Why is it
kay w
many times you run it through the speelchucker or ask someone else to
review it, why is it that no matter how careful you are, when you
review and preview and double check, when you finally load the printer
with the good, expensive paper and start printing, you can see at a
glance, from across the room, upside down and with papers printing in
reverse order, that each page has a great big fat error?
Why is that?
--
"If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner."
Tallulah Bankhead
James Gifford
> ..that no matter how many times you proofread something, no matter how
> many times you run it through the speelchucker or ask someone else to
> review it, why is it that no matter how careful you are, when you
> review and preview and double check, when you finally load the printer
> with the good, expensive paper and start printing, you can see at a
> glance, from across the room, upside down and with papers printing in
> reverse order, that each page has a great big fat error?
>
> Why is that?
Caaaaaallllllll forrrrrrr Johnnnnnnyyyyyy Murrrrrrphyyyyyy....
One of two or three common "photocopy samizdat" flyers on print shop
walls is a guy crying in his hands amid great stacks of paper. "100,000
copies and they found an error!"
(Others... two characters laughing til they cry: "You want it WHEN?";
"You want it good, fast and cheap? Pick two and call me back!" and my
fave, which may have only existed in one print shop because I was
responsible for putting it there: A Dirty-Harry character with a gun
whose muzzle is about two inches wide in perspective: "Go ahead... make
one more change!")
--
|=- James Gifford = FIX SPAMTRAP TO REPLY -=|
|=- So... your philosophy fits in a sig, does it? -=|
Sano
> ..that no matter how many times you proofread something, no matter how
> many times you run it through the speelchucker or ask someone else to
> review it, why is it that no matter how careful you are, when you
> review and preview and double check, when you finally load the printer
> with the good, expensive paper and start printing, you can see at a
> glance, from across the room, upside down and with papers printing in
> reverse order, that each page has a great big fat error?
>
> Why is that?
A buddy told me that proper proofreading, is reading everything backwards.
Either line by line, or sentence by sentence.
And he said, doing it for a year when he was in school; yeah it drove him
nuts.
N Jill Marsh
>..that no matter how many times you proofread something, no matter how
>many times you run it through the speelchucker or ask someone else to
>review it, why is it that no matter how careful you are, when you
>review and preview and double check, when you finally load the printer
>with the good, expensive paper and start printing, you can see at a
>glance, from across the room, upside down and with papers printing in
>reverse order, that each page has a great big fat error?
>
>Why is that?
Because you tried too hard and the damn thing was so familar to you
that errors disappeared until you saw them in another context.
To really really do a complete job (no, I'm not going to say the thing
about reading backwards, because grammar and style are hard enough to
check frontwards) you need a person after the writer and after the
first proofreader. Preferably someone with enough knowledge in the
field to notice if "dopamine" and "serotonin" got switched, but with
little familiarity with the specific topic so they are reading it
completely fresh.
--
nj"counting money works the same way"m
"Perhaps I would get a better understanding if I read it."
- James V. has an epiphany.
art...@yahoo.com
>A buddy told me that proper proofreading, is reading everything
backwards.
>Either line by line, or sentence by sentence.
>And he said, doing it for a year when he was in school; yeah it drove
him
>nuts.
I've given up profreading to maintain my salinity
huey.c...@gmail.com
> kay w <scu...@aol.com>wrote:
> > ..that no matter how many times you proofread something, no matter
> > how many times you run it through the speelchucker or ask someone
> > else to review it, why is it that no matter how careful you are,
> > when you review and preview and double check, when you finally load
> > the printer with the good, expensive paper and start printing, you
> > can see at a glance, from across the room, upside down and with
> > papers printing in reverse order, that each page has a great big
> > fat error?
> > Why is that?
> Because you tried too hard and the damn thing was so familar to you
> that errors disappeared until you saw them in another context.
The solution I have for this is to always be working on five or six
different things. As soon as you get one thing functionally done, make
one pass through to pretty-fy it, and then set it aside for a week or
three. Then go back and read it later, after you've completely
cleared it out of your mind, and you'll find more problems.
Last night, I was reading through the final draft of something, and
came across a bit that just made me say "What the HELL is THIS?". And
I'd written the damn thing. Then I spent a few minutes figuring out
what the hell that was.
