Newsgroup

[Jack Campin <jack@purr.demon.co.uk>]

Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net> wrote:
> jack@purr.demon.co.uk wrote:
>> The great advantage of Usenet newsgroups is that there are VERY clear
>> guidelines about posting binaries.  Binary attachments like the ones
>> that plague this list are TOTALLY out of order except in special
>> binaries newsgroups. 
> Hunh???  I have never seen a binary of any sort on the LUG.  

Eric Welch posted a stack of them before he quit.  Bob Degutis posted
binary attachments with every message for weeks on end before finally
figuring how not to.  David Almy posted a couple but caught on to the
problem and fixed it quickly.  (All of these generated by some piece of
dimwit Microsoft email software that comes with antisocial defaults set).
Stephen Kobrin (the bozo from the University of Pennsylvania) just posted
85K of binary crap which, as far as I can tell, should never have been
emailed ANYWHERE, let alone to this list, as it encoded some sort of
financial intelligence report covered by a non-disclosure agreement.  Is
that enough to jog your memory?

Dan Cardish wrote:
: news groups tend to become unruly, and there is going to be much non leica
: related junk making its way into the group.

Have a look at rec.photo.equipment.large-format.  MUCH less noise than on
this list.  Same goes for rec.food.historic, comp.lang.forth and comp.theory,
to name only a few of those I read.

: people who pay access charges can read their email offline.  I don't
: think this is possible with the newsgroups (apart from reading the headers)

It is not only possible, it's the only way I either can do it or would
consider doing it.  If you use a Mac I can suggest several alternative
software configurations that do it; equivalents exist in the Intel-MS
world too.

Paul Winkfield <paul@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> wrote:
- - If we can fire our Ms at speeds up to 1k of a second, why not the delete
- - key?

Sure you can, but it doesn't do you a whole lot of good if you've already
paid the communication costs for something like Kobrin's binary.  (If this
FCC proposal to charge US subscribers per-minute for Internet use is for
real, I'm all for it; means you have an incentive to cost UK users less
money with irrelevant noise).


But, I don't think Usenet is the best way to get the noise level down; a
simple automatic filter that bounced postings with excessive quotation, long
signatures or MIME attachments would fix all the real problems this list has.
Many mailing lists out there do that, it only takes a few lines of script,
and noise-free postings will get through just as quickly.  (The delay
introduced by Usenet is not an issue for people who read the list in digest
form; my Usenet posts and responses to them get back to me just as fast as
postings to daily digests.  But I agree that the extra speed of the non-digest
form may be fun for people who can afford it).


- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
jack@purr.demon.co.uk  -  Jack Campin, 2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE