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Microsoft to do for Usenet what it did for Email & The Web?
tjones2 writes "Seems like Microsoft isn't content with sad state of email these days. They now want to "make engaging with communities easier and friendlier". This means extending their reach into Usenet." Fortunately most of Usenet is such a cespool that really they can only make it better. And after cornering the market on email worms, imagine the benefits they can bring to NNTP!
If you know where to look, and what you are looking for, usenet is ok. It kind of has that wild west, last frontier kind of charm.
btw, if you hate having to decode stuff by hand with the various newsreaders, www.easynews.com is great for various binaries
I don't see this as having a major effect, most USENET users tend to run unix these days.
This is all an evil plot by Microsoft. They want more e-mail addresses in the hands of spammers, so they can sell their new upcoming anti-spam software.
Hmm, what could be the news group with the most activity? Let's search for groups with the word "pictures" in them and I'll bet we find out.
... I see you are browsing alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.hornyteens
Would you like:
* tissues
* baby oil
* a life
* or me to fuck off
?
IRC is next. After NNTP and IRC fall, what next?
Now, as a time-saving measure, right next to the "post reply" button, there will be a "Me Too" button, and a "Send me the link username@hotmail.com" button.
Ryan Fenton
Is there a segment or a part in the computing industry that Microsoft doesn't want to control with half-done software?
Who the hell visits usenet for news anymore? What are they trying to do.. make downloading pirated material easier?
...people could find a way to hide email addresses in news groups. If they did that, then there'd be a major reduction in spam. Then maybe I'd be able to reuse 1 of my email addresses.
testing out my trending skills
What did microsoft do for email and the web?
if usenet was supposed to be friendly it would have been designed that way :-)
Seriously, usenet is supposed to be distributed and resiliant to poor communications and have no choke points that would slow operation. All of the MS ideas would seem to introduce complication, choke points and remove much of the resiliance.
Hey Microsoft, what did you innovate today?
[*]
Score: -10000
X-Newsreader: Microsoft
Usenet is an open system that has been that way for years. We don't need microsoft going and adding their proprietary crap into usenet.
Usenet is one thing that hasn't changed much in recent times. You can find anything on usenet. It was the first place you could find massive amounts of mp3s. The first place for full movies and cd images. There's more free porn on usenet then someone could even dream of sorting through.
Usenet is many things to many people. Outside the binary areas there are some great discussions taking place and some excellent ideas constantly evolving.
We don't need microsoft changing standards around and screwing things up.. Luckily most usenet servers are old unix boxes and so they won't be able to do much harm to nntp. This still scares me though that they may try..
Well, as a long time internet participant, I recall quite good what
.DOC rich text attached to an otherwise empty posting.
AOL did to usenet: Aquire a hord of "Me too" follow-up posters.
Actually, a quick google-groups research shows that of the 32,000
postings that contain "me too", a whopping 30,600 also contain the
word "AOL".
So I question - what can Microsoft do to usenet? I suspect, nothing
nice. Probably their efforts result in even more MIME/HTML postings,
with binaries attached in non-binary groups (probably something like
"My Signature.exe"). And certainly a lot of proprietarily encapsulated
text, such as
On one hand, usenet is for everyone, including Microsoft users. On
the other hand, I really hope that google-groups will filter them off
so that usenet can stay the valuable source of accurate tech information
that it is today.
Marc
After penis enlargement, there goes .NET all around usenet.
And just wait until your parents find out you can download PORN from Usenet!!! OH GOD NOOOO!!! THE END IS NEAR!!!
[/joke]
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
What will the effect be on groups.google.com be if Microsoft begins to take over Usenet?
Personally, I don't even use a normal newsreader program, but just peruse using google. I find the info I want (typically tech help on linux) and then that's it. You can even post to newsgroups through google.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth
...and now Microsoft. Oh, how cruel the gods be!
Choice quotation:
Way to get on people's good side.
Despite it's repuation, I find Usenet to be quite good. I generally stick to the comp.* hierarchy. The S:N is pretty good. It's generally alt.* that's pretty bad.
If the internet needs even more spam, trolls, and pr0n than before, leave it to usenet to be the leader. Personally, I don't think this internet thing will ever catch on. It's just a fad...
--
Mandrake + Wine = -need(MS Windows)
This is very bad news for Usenet. In the beginning, USEnet was a haven for people with the persistence and intelligence necessary to figure out how to use it, and it was good. Flamewars were minimal, people were respectful, and knowledge flowed freely. Then AOL, WebTV, and their ilk came along and lowered the barriers to entry. The quality of discussion went down, the quantity went up, and USEnet became a lot less USEful than it had been. I feel like that situation has improved slightly, at least in the text-only discussion groups. But if MS makes it possible for every dingbat melonhead with a modem to get on it, it's going to get much worse.
I'm probably being elitist, but I like it when it takes a little effort and intelligence to be able to participate in a discussion. I know that the people on a newsgroup are at least slightly more advanced (usually) than their ICQ-going friends, and that better discussions will result.
The other thing is that USEnet has (so far) been flying below the **AA's radar as far as file sharing and software IP ifringement go. If they all of a sudden turn their attention towards it, USEnet is easy prey for a takedown: the servers are centralized machines that are easily traceable to a company or individual, and most ISPs would probably just take theirs down rather than fight it out with the RIAA. Of course, the user uproar would be like nothing we've ever seen before, because USEnet's main use is not only non-infringing, it's incredibly valuable to a lot of technical types out there.
Who wants to guess how Microsoft handles (or more likely, is handled by -) my all time favorite alt.sysadmin.recovery
C|N>K
Google already does this to a certain degree, although I don't know if their Activity ranking takes into account replies to topics or just number of messages or what.
If you look at the Google Groups listings you'll see a rough measure of their activity as shown by a green bar. For example, if you look at the rec.arts.comics.* hierarchy you'll see rac.xbooks has no activity. And sure enough, if you go to that group you'll see 2 posts from 2003, 8 from 2002, and a handful of older ones. rac.european has an almost full bar and looking there shows 5-10 posts each month. The others have completely full bars showing lots of posts each day.
Maybe Google should explain better how the Activity rating works; I didn't see a mention in the faq. Or perhaps show more detail than just the green bar.
What would happen is you load all the posts into a database and perform analysis on that data. From there you draw conclusions on the pretext that, if there were a lot of replies and a lot of repeats last week on newsgroup X, then that should continue this week, so that might be a good one to go for info.
