Throw a Weight in the Back?

On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 13:00:30 -0400, Peter Duniho wrote:

"Steve House" wrote in message
...
Why in the world would you need to DL all the message bodies in an
entire group?

Well, at least for a couple of reasons:

2) Because the Internet is not 100% infalliable. If you have a good

Good answers, and ones that Steve should have thought about, IMO, before
getting indignant.

In my case, its because while I get super-fast cable - they outsourced
the newsserver to someone else (one of the big names). But... I'm limited
to less than a 14.4k modem would be. So its better for me to
grab everything I'm interested in.. because otherwise, it takes several
seconds to get each message.

But that's me. (And my refusal so far to buy a seperate connection).

So you see Steve, that's part of the whole point here. Different people
have different requirements, and newer isn't always better. Heck,
usenet's supposed to have been dead 10 years now, because the web
replaced it, remember?

Addison

On 26 Jul 2003 19:37:13 -0500, Steve House wrote:

you can't trim the quoted test, can you?

You seem to be more concerned about cost to the ISP than cost to the
consumer.


As I am a (very small) ISP I do care, yes.

The ISP promises unlimited access for a fixed fee - kewl, let's
do it! If you can't deliver it, don't advertise it. Consumers who USE the
bandwidth advertised are a PITA I guess, especially those that actually
expect that when they pay for something promised it's cheerfully delivered?
LOL

Cancelling a contract is gladly not only a one way possibility.

Frankly I don't CARE what the cost to the ISP is.

The industriy for sure needs more guys like you.

If they can't make a
profit charging me what they do, that's their problem, not mine.

true

All I care
about is that they provide the service they promised when I pay their bill,
24/7 - it's up to them to figure out how. MY marginal cost to DL a file,
regardless of size, is zero. I'm paying for the connection to the network,
not the data passing over it.

I do care that my ISP also survives the next month.

Let's see if I understand your message here - if it comes from or has
anything to do with or even tangentially touches MS it's evil, wrong
thinking, subversive perhaps? "Real" computer people won't touch it? Ahhh,
of course...


No, you have to deal with M$. You can earn your money supporting M$.
Haven't made a buck up til today with supporting Apple.

Life is evolving and evolution is the definition of life.

Evolution? But the bible ...

:-)

#m

--
http://www.usawatch.org/ http://www.alternet.org/

24 "Deceptions" In 704 words: Bush's 2003 SOTU
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributor...7/22_sotu.html

I may not agree with some postings, Peter, but to my recollection I've never
been ill mannered nor engaged in ad hominem attacks on any other person.
Discussing whether traditional ways of doing things should perhaps be
reconsidered, especially in the context of a thread that posed that exact
question as its seeder, and offering ideas and examples of alternatives that
may indeed run counter those of the group's old timers is not bad manners,
it's participation. It's one thing to say that a point of view is perhaps
outmoded and based on the way things were in the past rather than the way
they are today, it's quite another to say the person holding that viewpoint
is ill mannered or stupid. I have done the former, mea culpa, but I have
never done the latter. On the other hand, some who hold those traditional
views .... well, if the shoe fits...

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Steve House" wrote in message

As far as Martin's comments about Microsoft, you're right, they are filled
with obvious prejudice. Frankly, I find Usenet posters to be just as
ill-mannered in newsgroups like this one as in the Microsoft-specific
ones.
You are a perfect example.

Pete

"Martin Hotze" wrote in message
...
On 26 Jul 2003 19:37:13 -0500, Steve House wrote:

you can't trim the quoted test, can you?



