One of the guys here talked about losing internet newsgroups and some of
us said how he can still get them.

The "other" end of newsgroups is that -- particularly where there is any
chance of politics to be involved -- they are being taken over by kooks
and extremists who practice one form or the other of shouting,
huffing-and-puffing, yelling-and-screaming, beating-the-chest, posting one
liner insults (or even one or two word insults), name-calling, cussing,
trivia, superficialities, and other meaningless-purposeless
Neanderthalisms.

The commercialization of the internet (blogs and website chat rooms)
allows the owner of the blog to censor out the "noise" but then it might
not be all noise, just something the owner doesn't like.

One of the technical problems of blogs and websies is the chance that they
can download malicious code onto your computer (keystroke loggers, rootkits,
viruses, spyware, trojans, etc), and collect personal data on you, too.
Software firewalls and AV are helpful, but a lot of them, too, collect
data on you (so they are spyware, too).

With ID theft said to be the fastest growing crime, I'm wondering if the
degredation in the quality of internet security is, some few years in the
future, going to lead to another form of economic melt-down as people
start geting seriously hit in the wallet by the hackers.

Stray Dog wrote:

One of the guys here talked about losing internet newsgroups and some of
us said how he can still get them.

The "other" end of newsgroups is that -- particularly where there is any
chance of politics to be involved -- they are being taken over by kooks
and extremists who practice one form or the other of shouting,
huffing-and-puffing, yelling-and-screaming, beating-the-chest, posting
one liner insults (or even one or two word insults), name-calling,
cussing, trivia, superficialities, and other meaningless-purposeless
Neanderthalisms.

??? How is this any different from what the newsgroups used to be 5, 10
or 15 years ago?

The commercialization of the internet (blogs and website chat rooms)
allows the owner of the blog to censor out the "noise" but then it might
not be all noise, just something the owner doesn't like.

And? Who gives a ****? As if blogs and such are in any respect relevant
to anyone and anything.

And if you think that the newsgroups are full of illiterate idiots who
are hardly able to scramble together three or four coherent words, you
should read the comments sections below any Youtube video.

One of the technical problems of blogs and websies is the chance that
they can download malicious code onto your computer (keystroke loggers,
rootkits, viruses, spyware, trojans, etc), and collect personal data on
you, too. Software firewalls and AV are helpful, but a lot of them,
too, collect
data on you (so they are spyware, too).

The risk is minuscule. You run a bigger risk contracting a swine flu
virus from a phone conversation.

With ID theft said to be the fastest growing crime, I'm wondering if the
degredation in the quality of internet security is, some few years in
the future, going to lead to another form of economic melt-down as
people start geting seriously hit in the wallet by the hackers.

We've been hearing the same tired story ever since the Internet got
invented. The only thing that is the fastest growing in this whole story
is the news media bleating about this "huge threat" in between the
Cheerios and Viagra commercials, then it's off to another "huge threat"
for two minutes, then Cialis and Geico.

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009, Stray Dog wrote:



One of the guys here talked about losing internet newsgroups and some of us
said how he can still get them.

The end of usenet is when idiots decide a newsgroup is a hangout and
they post all kinds of off-topic junk rather than go where the discussion
belongs.

Yes, it's bad enough that someone posted here about their usenet problem,
when there are plenty of newsgroups including local, where they could
have posted.

But now you start another thread of an even more off-topic nature, and
then let it slide further off topic, and you are the major poster in this
thread.

You've just helped to kill newsgroups, idiot.

Michael VE2BVW

Michael Black wrote:

But now you start another thread of an even more off-topic nature, and
then let it slide further off topic, and you are the major poster in this
thread.

You've just helped to kill newsgroups, idiot.

Should we send the posts to you for approval, Michael?


C'mon, do you think that OT posts just started?

- Mike -

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009, Michael Coslo wrote:

Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:30:02 -0400
From: Michael Coslo
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.equipment
Subject: The "other" end that is near....

Michael Black wrote:

But now you start another thread of an even more off-topic nature, and
then let it slide further off topic, and you are the major poster in this
thread.

You've just helped to kill newsgroups, idiot.

Should we send the posts to you for approval, Michael?


C'mon, do you think that OT posts just started?

- Mike -


In every group there are a few individuals who would like to be "net cop"
and be a medieval king: everyone obey MY^ rules, but I don't have to obey
my own rules.

More seriously, what kills newsgroups is a less than critical mass of
people who are willing to author _any_ posts, including OT posts that draw
other people out of their lazyness through the principle of "I'm going to
let someone ELSE do all the work."

Stray Dog wrote:

[...]

I'll tell you another one. One of the hard drive manufacturers had,
built into some memory chip on the hard drive circuit board some code
that "phoned home" for reasons never really disclosed. The guy who found
out called the manufacturer but the rep he talked to couldn't say what
the story was.

A lot of this spyware crap came out in a lot of the computer trade
magazines back 2000 to 2005 or so (computerworld, infoweek, eweek, and
several others). Ed Foster had a "gripeline" column in one of the
magazines and spent a lot of time on what I call the
tricky-cheaty-sneaky crap (everything from spyware to shrinkwrap
intimidations). He even had a website. His magazine laid him off (maybe
the advertizers were intimidated and threatened to pull their ad
contracts) so he set up his own website where he continued to be a forum
for user gripes about all manner of things.

[...]



Thanks for the extensive information! I find that using the Noscript
addon with Firefox blocks a _lot_ of unwanted and unnecessary and
malicious garbage on the Web.


With all good wishes,


Kevin, WB4AIO.