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Groups > comp.misc > #22054 > unrolled thread
| Started by | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| First post | 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000 |
| Last post | 2023-02-11 19:24 +0000 |
| Articles | 20 on this page of 65 — 15 participants |
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An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-20 22:22 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2022-07-23 09:02 +1000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 00:15 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-23 09:01 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-23 14:33 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2022-07-25 19:18 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:15 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-07-23 11:39 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:14 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-02 18:36 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-02 21:27 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:44 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-03 16:26 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> - 2022-08-03 18:35 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2022-08-03 22:26 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:51 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-04 09:17 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 12:47 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 14:17 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:01 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-13 14:42 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-13 21:25 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 14:22 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-14 18:00 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 18:13 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 12:14 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:15 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-16 20:51 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2022-08-17 08:02 +0100
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-17 20:12 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:15 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk James Warren <jwwarren987@gmail.com> - 2022-09-05 19:50 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2022-08-03 15:27 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-07-23 13:23 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-02 17:31 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-03 01:10 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-02 22:34 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 13:04 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-04 00:05 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 09:36 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-05 23:40 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> - 2022-08-05 22:12 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2022-08-06 02:40 -0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-06 18:09 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 13:58 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-14 17:22 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 18:58 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-16 19:10 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:12 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2022-08-18 02:11 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-23 08:35 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-23 17:13 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-24 00:50 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "voyager55" <voyager55@none.none> - 2022-07-24 12:14 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 03:18 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-24 22:26 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 16:17 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 09:49 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Bud Spencer <bud@campo.verano.it> - 2022-07-25 17:09 +0300
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> - 2022-07-25 23:01 -0400
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-03 12:02 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2022-08-14 15:09 +0000
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Y A <y000000000000@ya.ee> - 2023-02-11 08:13 -0800
Re: An open letter to Elon Musk Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> - 2023-02-11 19:24 +0000
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-21 01:41 +0000 |
| Subject | An open letter to Elon Musk |
| Message-ID | <kSIGlW7yBTuZxaaAi@bongo-ra.co> |
Dear Mr. Musk, I have read in the news that you are (or were) interested in buying Twitter in order to promote free speech. I applaud your goals , I care a lot about free speech myself. But let me suggest that the operational model of Twitter and free speech do not fit well together. An absolute concept of free speech is that if persons A and B want to exchange views or information about whatever issue , no entity C (where "entity" means individual or corporation or government) should be able to prevent it. In other words , the decision should be entirely up to A and B and noone else. There are physical limitations which make such absolute free speech impossible and it may not even be desirable. But it is also very far from a desirable level of free speech if a single entity , like Twitter , can restrict people's ability to communicate with each other. Obviously Twitter isn't the only form of online communication but my overall point is that online discussion is too centralised at present , that this centralisation negatively affects freedom of speech and plurality of opinions therefore the right way forward is to give emphasis to more decentralised methods of online discussion. And as it turns out , there is such a method. Not only that but it is one of the oldest forms of online dicussion : usenet ! I will guess that you have already encountered usenet although perhaps not recently. It is a lot less popular than what it was some decades ago but it is still going strong. From the point of view of freedom of speech it has many advantages over Twitter : it is decentralised , meaning a large number of servers controlled by different entities instead of servers ultimately controlled by a single entity which can command that this or that should be censored. Usenet is based on open standards for which there exist already a large number of implementations both of servers and clients and also programming libraries for many programming