Once they get the ball rolling on this though, I'd be willing to bet they try to "update" USENET as they become a major player there. Maybe that's just pessimism on my part though.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
1) Content-related query and aggregate presentation of feeds, rather than simple 'feed'->'group' organization
2) Intelligent filtering based on my interests (e.g. the kinds of messages I have chosen to read before), not just a simple kill-file / watch mechanism
3) Better integration of links and web content (the kind of thing you're seeing in Outlook 2003 / good RSS aggregators)
4) Tools to help with the end-user integration of threaded news content into other apps (e.g. InfoPath-like tools)
No reason any of these things couldn't be done (beyond the fact that two in particular would require the kind of R&D effort that currently goes in to spam filters - the first half of this sort of equation). Forms of 1, 3 and 4 are already available in Outlook 2003, only it doesn't integrate news feeds into the experience. Hence, I guess, MS stated intention to make news a first class citizen in this world.
Microsofties should stay away from usenet and stick with yahoo groups or something.
Every time someone predicted the death of usenet, the responses were "ha, again the imminent death of usenet is predicted". I think we can safely say that those complaining of the imminent death of usenet were proven right several years ago at the latest.
It's a shame that there is no decent, centralized place on the net for intelligent discussion. It's one of the biggest losses to humanity in recent years.
Well isn't this just wonderful! It's not enough that usenet is plauged with spam, now we can have pop-up ads there, too!
:)
Someone let me know when the Mozilla team gets them blocked -- God bless them, every one.
Flamebait?!
So some of the moderators are Clippy advocates? That's kinda scary.
but after having RTFA, I don't think this is among their worst plots against humanity. Basically, it's a database and analysis tool for Usenet groups, which lets the user know which groups are dedicated to certain subject, and what kind of traffic the various groups have. Not only name of group and number of posts, but also number of replies in each thread and so on. Sounds like a great way to find newsgroups.
However, Microsoft's earlier attempt at making inroads into Usenet, the newsreader capability of Outlook Express, is one of the worst things that has ever happened since AOL released its hordes upon us. The way OE prefers to quote (below the new message) is infinitely less readable than the way Evereyone Else Does It. Now, if just MS could start following the way EEDI when EE has the Right Idea...
Some people say that there are already "X-Newreader: Outlook" cancel-bots around.
Embrace and extend Usenet, Microsoft, because it will turn on you and destroy your monopolistic practices.
Here is a typical Usenet message that spreads the AI message -- against which Microsoft is ultimately powerless.
/ "AI4U"
http://mind.sourceforge.net/acm.html is a Do-It-Yourself page
for artificial intelligence (DIY AI) that invites programmers
for any given "XYZ" language to commence coding "Mind.XYZ"
simply by coding the Main Program Loop (ALife) with stubbed-in
calls to six mind-module subroutines as found on AI4U p. 208:
Security; Sensorium; Emotion; Think; Volition; Motorium.
If would-be AI Mind coders for any language will please create
the main Alife loop for Mind.xyz and host it on the Web with
language to the effect that the code is in the public domain
and that anyone may re-post the code with changes or additions,
then we may witness a "pre-Cambrian" explosion of AI Minds.
We also want the pathways of AI evolution to split far apart.
We do not want the exact same AI to be re-coded as Mind.XYZ.
If each AI coder gives a little and takes a little, lim --> ***
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595654371
is a mixture on both coding and on how the AI Mind-1.1 works
in JavaScript (with full "jsaimind" listing) and in Forth.
The AI4U book description contains my plus and minus points:
+ It describes the rapidly evolving AI Minds on the Web.
- It quickly becomes obsolete as the AI hyper-evolves.
+ On-demand publishing (ODP) makes for quick updates.
- The Mentifex project is considered oddball on the 'Net.
+ You've got the first book about the first real AI Mind.
- There are other, better, more authoritative AI textbooks.
+ AI4U makes a good supplement for actually coding AI.
- Artificial intelligence is too hard to understand.
+ AI4U describes the AI while it is still easy to learn.
- "I would rather build robots than study AI programming."
+ If you want to build a smart robot, then AI4U is for you.
- "I'm only a high school student/teacher; what's the use?"
+ This book will challenge even the most gifted student.
- "I am not a programmer and so I can't code AI."
+ AI4U teaches you how to operate an AI, not just code it.
- "I just want to do Web design, not artificial intelligence."
+ AI4U provides an AI that you may install on your website.
- "I am more interested in neuroscience and/or psychology."
+ AI4U teaches a theory of how the brain works psychologically.
http://mind.sourceforge.net/vb.html is a Visual Basic AI Blog
that tries to coordinate between the AI Mind project and, e.g.,
http://www.virtualentity.com/mind/vb/ -- Mind.Forth to Mind.VB.
Everything they're talking about there can be done locally at an NNTP server, at least as I read it, and won't affect the wider usenet. So it's more user-interface work and work on a server with a different set of design goals to the current NNTP servers.
I'm all for it. You'll need a proxy server to protect the Exchange box running the MS-NNTP server from direct access by scary things like non-Lookout news readers of course. It sounds like an interesting idea though, and perhaps some of the better / more useful ideas might propagate to other NNTP software.
least insightful post ever.
In the newsgroup I read many of the most intelligent posters use non-OSS readers that are trivial for zealots to attack.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This week, Microsoft invents the threaded news reader......
Embrace and extend, embrace and extend....
OK, well I'm one of those old fogeys who actually care about Usenet. I've been using it for twenty years and I still think it's a great thing. Admittedly a lot of groups are losing their vibrancy and vitality, and spam is an increasing problem. But Usenet is still a great way for communities of people with common interests to foregather and hang out with one another, bounce ideas around, solve technical problems and exchange ideas, irrespective of geographical distance.
Usenet, also, because of its primitiveness, is one of the parts of the network revolution which is most resistant to interference. It doesn't need the Internet; it can propagate happily over ad-hoc UUCP links on dialup lines. So even if the corporates come to control the Internet and dictate what we can do with it, even if governments put carnivore boxes on every router, Usenet is still ours and can still route around it.
It has it's problems. It was conceived in a more innocent age. We do need a successor.
But please, not Microsoft, the inventors of default top posting. This is one of the things which is making Usenet increasingly difficult to use. Microsoft do not have our interests at heart - only their own. If you want to see a new and better Usenet, look at projects like Usenet2.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
It pretty much is these days.
I'm sure there are pockets of something of value, but years ago it pretty much became a total mess..
It was sad to see it happen.. Most people cant manage themselves. Its why anarchy isn't a viable option in society at this stage of the game.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
search for newsgroups containing "e":
/Static/default.asp, line 213
Microsoft VBScript runtime error '800a0006'
Overflow: 'CInt'
Anyone using CInt for something like that is so utterly clueless that we'll have nothing to worry about.
Spot the secret MS MeSsage: Use(.)Net - the dot is silent.
Didn't you notice that, when you had to manually start windows from DOS, you had to type Win - its psychology, people.
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Ok, someone mod CmdTaco's comments and this article as Troll or flamebait
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
its gonna be slashdot :P
It sounds like at best MS has built a NNTP to SQL Server bridge. They are merely doing what every newsreader on the planet already does. They are making some form of local database out of NNTP messages. They happen to be using SQL server and they probably have some cool analytical tools. Of course, in the Microsoft world, this capability is not extended to the client. It will require special SQL servers that will stand in for the news server and will I bet will only extend their interface to new outlook clients.
they'll kill usenet. It will become the number one place to get virus-laden attachments for your machine and the host machines will get sick of all the extra garbage and redundancy and will take steps that will break usenet or just stop hosting usenet completely. Spam is already nuking conventional smtp email. Hopefully open source will come up with better, more robust standards for providing both.
I don't know that I'd rely on a dumbass troll like you to assess the relative intelligence of posters on any newsgroup.
Wasn't that a softdrink on futurama? ;)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
what's that, introduce hundreds of worm holes that will bring the internet to it's knees?
-- james
I work for the company with the world's largest installation of NNTP on MS Exchange. We've been having problems with scaling, and have been hinting to MS that we're thinking about switching to Linux. I find it both interesting and telling that the response is not to fix the technical issues we're having on the server side, but to add more chrome to the client side.
I think Google's contribution is more in the area of availability and searchability (if that is a word ;-)) of postings. If I remember a discussion that was in one of my subscribed groups in the recent X days (X being the time before messages are deleted), I'm usually quicker just full text searching in my news client than going to Google Groups. But I don't have 700 million+ postings, and I guess my news client wouldn't scale well to that number if I did.
If I find interesting discussions on Google Groups that have more than 10 postings and are likely to still be on my news server, I always get the messages to read them with my news client. Way more comfortable.
It should be: Microsoft to do to Usenet what it did to Email & The Web?
They are a business. One that wants total control of *everything*...
Eventully, even non computing industries.. like toilets, and snack foods...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
check here
Me suspects that MS has covertly cornered the online adult entertainment industry. And I don't even want to think about how they plan to enforce compliance.
In August 1996, Microsoft made their internal microsoft.* hierarchy available to the world at large. Around that same time, they switched from INN v1.4 to a proprietary MS NNTP server.
For the next few weeks, every post made to microsoft.* and select other groups was duplicated by msnews.microsoft.com and spewed back to the world because the proprietary MS server changed the Message-ID for every post. Message-IDs are supposed to be unique, so an altered ID was seen as a new post by servers peering with MS and thus were not treated as duplicates and dropped.
Thousands and thousands of posts were duped and spewed by Microsoft's "innovative" server, both inside microsoft.* and out. The reaction among news admins ranged from mild chuckles at Microsoft's expense to blind rage and the use of cancelbots.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to this. I could use a good laugh.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
When just about any cracker worth his salt can start a news group, what the hell do you expect. I can give you one hell of a good reason for MS to sql weasel into usenet. To find crackz and warez and get the servers shut down. They have tried in the past but their usenet trolls kind of fell flat. I just wonder what they are up to now. Maybe that is why they are licensing sco, they might need some real multi proccessor power to crunch the numbers to get at the thieves and scoundrals that steal MS software world wide. Even the clever Chinese won't be able to hide from MS UNIX. Bill is just sitting there gritting his teeth and swearing under his breath about the fact that Inet tech can be free from MS domination and control. He wants the world and he wants it now. LETS GIVE IT TO HIM. Use Linux, BSD, APPLE or anything else and let him eat cake, and play with his XBOX.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
It could be because Unix (Linux) people in general are more knowledgeable and can figure out how USENET works.
If Microsoft makes a push to make it more visible by just adding an icon in the start menu and by helping a user to choose a few good news groups then that will change.
Aaaah, and then a few news groups will be hosted on msn, oh and a few of those groups can only be read if you are an MSN subscriber. The excuse used will be that that is the only way "we" can control spam.
World domination all over again.
"Build it and they will come"
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
"Community.Net Server"
Once again Microsoft takes the most generic word (pun intended) possible as the name of their product,"Community."
I wonder if this will benefit the current owner(s) of community.net? What are the odds Microsoft ends up somehow acquiring the domain?
"Don't Follow Leaders." Bob Dylan
"What will the effect be on groups.google.com be if Microsoft begins to take over Usenet? "
Simple. Contaminate your competitions sources (poison the well). Then come out with your own alternative. Diabolical.
Holf on here. Nobody ever tried to copy anything except maybe the windows UI. Which actaully depending on the version of windows read no XP does not suck. There are better out though and they are more widely used then the windows alikes. KDE and Gnome for instance do not resemble the windows UI any more then they resemble the MAC UI. Nobody has ever copied IE or Outlook because you can't copy something that is already a rip-off, maybe you did not know this but there were contact managers before outlook, Goldmine for one Lotus Notes, I could go on forever, and there was a browser suite before IE/outlook it was call Netscape Navagator, those are what people have tried to copy, just like M$ has. Microshaft has NEVER done anything resmbling innovation all they have done is recognized products by small firms knock them off and bring them to the masses. Double space came of them ripping off Stacker. Windows came when they ripped off MAC OS. Office came when then ripped off Wordperfect, and combined it with Lotus 123. I could go on here too.
Microsoft does suck, suck up all the good ideas that is.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Considering the number of OTDs (outlook transmitted diseases) that would be prevented if Microsoft would just shut off a lot of stuff by default, I can only wonder what new spams and worms will be spread more efficiently.
Do I detect ^M in you text? ;)
Yes, Microsoft provide few other alternatives for this rude kind of behavior. I see it in the "easy" groups like Yahooo groups I'm a member of. Microsoft users consitantly post crap in .DOC format instead of splitting out text and images, the same way they do email. It would be forgivable, but they make no effort even when told that others, including other Microsoft users with almost the same software, can not read the files they are trying to share. All of the Micrsoft defaults are to RUDE, word as an "editor" of email, email in "html" format or "rich text", it's really a challenge for the user to not be rude and once things are set they are very dificult to undo. Typical M$.
Microsoft, by encouraging their users to venture into the "difficult" world of usenet, will force all of these things along.
The answer it fix the user. Provide detailed instructions on how to undo M$'s rude defaults in a place where they can be pointed to. The M$ abusers will find themselves shunned and locked in a little M$ ghetto devoid of cluefull and polite people.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"We want to make engaging with communities easier and friendlier with this interface. The tools [to access Usenet] have not evolved while there is so much to go after," Smith said.
Of course the tool doesn't evolve if you don't invest work in it. In the past, Microsoft simply refused to fix a few annoying bugs in their newsreader implementations which significantly degraded their user experience.
Take a look at the link off the article. There's a proof-of-concept interface out there. It seems like all they're really doing is collecting and analyzing statistics on the groups and posts. Now, before it's over I'm sure they'll put a front-end on it that uses that data to help prod idiots in the right direction, but I definitely don't see anything horrible about it yet.
It's particularly fun if you ask for more detail on microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics, where 4th down from the top is a long thread called 'FUCK MICROSOFT! FUCKING IDIOTIC CUNTS!'
What would you rather read without message filter - Usenet or Slashdot? For me, it'd be definitely the former. Why do people always seem to bash Usenet? I've read so much trash on web boards that I can't believe that people think it's any worse when reading newsgroups. But maybe I'm just reading the "wrong" newsgroups (i.e. those with a high signal/noise ratio).
So Microsoft wants to make Usenet more accessible to normal people. If they succeed, all the warez and other illegal stuff on Usenet will become more visible. Which means... it will get shut down?
"Pirated" things are posted on Usenet all the time. The reason no one does anything about it is that just about no one knows about Usenet. But now that's going to change. Think of the implications here.
re: "We don't need microsoft changing standards around and screwing things up.. Luckily most usenet servers are old unix boxes and so they won't be able to do much harm to nntp. This still scares me though that they may try.." ..maybe you are not aware that MS already got hands on the Usenet through MSNTV.
The former Webtv uses as form of communication / mail the old unix boxes.
The main window to the world for the msntv users is the usenet.
And (big sigh) MS already messed the webtv networks by fiddling with the usenet readers there, now they want to apply it on its OE.
The MSNTV TOS (terms of services) that MS introduced after it took over sounds like this:
You all (the users) belong to me. If anyone would get the chance to read the TOS would be really shocked to see the tone of the terms.
I have no doubt that certain parts of this story are actually true. Especially the part about them having a open marriage -
In the newsgroup I read many of the most intelligent posters
It's all relative. You've been following Jeff K.'s comments, who uses outlook. But us actual intelligent people, the kind that get the above humour, consider Jeff K. to be an idiot. But then again, you're a known idiot too, so what should we expect.
OK, so if Microsoft puts their proprietary crap in there and tries to co-op the Usenet standard, at worst it could make newsgroups even more accessible to even more doofuses and continue what AOL had started.
... less *nix servers for one. But it would make "classic Usenet" less active, and probably not as easy to access ... and that would be a good thing, because Usenet would actually be getting back to its roots and become less cluttered and again be a forum for the more savvy Internet users out there.
But, if MS tries to make Usenet "its own", there would inevitably be a split. User's utilizing the souped up OE or whatever would be more likely (and easy) to be filtered out, and the more savvy users desiring "classic" Usenet would be encouraged to use "purer" news readers such as Agent or Xnews.
And if MS is determined about this, and truly does pursue their vision of Usenet, there might even be a "network split". If "MS Usenet" really takes off, the majority of ISPs might start going with the new Usenet, with its Win2k3 servers and all. Sure, there are aspects of this scenario that suck
My ISP carries binary groups, and contary to popular belief, not all of them are copyright violations. alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking rarely contains something other than woodworkers posting pictures of their latest creation.
Further, USENET contains in headers everything the ISP knows for sure about the poster, so the *AAs can figgure out themselves all they need to know to go after the violators. (not exactly, but until they do their own work and ask for the identity of who had aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd at such a time, the ISP can't tell them more than they can determin themselves)
I've been following it ever since he first did Netscan back at UCLA. In fact, I used Netscan to do the statistics for the Esther Dyson Release 1.0 issue on open source in 1998, projecting the relative size of open source communities by comparing their usenet footprint (as well as other stats, like size of conferences and mailing lists.)
We had Marc do a presentation on what he's doing at the last O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, and it was very well received. Marc's at Microsoft Research, and he's a guy slashdotters would all relate to if you actually knew him.
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 http://www.oreilly.com
Quoted: "Furthermore, message analysis before the list is displayed to a Usenet user can make sure that only relevant messages are shown, cutting the spam that is prevalent in newsgroups"
Obviously these poor researchers used some Microsoft-managed news server. A decent administrator will filter spam using cancels (control) and cleanfeed scripts.
I can hardly see a spam on regular newsgroups - except on pr0n alt.* newsgroups of course.
But I'm sure that's not where Microsoft researchers did their tests, uh?
The floodgates of dumn opened up then.
As far as I know, the Usenet message reader in Outlook Express uses exactly the same dangerous HTML/scripting concept and libraries the e-mail reader uses. Therefore, and because of OE's lack of distinction between e-mail messages and Usenet messages, Usenet worms are already in place, as long as someone posts them to a news group, and noone cares to delete them or at least remove the payload.
JeR
I'm glad someone is paying attention to NNTP. All that's out there now (clientwise), besides Outlook Express, is crap. Now if they put together Outlook express with their free hosted service, yes it would monopolize, but a kick-ass new resource will be available for more than flames and porn.
Exactly: it's great, but only if you know where to look. Sounds as though Microsoft's ideas on this one are steps in the right direction. I'm a Usenet veteran, but still find it difficult to identify a group that's relevant to me when I first want to explore a new subject.
For bonus marks, if they could just get people to understand that it's polite to read the FAQ before posting (and make the FAQ an obvious link somewhere) and that following local customs and keeping on-topic also go a long way, they'd be ahead of everyone else who currently offers Usenet access. A group with influence of Microsoft could do a lot to improve the signal/noise ratio on some newsgroups. Extending their reach into Usenet isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Ill-informed editorial comments like Taco's don't help much, BTW. Most newsgroups actually are pretty good these days, as long as there's one where your interest is on-topic and you have decent filtering in your client to cut out the noise. I've found worthwhile groups on various technical subjects, all of my major hobbies, my local area and more. We can do without putting off people who might be genuinely interested in reading and/or contributing to such groups with juvenile statements like Taco's.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
[goes to look] Hmm. Looks very much like an old-style DOS-based offline QWKmail reader (and by coincidence, I have a QWK reader open in another window :)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
> I downloaded all pictures sent to alt.binaries.pictures.eroica .