Sure I can. Is this better? Now, of course, no one reading this message
sees any of what you wrote except that one line and unless they have been
faithfully reading this thread for the last several days they have no idea
of the contexts of your remark or my reply to it. I suspect that the vast
majority of people reading these words are lurkers who visit maybe once or
twice a week. Most ISPs that I'm aware of have just a few days dwell time
for the messages on their news servers. By tomorrow or the day after many
people reading this would not be able to go back and retrieve your message
that prompted this response to if they wished to see what you had written.
They certainly would not be able to get back to the even earlier messages in
the thread. (Yes, I know about Google and I know other subscription servers
have much longer retention times, that's one reason I use one myself). By
not trimming the quotes to any great extent, OTOH, other readers in the
thread would be able to see your comments in their entirety, and if
interested my comments that had prompted yours and so forth back in line,
without have to search Google and irrespective of whether their ISP is
retaining the thread or not. I've suggested that when data comms were
expensive the "no top post, trim all the quotes to the bone" approach made
perfect sense but now that data transfer is cheaper than dirt the
disadvantages outway the advantages.

I don't think that was an indignant remark - it was a real question, not a
rhetorical one - and certainly wasn't intended to be interpreted as an
insult. Why indeed would one waste the time and disk space to dl several
hundred or several thousand message bodies when only a portion of them held
any interest? Screen headers first and only bother retrieving the bodies
you actually intend to read.

I'm just amazed at the poor performance you cite for your newsgroup access.
Your header shows SuperNews is your server and IMHO something is decidedly
wrong as they have a reputation of being quite speedy. I use NewScene as
you can see below and a cable modem. Just timed my connection sped this
morning as I write this and picking up 2500 new headers in a group takes
about 5 seconds, a message in a binary group with a 5+ meg file, 121286
lines, takes 28 seconds, and an ordinary text message with only a few
hundred lines is virtually instantaneous 1 sec. You really need to get
on your ISPs case because you *should* be getting similar performance I
would think.

Yes, I agree that newer isn't always better, but sometimes it is. I'm a
trainer/consultant on PC apps and when it comes to MS Office, realistically
90% of the users I see will never need to use anything introduced to the
package since Office 97. OTOH, Access developers really do have useful new
features in more recent versions, and when it comes to my particular
specialty, project management and MS Project, it is incredibly foolish
(IMHO) to go with anything less than the current release, due both to the
complexity of the product, the squashing of bugs with each release, and to
the complexity of the overall project scheduling and managing process.

"Addison Laurent" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003 13:00:30 -0400, Peter Duniho wrote:

"Steve House" wrote in message
...
Why in the world would you need to DL all the message bodies in an
entire group?

Well, at least for a couple of reasons:

2) Because the Internet is not 100% infalliable. If you have a good

Good answers, and ones that Steve should have thought about, IMO, before
getting indignant.

In my case, its because while I get super-fast cable - they outsourced
the newsserver to someone else (one of the big names). But... I'm limited
to less than a 14.4k modem would be. So its better for me to
grab everything I'm interested in.. because otherwise, it takes several
seconds to get each message.

But that's me. (And my refusal so far to buy a seperate connection).

So you see Steve, that's part of the whole point here. Different people
have different requirements, and newer isn't always better. Heck,
usenet's supposed to have been dead 10 years now, because the web
replaced it, remember?

Addison

On 27 Jul 2003 07:51:06 -0500, Steve House wrote:

you can't trim the quoted test, can you?
^^^^

should have been "rest". sorry - a typo.

Sure I can. Is this better?


a litle bit. you cutted away the text you are _referring_ to.

Now, of course, no one reading this message
sees any of what you wrote except that one line and unless they have been
faithfully reading this thread for the last several days they have no idea
of the contexts of your remark or my reply to it. I suspect that the vast
majority of people reading these words are lurkers who visit maybe once or
twice a week.

wild guesses

Most ISPs that I'm aware of have just a few days dwell time
for the messages on their news servers.


you mean those who offer flat high speed access for very little money? you
get what you pay for.

By tomorrow or the day after many
people reading this would not be able to go back and retrieve your message
that prompted this response to if they wished to see what you had written.

bad news servers. their problem, not mine.

