It seemed that Usenet was dying out until Google came along and included it via Google Groups.
First off, all Google did was buyout the already popular Deja News service and expand their archive.
Second, having participated in Usenet for over a decade now, you're just plain wrong. Just because you didn't use it before doesn't mean it wasn't thriving. While there are still a number of thriving groups, there are a great number being strangled by political spam -- rec.arts.movies.current-films, frex, gets maybe one on-topic thread per week, and several hundred "BU$H IZ A MURDRING NAZI!" and "WHY DO LIBERAL FAGS HATE AMERICA?" threads. Even three years ago you could still have a serious film discussion in there, but not anymore, and short of moderating the group, there's no way to reverse the trend.
When I said "filling up my mailbox," I wasn't thinking of the disk space being used or things like that, but rather that certain newsgroups have hundreds of messages per day.
Unless you're downloading a group and going offline to read, there's no reason to keep anything but the headers on your computer.
Even if the messages are threaded, it's still hard to wade through all the cruft and find the threads you're interested in, especially when the interest is causual.
Any decent newsreader (i.e., not Outlook) should have filters (killfiles, scorefiles) that automatically find the interesting stuff for you. With something like Gravity, it's trivially easy to reduce a 1000 post-per-day group to 50.
There is no way to look at an old thread and only see new messages. Click the "See New Posts" icon.
While that's true, it doesn't work for those of us who set cookies to session-only. Sure, you can whitelist the forum, but that gets tiresome everytime you want to join a particular discussion group.
There is no way to filter out topics and people you're not interested in. Click the "Ignore" button.
If you have to do it manually, it's not really filtering.
You haven't noticed that TB 1.0 puts a handy little mark next to subthreads that you're participating in? And if that's not sufficient, get Gravity and use the scorefile.
DoD's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review document calls for the creation of tactical nukes deployed on the battlefield, and for war plans that include US nuclear first strike.
That's hardly anything new. Back in the Cold War, when we thought the Soviet army was actually good and had an advantage in manpower, US policy was to go nuclear in the event of a conventional invasion of NATO.
But then after the recent tsunami, Amazon raised over $10million in the first week alone. I don't know how much they eventually got up to, but it was over $14million when I stopped checking.
However, Enterprise has been attracting less than 2million viewers per week. It's highly unlikely that all, or even most, of them like the show enough to pay for its continuation, so those who do would probably have to chip in $100+ for the scheme to work.
Someone needs to tell these folks, "It's dead, Jim."
Oh, I've had fresh squeezed orange juice. OJ is my favorite beverage after Coke. But I also appreciate good liquor, and can't fathom why so many people insist on drowning it with other stuff. This isn't Prohibition; we don't need to make cocktails to hide the taste of bathtub gin.
I understand that SF can be meant to stand for "Science Fiction,"
It can, but in fandom it doesn't. "SF" is an abbreviation for "speculative fiction," an all encompassing term for science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror, and any other genre that deals with unreality.
However, when we have virtually unlimited screen real estate, is it really necessary to shorten 'SciFi' to 'SF'?
Yes. SciFi or Skiffy is the realm of zap guns and bug eyed monsters.
Good or bad doesn't matter. If you sync with their expectations you get published.
Or, in this case, if you're dumb enough to submit to them and then fall for their pay-to-print line, you'll get published. (Unless, of course, you then reveal that your book was a hoax.) Vanity presses don't care what you write.
Not to mention that sweatshops are so named for their lack of suitable venhilation. Try that with computers, and you'll soon be paying more to fix overheated computers than you're saving on labor.
Inconceivable! Everyone knows that US IP law is set by a cadre of running-dog capitalists who control the government, and the rest of the world operates under a more enlightened regime.
Colognes, spicy food etc are nowhere near as intrusive and completely antisocial as smoking, and just trying to make an anal comparison like you did is just ludicrous. Every time this guy came in after smoking, people in the office got nauseous, the stench is unbelievable and on several occasions it made me either physically sick or headachy.
"Physically sick" generally denotes vomiting. Are you saying that smokers make you vomit by their mere presence? Did you wear a breathing mask when you used the locker room in high school? Do you pass out when someone farts?
I suspect you're either being hyperbolic or hypersensitive. In either case, get over yourself.
Smoking is disgusting, and it does harm those people who dont smoke in the office. Smokers smell, even if they take steps to mitigate the stale smoke smell - and many dont.
Are there any perfumes or colognes you dislike, because we could ban them too. And while we're at it, perhaps we should prohibit people from eating spicey foods, because you might have to talk to them afterward and put up with their stinky breath! Oh my!
I don't smoke, but people like you make me want to take it up just to annoy you.
Evil. It's the laughing at wholesale destruction and killing the Jedi that gives it away...
You're just falling for propaganda from the entrenched power elites. Anyone with eyes can see that the Jedi are the evil ones. Come on, they sent two men to mediate a trade-dispute, but in ten years they did nothing to end slavery on Tatooine -- they couldn't even be bothered to free Shmi Skywalker, the mother of one of their most promising students. Clearly the Jedi are just lackeys of the corporations, bent on maintaining the status quo with no thought to the proletariat.
I remember one scene in 2001, with a static shot (as I first saw it in Cinerama) of the two astronauts speaking to each other and HAL's camera eye in the middle, that was horribly mangled in the TV release, with the view panning back and forth.
Kubrick shot 2001 in Cinemascope at the insistence of the studio, which believed the film would look best in 2.35:1; everything else he did in anamorphic widescreen, with shots composed with 4:3 screens in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
PEEVE: An apologia is not an apology, not in the sense that you're using the word.
It seemed that Usenet was dying out until Google came along and included it via Google Groups.
First off, all Google did was buyout the already popular Deja News service and expand their archive.
Second, having participated in Usenet for over a decade now, you're just plain wrong. Just because you didn't use it before doesn't mean it wasn't thriving. While there are still a number of thriving groups, there are a great number being strangled by political spam -- rec.arts.movies.current-films, frex, gets maybe one on-topic thread per week, and several hundred "BU$H IZ A MURDRING NAZI!" and "WHY DO LIBERAL FAGS HATE AMERICA?" threads. Even three years ago you could still have a serious film discussion in there, but not anymore, and short of moderating the group, there's no way to reverse the trend.
How do you get a negative SNR? Less than no signal?
When I said "filling up my mailbox," I wasn't thinking of the disk space being used or things like that, but rather that certain newsgroups have hundreds of messages per day.
Unless you're downloading a group and going offline to read, there's no reason to keep anything but the headers on your computer.
Even if the messages are threaded, it's still hard to wade through all the cruft and find the threads you're interested in, especially when the interest is causual.
Any decent newsreader (i.e., not Outlook) should have filters (killfiles, scorefiles) that automatically find the interesting stuff for you. With something like Gravity, it's trivially easy to reduce a 1000 post-per-day group to 50.
There is no way to look at an old thread and only see new messages. Click the "See New Posts" icon.
While that's true, it doesn't work for those of us who set cookies to session-only. Sure, you can whitelist the forum, but that gets tiresome everytime you want to join a particular discussion group.
There is no way to filter out topics and people you're not interested in. Click the "Ignore" button.
If you have to do it manually, it's not really filtering.
You haven't noticed that TB 1.0 puts a handy little mark next to subthreads that you're participating in? And if that's not sufficient, get Gravity and use the scorefile.
DoD's 2002 Nuclear Posture Review document calls for the creation of tactical nukes deployed on the battlefield, and for war plans that include US nuclear first strike.
That's hardly anything new. Back in the Cold War, when we thought the Soviet army was actually good and had an advantage in manpower, US policy was to go nuclear in the event of a conventional invasion of NATO.
The images don't show up in Lynx either! The bastards.
(and far better, to my mind, than The Day The Earth Stood Still and its fascist interstellar-UN robot overlords)
Well I for one welcome our new fascist interstellar-UN robot overlords.
(You know it had to be said.)
But then after the recent tsunami, Amazon raised over $10million in the first week alone. I don't know how much they eventually got up to, but it was over $14million when I stopped checking.
However, Enterprise has been attracting less than 2million viewers per week. It's highly unlikely that all, or even most, of them like the show enough to pay for its continuation, so those who do would probably have to chip in $100+ for the scheme to work.
Someone needs to tell these folks, "It's dead, Jim."
Oh, I've had fresh squeezed orange juice. OJ is my favorite beverage after Coke. But I also appreciate good liquor, and can't fathom why so many people insist on drowning it with other stuff. This isn't Prohibition; we don't need to make cocktails to hide the taste of bathtub gin.
The publication process, outside of vanity press, makes a very strong effort to weed out the stories that are submitted that carry those indicators.
ITYM: They have an intern who reads the first page or two of every manuscript, and throws out 99.9% of them.
Think of the worst book you've ever read, and then consider that it's must've been among the best-of-the-best to get published.
I understand that SF can be meant to stand for "Science Fiction,"
It can, but in fandom it doesn't. "SF" is an abbreviation for "speculative fiction," an all encompassing term for science fiction, fantasy, supernatural horror, and any other genre that deals with unreality.
However, when we have virtually unlimited screen real estate, is it really necessary to shorten 'SciFi' to 'SF'?
Yes. SciFi or Skiffy is the realm of zap guns and bug eyed monsters.
Good or bad doesn't matter. If you sync with their expectations you get published.
Or, in this case, if you're dumb enough to submit to them and then fall for their pay-to-print line, you'll get published. (Unless, of course, you then reveal that your book was a hoax.) Vanity presses don't care what you write.
I thought Lackey was all about the anal-rape?
Not to mention that sweatshops are so named for their lack of suitable venhilation. Try that with computers, and you'll soon be paying more to fix overheated computers than you're saving on labor.
Anybody who's been to college knows that it's not a proper screwdriver without at least equal parts vodka and oj. 100 proof, if possible.
You people make me sick. Leave it to dumbass Americans to dilute perfectly good vodka with fruitjuice.
Inconceivable! Everyone knows that US IP law is set by a cadre of running-dog capitalists who control the government, and the rest of the world operates under a more enlightened regime.
I know it's true. I read it on Slashdot.
I mean, why should competitors be allowed to use a trademark in advertisements. That is copyright infringment no matter what way you look
Your argument would be a lot more compelling if you knew the difference between trademark and copyright.
Why did they choose linaire, the world's most hideous linux distribution?
They got a good deal on the licence?
Colognes, spicy food etc are nowhere near as intrusive and completely antisocial as smoking, and just trying to make an anal comparison like you did is just ludicrous. Every time this guy came in after smoking, people in the office got nauseous, the stench is unbelievable and on several occasions it made me either physically sick or headachy.
"Physically sick" generally denotes vomiting. Are you saying that smokers make you vomit by their mere presence? Did you wear a breathing mask when you used the locker room in high school? Do you pass out when someone farts?
I suspect you're either being hyperbolic or hypersensitive. In either case, get over yourself.
Keep a backup on CD in a safe deposit box.
Smoking is disgusting, and it does harm those people who dont smoke in the office. Smokers smell, even if they take steps to mitigate the stale smoke smell - and many dont.
Are there any perfumes or colognes you dislike, because we could ban them too. And while we're at it, perhaps we should prohibit people from eating spicey foods, because you might have to talk to them afterward and put up with their stinky breath! Oh my!
I don't smoke, but people like you make me want to take it up just to annoy you.
Evil. It's the laughing at wholesale destruction and killing the Jedi that gives it away...
You're just falling for propaganda from the entrenched power elites. Anyone with eyes can see that the Jedi are the evil ones. Come on, they sent two men to mediate a trade-dispute, but in ten years they did nothing to end slavery on Tatooine -- they couldn't even be bothered to free Shmi Skywalker, the mother of one of their most promising students. Clearly the Jedi are just lackeys of the corporations, bent on maintaining the status quo with no thought to the proletariat.
I remember one scene in 2001, with a static shot (as I first saw it in Cinerama) of the two astronauts speaking to each other and HAL's camera eye in the middle, that was horribly mangled in the TV release, with the view panning back and forth.
Kubrick shot 2001 in Cinemascope at the insistence of the studio, which believed the film would look best in 2.35:1; everything else he did in anamorphic widescreen, with shots composed with 4:3 screens in mind.