ba.internet unbound

[Glenn Geller]

Over the past dozen years, the volume of messages on
ba.internet has slowed to a trickle. The group is a wisp
of its former self. (A little like http://www.well.com )

Those of us who still read or post are like a handful of
stragglers after Burning Man, camped out at the venue a
week after everyone else has left. The consensus that
governed the attendees' behavior is largely irrelevant due
to the greatly reduced population.

So I propose some radical self-government: Let's drop
the on-topic expectation and post about anything. The
people here are pretty smart, so only rarely would a topic
go nowhere.

What do you think?

[Mike Hunt]

Post by Glenn Geller
Over the past dozen years, the volume of messages on
ba.internet has slowed to a trickle. The group is a wisp
of its former self. (A little like http://www.well.com )
Those of us who still read or post are like a handful of
stragglers after Burning Man, camped out at the venue a
week after everyone else has left. The consensus that
governed the attendees' behavior is largely irrelevant due
to the greatly reduced population.
So I propose some radical self-government: Let's drop
the on-topic expectation and post about anything. The
people here are pretty smart, so only rarely would a topic
go nowhere.
What do you think?

I didn't realize people were sensoring themselves, but you're right, the
volume is probably manageable by people if there was some type of uptick
in posts.

[David Kaye]

I didn't realize people were sensoring themselves [....]

Yep. I have this nifty blood pressure monitor I can attach to my finger.

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

I didn't realize people were sensoring themselves [....]

Yep. I have this nifty blood pressure monitor I can attach to my finger.

Is it very accurate? I had one of the thumb ones for years but it wasn't very accurate at all for the price. Then I got a 30% off coupon from CVS so got the top of the line and top rated Omron BP monitor was about the same price as on Amazon and it's very accurate.

Wearables are getting quite fancy including monitoring your REM cycles during sleep.

In other news, I got a new PC this last week. It's a mid level game PC but I'll be using it for 3D graphics authoring as well as some Android and Unity3D development. It should keep me satisfied for a couple years at least. Kinda like Windows 10 over the previous versions. I had to do a registry hack to get Samba to see it though.

I'd like to upgrade this Linux box but that has become more complicated than it was when I built it.

[David Kaye]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
Is it very accurate? I had one of the thumb ones for years but it wasn't
very
accurate at all for the price.

I've only checked it twice against cuff meters and both times it read within
2 points diastolic.

[Julian Macassey]

Post by Glenn Geller
Over the past dozen years, the volume of messages on
ba.internet has slowed to a trickle. The group is a wisp
of its former self. (A little like http://www.well.com )
So I propose some radical self-government: Let's drop
the on-topic expectation and post about anything. The
people here are pretty smart, so only rarely would a topic
go nowhere.

Let's start with a related topic, just how evil is
google?
Do they really have our best interests at heart?

When will they start paying their taxes?

Why do they spend so much on lobbyists?

[poldy]

Post by Julian Macassey

Post by Glenn Geller
Over the past dozen years, the volume of messages on
ba.internet has slowed to a trickle. The group is a wisp
of its former self. (A little like http://www.well.com )
So I propose some radical self-government: Let's drop
the on-topic expectation and post about anything. The
people here are pretty smart, so only rarely would a topic
go nowhere.

Let's start with a related topic, just how evil is
google?
Do they really have our best interests at heart?
When will they start paying their taxes?
Why do they spend so much on lobbyists?

Did they ever claim to have "our best interests" at heart?

[Julian Macassey]

Post by poldy

Post by Julian Macassey
Let's start with a related topic, just how evil is
google?
Do they really have our best interests at heart?
When will they start paying their taxes?
Why do they spend so much on lobbyists?

Did they ever claim to have "our best interests" at heart?

Remember when they went public they trumpeted "Don't be
Evil"?

They have changed that slogan to: "Don't be evil, that's
our job".

[poldy]

Post by Julian Macassey

Post by poldy

Post by Julian Macassey
Let's start with a related topic, just how evil is
google?
Do they really have our best interests at heart?
When will they start paying their taxes?
Why do they spend so much on lobbyists?

Did they ever claim to have "our best interests" at heart?

Remember when they went public they trumpeted "Don't be
Evil"?
They have changed that slogan to: "Don't be evil, that's
our job".

That was their slogan for employees.

They didn't necessarily promise the public.

Anyways, once they become public, they have to keep the stock price up,
since those employees who were admonished not to be evil have stock
compensation.

So there's pressure to squeeze out every cent of profit they can all the
time.

[David Kaye]

Post by poldy
Anyways, once they become public, they have to keep the stock price up,
since those employees who were admonished not to be evil have stock
compensation.

Less pressure than with most companies. Sergey and Larry own a unique stock
that gives them huge voting rights without needing to have large amounts of
personal stock. This caused many institutional investors to shy away from
buying Google stock.

Other companies such as Microsoft did it the old-fashioned way: Bill, Paul,
and Steve Ballmer simply kept or acquired so much stock that they didn't
have to answer to anyone else. By the way, Bill Gates is no longer chairman
of Microsoft nor its largest stockholder.

[Julian Macassey]

Post by poldy

Post by Julian Macassey
Remember when they went public they trumpeted "Don't be
Evil"?
They have changed that slogan to: "Don't be evil, that's
our job".

That was their slogan for employees.
They didn't necessarily promise the public.

So, they should change their slogan to "We are evil",
or just "Fuck You"

Post by poldy
Anyways, once they become public, they have to keep the stock price up,
since those employees who were admonished not to be evil have stock
compensation.

Every man has his price.

Post by poldy
So there's pressure to squeeze out every cent of profit they can all the
time.

Which lowers the quality of the product at the same time.

[b***@MIX.COM]

Post by Glenn Geller
So I propose some radical self-government: Let's drop
the on-topic expectation and post about anything.

Paging Sam Habash...

This would be different from recent (and some not so recent)
years how exactly?

From ***@presto.ig.com Fri Aug 2 01:05:44 1991
Path: rpi!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!swbatl!texbell!moxie!texsun
!newstop!sun!amdcad!apple!ig!news
From: ***@presto.ig.com (Usenet News Admin)
Newsgroups: ba.internet.ctl
Subject: newgroup ba.internet
Date: 20 Nov 90 22:25:50 GMT
Control: newgroup ba.internet
Distribution: ba
Organization: IntelliGenetics, Inc., Mountain View, California, USA
Lines: 26
Approved: ***@presto.ig.com

Per discussions in ba.news.group and on various mailing lists.

Name: ba.internet

Type: unmoderated

Purpose: Discussion of Internet issues affecting Bay Area
sites (both Internet-connected sites and "wannabe"s), including
discussions of existing and proposed Internet service providers
(BARRNet, AlterNet, PSI, CSNET/CREN, etc.) and such issues as
pricing, support and maintenance, membership criteria, levels
of service, usage/content restrictions, news/mail service
issues, routing and protocol issues, etc.

This is meant to supplement, not duplicate, such things as the
Commercialization-Privatization (com-priv) list at psi.com, the
BARRNet member mailing lists, the NNTP-managers list, or the
various TCP/IP lists/newsgroups.

I will act as informal looker-over-shoulder of the group if desired, and
plan to draft and post a FAQ in the next week or two.

--
Michael C. Berch
IntelliGenetics, Inc.
***@presto.ig.com / ***@postmodern.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!ig!mcb

Billy Y..

[Tak Nakamoto]

"Glenn Geller" wrote:

Over the past dozen years, the volume of messages on
ba.internet has slowed to a trickle. The group is a wisp
of its former self. (A little like http://www.well.com )

-----------------

Internet newsgroups aren't only forums where traffic has very sharply
decreased. I participate in a few Yahoo group lists. With a couple of very
notable exceptions, all of them have just about died. There are few groups
that maintain sustained in depth discussions.

The question is where has discussion shifted. Facebook? The comments section
of web news publications? Private websites like Chowhound? There are many
venues for individuals to comment and many do. The most effective of the
groups have moderators to keep the trolls out. There's difficulty finding a
"community" where discussions can be shared about a specific type of topic
that is user initiated.

Tak Nakamoto

[David Kaye]

Post by Tak Nakamoto
The question is where has discussion shifted. Facebook? The comments
section of web news publications? Private websites like Chowhound? There
are many venues for individuals to comment and many do. The most effective
of the groups have moderators to keep the trolls out. There's difficulty
finding a "community" where discussions can be shared about a specific
type of topic that is user initiated.

Or maybe we've had most of our questions answered and we've already said
what we're going to say. I don't think I have any questions about
broadcasting anymore, and people already know my views on things. I've
dropped off a bunch of newsgroups because there just isn't much I'm
interested in talking about.

However, F*cebook has made lots of inroads with their group discussions
because it's easy to post photos and videos there. So, I'm involved in
discussions of old SF, old Oakland, public transit, broadcasting history,
etc., but even there I don't participate all that much, since I don't see
that much that needs to be said.