languages. So whether one wants to use a preexisting client or server or implement their own , possibly one with a fancier interface , the possibilities are limitless. You are a visionary so let me a suggest the following vision : every city block in every city in every technologically advanced country will have at least 1 usenet server operating. Note that the servers do not need any special facilities , it could just as well be a server operating from one's own home. It doesn't have to be a recent or powerful computer either , an old computer which one has lying somewhere and remains unused , would do the job just fine. The important thing is that all of these servers would be operated by different people. So lets say someone does not want a certain usenet group or messages on their server because they consider them as too right wing or too left wing or too whatever wing or they feel it's "hate speech" , etc. Not a problem. With so many servers the messages would still get transmitted between the people who are interested in them because there would be billions of different paths (passing through servers) between clients a message could follow. Now *that's* freedom of speech. So where do you come in ? No , I'm not suggesting that you pay for all those servers out of your own pocket. What you can do is express publicly your interest and support for usenet. Coming from someone as well known as you , this already will have a large positive impact. It may be that this is all that is needed. The infrastructure already exists : there is news client and news server software for the usual desktop operating systems , there exist both free and commercial servers running and more can be created whether one is primarily motivated by profit or the desire to offer a public service. If you want to go further than that , you can announce a public competition for a new news client or a new news server with a prize for each of say 20,000 USD. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with already existing software but people get attracted to the new sexy thing and such new software , with the attendant publicity , would be the new sexy thing. I won't go into details of how such a competition could be run or what criteria should be used to rank the entries because it would make this too long and it would be a digression. The publicity would be more important than the precise rules of the competition anyway. You could create a charity which runs news servers. Again , the main advantage of such a thing would be the publicity caused by the association with your name rather than having a few extra servers. None of the above suggestions would cost more than thousands of USD. A lot cheaper than Twitter and they would do a lot more for freedom of speech. I will admit though that if your main goal in the endeavour is to make profit rather than enhance freedom of speech then a centralised medium offers more opportunity. So these are my suggestions , I hope you will get to read them and give them some thought. Finally , for your convenience here is a list of some usenet servers : news.aioe.org , news.cyber23.de , news.eternal-september.org (requires registration) , news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (read only). Best regards Spiros Bousbouras
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-20 22:22 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <ZMSdnUUiUonPJUX_nZ2dnUU7-bPNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22054 |
On 7/20/22 9:41 PM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote: > Dear Mr. Musk, > > I have read in the news that you are (or were) interested in buying > Twitter in order to promote free speech. I applaud your goals , I care a > lot about free speech myself. But let me suggest that the operational > model of Twitter and free speech do not fit well together. > > An absolute concept of free speech is that if persons A and B want to > exchange views or information about whatever issue , no entity C (where > "entity" means individual or corporation or government) should be able to > prevent it. In other words , the decision should be entirely up to A and B > and noone else. > > There are physical limitations which make such absolute free speech > impossible and it may not even be desirable. But it is also very far from > a desirable level of free speech if a single entity , like Twitter , can > restrict people's ability to communicate with each other. Obviously > Twitter isn't the only form of online communication but my overall point > is that online discussion is too centralised at present , that this > centralisation negatively affects freedom of speech and plurality of > opinions therefore the right way forward is to give emphasis to more > decentralised methods of online discussion. > > And as it turns out , there is such a method. Not only that but it is one > of the oldest forms of online dicussion : usenet ! > > I will guess that you have already encountered usenet although perhaps not > recently. It is a lot less popular than what it was some decades ago but > it is still going strong. From the point of view of freedom of speech it > has many advantages over Twitter : it is decentralised , meaning a large > number of servers controlled by different entities instead of servers > ultimately controlled by a single entity which can command that this or > that should be censored. Usenet is based on open standards for which there > exist already a large number of implementations both of servers and > clients and also programming libraries for many programming languages. So > whether one wants to use a preexisting client or server or implement their > own , possibly one with a fancier interface , the possibilities are > limitless. > > You are a visionary so let me a suggest the following vision : every city > block in every city in every technologically advanced country will have at > least 1 usenet server operating. Note that the servers do not need any > special facilities , it could just as well be a server operating from > one's own home. It doesn't have to be a recent or powerful computer either > , an old computer which one has lying somewhere and remains unused , would > do the job just fine. The important thing is that all of these servers > would be operated by different people. So lets say someone does not want a > certain usenet group or messages on their server because they consider > them as too right wing or too left wing or too whatever wing or they feel > it's "hate speech" , etc. Not a problem. With so many servers the messages > would still get transmitted between the people who are interested in them > because there would be billions of different paths (passing through > servers) between clients a message could follow. Now *that's* freedom of > speech. > > So where do you come in ? No , I'm not suggesting that you pay for all > those servers out of your own pocket. What you can do is express publicly > your interest and support for usenet. Coming from someone as well known as > you , this already will have a large positive impact. It may be that this > is all that is needed. The infrastructure already exists : there is news > client and news server software for the usual desktop operating systems , > there exist both free and commercial servers running and more can be > created whether one is primarily motivated by profit or the desire to > offer a public service. > > If you want to go further than that , you can announce a public competition > for a new news client or a new news server with a prize for each of say > 20,000 USD. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with already > existing software but people get attracted to the new sexy thing and such > new software , with the attendant publicity , would be the new sexy thing. > I won't go into details of how such a competition could be run or what > criteria should be used to rank the entries because it would make this too > long and it would be a digression. The publicity would be more important > than the precise rules of the competition anyway. > > You could create a charity which runs news servers. Again , the main > advantage of such a thing would be the publicity caused by the association > with your name rather than having a few extra servers. > > None of the above suggestions would cost more than thousands of USD. A lot > cheaper than Twitter and they would do a lot more for freedom of speech. I > will admit though that if your main goal in the endeavour is to make > profit rather than enhance freedom of speech then a centralised medium > offers more opportunity. > > So these are my suggestions , I hope you will get to read them and give > them some thought. > > Finally , for your convenience here is a list of some usenet servers : > news.aioe.org , news.cyber23.de , news.eternal-september.org (requires > registration) , news2.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (read only). > > Best regards > Spiros Bousbouras > Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, it's just an IP port number. It's also basically a text-only kind of media, very 70s/80s, and not even as interactive as those old 300-baud dial-up BBS systems. If Musk wants to BE somebody then he needs control of one or more large profit-making modern 'social media' sites.
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| From | not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 09:02 +1000 |
| Message-ID | <62db2c79@news.ausics.net> |
| In reply to | #22055 |
In comp.misc 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote: > > Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not > much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, > it's just an IP port number. Technically there was money in it in the 90s and early 2000s when ISPs ran news servers themselves because it was one of the things users were paying for an internet connection in order to access. But the users left, and the ISPs followed. Though conveniently not before computer hardware capable of running a public news server became cheap enough that free services for text-only groups became practical. > It's also basically a > text-only kind of media, very 70s/80s, and not even as > interactive as those old 300-baud dial-up BBS systems. I dunno, Twitter seems pretty text-only and used to be even more limited with its mamimum number of characters (based on the maximum length of an SMS, was it?), though I gather that restriction must have been lifted at some point given some of the long tweets that I see published in the media. I don't really understand the attraction of Twitter, perhaps in a similar way to how hardly anybody understands the attraction of Usenet today. I do know that Musk is a user of Twitter (again thanks to tweets published in the media), so the platform that he wants is possibly something I wouldn't like anyway, free speech issues aside. > If Musk wants to BE somebody then he needs control of > one or more large profit-making modern 'social media' > sites. Well launching rockets will probably always get him more attention anyway. Certainly from me. -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 00:15 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <-bCdnRhuw95q6Eb_nZ2dnUU7-fnNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22056 |
On 7/22/22 7:02 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote: > In comp.misc 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote: >> >> Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not >> much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, >> it's just an IP port number. > > Technically there was money in it in the 90s and early 2000s when > ISPs ran news servers themselves because it was one of the things > users were paying for an internet connection in order to access. > > But the users left, and the ISPs followed. Though conveniently not > before computer hardware capable of running a public news server > became cheap enough that free services for text-only groups became > practical. > >> It's also basically a >> text-only kind of media, very 70s/80s, and not even as >> interactive as those old 300-baud dial-up BBS systems. > > I dunno, Twitter seems pretty text-only and used to be even more > limited with its mamimum number of characters (based on the maximum > length of an SMS, was it?), though I gather that restriction must > have been lifted at some point given some of the long tweets that I > see published in the media. > > I don't really understand the attraction of Twitter, perhaps in a > similar way to how hardly anybody understands the attraction of > Usenet today. I do know that Musk is a user of Twitter (again > thanks to tweets published in the media), so the platform that he > wants is possibly something I wouldn't like anyway, free speech > issues aside. > >> If Musk wants to BE somebody then he needs control of >> one or more large profit-making modern 'social media' >> sites. > > Well launching rockets will probably always get him more attention > anyway. Certainly from me. I am fond of his rocket program - has proven very useful so far, likely much more so tomorrow - assuming ideological enemies don't manage to conspire to assure Boeing starts getting all the contracts ..... I notice the full Starship hasn't launched. Technical ? No. PERMITS/LICENCES/INSURANCE - there are LOTS of ways to punish the un-Woke .......... If the current administration persists it'll soon be naught but ULA/Boeing and NASA launching more than a tennis ball.
