.GOD'S
> > > LAWS, OR THE BAT WILL BE DEPOSITED IN THE LIGHTLESS PLACE."
> > [...]
> >
> > There is no Net.God but the One True Net.God and His Word is The Law.
> >
> IAWTP.

ITYM <AOL>

--
^Ï^. Sn!pe, PTB, FIBS, Pro Crastinator

My pet rock Gordon just is.

On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 19:58:36 +0100
snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) wrote:

> Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 18:52:33 +0100
> > snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) wrote:
> >
> > > Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Sn!pe:
> > > >
> > > > > I don't know about that but, back in the day, "me too" was
> > > > > deemed a usage typical of newbies.
> > > >
> > > > And for a good reason -- to encourage people to contribute
> > > > added value and to use arguments instead of "reactions" to
> > > > make their point:
> > > >
> > > > Chris Hennessy (chenness@enterprise.powerup.com.au) wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The brothers Usas and Senda, despairing of the state of UseNet, went
> > > > unto the mountain at the feet of Net.God. "Oh Net.God, there is
> > > > confusion and sorrow in your place of UseNet. The people worship false
> > > > gods and knowst not your will."
> > > >
> > > > Net.God spoke unto Usas and Senda. "YOU PLAYETH THE GAME BY NET.GOD'S
> > > > LAWS, OR THE BAT WILL BE DEPOSITED IN THE LIGHTLESS PLACE."
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > There is no Net.God but the One True Net.God and His Word is The Law.
> > >
> > IAWTP.
>
> ITYM <AOL>
>

{:-)

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote at 21:04 this Wednesday (GMT):
> Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>
>> Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> writes:
>>
>> > Chris Hennessy (chenness@enterprise.powerup.com.au) wrote:
>> >
>> > The brothers Usas and Senda, despairing of the state of UseNet, went
>> > unto the mountain at the feet of Net.God. "Oh Net.God, there is
>> > confusion and sorrow in your place of UseNet. The people worship false
>> > gods and knowst not your will."
>> >
>>
>> Interesting to note that top-posting wasn't mentioned by Net.God in
>> His commandments.
>>
>
> I guess that the Commandments predate the deplorable appearance of
> Outlook Excrete. It was that email prog. being pressed into service on
> Usenet that brought the execrable email habit of top posting to Usenet.

Of course it was MS.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> writes:

> On 8/27/24 3:53 PM, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On 8/15/24 7:07 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:11:43 -0000 (UTC), Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On 8/8/24 02:32, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's a complete rethinking of the way distributed social media is
>>>>>>> supposed to work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Usenet is not social media.
>>>>> ObDevilsAdvocate: Usenet is the original social medium.
>>>
>>> +1
>>>
>>> And it gives us maximum control over what we see or avoid. No
>>> pictures or -- god forbid -- reels, but that's a good thing. The bad
>>> thing about reels is that they're addictive time-wasters.
>>>
>>>> Absolutely. And the centralization introduced by the web-based successors
>>>> (at least the proprietary ones) is a definite step back.
>>>
>>> What bothers me is that otherwise smart people have replaced usenet
>>> with Facebook. Maybe X too, but I don't read that even if I have an
>>> account. How hard can it be to do all three? The 'social media' make
>>> actual conversation, as opposed to post-it notes, difficult. I "know"
>>> the people I've known on usenet since 1995. I've met some of them IRL.
>>> FB people, unless friends of friends, are unknown strangers, just
>>> groups of words without names.
>> That's quite right. I mean, I don't know anything about FB and the
>> other, but they're all very much unsusceptible to conversation. So
>> they're totally time-wasters.
>
> Unfortunately, it's pretty much all we've got now. Exceptions, of
> course, but my long-term "friends" don't show up in the newsgroups at
> all any more. Not even the loons.

Sometimes we need to wait. We've done what we could so far. The USENET
is still pretty good for conversation with the global community. I wish
the experts would come back at least for a little while. I believe the
experts come here, find not much and they go away. I believe many have
done that. In comp.lang.lisp, for example, there are more than a few
experts there, but they only appear sometimes because there's not much
going on there.

I wrote an NNTP server for a small semi-closed group. Perhaps the
openness is not a very good thing anymore. But I do think people still
want the all-connected-type of application these days, even at the
detriment of conversation---which is absurd. I don't think good
conversation can be carried out this way. But an NNTP server, say,
could have a phone app that's good for reading only. Have you tried the
Hacker News apps? They let you read the comments just fine. The same
could be done for an NNTP server, but I never found a decent phone news
reader.

I think we're doing our part. If the world has moved on, that's fine.
I'll continue to use NNTP and perhaps other media that are focused on
writing and reading. I don't care for images, sounds, video or whatever
and I also think that NNTP sort of supports all of that: people here
often add external URLs on which we download videos, images and whatnot.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> writes:

> I think we're doing our part.

!!!

> If the world has moved on, that's fine.

Maybe. I see not much fun New Fedistan (Mastodon & friends).
Generation 10 second attention span may see it differently.

> I'll continue to use NNTP and perhaps other media that are focused on
> writing and reading.

I like those gateways of mailing-lists and other stuff to NNTP. We
should have even more stuff in/via NNTP.

> I don't care for images, sounds, video or whatever

Depending on the newsreader it may work. GNUS already has problems with
animated GIFs, but if TB uses FF's HTML renderer, much more may be
possible. There should be more experiments with this in other
hierarchies or contexts.

> and I also think that NNTP sort of supports all of that: people here
> often add external URLs on which we download videos, images and
> whatnot.

That's how it will stay in text only groups. But NNTP is not only Big8
and their rules and with MIME a lot more is doable. The client is the
limit.

\o/ I even get XKCD via NNTP. \o/ Thanks feedbase! \o/

--
4. Hitchhiker 11:
(72) "Watch the road!'' she yelped.
(73) "Shit!"

On Wed, 28 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 8/27/24 3:53 PM, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>> The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 8/15/24 7:07 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:11:43 -0000 (UTC), Steven M. O'Neill wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 8/8/24 02:32, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It's a complete rethinking of the way distributed social media is
>>>>>>>> supposed to work.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Usenet is not social media.
>>>>>> ObDevilsAdvocate: Usenet is the original social medium.
>>>>
>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>> And it gives us maximum control over what we see or avoid. No
>>>> pictures or -- god forbid -- reels, but that's a good thing. The bad
>>>> thing about reels is that they're addictive time-wasters.
>>>>
>>>>> Absolutely. And the centralization introduced by the web-based successors
>>>>> (at least the proprietary ones) is a definite step back.
>>>>
>>>> What bothers me is that otherwise smart people have replaced usenet
>>>> with Facebook. Maybe X too, but I don't read that even if I have an
>>>> account. How hard can it be to do all three? The 'social media' make
>>>> actual conversation, as opposed to post-it notes, difficult. I "know"
>>>> the people I've known on usenet since 1995. I've met some of them IRL.
>>>> FB people, unless friends of friends, are unknown strangers, just
>>>> groups of words without names.
>>> That's quite right. I mean, I don't know anything about FB and the
>>> other, but they're all very much unsusceptible to conversation. So
>>> they're totally time-wasters.
>>
>> Unfortunately, it's pretty much all we've got now. Exceptions, of
>> course, but my long-term "friends" don't show up in the newsgroups at
>> all any more. Not even the loons.
>
> Sometimes we need to wait. We've done what we could so far. The USENET
> is still pretty good for conversation with the global community. I wish
> the experts would come back at least for a little while. I believe the
> experts come here, find not much and they go away. I believe many have
> done that. In comp.lang.lisp, for example, there are more than a few
> experts there, but they only appear sometimes because there's not much
> going on there.
>
> I wrote an NNTP server for a small semi-closed group. Perhaps the
> openness is not a very good thing anymore. But I do think people still
> want the all-connected-type of application these days, even at the
> detriment of conversation---which is absurd. I don't think good
> conversation can be carried out this way. But an NNTP server, say,
> could have a phone app that's good for reading only. Have you tried the
> Hacker News apps? They let you read the comments just fine. The same
> could be done for an NNTP server, but I never found a decent phone news
> reader.
>
> I think we're doing our part. If the world has moved on, that's fine.
> I'll continue to use NNTP and perhaps other media that are focused on
> writing and reading. I don't care for images, sounds, video or whatever
> and I also think that NNTP sort of supports all of that: people here
> often add external URLs on which we download videos, images and whatnot.
>

The highest expert ratio I have generally found on moderated mailinglists.
I've also detected a few on usenet as well, so they are here, you just
need to learn how to detect them. ;)

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, yeti wrote:

>> If the world has moved on, that's fine.
>
> Maybe. I see not much fun New Fedistan (Mastodon & friends).
> Generation 10 second attention span may see it differently.

This is very interesting. I thought about this the other day, and came to
the conclusion that for me, mastodon, is a worse usenet. More limits,
slower, and with worse content and severely lacking in the blocking and
filter department, but at the end of the day, pretty much the same.

>> I'll continue to use NNTP and perhaps other media that are focused on
>> writing and reading.
>
> I like those gateways of mailing-lists and other stuff to NNTP. We
> should have even more stuff in/via NNTP.

A benefit of old school protocols is that they are fairly simple and text
based. That makes it very easy to write integrations and gateways instead
of todays modern, machine readable protocols.

>> I don't care for images, sounds, video or whatever
>
> Depending on the newsreader it may work. GNUS already has problems with
> animated GIFs, but if TB uses FF's HTML renderer, much more may be
> possible. There should be more experiments with this in other
> hierarchies or contexts.

I find it very easy and convenient to link to any media I would like to
use to illustrate my texts. It does not happen often, but it is possible
if necessary. I am all in favour of pushing media to the client and end
user choice.

>> and I also think that NNTP sort of supports all of that: people here
>> often add external URLs on which we download videos, images and
>> whatnot.
>
> That's how it will stay in text only groups. But NNTP is not only Big8
> and their rules and with MIME a lot more is doable. The client is the
> limit.
>
> \o/ I even get XKCD via NNTP. \o/ Thanks feedbase! \o/
>
>

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> The highest expert ratio I have generally found on moderated
> mailinglists.

IMO we just should nudge them to be writable via Gmane/Gwene too.
E.g. I'd sometimes like to reply to TinyCC's ML, but I'm really not in
the mood to subscribe to each ML individually. Other MLs (Dillo,
Gambit, ...) allow that and having all those side by side to newsgroups
in the same frontend is soooo nice!

> I've also detected a few on usenet as well, so they are here, you just
> need to learn how to detect them. ;)

Use a dowsing rod? A pendulum?

--
1. Hitchhiker 20: (58) "Research. Government archives. Detective work.
Few lucky guesses. Easy."

[X-posing to alt.english.usage]

Mike Spencer:

> Interesting to note that top-posting wasn't mentioned by
> Net.God in His commandments.

The fifth commandment implies interleaved posting:

Thou shalt quote meaningfully. Net.God loves not the man
who taketh more than needed nor he who quoteth all,
including the sig. Render unto Net.God what is Net.God's,
render unto Usas what is Usas; credit Senda for he is good.

The styling, by the way, is flawed. Whoever says `taketh'
should also say `loveth' not `loves'. `he' should be `him'
because it is the object of `loves', `who' should be `that'
(see KJV), the possessive of `Usas' is not `Usas', &c.

I posted The Compleat Commandments here:

http://al.howardknight.net/?ID=172492619200

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

Johanne Fairchild:

> but I never found a decent phone news reader.

HotdogEd is the best I have seen, in spite of its poor
maintaitenance and non-trivial configuration:

<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details/HotdogEd_Editor?id=com.pushkin.hotdoged>

A remastered version is in development:

<https://github.com/Reveritus/HotdogEd?tab=readme-ov-file>

but it has no NNPT support (yet). The English community is
in the HOTDOGED Fidonet echo. The old website is:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20220418115856/http://hotdoged.propush.ru/>

with docs and downloads of the latest original release.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

In comp.misc D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Aug 2024, yeti wrote:
>
>>> If the world has moved on, that's fine.
>>
>> Maybe. I see not much fun New Fedistan (Mastodon & friends).
>> Generation 10 second attention span may see it differently.
>
> This is very interesting. I thought about this the other day, and came to
> the conclusion that for me, mastodon, is a worse usenet. More limits,
> slower, and with worse content and severely lacking in the blocking and
> filter department, but at the end of the day, pretty much the same.

Isn't Mastadon supposed to be the "open source twatter"?

If so, does it allow long form content, or is it intentionally crippled
to the same "brain fart" size message units as twatter?

Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:

> Isn't Mastadon supposed to be the "open source twatter"?
>
> If so, does it allow long form content, or is it intentionally crippled
> to the same "brain fart" size message units as twatter?

Some Mastodon nodes allow 500 chars, others up to gigantomanic lengths
per brain fart. They may allow near to zero markup or other nodes
additionally HTML and Markdown. They are federated with systems that
grok hashtags and with others that do not.

Such a level of feature inequality among federated nodes only deserves
one judgement: Fatal design flaw.

There are only a few major timelines and even hashtags don't cure that
and so there is no easy way for discussions to stay focused.

And filter mechanisms are very underdeveloped.

News readers had decades of evolution more than New Fedistan clients.

--
1. Hitchhiker 5: (44) Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was delighted. He knew
that when a Dentrassi looked that pleased with itself there was
something going on somewhere on the ship that he could get very angry
indeed about.

In comp.misc yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:
>
> News readers had decades of evolution more than New Fedistan clients.

This is very true, and I'd bet if we could time travel back to the way
distant past, that many of the very useful features we take for granted
in Usenet clients today would not be present in those early clients.
The features got added when the irritation level of whatever caused the
add exceeded the effort of writing the code for the additional feature.

Mastadon clients are in their 'very young child' age range of
evolution. Maybe in 30 years (assuming Mastadon's still a thing in 30
years) they will have learned from Usenet and added the useful Usenet
client features.

Rich to yeti:

> > News readers had decades of evolution more than New
> > Fedistan clients.
>
> This is very true, and I'd bet if we could time travel
> back to the way distant past, that many of the very useful
> features we take for granted in Usenet clients today would
> not be present in those early clients. The features got
> added when the irritation level of whatever caused the add
> exceeded the effort of writing the code for the additional
> feature.
>
> Mastadon clients are in their 'very young child' age range
> of evolution. Maybe in 30 years (assuming Mastadon's
> still a thing in 30 years) they will have learned from
> Usenet and added the useful Usenet client features.

I fear it will never come to pass, because modern platforms
are philosphically, ideologically, and aesthetically
incompatible with Usenet. The are designed to conform to
modern UX trends that promote a /negative entry threshold/,
an entry dip if you will, and substitute tawdriness for
elegance.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

On Fri, 30 Aug 2024, Anton Shepelev wrote:

> Rich to yeti:
>
>>> News readers had decades of evolution more than New
>>> Fedistan clients.
>>
>> This is very true, and I'd bet if we could time travel
>> back to the way distant past, that many of the very useful
>> features we take for granted in Usenet clients today would
>> not be present in those early clients. The features got
>> added when the irritation level of whatever caused the add
>> exceeded the effort of writing the code for the additional
>> feature.
>>
>> Mastadon clients are in their 'very young child' age range
>> of evolution. Maybe in 30 years (assuming Mastadon's
>> still a thing in 30 years) they will have learned from
>> Usenet and added the useful Usenet client features.
>
> I fear it will never come to pass, because modern platforms
> are philosphically, ideologically, and aesthetically
> incompatible with Usenet. The are designed to conform to
> modern UX trends that promote a /negative entry threshold/,
> an entry dip if you will, and substitute tawdriness for
> elegance.
>

Well, that's where small, individual open source projects fill an
important niche. The big markets do push things into the same directions,
but there's plenty of room for creative, individual unique projects.

yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> writes:

[...]

> \o/ I even get XKCD via NNTP. \o/ Thanks feedbase! \o/

How do I get that? :)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

[...]

>> Sometimes we need to wait. We've done what we could so far. The USENET
>> is still pretty good for conversation with the global community. I wish
>> the experts would come back at least for a little while. I believe the
>> experts come here, find not much and they go away. I believe many have
>> done that. In comp.lang.lisp, for example, there are more than a few
>> experts there, but they only appear sometimes because there's not much
>> going on there.

[...]

> The highest expert ratio I have generally found on moderated
> mailinglists. I've also detected a few on usenet as well, so they are
> here, you just need to learn how to detect them. ;)

In the 00s (first decade), we had lots of very technical conversations.
I remember comp.lang.c. Wow. It was full of very knowledgeable C
programmers. You can hardly see that now.

Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> writes:

> Johanne Fairchild:
>
>> but I never found a decent phone news reader.
>
> HotdogEd is the best I have seen, in spite of its poor
> maintaitenance and non-trivial configuration:
>
> <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details/HotdogEd_Editor?id=com.pushkin.hotdoged>

``We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.''

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> writes:

> yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> \o/ I even get XKCD via NNTP. \o/ Thanks feedbase! \o/
>
> How do I get that? :)

Top secret:

<https://feedbase.org/> has the details and for adding more feeds,
you'll need that address too.

--
1. Hitchhiker 2: (26) Ford looked back at him, genuinely surprised.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>In the 00s (first decade), we had lots of very technical conversations.
>I remember comp.lang.c. Wow. It was full of very knowledgeable C
>programmers. You can hardly see that now.

Ben Bacarisse and James Kuyper are knowledgeable as all get-out.

In article <874j749xk4.fsf@enoch.nodomain.nowhere>,
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote:
>
>Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> writes:
>
>> Chris Hennessy (chenness@enterprise.powerup.com.au) wrote:
>>
>> The brothers Usas and Senda, despairing of the state of UseNet, went
>> unto the mountain at the feet of Net.God. "Oh Net.God, there is
>> confusion and sorrow in your place of UseNet. The people worship false
>> gods and knowst not your will."
>
>Interesting to note that top-posting wasn't mentioned by Net.God in
>His commandments.

I do not think top-posting existed at the time that was written. Top
posting is a relatively recent horror.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:

> Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>In the 00s (first decade), we had lots of very technical conversations.
>>I remember comp.lang.c. Wow. It was full of very knowledgeable C
>>programmers. You can hardly see that now.
>
> Ben Bacarisse and James Kuyper are knowledgeable as all get-out.

They were both there at the time. Are they hanging out at comp.lang.c
now? I unsubscribed myself. Can't remember why. Very long
conversations about uninteresting things? Can't remember.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> writes:

> Are they hanging out at comp.lang.c now?

Yes.

.... and round about 3% +/- a bit (BB:3.2% and JK:2.6%) of the posts of
2024 in c.l.c I see in my newsreader are from each one of them.

> I unsubscribed myself. Can't remember why. Very long conversations
> about uninteresting things? Can't remember.

I can't remember why I did not unsubscribe c.l.c and that may even be
worse... >:-P

--
2. Hitchhiker 20: (34) "What, that thing?" said Arthur, "I thought we'd
forgotten about that."

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>>Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>>>In the 00s (first decade), we had lots of very technical conversations.
>>>I remember comp.lang.c. Wow. It was full of very knowledgeable C
>>>programmers. You can hardly see that now.
>>Ben Bacarisse and James Kuyper are knowledgeable as all get-out.
>They were both there at the time. Are they hanging out at comp.lang.c
>now? I unsubscribed myself. Can't remember why. Very long
>conversations about uninteresting things? Can't remember.

I still have subscribed comp.lang.c, but by now I have added every
regular to my filter, so I only possibly see occasional non-regulars.

"Uninteresting things" sometimes might matter in C programming
(depending on what exactly those uninteresting things are).

In article <87bk1dponf.fsf@tudado.org>,
Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote:
>Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@g{oogle}mail.com> writes:
>
>> Kerr-Mudd, John:
>>
>>> PS &OT, today I went for a drink in a Social Club; it was
>>> astoundingly non-social, the other people were
>>> focussed on their mobile phones. So I did likewise.
>>
>> So that club is no longer a sutiable "medium for public
>> discussions." Smartphones are joykillers, and social
>> networks, ironically, great disuniters of people.
>
>Totally true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyDf3rfFHkw

--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."