> I got nothing but pictures of bloody Beethoven.
Erocia -> Beethoven
Erotica -> Beat-Off-'n
Mr. Taco, you do seem rather naive. There is nothing so bad that Microsoft cannot make it worse. What's worse than a Usenet cesspool? A really cool Usenet that is proprietary. So you can only get into it if you subscribe to it and have to pay a monthly fee.
And the MS juggernaut rolls on...
Furry cows moo and decompress.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
In OUTLOOK EXPRESS, e-mail worms ARE usenet worms
That's what you wanted to say, so say it.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
usenet's largely dead because of spammers and has been for several years
Usenet? Is that thing still around?
Microsoft to do for Usenet what it did for Email & The Web?
;-)
I'm SURE they'll find some way to fuck it up!
Hopefully its beyond their ability to make a Microsoft USENET standard. You can never count on that though. It's a good thing they're not a monopoly!
Get paid to code OSS
How do you think the S/N ratio will change when MS adds out-of-the-box pimping of NNTP? All those people who post on /. and other web forums will have a brand new place that's easy to troll.
Admittedly punch cards aren't in use anymore and Usenet is.
Still Usenet is used by a shrinking group of users and the few remaining useful newsgroups have procedures in place for spam that would just as quickly be deploied against any technology Microsoft has to offer.
Usenet already has a number of means of deploying binary files so it appears Microsoft is simply going to mimic exiting resources.
I don't actually exist.
Hmmm.... I think I sense a bit of sarcasm out of Mr. Taco on that one. I'm not used to the admins making such direct blows to microsoft in the news postings!
today is spelling optional day.
One thing Microsoft has contributed was the "popular" image of these things. Yes REAL was first with streaming video, then WMV came out and suddenly there were Music Video's all over the place, streaming porn etc... Wherever Microsoft goes so does the people. Remember that.
Top posting.
> What's the worst thing about Usenet?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
1. Expand into already declining areas of the internet.
2. ????
3. PROFIT!
Maybe Bill wants an excuse to browse all the porn? It's for work, HONEST!
I probably post hundreds of times a month in diverse newsgroups. I have a basic spam filter on my e-mail address -- something obvious, but not one of the common ones that the smarter spammers spot and unmunge these days -- and get almost 0 spam to my Usenet-related account.
I've only ever encountered one guy on one group who objected to having a munged reply address, and threatened to killfile me. Since that seemed to be all he ever did to anyone, I just told him to go ahead. No-one else who needs to read you mail address has a problem, so go ahead and munge it in an original and witty way, and say goodbye to Usenet-related spam.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
MS probably sees this a way to bootstrap their way into replacing Notes in a corporate environment. Nobody cares about unregulated content least of all MS. So if they got involved in NNTP the first thing they'd no is dump a huge shitpile of DRM on top of it. No, the real purpose of this is to gargolye together another "Notes Killer" abortion. Except with no security and deadly coupling to Windows branded apolications.
Maybe they've gotten tired of the complaints from OE users not being able to decode yEnc binaries like users of all other newsreaders. But seriously...
The microsoft.public hierarchy is without a doubt a valuable resource, but I can't see what Microsoft can hope to offer. Their software (including their betas) is already posted on an almost daily basis in ISO format and the 3-in-one, 4-in-one, etc. versions are superior to Microsoft's legit offerings. But seriously...
Personally, I hope whatever they do fails. Usenet has always been pure information/pure content. Google has already discovered this, as have serious mp3 collectors, serious pr0n collectors, and serious warez collectors. And if you've elected to pay the $10 a month for a premium news service, the spam is negligible, especially in view of the fact that you can download all you want as fast as you can (or to the extent your news service allows). Hell, I remember a recent account error Newscene made that gave me 162GB of downloads for my $32 3-month subscription.
So where does Microsoft fit in? I don't really know. The content is already there. The format? Well if my characterisation that it's pure content is true, then the who needs anything more? As it stands now, Microsoft's only role is having provided a newsreader with few features and now a Netscan service that can be used to nail the minions posting copyrighted material. Then, of course, there's all those inappropriate quoted-printable posts from OE users in the microsoft.public hierarchy.
But seriously...
COMIC NEWS
Imagine, postings taht start like,
# APPEARS AS ANNA...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This is somewhat offtopic, but seems like a good time and place to ask.
Anyone know of a good newsreader for mac os x? I've googled up a few, but they are all terrible from my point of view.
In my last life I was a windows user and would use newsbin pro which was great for binaries and Agent for reading/posting.
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
Microsoft's Outlook-based newsreader has a means of auto-detecting UU-encoded postings. Unfortunately it is an incredibly stupid method that simply checks for the presence of the word "begin" at the start of a line, followed by two spaces, which can cause all kinds of problems. Rather than fix such a grevious and utterly stupid error, Microsoft has offered the workaround "tell people not to have non UU-encoded postings with that line in it".
Brilliant. Also typical Microsoft. Tell the rest of the world to accomidate their stupidity.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Microsoft--for better or for worse--wants to open Usenet to a more mainstream audience.
AOL did this several years ago. Back then it was called "The September that Never Ended".
(for those who don't get the reference, September was a famous month for all of the new college students who saw USENET for the first time, jumped in, and made idiots of themselves. College students, however, typically learned to wise up or go away. AOLers, unfortunately, did not -- seeing USENET as a service for AOL rather than an Internet resource that they were being granted the privledge of using).
Note that once the stigma of aol began to fade, webtv dumped their users onto it with even less concern for nettiquete.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"Microsoft to do for Usenet what it did for Email & the Web"
-1 Troll
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Google already does this to a certain degree
Shocking. To think that the innovative Microsoft would consider swiping someone else's ideas. What has the world come to?
May we never see th
Yenc is so horrible it became widely adopted overnight. yEnc and parity files have changed the way binaries are transmitted on USENET for the better. The link you provided has some valid points, but they seem more problems for yEnc implementers than users. In any case, if you got something better, put it out and let it compete with yEnc. Usenet will eagerly adopt a new standard the addresses some the problems mentioned the article. Think you can do better then yEnc, put up or shut up!
Brilliant. Also typical Microsoft. Tell the rest of the world to accomidate their stupidity.
The reason motherboards are specifically forbidden (PCsomeyear or other) from allowing users to switch between APM and ACAPI is because Windows has a piss-poor architecture WRT ACAPI that has totally different sets of code that run in an ACAPI and non-ACAPI environment.
As a result, everyone's stuck with buying a motherboard that only supports one or the other.
You have no *idea* the amount of third-party poor engineering that hits the computer world that Microsoft has caused.
May we never see th
The last time Usenet was opened up to a more mainstream audience, we got the September That Never Ended.
The signal-to-noise ratio could drop by another few orders of magnitude
that all people, (with internet access)
will take the files, combined together in the glory that is pornography,
sorted, in harmony.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Most of the tech groups (and more than any other medium) have experts in their field who donate their spare time to answer newbies and have great conversations with each other. I think that is pretty unique.
The same happens in many non-tech groups. I visit rec.music.classical.recordings frequently, looking for cds recommendations or new music to try. Some of the participants are players in big orchestras, so I know I get great advice. And spam is a non-issue, since the group is moderated.
I use google for text reading and gravity for binaries.(OE is useless for more than basic browsing)
OTOH, I fail to see why usenet would be affected at all by anything microsoft could do. All they are doing is data gathering and statistics analysis, in order to determine what are the most relevant and user-friendly newsgroups (for instance, the groups with most replies). And if this can help to bring more people, then it's welcome.
Usenet is a valuable and unique resource, because what it does isn't really covered by the alternatives. And it's also Internet history.
Usenet and buying a Mac are alike. If you know what youre looking for, youll stand a chance of getting out of the store with a Mac. If you know what your looking for, youll find what you need on Usenet.
Many have pointed out why Microsoft turning it's attention to the long-neglected usenet could be a bad thing. However, there are some possible benefits to it too...
First of all, Usenet apps are currently quite stagnant. There are new apps out there, but Agent is still considered one of the best and there haven't been any major changes to it in years. The interface is practically the same as it was 5 years ago! If Microsoft enters the news-reader market in a serious way then perhaps it might stimulate some creativity and development elsewhere. If nothing else, at least Usenet will get some publicity and new users. This is the big thing.
Currently, for most people, pay-for Usenet services are the only way to get good feeds at present. With more demand for Usenet from consumers and support from Microsoft perhaps ISP's will take their Usenet servers more seriously. Usenet is a valuable source for thousands of topics, but it is also a great repository for a weath of high-bandwidth materials such as porn, pirated music, videos, etc.. This is stuff that most ISP's don't really care about their users downloading except for the gawd-awful bandwidth costs they incur. A good Usenet server being used by users instead of P2P apps will actually reduce a lot of backbone traffic since the latest copy of Eminenema's album that everybody and their dog is downloading will only have to go over the backbone once to the news-server. From there it's all internal network traffic. Less bandwidth = lest cost, and cheaper internet access, not to mention more speed on less congested lines.
See. There's a silver lining in every cloud, even if it's a MS-sheitstorm.
It's embrace, extend, destroy all over again. If they can take over the medium, they can destroy the message. I'd say most UNIX lore and wisdom is distributed via USENET,
destroying that medium would be useful to M$, as a means to end, to destroy *nix philosophy. Ditto opensource. W/o USENET the developers would be talking just to themselves on their closed conferences. There are websites, but they are more like newspapers , and magazines, the experiences is perceived as editted, and so will be assumed to be biased to the skeptic.
Three months ago I posted a 'real" (disposable) email address in a sex group. Then I did it a few more times. Since then I have received TWO spams to that address - in contrast to what I considered a "permanent" email address that apparently got into the hands of one of those allegedly "opt in" sex site lists about six months ago and is now utterly useless due to the dozens of spams the box gets every single day (more than 500 a week, in fact).
It's easy to identify the "spam" groups - just look at a page of stats at all the binaries groups that average the same number of posts. Generally, any groups with message counts notably above or below the average are either very active groups or are "occupied" groups that are well maintained by their communities.
So far as "quality" I have found far more "quality" in usenet than I have ever found in p2p apps and most of the free web. Even when i had the prodicgious bandwidth to share via p2p I didn't bother, for usenet was far more compelling than anything napster or imesh had to offer: well informed opinions (in the right discussion groups) and a large amount of high quality and carefully catalogued content in the binaries groups.
To wit: if you want to collect complete albums of good quality you don't do the onesy-twosy crap of p2p; you hit the newsgroups. And if you want to collect the complete collection of playboy scans, suze randall, or amateur teen kingdom, you don't do the onesy twosey shit of p2p; again, you hit the newsgroups, where the people who share and post do so for the glory and, therefore, actually take some amount of pride in their service - not only in posting, but in keeping the community culled of spam. There even (at least) one group I know of where a community member with his own website (and server) makes automated hourly posts - sort of anti-spams - of on-topic material just to help keep the community S/N level high.
There are few places you find such a collection of individuals so dedicated to their communities as you find on usenet.
...For E-mail and the Web? Let's have a look.
They've encouraged pollution of E-mail with HTML and rich text that's readable only on a client that can interpret the code. I mean, c'mon... If you can't get your message across using well-written sentences in plain ASCII text, then no amount of coloration, fancy fonts, or flashing widgets are going to help.
They've done a lot, both in the past and more recently, that bends or outright breaks W3C Consortium open standards. Granted, they've gotten a little better, but how many web sites still have interactive features that only work if you use IE? And how many have that stupid "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" blurb at the bottom? How are Flash animations and fancy graphics going to help a vision-impaired or outright blind user, who depends on text-to-speech software or simple high-contrast colors, find what they need on the web?
Outlook (known among myself and many of my friends as 'Lookout Distress') is still one of the best virus carriers on the planet. Only Microsoft would come up with an E-mail client insecure enough that it seems almost to have been designed expressly to aid virus and worm transmission.
And now UncaBill and Steve "Uncle Fester" Ballmer want to try and "Ballmerize" (my word -- like it?) Usenet? Sheesh... With their track records, they'll probably try (and, hopefully, fail miserably) to borg the whole thing into one big "Web Experience" that will be "Best Viewed with Internet Explorer" all over again.
As others have so accurately pointed out, Usenet is fine the way it is. Noisy, a bit tough to navigate, and definitely a place where you would want to have your Nomex undies handy to grab at a moment's notice, but perfectly usable to those of us who CARE ENOUGH ABOUT IT to LEARN how to use it right.
Speaking for myself, I think I can say, with confidence, that Balmy should leave Usenet to those who know it best: The admins around the world who carry it, and the thousands of users who make it a most interesting place indeed.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
If you're using the Leafnode news server, for example, try this amazing two-step programme:
- Edit your
/etc/news/leafnode/filters file and add:
- Enjoy amazing signal-to-noise ratio on your favorite newsgroups
Yes, you filter on any header you like. I already use this feature to remove a whole heap of spammy ISPs from my news spool and it works a treat^X-Newsreader:.*Microsoft.*
I thought that you were replying to the other message. I appreciate the info.I'm glad that you brought that up. I use a web interface to email, so commenting in newsgroups with the same interface should protect me. I appreciate the warning so that I don't fall into the same trap again.
