cypherpunks discussions

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 07:22 AM 12/8/03 -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
>Other people have made the point that mailing lists are "old tech"
>and I agree.   I don't like the new replacements (blogs, web boards)
>as much as lists, but perhaps that's because of what I used first.

Its not just "the First is the Only Way" phenom.

What's going on is that folks are online all the time now, so
things interactive (web boards, IM) have become more popular
than they could have been in the dial-up past.

The big advantage of email, which was the original "killer app",
was store and forward.  Ie, asych; offline.  IM strikes me as
perverse.  If I wanted to be interrupted I'd answer my telephone.
Email clients of olde allowed aliasing to lists, which predated
(and motivated) mailing list exploders/auto-managers.  They
are still widely used for group-of-friends 'private' lists.  Even
my parents understand Bcc: nowadays.

Yahoo boards have options to use email, and
modern clients manage multiple email addresses.  But
for online folks a board is perhaps more convenient,
since the board is accessable everywhere.  For
home/office/school mobility this is a feature, even
if its regressing to the "PC as dumb terminal" mechanism.

The advantage of eg Yahoo groups (and presumably blogs)
is their moderation; the lack thereof enabled spammers to
bulldoze the commons of usenet.   Inevitable.  Also the
reason why lne.com is the best node.



>Kids these days don't know how to use shell shortcuts either.

Not sure what you mean by that.  "Shortcut" is a M$ term
for lame-ass sym link.

----
"Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger
of a decent sniper rifle." Michael Hohensee