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| From | Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 09:01 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <jk1o7mF4l04U1@mid.individual.net> |
| In reply to | #22056 |
Computer Nerd Kev wrote: > launching rockets will probably always get him more attention > anyway. Certainly from me. More than digging tunnels.
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 14:33 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <TtqdnW-eCaZro0H_nZ2dnUU7-WHNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22058 |
On 7/23/22 4:01 AM, Andy Burns wrote: > Computer Nerd Kev wrote: > >> launching rockets will probably always get him more attention >> anyway. Certainly from me. > > More than digging tunnels. Mostly you don't SEE those ... doesn't mean they aren't extremely useful. Consider a shiny computer/phone app. People SEE the skin, the GUI, and give credit to whomever - but that layer runs on hundreds of uninteresting little functions and protocols - many invented decades ago by people with no names, no faces, only skill. #include <stdio.h> ... people always tack that on at the top - but look at what's IN it sometime.
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| From | Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 19:18 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <jk853rF5ggkU2@mid.individual.net> |
| In reply to | #22061 |
25B.Z959 wrote: > Andy Burns wrote: > >> Computer Nerd Kev wrote: >> >>> launching rockets will probably always get him more attention anyway. >>> Certainly from me. >> >> More than digging tunnels. > > Mostly you don't SEE those ... doesn't mean they aren't extremely useful. But are his tunnels any kind of a breakthrough, compared to when the era of tunnel boring machines began 150+ years ago?
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| From | "25B.Z959" <25B.Z959@nada.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-25 23:15 -0400 |
| Message-ID | <KO6dnfY35K79wUL_nZ2dnUU7-aPNnZ2d@earthlink.com> |
| In reply to | #22070 |
On 7/25/22 2:18 PM, Andy Burns wrote: > > 25B.Z959 wrote: > >> Andy Burns wrote: >> >>> Computer Nerd Kev wrote: >>> >>>> launching rockets will probably always get him more attention anyway. >>>> Certainly from me. >>> >>> More than digging tunnels. >> >> Mostly you don't SEE those ... doesn't mean they aren't extremely useful. > > But are his tunnels any kind of a breakthrough, > compared to when the era > of tunnel boring machines began 150+ years ago? 150 ? Yes. Contemporary machines, not so much. But what you DO with them and why - that's where he figures his niche to be. Face it, we DO need new TBM tech. Slowly grinding away with carbide chips just ain't all that good. Laser/particle-beam thermal shock - that'd be a step up. Maybe ultrahigh pressure water cutting jets ? Soften it up, deeply pre-fracture, THEN grind out the chips. Oughtta be two or three times as fast. May have to wait a couple centuries for phasor drilling. Contact : Montgomery Scott, C/O Star Fleet Command, San Francisco, N.America.
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| From | Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-07-23 11:39 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <87v8roqfiq.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk> |
| In reply to | #22056 |
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes: > In comp.misc 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote: >> >> Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not >> much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, >> it's just an IP port number. > > Technically there was money in it in the 90s and early 2000s when > ISPs ran news servers themselves because it was one of the things > users were paying for an internet connection in order to access. Users expected it, but it was pretty expensive to provide... I’m very skeptical that it paid its way at my then-employer. Might have been profitable for consumer ISPs. > But the users left, and the ISPs followed. Though conveniently not > before computer hardware capable of running a public news server > became cheap enough that free services for text-only groups became > practical. > >> It's also basically a >> text-only kind of media, very 70s/80s, and not even as >> interactive as those old 300-baud dial-up BBS systems. > > I dunno, Twitter seems pretty text-only It is full of images and videos. -- https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-02 17:14 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <jdcO2xo2JN7=kMdTk@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22056 |
On 23 Jul 2022 09:02:17 +1000
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote:
> In comp.misc 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote:
> >
> > Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not
> > much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it,
> > it's just an IP port number.
>
> Technically there was money in it in the 90s and early 2000s when
> ISPs ran news servers themselves because it was one of the things
> users were paying for an internet connection in order to access.
>
> But the users left, and the ISPs followed. Though conveniently not
> before computer hardware capable of running a public news server
> became cheap enough that free services for text-only groups became
> practical.
I thought it was the other way around at least in U.S.A. , ISPs stopped
offering it and then users left. It doesn't really shed light on the
issue but here is a somewhat related thread :
https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/6mtzb/time_warner_cable_to_block_all_usenet_access
> I dunno, Twitter seems pretty text-only and used to be even more
> limited with its mamimum number of characters (based on the maximum
> length of an SMS, was it?), though I gather that restriction must
> have been lifted at some point given some of the long tweets that I
> see published in the media.
Googling for "twitter maximum tweet length" gives several matches than
the limit is 280 characters.
> I don't really understand the attraction of Twitter, perhaps in a
> similar way to how hardly anybody understands the attraction of
> Usenet today.
I don't understand the attraction of twitter either. I love online
discussions , you could even say that I'm addicted to them and I've read such
at times when I should be doing other things. But I like discussions which
have some "meat" in them : arguments and counterarguments , citations ,
computer code , something. From the occasional tweet I see cited , you mostly
get 1-2 sentences of strong statements often on complicated issues which
could well justify whole essays. I have 0 interest in that sort of thing.
I'm not simply interested in knowing what someone believes but why they
believe it.
My impression is that the concept of twitter is to extend online social
interaction friends do face to face ; something like
- Great party yesterday.
- Yeah. Did you notice John and Jenny making out ?
etc. , this kind of thing. For this it may work great. But for having a
decent conversation on complicated issues ? No way.
> I do know that Musk is a user of Twitter (again
> thanks to tweets published in the media), so the platform that he
> wants is possibly something I wouldn't like anyway, free speech
> issues aside.
Yes , he is a user.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon_Musk :
Elon Musk published his first tweet on his personal Twitter account in
June 2010,^[1] and had more than 80 million followers at the time of the
purchase.^[2] In 2017, in response to a tweet suggesting Musk buy
Twitter, he replied, "How much is it?"^[3]
--
"A great disturbance in the internets. It was like a million hentai lovers
voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced."
"automatedresponse"
www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/6mtzb/time_warner_cable_to_block_all_usenet_access
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| From | Rich <rich@example.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-02 18:36 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tcbqr5$1l6pi$2@dont-email.me> |
| In reply to | #22074 |
In comp.misc Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote: > On 23 Jul 2022 09:02:17 +1000 > not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) wrote: >> In comp.misc 25B.Z959 <25B.Z959@nada.net> wrote: >> > >> > Usenet doesn't belong to anybody ... ergo there's not >> > much money in it. You can't buy it, you can't sell it, >> > it's just an IP port number. >> >> Technically there was money in it in the 90s and early 2000s when >> ISPs ran news servers themselves because it was one of the things >> users were paying for an internet connection in order to access. >> >> But the users left, and the ISPs followed. Though conveniently not >> before computer hardware capable of running a public news server >> became cheap enough that free services for text-only groups became >> practical. > > I thought it was the other way around at least in U.S.A. , ISPs stopped > offering it and then users left. It doesn't really shed light on the > issue but here is a somewhat related thread : > https://www.reddit.com/r/promos/comments/6mtzb/time_warner_cable_to_block_all_usenet_access If you go digging, you can probably find as many explanations as you wish, all of which in isolation will sound plausable. There is one floating around related to a New York AG who was going hard at child porn circa 1997-1999 and targeted Usenet in his 'sweep' that is offered up as a reason why ISP's started dropping Usenet. Reality is more likely a combination of: 1) upward growth of the web, which directly supported advertising revenue 2) massive growth in Usenet data transfer and storage sizes if the ISP provided the alt.binaries.* groups (but the alt.binaries.* groups also meant those same ISP's /might/ be targeted by copyright/CP groups, so the legal departments likely had nervous reservations). 3) no direct way to monitize via advertising (the ISP's could, at most, have made it subscription -- but then going from "free" to $x/month for what was previously free would have ticked off a lot of users who would have likely said "no" on principle). 4) a huge upward trend in the AOLification of the user base (i.e., the technical acumen of all those new users) which likely resulted in upward trends in support calls for "how to I access this usenet thing" [assuming those same AOL level users even /knew/ of usenet]). This would have generated a "false impression of dwindling usage" because even if usage was flat, a horde of new users who don't use Usenet added into the totals would give the appearance of a large downward usage trend. 5) a huge upward spike in Usenet spam-advertising -- this likely contributed to the "reduction in usage" factor as for a while in the late 90's many popular groups were very much overrun by spammers. #4 and #5 would provide the "dwindling usage" factor that gets quoted. Spammers driving users away plus a massive growth of new users who don't even know Usenet exists and therefore don't look at Usenet results in the "usage stats" showing a nosedive. Add in nervous legal departments due to CP/copyright worries and direct expense for ever more disk storage from server ops. and you have the makings of a "this cost is exceeding any revenue we might get, lets cut it loose" business planning mentality.
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| From | Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-02 21:27 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <878ro6tmqc.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk> |
| In reply to | #22076 |
Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes: > If you go digging, you can probably find as many explanations as you > wish, all of which in isolation will sound plausable. There is one > floating around related to a New York AG who was going hard at child > porn circa 1997-1999 and targeted Usenet in his 'sweep' that is offered > up as a reason why ISP's started dropping Usenet. There were various legal issues in the UK but Usenet provision largely continued despite them. Virgin Media appear to have only stopped in 2021 (TBH I’m surprised they carried on that long.) > Reality is more likely a combination of: [...] 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s competitors offered an easy way out. IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply. -- https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-03 12:44 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <SA02uRPv1pMDD06kX@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22077 |
On Tue, 02 Aug 2022 21:27:23 +0100 Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: > Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes: > > If you go digging, you can probably find as many explanations as you > > wish, all of which in isolation will sound plausable. There is one > > floating around related to a New York AG who was going hard at child > > porn circa 1997-1999 and targeted Usenet in his 'sweep' that is offered > > up as a reason why ISP's started dropping Usenet. > > There were various legal issues in the UK but Usenet provision largely > continued despite them. Virgin Media appear to have only stopped in 2021 > (TBH I’m surprised they carried on that long.) Yes , virginmedia were providing usenet until 2021-06-30 . The retention on some groups was more than 10 years. Very nice. There is a U.S. based ISP who still provide usenet access : https://secure.dslextreme.com/support/kb/email-and-newsgroups/newsgroups/news-settings-for-clients I have a vague recollection that I've come across a Canadian ISP doing similar but I couldn't find an entry in my bookmarks and perhaps I'm misremembering. I guess this is as good a place as any to ask if anyone knows of any ISP in any country who automatically provide usenet access to their subscribers. > > Reality is more likely a combination of: > [...] > > 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you > wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s > competitors offered an easy way out. Or you could and can use filtering. It is a minor mystery to me why people don't do that. I have indirect evidence that some people chose to leave a group which had posters they strongly disliked rather than filter those posters and I could see from the headers of the people who left that they were using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My guess is that for some people there is a psychological factor involved and they find off-putting or distracting the idea that they are reading or posting on the same online discussion medium as some "bad" people. So even if they can apply filtering and not see any of the posts of the bad people , that's not good enough for them. > IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply. I don't think it's dying but advertising it more is desirable. -- I am writing this mail to you with serious tears in my eyes and great sorrow in my heart An email offering me 30% of $7,200,200
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| From | Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-03 16:26 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <8735edtkk1.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk> |
| In reply to | #22082 |
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes: > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: >> 6) There was no good way to prevent bad behavior on Usenet. If you >> wanted to escape bad actors (or just posters who can’t let go), Usenet’s >> competitors offered an easy way out. > > Or you could and can use filtering. It is a minor mystery to me why > people don't do that. I have indirect evidence that some people chose > to leave a group which had posters they strongly disliked rather than > filter those posters and I could see from the headers of the people > who left that they were using a newsreader i.e. not googlegroups. My > guess is that for some people there is a psychological factor involved > and they find off-putting or distracting the idea that they are > reading or posting on the same online discussion medium as some "bad" > people. So even if they can apply filtering and not see any of the > posts of the bad people , that's not good enough for them. Filtering as implemented on Usenet is inadequate for reasons that seems pretty clear to me. First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can filter out everyone who likes arguing with idiots but then you miss everything else they say outside those arguments. Secondly, everybody has to do their own filtering. It’s considerable excess effort compared to centralized blocking and means that everyone gets a different view of what would otherwise be a unified forum. In contrast Usenet’s successors have, for the most part, distributed decisions over blocking of bad actors to localized authorities. Empirically it seems that most people prefer this model. Elsewhere you wrote: | Say you have an online discussion community with 1,000,000 people and | 999,999 of them think that person A is a sage and person B is an idiot | but there is one person C who thinks that B says more worthwhile stuff | than A ; C should still have the ability to read B's messages. If the | 999,999 people can use their preferences to prevent C from reading B's | posts (or make it very hard) , it goes against freedom of speech | regardless of what algorithms these 999,999 people use to achieve | that. The reality is