Thanks.
testing out my trending skills
What will be worse is the button mail this discussion to a friend, and keep me informed when a new similar discussion starts, and mail it to my friends. Wow what an incredible ms innovation. I feel an new tech term of the week coming on......help I can't stop myself from using it...infospam, infospam, infospam say it three times and it will catch on. I have an Aunt that already thinks that I should automatically see all the info she spams all her friends with gota love microsoft. It has got so bad that I filter her stuff direct to trash and burn now.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I already get regular infospam from /. why not MS usenet junk as well. And you thought MS was against junk.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Most people can just use web browsers if they need help.
Thats what we are setting up at abcusenet.com
Litigious bastards
while the right hand is scaring us with their intentions to
invade USENET, what's the left hand doing?
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I look forward to cashing the checks that MS will be sending to cover the for profit use of my usenet posts in accordance with my new licencing aggreement.
This post may seem very hateful to people who don't browse usenet.
However, Outlook/Outlook Express has the horrible, horrible tendency to mangle posts.
> Outlook tends to have break long lines while quoting at the most
annoying spots.
> Which leads to a mess similiar to what's in this post: an ugly,
horribly formatted
>quote. Of course, Outlook ends up formatting this broken quote
style correctly,
> which always makes a fun discussion for why the problem
is with Outlook
> instead of with every other news client out there. *sigh*
Which makes Outlook a poor, poor choice for usenet.
> And it doesn't seem to encourage snipping the original quote.
> > However, it makes the conversation hard to follow.
> > > At first glance, it doesn't seem to be a problem.
> > > > Never mind Outlook sets up the cursor to top
> > > > post by default.
There also seems to be frequent problems with the line lengths of Outlook users' posts.
Do yourself a favor - if you want to post to usenet under windows, download a decent usenet client (Forte Free Agent seems to be preferred by many, although I haven't used it). Learn how to properly quote, and set your line lengths to a sane number.
In all seriousness, when I read "Microsoft to do for Usenet what it did for Email & The Web", my first thought was: "Microsoft is making a newsreader that automatically executes code stored inside of Usenet posts?"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
> > > > post by default.
Which brings to mind a Usenet post I saw a little while ago (in ahbou, I believe):
Find
Porn
Faster
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Wow, this post sure reads a lot like this one earlier post here.
"Sufferin' succotash."
There is far better software out there for dealing with Usenet than Microsofts stuff.
I think Microsofts problem is that they are viewing the world thru the software they make and as such are really quite blind as to what is already available. So when they come up with some improvement, they really don't know it was done a decade ago or better and actually think they invented something new.
What is Usenet good for?
establishing Prior art for one....
Ive always used the usenet to see what type of usenet/internet activity a so-called 'Internet experienced' applicant has had on usenet.
Ive always thought that slashdot would be well served if it somehow made its threads synch up with a moderated alt.slashdot so that all discussions/info can be accessed though a news reader, and be archived globally if (heaven forbit) slashdot ever goes away.
because people posting things with RAR passwords and then not including the passwords unless you're part of a list of people.
Don't bother to suggest cracking rar passwords. None of the applications out there that can do so work.
Oh oh, point in case.
Ok assume I'm a troll. I post with mozilla. So that means my original comment that all trolls use IE [and subjectively many good people use IE] is false.
So you in fact proved one element of my claim.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Basicly all that has gone wrong with NNTP is the lack of accounts providing a NNTP server. Linux will be back in a flash. Microsoft does already support usenet what is new. Outlook express does it yep nice way to infect 1000 people quickly so NNTP server disappeared because of microsoft so fix the faults and it will be back.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
If they can clue the masses into Usenet in such a way that users think that they need Microsoft software in order to do Usenet, they'll control millions of people's access to Usenet, and to some degree Usenet itself.
If that were true, AOL would've controlled Usenet a long time ago.
Furthermore, MSN is the default startup homepage on 90% or 95% or whatever of browsers, and yet Google rules the web search.
they had better [effing] leave 'html' and 'rich text' out of their news reader
.doc formatting instead. :-(
Good News: They probably will.
Bad News: They will probably push MS Word
This has been information from out of my ass. Thank you.
One wonders. When I saw the name the first thing I thought of was SLMR (pronounced "slimer") which was a QWK mail reader I used back in my old Fidonet BBS days before switching to Blue Wave. Ah, the good old days when buying a second hand 9600 baud modem for only $300 was a great deal and I couldn't believe I was leaving 2400 behind.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Hey Spudley!
How can you live with yourself, and that tiny penis? You could never satisfy a woman, you fucking pindick! Real men have twelve inch cocks, so clearly you're not a real man. I bet you fuck your mother, because she's the only woman who'll love you.
Now buy stuff from me!
Sheesh, you'd think you hadn't heard of the ASSTR, the alt.sex.stories text repository! More text porn than you can shake your rotting grogan-choad at! (No, it's not actually related to alt.tasteless. I don't even think they say "choad" or "grogan" in there.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
All I want is a Mr Clippy...
MC: "Where do you want to go today?"
ME: alt.binaries.pictures.erotica
MC: I'm sorry, but that msnews group is not found
MC: "Where do you want to go today?"
ME: comp.os.linux
MC: "now viewing comp.os.windows"
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
Of course the online experience isn't really the same as having a nice volume to hold in your hands.
Maybe they could start by resurrecting the fidonet echo. There may be some active nodes out there, but dialing into tymnet on my 286 is history.
Suddenly I am feeling like a piece of history myself.
Fuck it up?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
*Does not compute* *var.curuser.slashdot schema.....unlogical, unlogical* *shutdown destruct initiated*
Many Thanks,
Luke
This is a pretty stupid move. Why is software company with serious interests in digital media trying to make it easier for people to use what has become little more than a medium for warez-trading?
Perhaps someone at Microsoft wants to make it easier to collect usenet goat-pr0n.
In other news: Syphillis to do for the brain what it did for the penis.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
As a result, everyone's stuck with buying a motherboard that only supports one or the other.
Wrong! Some motherboards do not have proper implementations of ACPI, but if both it and APM both are supported you can select which one to enable in the BIOS. At least you can with all of my 3+ year old boards. Not only that, but these BIOS settings are usually completely ignored by Linux and other real operating systems. So if you boot on a system with APM and ACPI support, even if ACPI is enabled, using an APM kernel, you will get APM. And vice versa.