Another thing I've noticed is that the act of printing a proof copy
causes the errors to jump out at you. I have a big industrial-sized
laserprinter, and printing out a 120-page book, taking it home, and
reading it in the hammock, you'd be surprised how many errors you
could look at every day for three months and not see, and then they
leap right off of the page when you're sitting in the hammock with a
beer reading over the final draft instead of sitting at the big desk
staring at the same thing over and over again.
Your mind really does get 'stuck'. The solution is to clear it out. Go
out to lunch. Throw some darts down at the pub. Go have a cigarette.
Walk around the building. Work on something totally different.
--
Huey
D.F. Manno
huey.c...@gmail.com wrote:
> Your mind really does get 'stuck'. The solution is to clear it out. Go
> out to lunch. Throw some darts down at the pub. Go have a cigarette.
> Walk around the building. Work on something totally different.
One thing I've found that works for me is to have the computer read the
text to me. Typos really jump out then.
--
D.F. Manno
dfm2a...@spymac.com
"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream
will never die."
Opus the Penguin
> In article <1IKdnXvUpob...@speakeasy.net>,
> huey.c...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Your mind really does get 'stuck'. The solution is to clear it
>> out. Go out to lunch. Throw some darts down at the pub. Go have a
>> cigarette. Walk around the building. Work on something totally
>> different.
>
> One thing I've found that works for me is to have the computer
> read the text to me. Typos really jump out then.
Sum typos dew. Others will sneak rite buy.
--
Opus the Penguin
The best darn penguin in all of Usenet
Bill Van
> The solution I have for this is to always be working on five or six
> different things. As soon as you get one thing functionally done, make
> one pass through to pretty-fy it, and then set it aside for a week or
> three. Then go back and read it later, after you've completely
> cleared it out of your mind, and you'll find more problems.
>
Sure, if you have that kind of time for it. Not so useful in daily
journalism, or for daily posting to afca.
Mind you, in the former case you have at least one editor to read your
stuff before it's published and in the latter, dozens of highly educated
wiseasses to make fun of it after it's posted.
bill
huey.c...@gmail.com
I may be a professional writer by trade, but here, I'm just another
nutcase with a keyboard. If you want the pro-grade stuff, you're gonna
hafta pay me a hell of a lot more.
--
Huey
Bill Van
huey.c...@gmail.com wrote:
Agreed. And, the wiseass sniping is half the fun of hanging out here.
bill
K_S_O...@yahoo.com
Your afca salary is hereby doubled. Retroactive, even.
Kevin
M C Hamster
news:E4ednRGtkIc...@speakeasy.net...
I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't trust
them.
Are they any different from what goes on here, except that one person, the
blogger, gets to egotrip to his/her heart's content, whereas we are at least
to some degree moderated by the collective aesthetic and moral consciousness
of AFCA?
Or are they rather much like AFCA, where one person (the blogger) moderates
the discussion but they are largely interactive types of things? That is,
is it really like Usenet but which doesn't use newsreaders and thus is more
accessible to the masses?
It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I don't
trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even less than
regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just make shit up.
Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some self-regulation here at least.
Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
M C Hamster "Big Wheel Keep on Turnin'" -- Creedence Clearwater Revival
K_S_O...@yahoo.com
<davo...@speakeasy.hairnet> wrote:
I think of them as rants in various keys; they're not really
conversations except as you note where they're 'hosted' conversations,
with one person who has the ability and usually the impulse to cut
other people off or overrule them after a few exchanges. I've gone on
before about how web-based discussions of all sorts seem to me to be
more authoritarian than usenet.
But some are sort of extended screeds on some subject or other, and as
such I think they can be better than static web pages. I'm going to
make a blog about my boat and sailing this summer, just to cut down on
the number of email updates I have to send people. And there's a good
one here in Brazoria that keeps up with the chemical industry dumping
stuff, for example, that's useful, I guess. But as conversations I
agree, they suck ass, I can't be bothered.
Kevin
huey.c...@gmail.com
> Are they any different from what goes on here, except that one
> person, the blogger, gets to egotrip to his/her heart's content,
> whereas we are at least to some degree moderated by the collective
> aesthetic and moral consciousness of AFCA?
Yes.
> Or are they rather much like AFCA, where one person (the blogger)
> moderates the discussion but they are largely interactive types of
> things? That is, is it really like Usenet but which doesn't use
> newsreaders and thus is more accessible to the masses?
Also yes.
A blog is, in one respect, a webpage with the subject "Me, me, me, me,
me, me, me, and also me", and enabling feedback is a way to say "I'm
tired of talking about me; why doesn't everybody ELSE talk about me for
a while?" It is every bit as egocentric as a self-published
autobiography, and usually edited far more poorly.
On the other hand, it's also a great deal more accessible than this
strange, mysterious thing called 'usenet' that nobody really knows
about anymore in the universe where the web IS the internet, and nobody
understands that there's anything else that's even POSSIBLE with the
internet other than maybe Kazaa. Everybody knows what a web browser is,
and sticking all your personal crap on LiveJournal or Blogger gives all
your friends you don't talk to all that often a chance to keep up with
what you're doing.
> It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I
> don't trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it
> even less than regular web sites. They seem like avenues for
> people to just make shit up.
Blogs as a general class are exactly like 'regular web sites' or
newspapers or television shows or any other information source; they
are worth exactly what the information in them is worth. If they're
well-written and trustworthy, they're as useful an information source
as a newspaper that's well-written and trustworthy. If they're utter
crap, they're as useful as Fox News. It's unfair to paint them all as
inherently untrustworthy, although I'll freely admit that the only even
remotely blog-like thing I read regularly is Fark, and the only pure
blogs I look at even occasionally are the ones written by friends or
professionals working on some project I'm interested in. Still, if
it's 2AM, and I want to know how one of my friends is doing, but don't
care to guess wrong whether they're awake or not, checking their blog
is, to me or any of their other friends, a useful thing.
Still, I don't do it all that often. If it's important, they'll call
or email. Or send me a URL to one of their blog posts I should read.
> Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some self-regulation here at
> least.
Most people have at least some sense of shame, and therefore at least
some things that they will not write in their own blog. The people who
lack this also occasionally make for some interesting reading, even if
it is of the 'slowing down to gape at a traffic accident' variety.
> Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
I've said this before: AFCA ~is~ my blog. The posts and responses from
people who collectively know everything are far more useful to me
personally than my own bunch of idiot rants, which I'm already
intimately familiar with.
Besides, here I can delude myself into thinking that at least somebody
is reading what I write. If I put up a blog, I'd have webserver
statistics that conclusively proved that I have no friends. ...hehe,
no, that's not true. I have... ...four.
--
Huey (It must be more than that, right?) Callison
ra...@westnet.poe.com
> I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
> software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
> read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
> searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't trust
> them.
Do you similarly not get newspapers? They are also open forums with
enabling machinery for all manner of nutcases with printers. Or
Newsradio? That's an open forum with enabling frequencies for all manner
of nutcases with transmitters.
Blogs are fantastic, the current zenith of expression of the first
amendment. Sure, as the putative consumer of this form of first amendment
content, you're going to have to exercise some critical review, but then
you already do that with the more tradtional media, so it's unreasonable
to expect better of the more free and open blog forum.
<snip>
> Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
Yes, in fact you should start one!
As far as reading one, you ought to confine it to ones that you know are
reputable, or take them with a grain of salt, just as you ought to be
doing with the crap that filters out along things like the AP.
John
--
Remove the dead poet to e-mail, tho CC'd posts are unwelcome.
Mean People Suck - It takes two devitations to get cool.
Ask me about joining the NRA.
kay w
MC:
>It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I don't
>trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even less than
>regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just make shit up.
>Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some self-regulation here at least.
Agreed. I see no point to the blogs. Or man-on-the-street
interviews. Or letters to the editor.
I want to know what people smarter than I am know; not what everyone
with access to a computer thinks.
Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
Boron Elgar
>Previously, and snipped:
>
>MC:
>>It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I don't
>>trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even less than
>>regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just make shit up.
>>Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some self-regulation here at least.
>
>Agreed. I see no point to the blogs. Or man-on-the-street
>interviews. Or letters to the editor.
I consider afca as close to blogging as I will get.
I do read man-on-the-street interviews in almost useless weekly puff
paper that is put out in my township, but I read them because the
level of stupidity I see there never ceases to amaze me.
I will read a letter to the editor once in awhile and confess to even
sending a few in my day (published, too), but I pursue them carefully,
looking for clues and hints in the writer's name or other info. You'd
be surprised how many famous people write in.
>I want to know what people smarter than I am know; not what everyone
>with access to a computer thinks.
Can we develop some objective criteria to make such judgments here on
afca so I don't have such a fat KF?
