Binaries groups are clearly not text (hence the binaries.* name). Sure they use the 128 character set to transfer their data, but it is STILL data, not readable by a human being. f I were an Admin at an ISP I would stop offering those groups rather than turnoff the news: server completely.
I think you missed the point. You blame the pirates, but I blame the ISPs for being too stupid to keep the text-only forums alive. That's what I would have done if I were the Admin, rather than turnoff the news: server completely.
>>>clients only go over the local link, because long distance bandwidth was precious.
That is still true today. It's still cheaper for an ISP to store all the Usenet messages locally, and have users access that store, then to setup long distance connections. The concept is not obsolete.
Another advantage of Usenet is that it served a global community, so that everyone was seeing the same identical posts, whereas web forums only serve a few hundred people and they are fractured. With usenet I can visit just one group (example: rec.games) and see all the posts at once, but with web forums I have to read across about 10 different gaming forums to catch up. It's less convenient.
Yeah but in this case they are correct. Anti-missile interceptors don't work. While eliminating nukes between the US and former USSR is a good plan, we still need to keep SOME on hand to discourage other countries from attacking us, for fear we'd wipe them off the map.
Because they get complaints from users that they can't watch Youtube videos in real time. So it's perfectly natural for companies to throttle downloading activities, while giving priority to Youtube, Skype, and othe realtime applications.
As for cost, I don't think wireless will ever be as fast or cheap as wired. There's only ONE radio spectrum and it has to be shared with everyone within the cell tower's zone. In contrast the wired internet has an infinite number of spectrums, limited only by the number of wires laid down.
Unlimited TIME is what they advertise, not unlimited data. Read the contract. And I agree with their position. If you're downloading 1000 gigabytes each month while your grandma downloads just her emails, why should you pay the same amount each month? Electricity, water, gasoline, natural gas - all metered. It makes logical sense to do the same for data.
For example Comcast has a current cap of 250 GB. They could sell additional gigabytes at ~10 cents each for people who enjoy watching lots of videos or other high-data activities.
>>>Netscape was a disk thrashing piece of garbage.
Funny. Netscape Navigator 4 works just fine on my 8 megabyte, 386/12 MHz laptop. I agree AOL's version 6 was garbage, but that was not release in the 1990s. And Netscape Navigator didn't have annoying ads like Opera had.
>>>Run both Opera and Firefox on memory starved systems and you will change your tune.
I have (112MB WinXP laptop). Opera ran like a snail due to disk thrashing. Firefox ran much faster, but still wasn't that great either. I ended-up using IE7 instead.
>>>Youtube and other sites that offer both H264 and Flash?
I use "3GP" for my youtube watching (via firefox addon), but that's only because my laptop is still stuck on dialup. Perhaps that's the way for Firefox to handle h.264 - via addons.
Firefox still seems "light" to me. Right now I have 7 open tabs, and it's using just 130 megabytes of RAM. I've tried to find a smaller browser like Opera or seaMonkey, but there's no significant difference.
As for paying, I'd be happy to pay for "addons" to get h.264. 1-2 dollars won't rupt my bank, so long as the actual Firefox browser remains free.
>>>have their infinitely "more powerful" laptop process 5% of the NYSE volume like our mainframes did, while supporting about 100K trader desks, a couple TB of tape robot storage, etc.
A laptop could do that if it had an efficient assembly-written OS (like Kolibri), rather than the bloated general purpose OSes like Windows NT or OS X. At my former company we used the equivalent of laptops (Pentium 2s) to manage, load mission data, and launch a ship full of Tomahawk missiles.
When I think of Voyager I think of the SMELL of magazines like Astronomy, National Geographic, and Analog Science Fiction. That was where I first read about Voyager (late 70s) and followed their path all through my childhood. I didn't see the Voyager-themed Trek movie until the SciFi Channel ran it in the mid-90s.
Even now the magazine scent still takes me back to my parents old dark basement, flipping through the articles, and "traveling" to far-off destinations.
>>>for us audio-nerds... tubes had that nice desirable sweet sound...
