On 8/2/22 9:10 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>> kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>>> 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. 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.
>>>
>>> When Usenet was popular, it belonged to the people that ran the machines.
>>> Some of those people, like the ones that ran PSUVM, were less active about
>>> controlling users than others. But believe me, if you posted something
>>> that was problematic, it was entirely possible to get kicked off a server.
>>> Carasso managed it at least a dozen times.
>>
>> PSUVM ? Carasso ? I'm guessing you don't mean "Emmanuel Carasso or Emanuel
>> Karasu was an Ottoman lawyer and a member of the prominent Sephardic Jewish
>> Carasso family of Ottoman Salonica."
>
> Roger David Carasso may not have invented trolling on the internet, but
> he certainly perfected it. And there is some chance that he may have
> invented many of the more popular trolling techniques seen today.
>
> PSUVM was an IBM machine at Penn State which was full of undergraduates with
> Usenet access, I believe through some sort of BITNET gateway. It was famous
> for the huge flood of ignorant posts that appeared every September.
>
>>> Now, the point is that the system was distributed so that if you found
>>> yourself kicked off one server you could likely get an account elsewhere,
>>> until you go to the point where UDP was threatened for the servers that
>>> would accept you. So there was some de facto freedom here but it had
>>> limits.
>>
>> And that's why we need as many servers as possible. Otherwise , yes freedom
>> has de facto limits. After all , people have been jailed or killed for saying
>> some things in public , usenet cannot magically remove such physical
>> possibilities , it can at most make them harder.
>
> Having as many servers as possible means that people who really should be
> removed from the net do not get removed. That's kind of the problem today.
> The management system that worked for Usenet does not scale up.

"Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !

NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
so you're no longer bothered.

25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>
> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>
> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
> so you're no longer bothered.

And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 8/5/22 7:40 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> 25B.Z969 <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>>
>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>
>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>> so you're no longer bothered.
>
> And that, in short, is what killed Usenet.

Gimmicks, eye-candy and GOOD ADVERTISING killed Usenet.

Everybody wanted to post pictures and video of their lunch
or cats. Usenet isn't good for that (and be very very
happy it isn't).

On 8/3/22 9:04 AM, Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 22:34:38 -0400
> "25B.Z969" <25B.Z969@noda.net> wrote:
>> On 8/2/22 9:10 PM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>> Spiros Bousbouras <spibou@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> And that's why we need as many servers as possible. Otherwise , yes freedom
>>>> has de facto limits. After all , people have been jailed or killed for saying
>>>> some things in public , usenet cannot magically remove such physical
>>>> possibilities , it can at most make them harder.
>>>
>>> Having as many servers as possible means that people who really should be
>>> removed from the net do not get removed. That's kind of the problem today.
>>> The management system that worked for Usenet does not scale up.
>>
>>
>> "Should be removed" ?????? Gee, how TOTALITARIAN of you !
>>
>> NOBODY "should be removed from Usenet" - not even the
>> worst pin-headed trolls. If you don't like them, there
>> doesn't exist a newsreader where you can't plonk them
>> so you're no longer bothered.
>
> Yes , that's my feeling too. Having said that , with a huge amount of servers
> available , I expect some would do filtering. Say for example person A thinks
> that person B is a jerk. Then person A can run a news server which filters
> all posts by B. Those people who agree that B is indeed a jerk could connect
> to this server and not see any posts by B without bothering to do any
> filtering themselves. Those who still want to see posts by B could connect to
> a different server. But I'm totally against the idea that B should be
> prevented on a worldwide level from making available his/her views online. In
> extreme circumstances (like , B is sharing a realistic way to construct an
> atomic bomb using ordinary kitchen materials !) then maybe but in such cases
> the authorities would likely need to be involved anyway and handle the matter
> in the physical world and that's a whole different discussion.

Everybody has favorite perspectives - and, even unconsciously,
kinda tramps-down the "heretics". This is why we need some
sources where such activity is just not tolerated, or possible.
IMHO, the ability to make yourself heard is still too low -
it NEEDS to be where even aggressive govts can't stop it.
Bounce lasers off the moon if need-be.

Sorry, but you're not gonna build a nuke based on Formula-409.
That takes industrial-scale facilities. Now super-GERMS ...
those ARE more worrisome. That can be done at a small scale,
undetectable ; just requires some knowledge. Numerous fanatic
and terrorist orgs already have access to the knowledge
and cheapo tech. Don't let your stock of masks and sanitizer
get too low ......