>
>Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
The Princess has one, as do most of her friends. We call hers the "All
Princess, All the Time Channel." She is my own kid, a good writer, but
it is damned boring to be over-exposed to the minutiae of her life at
school. I do get some really nifty links from there, though.
Boron
kay w
Me(kay):
>>Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
Boron:
>The Princess has one, as do most of her friends. We call hers the "All
>Princess, All the Time Channel." She is my own kid, a good writer, but
>it is damned boring to be over-exposed to the minutiae of her life at
>school. I do get some really nifty links from there, though.
A college chum of mine (so I know first hand what sorts of trouble we
got into) has discovered her now-college-aged daughter's blog, in
which the daughter is a great deal more forthcoming about her college
experiences than she is directly with her folks.
Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
Boron Elgar
>Previously, and snipped:
>
>Me(kay):
>>>Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
>
>Boron:
>>The Princess has one, as do most of her friends. We call hers the "All
>>Princess, All the Time Channel." She is my own kid, a good writer, but
>>it is damned boring to be over-exposed to the minutiae of her life at
>>school. I do get some really nifty links from there, though.
>
>A college chum of mine (so I know first hand what sorts of trouble we
>got into) has discovered her now-college-aged daughter's blog, in
>which the daughter is a great deal more forthcoming about her college
>experiences than she is directly with her folks.
>
>Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
>about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
The Princess has her blog linked in her IM window, so it is there for
all to see. I'm betting there is another website somewhere, offered
up to select peers, to which I am not privy...at least I hope so.
Boron
K_S_O...@yahoo.com
>Previously, and snipped:
>
>Me(kay):
>>>Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
>
>Boron:
>>The Princess has one, as do most of her friends. We call hers the "All
>>Princess, All the Time Channel." She is my own kid, a good writer, but
>>it is damned boring to be over-exposed to the minutiae of her life at
>>school. I do get some really nifty links from there, though.
>
>A college chum of mine (so I know first hand what sorts of trouble we
>got into) has discovered her now-college-aged daughter's blog, in
>which the daughter is a great deal more forthcoming about her college
>experiences than she is directly with her folks.
>
>Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
>about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
She put it on the in-ter-net and she's baffled how her parents found
out? Me dear old mum had an expression for people like this; "Thick
as two short planks."
Kevin
Dana Carpender
kay w wrote:
> Previously, and snipped:
>
> Me(kay):
>
>>>Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
>
>
> Boron:
>
>>The Princess has one, as do most of her friends. We call hers the "All
>>Princess, All the Time Channel." She is my own kid, a good writer, but
>>it is damned boring to be over-exposed to the minutiae of her life at
>>school. I do get some really nifty links from there, though.
>
>
> A college chum of mine (so I know first hand what sorts of trouble we
> got into) has discovered her now-college-aged daughter's blog, in
> which the daughter is a great deal more forthcoming about her college
> experiences than she is directly with her folks.
>
> Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
> about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
>
The whole phenomenon bemuses me a bit. I mean, didn't kids used to keep
their diaries under lock and key?
That said, my ezine has gone to a blog format, just because it's easier
for the webmaster to handle.
Dana
kay w
Me(kay):
>>A college chum of mine (so I know first hand what sorts of trouble we
>>got into) has discovered her now-college-aged daughter's blog, in
>>which the daughter is a great deal more forthcoming about her college
>>experiences than she is directly with her folks.
>>
>>Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
>>about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
Kevin:
>She put it on the in-ter-net and she's baffled how her parents found
>out? Me dear old mum had an expression for people like this; "Thick
>as two short planks."
She's a bright enough kid; she merely assumes, as I did at that age,
that parents are idiots without resources of their own.
K_S_O...@yahoo.com
That was the best way to publicise them back then.
Kevin
Greg Goss
>I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
>software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
>read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
>searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't trust
>them.
>
>Are they any different from what goes on here, except that one person, the
>blogger, gets to egotrip to his/her heart's content, whereas we are at least
>to some degree moderated by the collective aesthetic and moral consciousness
>of AFCA?
You get to choose your egotrippers. But to me, to be called a "BLOG"
requires some manner of providing feedback from the users.
Pournelle's blog (claimed to be the first on the Web, though he
detests the word "blog") has "View" and "Letters" pages. Sullivan has
the same. Both of these choose (or have a letters editor choose) the
letters to reply to, though you gather the impression that they're
willing to publish letters contrary to their views. Most diary-scale
blogs allow anyone to tack on commentary.