"Sizzle"..... like a modern day iPod/MP3 player. NOT a desirable trait in my humble opinion. I prefer the cleanness of CDs or other non-compressed media.
>>>1977 was a different time, when information technology usually didn't even involve transistors
It's difficult to find technical data about Voyager, but I did dig up this information: - Voyager was one of the earliest spacecraft to use Volatile memory (CMOS) rather than hardwired ROM. The management was not thrilled with the idea, because they feared volatile memory could be damaged by the space environment.
- The processor operated at 20 ms cycles. If I did my math correctly that's only 0.1 megahertz..... 1/10th as fast as most 8 bit computers or consoles (C64, AppleII, NES, Atari, etc).
- The software was written by just two guys, and is stored in only 4K of memory (like a VIC20 or Atari VCS/2600 cartridge). I don't know how much RAM is available.
>>>I think what killed news groups was the pirates
And that could very easily be fixed by Usenet Sysops, by simply refusing to carry the binaries - revert usenet to what it was originally - a text only interface.
So. How much would it cost to setup an old-fashioned BBS (or website) to carry rec.arts.tv, rec.arts.startrek, and so on? That's how I accessed the Usenet in the old days, via slow Trailblazer modems (~18 kbit/s) that transferred the data in the late night hours. I can certainly do it again.
- I don't see any difference between DejaNews and Googlegroups. It's still the same interface that I've been using since the 90s. True google added some new user-created groups, but that's a GOOD thing. It's expansion with new features.
- I don't see any evidence of archive erosion. I can still find my ancient high school post from 1988, 89, and so on.
- Google search results DO link to Usenet groups. Goto the front page and type something like "politics" in the second user-input box, and you get a list of all the groups related to politics (alt.politics, myc.politics, tx.politics, etc). OR you can click the "browse usenet" button and dig into the Usenet hierarchy directly.
I think the real problem here is not Google but PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair). Almost all your complaints boil-down to not knowing how to use the googlegroups software.
Moderators often censor views. The guy saying "Linux is better" in the 1990s may have been unpopular with the majority still using Windows 95 or Mac OS 7, but at least on Usenet he could not be censored. On the forums he can be.
Usenet would be dirt-cheap to operate if, for example, Duke chose to stop carrying the binaries groups. (Like Google Groups today.) Then they'd just be handling the Text messages in groups like rec.arts.tv which requires very little bandwidth.
This is yet another example of throwing-out the whole Baby, when all you really need to do it remove the bathwater (binaries). There's no reason to completely stop carrying Usenet.
>>>against the law in Germany to have unsecured wireless networks.
Really? Well then that really calls into question the Government's motives. Are they policing a naughty corporation, or are they seeking to use the data themselves to punish citizens? If I worked at Google I would destroy the drives immediately, rather than turn it over to a government (german, EU, or US). Private data needs to be protected from prying politicians' eyes, per the EU Lisbon Treaty
No. It was an apartment house (divided in 2) and the warrant was for the apartment on the left (call it Apt A)..... not the one on the right (Apt B). They were given permission to search ONE of them, not both. Or do you think if a warrant says "One Main Street, Sunny Apartments" that gives the cops permission to search all 10-20 apartments located there? It does not.
>>>>>"Here's an interesting case where government cops entered the wrong house (therefore an illegal warrantless search) to do a drug raid." >> >>The United States Secret Service doesn't enforce those laws, so bringing that into this conversation is pointless.
But they all serve the same boss (U.S. Government), so it's all relevant. It's all evidence of why/how an innocent can be wrongfully jailed by the U.S.
>>>hiding in your bedroom with your gun "Waiting" for the intruder can be classified as premeditated
True but the intruder didn't have to enter the bedroom. He could have just as easily turned-around and left, in which case no killing would occur. The outcome of the situation is entirely in the *intruder's* hands.
Slashdot Mirror
Binaries groups are clearly not text (hence the binaries.* name). Sure they use the 128 character set to transfer their data, but it is STILL data, not readable by a human being. f I were an Admin at an ISP I would stop offering those groups rather than turnoff the news: server completely.
