What happened to OM?

writes:

[...]

So, seriously? Are there *any* of the old hands still around out there?
Considering most of the threads are now dominated by Brad Guth and his sock
puppets, I'm surprised as hell that even Jeff's managed to put up with the
bull****...

I still read, though rarely post.

I use Gnus as my newsreader, and judicious use of its SCORE files (its
improved version of killfiles) doesn't leave much to read. I'm totally
unaware of what Guth is up to, since I "kill" anything he posts, any
post which follows up one of his posts, and any post with the word
"Guth" (in any case) in its subject. Any trolling get immediately
scored out of future consideration.

On Monday, November 12, 2012 12:14:09 AM UTC-6, Chris Jones wrote:

I still read, though rarely post.

....Yeah, that's the same thing I've heard from a few other ssh vets out there. We tend to keep in touch through Facebook, usually when we run into each other he

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Retro-...ref=ts&fref=ts

I use Gnus as my newsreader, and judicious use of its SCORE files (its
improved version of killfiles) doesn't leave much to read.

....I've recently been doing a frackload of system upgrades and data backups - ~17TB of data spread across four systems - and in the middle of moving stuff around I came across my copy of Agent, and just to save a little backup space I went to trim all of the DAT files except for ssh. When looking over my killfile, I'd found between 1993 and 2011, I'd thrown just shy of 10,000 trolls, idiots, morons, hoaxters and spammers into Killfile Hell.

From what I can fathom, Google Groups *sort* of has that feature, but it doesn't seem to be a permanent one. I can either block maladroits like Guthball and/or flag him as spam, and he's gone for the session. But if I close the page and leave GG for any reason, he shows back up like a really bad case of herpes simplex 2...:&

On Friday, September 21, 2012 8:44:07 PM UTC-5, wrote:
Glad to know that you're still around. Send me a notice when you do start that new group.

....Actually the Retro Space Images page on Facebook has somewhat already filled that need. Only downside is that a *lot* of those subscribing and following the page are of this "next generation" who've gotten into Teh Intarwebz via Twitter, and seem to think that all posts should be under 140 characters or "u need 2 STFU! ur posts r 2 long 2 reed! LOL!!" Not that I pay one iota of attention to that sort of idiocy, mind you :P

....And there's another upside worth mentioning. Retro's page gives us something that none of the usenet newsreaders I've come across ever gave us: the ability to see images in threads. That was something we all dreamed of when usenet was getting its start in the days when 2400bd was the speed limit unless you were fortunate enough to have direct access to those Big Iron mainframes on campus, and trimming your quotes was something you learned to do by your second post at the risk of your life. Quite a few newsreaders that came soon afterwards included watchdog coding to help prevent full quotes with only one line of comment - mostly to preserve bandwidth, which in those days was a dwindlng global resource, especially after "Eternal September" arrived - but that feature, IIRC, never really got implemented in the usenet readers that ran on Windows. At least not one I came across, and I was using Forte Agent from one of the later beta versions onward.

....Granted, I saw several commercial usenet readers being demoed at the last Windows World in Dallas in...1994?...where the reader could parse UU'd files and create a cludge that would allow it to download those images - just JPGs and BMPs, no other binary downloads possible "so as not to assist in software piracy" as one PR dork said proudly - and show them to you as if they were part of the actual post. You had to post the image to a binary group first using these readers, which would then be able to access that insane reference number all posts are assigned in order to include the "imbeddeed" reference.

Today's kids have it easy compared to what we had to achieve with just stone punches and Hollerith papyrus cards...

OM

wrote:

On Monday, October 8, 2012 5:18:13 PM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Oct 4, 7:45 am, Jeff Findley
wrote:

In article f6c41238-e7a8-42dc-b155-

,


says...
We should pray for him.

...Unlike you, I'm on a first-name basis with
God/Yahweh/Roddenberry. He says you should shut up, simply because
you're an idiot. The troll part is only cheap decorations.

So, seriously? Are there *any* of the old hands still around out
there? Considering most of the threads are now dominated by Brad
Guth and his sock puppets, I'm surprised as hell that even Jeff's
managed to put up with the bull****...

Still lurking about, to quote Daffy Duck.


--
Pete Stickney
From the foothills of the Florida Alps

On Sunday, November 11, 2012 10:15:33 PM UTC-7, OM wrote:

So, seriously? Are there *any* of the old hands still around out there? Considering most of the threads are now dominated by Brad Guth and his sock puppets, I'm surprised as hell that even Jeff's managed to put up with the bull****...



OM

Right, SSH is putnear dead.

Some old hands can be found at Nasaspaceflight.com: Herb Schaltegger, Ed Wright, Dwayne Day, HOP (Hell's Own Puppy), Jorge, etc.

Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings is an active forum.

Wasn't Keith Cowing active in SSH back in the day? NASAwatch is jumping.

Henry Spencer and George Herbert are still active in at least one forum I know of.

In article ,
says...

On Sunday, November 11, 2012 10:15:33 PM UTC-7, OM wrote:

So, seriously? Are there *any* of the old hands still around out there?
Considering most of the threads are now dominated by Brad Guth and
his sock puppets, I'm surprised as hell that even Jeff's managed to
put up with the bull****...

Right, SSH is putnear dead.

Some old hands can be found at Nasaspaceflight.com: Herb Schaltegger,
Ed Wright, Dwayne Day, HOP (Hell's Own Puppy), Jorge, etc.

Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings is an active forum.

Wasn't Keith Cowing active in SSH back in the day? NASAwatch is jumping.

Henry Spencer and George Herbert are still active in at least one forum
I know of.

The ARocket email list is still kicking it old school. Due to things
like ITAR, it seems best to keep that in email rather than something
more "public" like a web based forum.

The only way this forum is even bearable is to killfile most of the
idiotic trolls.

Jeff
--
"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would
magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper
than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in
and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

On Monday, September 30, 2013 5:11:46 AM UTC-7, Jeff Findley wrote:

The ARocket email list is still kicking it old school. Due to things

like ITAR, it seems best to keep that in email rather than something

more "public" like a web based forum.

ITAR is one consideration. Signal to noise ratio is another.