[n***@sbcglobal.net]

Post by David Kaye

Post by Tak Nakamoto
The question is where has discussion shifted. Facebook? The comments
section of web news publications? Private websites like Chowhound? There
are many venues for individuals to comment and many do. The most effective
of the groups have moderators to keep the trolls out. There's difficulty
finding a "community" where discussions can be shared about a specific
type of topic that is user initiated.

Or maybe we've had most of our questions answered and we've already said
what we're going to say. I don't think I have any questions about
broadcasting anymore, and people already know my views on things. I've
dropped off a bunch of newsgroups because there just isn't much I'm
interested in talking about.
However, F*cebook has made lots of inroads with their group discussions
because it's easy to post photos and videos there. So, I'm involved in
discussions of old SF, old Oakland, public transit, broadcasting history,
etc., but even there I don't participate all that much, since I don't see
that much that needs to be said.

And I am one of many who won't "do" Facebook. I have relatives and friends who wonder why I'm not there but I've owned my real name as a domain for years and have a blog there. So I'm easy to find and come up on the first page of a search. I guess that too "geek" for my relatives. LOL!

[David Kaye]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
And I am one of many who won't "do" Facebook.

I'm on F*cebook (it's a swear word, thus the asterisk), because most of my
friends are. It's easy to keep up with what they're doing that way. I have
always been nervous about one company controlling so much, but when others
are on there what am I going to do?

For me it's not really a substitute for seeing these people in person
because the ones I'm close to I see in person often, and the ones I'm not
close to I'm not going to be seeing them anyway. So, F*cebook isn't
replacing anything for me.

But, for instance, I'm a big fan of googie architecture, signs, etc. If
someone were to start a Usenet newsgroup about it it would be rejected by
most news servers because there'd be a lot of binaries (photos of signs and
buildings).

[Julian Macassey]

Post by n***@sbcglobal.net
And I am one of many who won't "do" Facebook. I have relatives
and friends who wonder why I'm not there

I will be on facebook when Mr. Zuckerberg gives me hios
personal phone number and details in exchange for mine.

It seems he values hios privacy, but not mine.

[b***@MIX.COM]

Post by Julian Macassey
I will be on facebook when Mr. Zuckerberg gives me hios
personal phone number and details in exchange for mine.
It seems he values hios privacy, but not mine.

As it turns out, you can "be on" it regardess. Example -

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Billy-Youdelman/216071395224421

Suggestions regarding what to do about this (just discovered
today when I was showing a friend how Google works) will be
cheerfully entertained. Including if it's even worth doing
anything. Heh.

Post by Julian Macassey
The Internet is full of people who can't read and want to talk
about sandwiches - Noam Chomsky, Oct 2013

Hopefully I've at least reduced that number by one.....

Billy Y..

[Yeechang Lee]

Post by Tak Nakamoto
The question is where has discussion shifted.

Reddit comes to mind. It is the first and only online forum system
I've found in more than two decades on the net with the best aspects
of Usenet:

* Fast
* Highly text-oriented (although images and URLs are easy to embed)
* Highly threaded
* Almost entirely keyboard-driven (with Reddit Enhancement Suite)
* Thousands of discrete forums (subreddits), all accessible with one
Reddit ID to sign in with

While improving on other aspects:
* Robust moderation tools
* Upvoting/downvoting does a good job of eliminating trolls, jerks,
and off-topic discussions that moderation misses
* Anyone can create a new subreddit without the cumbersome and slow
RFD/CFV process
* Although posts and comments show up in real time, there is also a
built-in "live" system for real-time dissemination of information on
breaking/important news events

And is free of the sins of other forum systems:
* No signatures of any kind
* No animated GIFs (again, unless one wants to view them)
* As mentioned, a mouse is almost not needed

Some longstanding Usenet problems are still present, notably the
tendency for hiveminds taking over and directing consensus, but that's
something that will always exist as long as human nature and free will
do (ironically enough), and at least there is always the possibility
of escaping to another subreddit if necessary.

[Tak Nakamoto]

"Yeechang Lee" wrote


Reddit comes to mind. It is the first and only online forum system
I've found in more than two decades on the net with the best aspects
of Usenet:

-------------------

I'll have to look at Reddit again. I wasn't particularly impressed by the
limited number of forums I've looked at.

Tak Nakamoto

[Julian Macassey]

Post by Yeechang Lee
Reddit comes to mind. It is the first and only online forum system
I've found in more than two decades on the net with the best aspects
-------------------
I'll have to look at Reddit again. I wasn't particularly impressed by the
limited number of forums I've looked at.

I have found reddit to be a mess at the best of times and
the "Ask Me Anything" forums are in truth "Ask Me Approved
Questions".