Henry Spencer - Any Word?

It has been interesting, watching the rise and fall of Usenet. From
93 on, I've been lurking, very occasionally posting, and learned so
much from the various contributors to many groups. Now they are
almost all gone. It's like the learned ones made the Usenet, then
hung around until driven off by the human coarseness that has always
been around, but has been worse the last few years. At least Jorge
Frank hasn't been driven off, yet.

I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Tim Berners-Lee and that
confounded WWW of his

rick jones
--
No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause.
There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision. - Jobert
these opinions are mine, all mine; HP might not want them anyway...
feel free to post, OR email to rick.jones2 in hp.com but NOT BOTH...

Chris Gunn wrote:

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!

It's not a list, it's a newsgroup, and everybody is welcome, even the
nutters. Get yourself some decent modern technology and go with it.

You people are such assholes.

kT wrote:

Chris Gunn wrote:

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!

It's not a list, it's a newsgroup, and everybody is welcome, even the
nutters. Get yourself some decent modern technology and go with it.

You people are such assholes.


He said, anonymously...

Newsgroups are like people chatting in the town square, all clustered by the
topic. If all the interesting people leave, and the only people left are
foul-mouthed dissenters, the group loses its value. We talk about people
and their judgments here more than space topics.

When was the last time you saw a really cool reference or website cited
here? I used to grab stuff all the time, but the well has completely dried
up. I don't blame anyone, I simply note the interesting dynamic.

Mike Ross

On Feb 27, 4:53 pm, Mike Ross
wrote:
kT wrote:
Chris Gunn wrote:

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!

It's not a list, it's a newsgroup, and everybody is welcome, even the
nutters. Get yourself some decent modern technology and go with it.

You people are such assholes.

He said, anonymously...

Newsgroups are like people chatting in the town square, all clustered by the
topic. If all the interesting people leave, and the only people left are
foul-mouthed dissenters, the group loses its value.

No it doesn't. Foul mouth dissenters are welcome in America, and they
are especially welcome on the usenet. This is far better than having
them swarm the streets and harm our precious little children's
sensibilities with all those terrible *WORDS*. Can't have that, eh?

We talk about people
and their judgments here more than space topics.

So what, it's a free usenet. Freedom and access defines the usenet.


When was the last time you saw a really cool reference or website cited here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_angles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tait-Bryan_rotations

https://ir.sun.ac.za/dspace/bitstrea...67/1/Berne.pdf

I got it off the orbiter forum.

Good enough?

I used to grab stuff all the time, but the well has completely dried
up. I don't blame anyone, I simply note the interesting dynamic.

You simply are not paying attention to the good stuff, and paying too
much attention to the crap. The only people complaining about the
cranks and their right to post here are the fascists who can't stand
freedom, and will do whatever they can to take that freedom away.

On Feb 27, 3:05 pm, Chris Gunn wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:22:39 GMT, (Rand

Simberg) wrote:
On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:01:04 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away, Ed
Kyle made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

It has been six months. Does anyone have any information about Henry?

He posts daily to Arocket. I suspect that he's just decided that the
newsgroups aren't worth the trouble any more.

Sad.

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!

So tell us then, why are you reading his posts?

Can you read at all? He signs his name you know.

If you can't recognize his name, or filter him, it's your problem.

On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:53:46 -0600, in a place far, far away, Mike
Ross made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

kT wrote:

Chris Gunn wrote:

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!

It's not a list, it's a newsgroup, and everybody is welcome, even the
nutters. Get yourself some decent modern technology and go with it.

You people are such assholes.


He said, anonymously...

We all know who he is. He's one of the causes of the downfall, and a
major one for sci.space.*.

Newsgroups are like people chatting in the town square, all clustered by the
topic. If all the interesting people leave, and the only people left are
foul-mouthed dissenters, the group loses its value. We talk about people
and their judgments here more than space topics.

Yes, unfortunately, the village idiots have taken over. The rest have
gone on to salons for serious discussion.

When was the last time you saw a really cool reference or website cited
here? I used to grab stuff all the time, but the well has completely dried
up. I don't blame anyone, I simply note the interesting dynamic.

Well, I try to do that occasionally, but half the time I get
criticized for it.

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:53:46 -0600, in a place far, far away, Mike
Ross made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

kT wrote:

Chris Gunn wrote:

this list seems to be mainly posted to by nutters like Brad, and at a
time when so much interesting stuff is happening!
It's not a list, it's a newsgroup, and everybody is welcome, even the
nutters. Get yourself some decent modern technology and go with it.