different. What actually happens is different in two ways: 1) The controllers of the discussion community ban person B, usually with very little reference to the 999,999 other readers. Those readers stay or go elsewhere depending on their views of the moderation policy, the quality of the discussion, etc. 2) If B and C still want to communicate then they can can make a new online discussion community to do so. No communication that anyone actually wants to receive is blocked. The only thing that B is denied is access to an audience that don’t want to hear from them anyway. To me, “freedom of speech” means freedom to speak to those who wish to hear you. It does not give anyone a claim over other people’s attention. >> IMO Usenet is dying due to lack of demand, not lack of supply. > > I don't think it's dying but advertising it more is desirable. It’s dying in the sense that the numbers of users and posts have sharply and consistently declined from their peak (IIRC somewhere around the turn of the century). -- https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
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| From | Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-03 18:35 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <tcef5k$1eav$1@gioia.aioe.org> |
| In reply to | #22084 |
2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb: [Schnipp] > First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be > spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header? [Schnipp] -- Jan v/d Broek balglaas@dds.nl
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| From | Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-03 22:26 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <SaC*iORUy@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk> |
| In reply to | #22086 |
Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> wrote: > 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb: > > [Schnipp] > > > First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be > > spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can > > Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header? You can block the thread, but that's a manual process you have to do for every objectionable thread. You can auto-block threads started by identified idiots, but it doesn't help when the idiot follows up to an existing thread. You can auto-block subthreads from the idiot posting onwards, but you might lose a lot of thread (eg the idiot just posts '+1' and then a hundred more posts follow from others with interesting content). Also, on Usenet in general there is no strong binding from posters to humans. You can make a million sockpuppets and they can all post. The email addresses don't even have to be valid. If somebody blocks one of your socks you have 999,999 more socks you can post from. If you do this enough you overwhelm the ability of readers to add you to the block list. Some servers (eg Google Groups) enforce a valid email<->account policy, but people still use them to post spam, and it's trivial to find a server that doesn't need this. Essentially the filtering tools on Usenet are designed for not seeing posts from people posting genuinely. They are not designed for people posting adversarially, who aim to work around the filtering. Theo
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-13 14:51 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <APIOmz60p+Cfi9Uij@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22087 |
On 03 Aug 2022 22:26:56 +0100 (BST) Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote: [...] > Also, on Usenet in general there is no strong binding from posters to > humans. You can make a million sockpuppets and they can all post. The > email addresses don't even have to be valid. If somebody blocks one of your > socks you have 999,999 more socks you can post from. If you do this enough > you overwhelm the ability of readers to add you to the block list. Some > servers (eg Google Groups) enforce a valid email<->account policy, but people > still use them to post spam, and it's trivial to find a server that doesn't > need this. > > Essentially the filtering tools on Usenet are designed for not seeing posts > from people posting genuinely. They are not designed for people posting > adversarially, who aim to work around the filtering. What you are describing is a manual DOS attack. Perhaps such are harder to defend against on usenet rather than say on a message board but if one wants to do a DOS attack , there are automatic tools. DOS attacks , manual or otherwise , are a problem but I consider this a different problem than freedom of speech where one makes arguments they believe in or at least arguments they believe deserve an answer and it so happens that many people find such arguments objectionable.
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| From | Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-04 09:17 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <87wnbos9rd.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk> |
| In reply to | #22086 |
Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes: > 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb: >> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be >> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can > > Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header? Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives. The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying attention. -- https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
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| From | Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-14 12:47 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <K3nSl8qrom6hhZTrn@bongo-ra.co> |
| In reply to | #22089 |
On Thu, 04 Aug 2022 09:17:26 +0100
Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes:
> > 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb:
> >> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may be
> >> spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You can
> >
> > Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header?
>
> Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if
> the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives.
>
> The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people
> don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying
> attention.
Let me mention 2 specific cases. There is a guy named Pascal Bourguignon who
used to be a regular on comp.lang.lisp .Very knowledgeable and very willing
to share the knowledge. On 2018-06-11 he posted <m27en5weof.fsf@despina.home>
where he asks if it is worth it to renew his usenet subscription and one
reason he was wondering was the trolls on the group. Back then (and now) the
trolls (including brain damaged people) posting on comp.lang.lisp were
trivial to filter , they made no (or trivial) attempts to avoid filtering ,
usually didn't get any replies at all and by filtering the few replies (if
any) , one would be guaranteed not to miss anything important. Also Pascal
used emacs so he could certainly do filtering. I replied with
<1XT61I7xwyekwcQsGB2NfJzX8zHMw@bongo-ra.co> where I emphasised that it's
easy to filter the trolls. Pascal did renew his subscription but sometime
after that he disappeared from comp.lang.lisp and any other group I
frequent. So what I find a mystery here is why make a post to complain ,
among other things , about the trolls ? Why not just go and filter them and
take them off your mind ? And he never replied to my points about filtering.
He could have said for example that he doesn't consider it effective for
whatever reason. If there were purely technical reasons , I think he is the
kind of person who would explain them. Hence I think that there is also a
"psychological factor involved".
The other example is from a thread "rip erik naggum" also on comp.lang.lisp
started on 2009-06-20. I only have a googlegroups link for this one :
groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.lang.lisp/cDiRNDre9w4 .In the thread we read
Scott Burson :
His arrogance and hostility drove me away from c.l.l for years. I can
only wonder how many others he alienated.
Spiros Bousbouras (replying to the above) :
Why go away from c.l.l instead of simply not reading his posts?
vippstar (also responding to Burson) :
Why are you glad? Did he do anything that you couldn't avoid by
killfiling him? It was your choice (and seems, your fault) that you
didn't ignore him when you had to.
Burson made several more replies in the thread but again he never addressed
this point. Admittedly Naggum was a harder case to filter because he was a
very divisive poster ; a significant percentage on comp.lang.lisp thought
he was posting very worthwhile stuff whereas another significant percentage
thought he was a major jerk and possibly that his contributions weren't that
worthwhile on the average. So a lot of people responded to Naggum and there
were long metadiscussions on how good or bad Naggum was (like , in fact , the
thread I linked to) , etc. But again I find it strange that Burson gets asked
by 2 people essentially "Why didn't you filter Naggum since he bothered you so
much ?" and he never gave even a short response like saying for example that
with the amount of responses Naggum was getting , filtering him would not
have been practical. So again my instinct suggests some kind of psychological
reason like perhaps that Burson was finding Naggum so unpleasant that he
reached a point that he just couldn't bear to be on the same group as Naggum
even if he didn't get to read his posts.
By the way , with someone as divisive as Naggum , I'm not sure that a moderated
group would have been an improvement because , no matter what decision a moderator
would have made with regard to Naggum posts and replies to him , it would have
annoyed a lot of people. So again I consider the least evil that everyone gets
to make up their own mind ; if it is to leave the group altogether , so be it
(although a pity).
--
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted
whenever I am contradicted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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| From | Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2022-08-14 14:17 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <87zgg7q80c.fsf@LkoBDZeT.terraraq.uk> |
| In reply to | #22110 |
Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> writes: > Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote: >> Jan van den Broek <balglaas@dds.nl> writes: >>> 2022-08-03, Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> schrieb: >>>> First if you block one person you still see the responses. You may >>>> be spared one particular idiot, but you still see the argument. You >>>> can >>> >>> Ever thought of filtering on the "References"-header? >> >> Yes, and I do. But it’s additional effort for every discussion, and if >> the subthread gets back on track then it produces false positives. >> >> The starting point of this subthread was “it’s a mystery why people >> don’t use filtering”. It is really not a mystery if you’re paying >> attention. > > Let me mention 2 specific cases. It seems pretty clear that most people (including Pascal and Scott) find Usenet’s local filtering inadequate. The only remaining issue is that you don’t believe anyone when they tell you this. -- https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
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