I think you missed the point. You blame the pirates, but I blame the ISPs for being too stupid to keep the text-only forums alive. That's what I would have done if I were the Admin, rather than turnoff the news: server completely.
>>>clients only go over the local link, because long distance bandwidth was precious.
That is still true today. It's still cheaper for an ISP to store all the Usenet messages locally, and have users access that store, then to setup long distance connections. The concept is not obsolete.
Another advantage of Usenet is that it served a global community, so that everyone was seeing the same identical posts, whereas web forums only serve a few hundred people and they are fractured. With usenet I can visit just one group (example: rec.games) and see all the posts at once, but with web forums I have to read across about 10 different gaming forums to catch up. It's less convenient.
Yeah but in this case they are correct. Anti-missile interceptors don't work. While eliminating nukes between the US and former USSR is a good plan, we still need to keep SOME on hand to discourage other countries from attacking us, for fear we'd wipe them off the map.
Because they get complaints from users that they can't watch Youtube videos in real time. So it's perfectly natural for companies to throttle downloading activities, while giving priority to Youtube, Skype, and othe realtime applications.
As for cost, I don't think wireless will ever be as fast or cheap as wired. There's only ONE radio spectrum and it has to be shared with everyone within the cell tower's zone. In contrast the wired internet has an infinite number of spectrums, limited only by the number of wires laid down.
>>>unlimited data isn't really unlimited.
Unlimited TIME is what they advertise, not unlimited data. Read the contract. And I agree with their position. If you're downloading 1000 gigabytes each month while your grandma downloads just her emails, why should you pay the same amount each month? Electricity, water, gasoline, natural gas - all metered. It makes logical sense to do the same for data.
For example Comcast has a current cap of 250 GB. They could sell additional gigabytes at ~10 cents each for people who enjoy watching lots of videos or other high-data activities.
>>>Netscape was a disk thrashing piece of garbage.
Funny. Netscape Navigator 4 works just fine on my 8 megabyte, 386/12 MHz laptop. I agree AOL's version 6 was garbage, but that was not release in the 1990s. And Netscape Navigator didn't have annoying ads like Opera had.
>>>Run both Opera and Firefox on memory starved systems and you will change your tune.
I have (112MB WinXP laptop). Opera ran like a snail due to disk thrashing. Firefox ran much faster, but still wasn't that great either. I ended-up using IE7 instead.
>>>Youtube and other sites that offer both H264 and Flash?
I use "3GP" for my youtube watching (via firefox addon), but that's only because my laptop is still stuck on dialup. Perhaps that's the way for Firefox to handle h.264 - via addons.
Firefox still seems "light" to me. Right now I have 7 open tabs, and it's using just 130 megabytes of RAM. I've tried to find a smaller browser like Opera or seaMonkey, but there's no significant difference.
As for paying, I'd be happy to pay for "addons" to get h.264. 1-2 dollars won't rupt my bank, so long as the actual Firefox browser remains free.
>>>have their infinitely "more powerful" laptop process 5% of the NYSE volume like our mainframes did, while supporting about 100K trader desks, a couple TB of tape robot storage, etc.
A laptop could do that if it had an efficient assembly-written OS (like Kolibri), rather than the bloated general purpose OSes like Windows NT or OS X. At my former company we used the equivalent of laptops (Pentium 2s) to manage, load mission data, and launch a ship full of Tomahawk missiles.
When I think of Voyager I think of the SMELL of magazines like Astronomy, National Geographic, and Analog Science Fiction. That was where I first read about Voyager (late 70s) and followed their path all through my childhood. I didn't see the Voyager-themed Trek movie until the SciFi Channel ran it in the mid-90s.
Even now the magazine scent still takes me back to my parents old dark basement, flipping through the articles, and "traveling" to far-off destinations.
>>>for us audio-nerds... tubes had that nice desirable sweet sound...
"Sizzle"..... like a modern day iPod/MP3 player. NOT a desirable trait in my humble opinion. I prefer the cleanness of CDs or other non-compressed media.
>>>1977 was a different time, when information technology usually didn't even involve transistors
It's difficult to find technical data about Voyager, but I did dig up this information:
- Voyager was one of the earliest spacecraft to use Volatile memory (CMOS) rather than hardwired ROM. The management was not thrilled with the idea, because they feared volatile memory could be damaged by the space environment.
- The processor operated at 20 ms cycles. If I did my math correctly that's only 0.1 megahertz..... 1/10th as fast as most 8 bit computers or consoles (C64, AppleII, NES, Atari, etc).
- The software was written by just two guys, and is stored in only 4K of memory (like a VIC20 or Atari VCS/2600 cartridge). I don't know how much RAM is available.
>>>I think what killed news groups was the pirates
And that could very easily be fixed by Usenet Sysops, by simply refusing to carry the binaries - revert usenet to what it was originally - a text only interface.
So. How much would it cost to setup an old-fashioned BBS (or website) to carry rec.arts.tv, rec.arts.startrek, and so on? That's how I accessed the Usenet in the old days, via slow Trailblazer modems (~18 kbit/s) that transferred the data in the late night hours. I can certainly do it again.
False, false, false.
- I don't see any difference between DejaNews and Googlegroups. It's still the same interface that I've been using since the 90s. True google added some new user-created groups, but that's a GOOD thing. It's expansion with new features.
- I don't see any evidence of archive erosion. I can still find my ancient high school post from 1988, 89, and so on.
- Google search results DO link to Usenet groups. Goto the front page and type something like "politics" in the second user-input box, and you get a list of all the groups related to politics (alt.politics, myc.politics, tx.politics, etc). OR you can click the "browse usenet" button and dig into the Usenet hierarchy directly.
- And here's the search results for comp.lang.c++ - apparently there are SEVERAL of these, including foreign languages and a moderated group: http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?lnk=nhpsfg&q=comp.lang.c%2B%2B&qt_s=Search+for+a+group
I think the real problem here is not Google but PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair).
Almost all your complaints boil-down to not knowing how to use the googlegroups software.
Moderators often censor views. The guy saying "Linux is better" in the 1990s may have been unpopular with the majority still using Windows 95 or Mac OS 7, but at least on Usenet he could not be censored. On the forums he can be.
Usenet would be dirt-cheap to operate if, for example, Duke chose to stop carrying the binaries groups. (Like Google Groups today.) Then they'd just be handling the Text messages in groups like rec.arts.tv which requires very little bandwidth.
This is yet another example of throwing-out the whole Baby, when all you really need to do it remove the bathwater (binaries). There's no reason to completely stop carrying Usenet.
I accessed Usenet through a local BBS, and the guy charged nothing for it.
>>>against the law in Germany to have unsecured wireless networks.
Really? Well then that really calls into question the Government's motives. Are they policing a naughty corporation, or are they seeking to use the data themselves to punish citizens? If I worked at Google I would destroy the drives immediately, rather than turn it over to a government (german, EU, or US). Private data needs to be protected from prying politicians' eyes, per the EU Lisbon Treaty
>>>the warrant was for the correct address
No. It was an apartment house (divided in 2) and the warrant was for the apartment on the left (call it Apt A)..... not the one on the right (Apt B). They were given permission to search ONE of them, not both. Or do you think if a warrant says "One Main Street, Sunny Apartments" that gives the cops permission to search all 10-20 apartments located there? It does not.
>>>>>"Here's an interesting case where government cops entered the wrong house (therefore an illegal warrantless search) to do a drug raid."
>>
>>The United States Secret Service doesn't enforce those laws, so bringing that into this conversation is pointless.
But they all serve the same boss (U.S. Government), so it's all relevant. It's all evidence of why/how an innocent can be wrongfully jailed by the U.S.
>>>hiding in your bedroom with your gun "Waiting" for the intruder can be classified as premeditated
True but the intruder didn't have to enter the bedroom. He could have just as easily turned-around and left, in which case no killing would occur. The outcome of the situation is entirely in the *intruder's* hands.
:-|
>>>hope more EU countries will demand the same thing
Yeah because we can trust the Fourth Reich with our private data. They have demonstrated themselves to be completely trustworthy in the past.