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Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:21:04 +1000
Subject: Re: OT: usenet reader software
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
Cc: "python-list@python.org" <python-list@python.org>
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On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Monte Milanuk <memilanuk@invalid.com> wrote:
> That said, the irony that there seems to be a distinct *lack* of GUI
> usenet reader programs for Linux just kills me. Seems like its either Pan,
> or knode if you're into KDE.  Otherwise... you get to go dredge up old
> CLI programs like this one (slrn).  Works pretty well (better than I
> remember, actually) but still... having to exit the program and restart
> it to open a different server is *very* old-school :/

When I wanted to post a question to sci.math, I ended up with Xpn,
which seems decent. Got it from the Debian Wheezy repo, so it's
convenient to grab. Out of curiosity I just now went back there, found
the thread I'd started (no new posts), and skimmed everything that had
come in since then. What I'm seeing is:

1) Heaps of threads by one John Gabriel, which have in several cases
been followed up with public service announcements saying "CRANK
ALERT". He seems to be the sci.math equivalent of either Ranting Rick
or jmf... but worse than either by a significant margin. Seriously, he
makes me happy about how well-off c.l.p is.
2) Other "crank" threads, boasting of how Newton is right and Einstein
wrong, or something. I'm not sure if Archimedes Plutonium is an alias
of John Gabriel or not, but I can't be bothered reading the threads to
find out.
3) Straight-up spam about adwords, "Islam is not a Religion of
Extremism" (which comes through to c.l.p too, and even crosses the
boundary to python-list at times; I see some of that in my Gmail spam
box), etc
4) A few homework problems, again similar to what we see here
5) About two threads, and this across roughly two and a half weeks,
that are actually interesting and potentially useful.

I might be overstating the problem a bit; a sci.math regular might
read a bunch of them and find that a few more are useful than the ones
that I picked out based on their subject lines. But certainly there is
a LOT of spam there. Not as much as there is utter junk that isn't
spam (ridiculous crank-posted rubbish outnumbers spam threads by
probably 3:1 or more), but still a lot of spam.

ChrisA