Some systems don't have APM support anymore; this is mainly because of various "Legacy Free" initiatives mainly coming out of Intel, not Microsoft.
"Actually I've found that as the signal/noise ratio on sites such as Slashdot have decreased with all of the AC posting and such"
Note the above got a +5 insightful, while this got a -1 offtopic.
If the S/N ratio is decreasing, it's because MODERATION DOESN"T WORK. Blaming it on AC posting is stupid, because if moderation did work, you wouldn't even see it (unless you want to, and if you did, then you have nothing to complain about).
"On usenet, questions are answered by folks who typically know the answer rather than the pure drivel and conjecture that we are seeing more on Slashdot."
Well hopefully you're doing your part in making sure that Slashdot doesn't sink further into irrelevancy.
It appears that it's Linux elitist because generally users with clue use Linux on their home machines.
I code for Linux at work. At home I have SuSe but my primary machine is Windows XP.
Why?
Because as a hobby I play music, and there is a plethera of excellent music software for the Windows platform. From recording (cubase, protools) to creation (live, reason) there is simply no comparison in linux, outside of academic electronic music.
Your elderly 'elitism' is misplaced, and wildly out of touch.
Me too [g] and I do remember SLMR (and its child, OLX). SLMR went away real fast when I discovered that instead of closing the QWK packet I'd just laboriously downloaded at 2400 baud, it ATE the damned thing. -- Eventually I settled on Blue Wave (hacked to call itself variously Heat Wave, Cold Wave, or Crime Wave!) and still use it to this day -- with WordPerfect 5.1 as my editor. And my old FidoNet address is still taped to the front of my 286. I feel *so* retro. :)
:)
Speaking of BBS networks, most had a dedicated utility to extract pretty much the same info as this nifty new M$ tool. ILink is dead enough that no one bothers to analyse conference traffic anymore, but I think INtelec and Fido are still keeping stats. (Ha! And they thought we'd wandered off topic.
I paid all of $3 for my first 2400 baud modem, at one of DAK's fire sales. I still have it, too!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Now you're just reaching there, Tom.
...reaching for some MANHAM TO CAN!
testing out my trending skills
It's 'cesspool' you dumb motherfucker.
"Those problems have been solved by a large number of newsreaders in the form of scorefiles, killfiles, and a group listing view that accepts wildcards. One problem is that normal human beings cannot use any of those features - because their naive newsreader does not support them or the interface is a windowized version of 'rn'. This is accidental complexity and is the sort of UI and standardization problem MS is good at solving. Another problem is that for the user to communicate their definition of "good" in a meaningful way is difficult. This is inherently complex; explaining what is "good" to a human being is difficult, much less a computer program."
I was going to do a longer post, but then I realized that your post can be summed up as: "The user is too stupid to switch to another more capable Windows newsreader, therefore they have to wait for Microsoft to force-feed them something that's fit for the job". Quite frankly a Windows user, should be insulted. But then contempt for Windows users is epidemic here. (Do I really need to drag out the examples, so helpfully presented over the years?)
At a MS Security Board meeting...
"I know! We'll trick potential hackers by putting all of our dynamic pages in a folder called 'Static'"
"Brilliant! Another promotion!"
... and then there were none
The expression is "case in point".
YOU FAIL IT!
Fortunately most of Usenet is such a cespool that really they can only make it better.
I see FUD.
Get back to us when you've tried to take part in a couple of dozen different discussion groups. :-)
But seriously, the problem that you're overlooking is that the name of a group doesn't necessarily tell you enough about its purpose to work out whether it's the right place to lurk/post.
Programming language groups are great examples of this. To give some examples from personal experience, suppose you're writing an e-mail client in C++, using GCC on a Linux box and some library or other to do the Internet protocol stuff. Which of the following groups are relevant to you?
Which of the above are moderated groups? Which are for experienced users, and which for newbies? Where should you ask questions about:
If you get more than one of those right, without knowing the groups concerned, I'll be impressed.
(Anyone about to bitch about why you'd want to use C++ anyway can consider that comp.lang.perl doesn't even exist -- although it gets dozens of posts every month -- and go figure.)
There are FAQs for the C++ newsgroups, frequently referenced in the sigs of regular posters and in the footers appended to posts to the moderated groups, that make it quite clear what's on-topic and what's not. They even provide lengthy lists of related groups where many questions people might be thinking of posting should be sent instead. And yet still, numerous people every month clog up already crowded groups with inane questions that are asked a million times (sometimes prefaced with "This might be a FAQ but..." or something equally irritating) or with subjects that are completely off-topic and just get in the way of useful discussion.
Now, this was the first example that came to mind, but there are myriad others. I'm very happy for you that you found all the groups you ever wanted in two minutes, but the world of downloading pr0n and illegal copies of games is different to the useful discussion that goes on elsewhere in Usenet, and does have genuine problems at the moment. A more optimistic view of Microsoft's work is that they might help to fix some of those problems, and make the rest of Usenet a better place for those of us interested in using it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You have a group called large.breasts - and what do you see? Tons of pictures of cunts and asses - why? Because that's what most americans are...
If you ever want to hide portions of an email from Outlook users, you can simply use the "begin " line on its own
I remember that too. Apparently it is now legendary...
The September that never ended
Microsoft want to make Usenet easy to use so that their engineers can FINALLY figure out how to use it.
[shrug] If they allow you to choose, they aren't PC[whatever year]-compliant.
May we never see th
Excellent, I'm glad you read newsgroups. So, can you tell us what's going on these days on alt.manham.canning and alt.mangoo.bottling?
Gimme a break. Actually, gimme a Linux desktop that works as well as Windows, and has as much 3rd party support. Really, I'm not against Linux but Microsoft can't do *anything* without Slashrot knowing about it.
Don't you get sick of it? They're not even doing anything wrong man! What am I doing reading this crap!?!? <heart-attack/>.
OE-Quotefix does a good job of fixing QE's quirks. Now if it removed the lines in the header identifing it as OE, life would good.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Windows has a piss-poor architecture WRT ACAPI that has totally different sets of code that run in an ACAPI and non-ACAPI environment
.... How's Linux's ACPI implementation turning out? :)
This was to work around some seriously broken ACPI implementations (mainly on computers of the AMD-variety) that just happened to work under Win98.
Expecting users to change a BIOS setting would have apparently been a drag on sales. Good Engineering is making due with what you've got to work with. After all, Gates' Empire is one built on shitty clones.
Speaking of which
http://mnetz.150m.com