They certainly would not be able to get back to the even earlier messages in
the thread. (Yes, I know about Google and I know other subscription servers
have much longer retention times, that's one reason I use one myself). By

ok

not trimming the quotes to any great extent, OTOH, other readers in the
thread would be able to see your comments in their entirety, and if
interested my comments that had prompted yours and so forth back in line,
without have to search Google and irrespective of whether their ISP is
retaining the thread or not.


the references are in the header.

I've suggested that when data comms were
expensive the "no top post, trim all the quotes to the bone" approach made
perfect sense but now that data transfer is cheaper than dirt the
disadvantages outway the advantages.

you know how usenet works? how often is your posting duplicated all over
the world?
Besides these are the rules of the usenet. Go and build your usenet and
apply your rules there, it is rather easy to do. Just start your own - for
example - stevehouse.* hierarchy.

OK, what is your estimate on what bandwidth costs? what do you think is the
cost for one megabit transit? (and now we haven't even calculated expenses
for operating the network, etc.)

And bandwidth is only a fraction of the total cost. Just check your
hardware vendor for some storage systems to hold several gigs. Then go for
the hardware to spool it. Then also count the feed-traffic and also the
'get' traffic.

It would be best if everybody would just log on to a big terminal server in
Redmont, eh? This would solve many problems.

#m
--
http://www.usawatch.org/ http://www.alternet.org/

24 "Deceptions" In 704 words: Bush's 2003 SOTU
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributor...7/22_sotu.html

On Sun, 27 Jul 2003 15:44:11 +0200, Martin Hotze wrote:

On 27 Jul 2003 07:51:06 -0500, Steve House wrote:

you can't trim the quoted test, can you?
^^^^

should have been "rest". sorry - a typo.

bullsh** .. s/test/text

*arrggg* ... and supersede does not work here. *hmpf*

f-up2poster

#m

--
http://www.usawatch.org/ http://www.alternet.org/

24 "Deceptions" In 704 words: Bush's 2003 SOTU
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributor...7/22_sotu.html

Not necessarily keeping the entire thread - but certainly the previous
message in its entirely and perhaps several other steps back in the thread
if relevant. (The "snip" you see below is the block of text from my message
you had quoted in your reply.) Trimming the history is another reason for
top posting, by the way. Far easier to simply go down to the point in the
history it loses relevance and delete the quote from there to the end of the
message than it is to go line by line deciding what to keep and what to
erase. It's also a lot easier to locate the current message's contents if
they're in a group at the top.

An interesting analogy to email because I think that hits it on the head -
newsgroup postings are virtually identical to an exchange of a series of
emails that are in a public folder rather than a private mailbox, with
anyone reading it invited to contribute and comment. But the dynamic of the
exchange is the same - the only real difference is in its public nature.

Yes, I have software that maintains the thread structure. But only for
those messages that are still active in the server - when a message is
purged from the server its header is purged from my reader. I use both OE
and Agent and they're set up the same. Messages headers are grouped by
thread. No bodies are retained from session to session, only headers. Only
headers for unread messages are displayed.

For clairity, I'd suggest that top posting is first, bottom posting second,
and "interwoven" posting where the reply is interspersed in amongst the
quoted text is a distant third. That being said and contrary to some, I
don't think any of it is a "rule" that must be obeyed. Different messages
and different topics lend themselves to different styles and I find I use
all three, whichever I think will best communicate the thoughts at hand.



"David" wrote in message
...
....snip....

I would like to get this clear. Are you proposing that an entire thread
of discussion should always be contained in one message so that the
latest message always contains all the previous ones on that topic?

That _might_ be appropriate in an e-mail discussion between a few
friends but it seems to me it is totally wrong for a newsgroup. Does it
indicate that you do not have software that maintains the structure of
threads?

The thing I hate most is the one line comment added to a 1000 line
complex of messages. Bottom quoting, with just enough quoted for clarity
I find infinitely easier to handle. Since many messages contain
irrelevant dross keeping that hardly adds to clarity.

I agree with you there, especially if the one line is at the bottom. grin