You people are such assholes.

He said, anonymously...

We all know who he is. He's one of the causes of the downfall, and a
major one for sci.space.*.

sci.space.* seems alright to me?

Why exactly do you have a problem with people exercising their
fundamental right to freedom of speech on the usenet, Rand Simberg?

Oh, I get it, you're a faaaaaaaaaaaascist!

Newsgroups are like people chatting in the town square, all clustered by the
topic. If all the interesting people leave, and the only people left are
foul-mouthed dissenters, the group loses its value. We talk about people
and their judgments here more than space topics.

Yes, unfortunately, the village idiots have taken over. The rest have
gone on to salons for serious discussion.

I don't see anyone here interfering with your fundamental right to
freedom of speech, on the contrary, I see people here exercising their
fundamental right to freedom of speech, including all of your fascists.

Democracy is great, no? Oh, I get it, you're a republican. That's it.

When was the last time you saw a really cool reference or website cited
here? I used to grab stuff all the time, but the well has completely dried
up. I don't blame anyone, I simply note the interesting dynamic.

Well, I try to do that occasionally, but half the time I get
criticized for it.

As is the right of all freedom loving democrats.

You, on the other hand, seem to have a problem with criticism.

Why is that? You can dish it out just fine, but you sure can't take it.

"Mike Ross" wrote in message
. ..
It has been interesting, watching the rise and fall of Usenet. From 93
on,
I've been lurking, very occasionally posting, and learned so much from the
various contributors to many groups. Now they are almost all gone. It's
like the learned ones made the Usenet, then hung around until driven off
by
the human coarseness that has always been around, but has been worse the
last few years. At least Jorge Frank hasn't been driven off, yet.

It is a bit sad, but I could see it coming.

The online Lego community abandoned Usenet many years ago. Once Lugnet was
created (the first widely accepted Lego fan, web based, online forum)
rec.toys.lego started dying. Its death was pretty quick too. Now there are
many online, web-based, Lego forums, partly because Lugnet never evolved
with the times. It's web based forums were state of the art when they came
out, but now they're looking pretty old and tired. All the Lego space talk
happens on the Classic Space forums.

Today there are many software packages to let you set up online, web based,
forums. It's not something you have to "hand code" like Lugnet was.


As for space, I've been reading a lot of the NASA Spaceflight forums. Lots
of good stuff there. Unfortunately, there is a lot of stuff on "L2" that I
don't get because I refuse to pay yearly fees for this sort of thing (I've
got three kids, what do you expect?).

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

"Rick Jones" wrote in message
...
It has been interesting, watching the rise and fall of Usenet. From
93 on, I've been lurking, very occasionally posting, and learned so
much from the various contributors to many groups. Now they are
almost all gone. It's like the learned ones made the Usenet, then
hung around until driven off by the human coarseness that has always
been around, but has been worse the last few years. At least Jorge
Frank hasn't been driven off, yet.

Not completely, but he's on the NASA Spaceflight online forums. Lots of
good stuff there.

I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Tim Berners-Lee and that
confounded WWW of his

Don't you mean Al Gore since he invented the Internet? ;-)

Jeff
--
A clever person solves a problem.
A wise person avoids it. -- Einstein

Jeff Findley wrote:
As for space, I've been reading a lot of the NASA Spaceflight forums. Lots
of good stuff there. Unfortunately, there is a lot of stuff on "L2" that I
don't get because I refuse to pay yearly fees for this sort of thing (I've

Lots of good stuff, but there are still assholes there. The hype you hear
about L2 comes mostly from those who are paying, and want to feel good about
it. A good percentage of the posts are back-patting. The guy who runs the
board does a pretty good job of kicking discussions over to the free-to-all
areas. I paid for a 2 month subscription which was about right.

unmannedspaceflight.com is another place to keep tabs on, but it doesn't have
as much traffic.

The thing that I hate about these web-based bulletin boards is their primitive
interface. I use trn to read news, and I've gotten accustomed to it's
features, specificly: kill files for topics and people and read-message
tracking. It tracks what messages I've read, and lets me mark a message to
read it again later; the bulletin boards keep track of my "last visit" and
will show me new threads since my "last visit". Huh? So if I don't read
everything I want to read this time, I may not see it next time! rn is twenty
years old, and it's replacements can't do what it does. Oh, but they do
animated smileys and advertisements. The Spaceflight bulletin board
doesn't even show me the thread starting where my Last Visit ended; it usually
puts me at the newest posting, but sometimes throws me in some random place in
the middle (sometimes at a post I've already read.

Glen Overby