So the moderation is provided by the readers through a "letters to the
editor" mechanism.
Because of the lack of a feedback page, I don't consider Wonkette to
be a blog (and stopped reading her because the lack of election news
has reverted her to a sex-crazed college student (are there any other
kinds?)). Similarly, Charlie Daniels and David Warren are producing a
daily editorial not a blog, because there's no public feedback
mechanism.
I have a blog on Live Journal. Mainly it's a way for me to link ideas
from my AFCA friends to my Darksider friends, and to gather their
replies to dump back to my AFCA friends. I don't put my deepest
emotional soul into my LJ, mainly because my wife reads it.
>
>Or are they rather much like AFCA, where one person (the blogger) moderates
>the discussion but they are largely interactive types of things? That is,
>is it really like Usenet but which doesn't use newsreaders and thus is more
>accessible to the masses?
>
>It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I don't
>trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even less than
>regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just make shit up.
>Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some self-regulation here at least.
>
>Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
>
>M C Hamster "Big Wheel Keep on Turnin'" -- Creedence Clearwater Revival
>
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Greg Goss
>Blogs are fantastic, the current zenith of expression of the first
>amendment. Sure, as the putative consumer of this form of first amendment
>content, you're going to have to exercise some critical review, but then
>you already do that with the more tradtional media, so it's unreasonable
>to expect better of the more free and open blog forum.
Of course, a letter to a blog can draw the attention of the
authorities just as a letter to an editor. I presume that the FBI can
request the physical page and envelope from a newspaper?
http://flag.blackened.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=72081&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
So there are limits to free speech here.
Rick B.
"Greg Goss" <go...@gossg.org> wrote in message
news:3b5egbF...@individual.net...
> I don't put my deepest emotional soul into my LJ, mainly because my
wife reads it.
You could construct an entire episode of Home Improvement or Everybody
Loves Raymond around that line.
incandescent blue
> Previously:
>
>>>Daughter still hasn't clued in how it is her parents know so much
>>>about what's going right (and wrong) in her life.
>
> Kevin:
>>She put it on the in-ter-net and she's baffled how her parents found
>>out? Me dear old mum had an expression for people like this; "Thick
>>as two short planks."
>
> She's a bright enough kid; she merely assumes, as I did at that age,
> that parents are idiots without resources of their own.
It's particularly shortsighted since LJ at least (and I presume most
of the other popular blog sites) makes it pretty easy to password-protect
entries. Sure, it's still not as secure as NOT PUTTING THE STUFF ONLINE
IN THE FIRST PLACE, but it will at least put a bit of a stumbling
block in the way of uninvited readers.
--
"I'm sorry," I say, "if I give you the impression that it's only my
mouth that's rough. I do my best to be rough all over."
Peter Hoeg, _Smilla's Sense of Snow_
Bill Van
Dana Carpender <dcar...@kivanospam.net> wrote:
> That said, my ezine has gone to a blog format, just because it's easier
> for the webmaster to handle.
>
> Dana
URL?
Dana Carpender
groo
> You get to choose your egotrippers. But to me, to be called a "BLOG"
> requires some manner of providing feedback from the users.
> Pournelle's blog (claimed to be the first on the Web, though he
> detests the word "blog") has "View" and "Letters" pages. Sullivan has
> the same. Both of these choose (or have a letters editor choose) the
> letters to reply to, though you gather the impression that they're
> willing to publish letters contrary to their views. Most diary-scale
> blogs allow anyone to tack on commentary.
Damn, I kept reading that as "dairy-scale blogs". I was imagining row after
row of cows with keyboards.
--
"If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten." - George Carlin
Greg Goss
Bill Van
Dana Carpender <dcar...@kivanospam.net> wrote:
> http://www.holdthetoast.com/httblog/
Bookmarked, thanks.
Hank Gillette
"M C Hamster" <davo...@speakeasy.hairnet> wrote:
> I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
> software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
> read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
> searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't trust
> them.
You're missing out if you've never read Mark Evenier's blog
<http://www.newsfromme.com/>. Mr. Evenier's a professional writer,
having written for television, animated cartoons, and comic books.
He worked with Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Frank Nelson, Jack Kirby, and
others too numerous to mention, and has written about those experiences
in an interesting way. Maybe he isn't a typical blogger, but his is one
site I try to read daily.
I dare you to read his story about Redd Foxx
<http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL097.htm> and not start clicking all
over his web site. Reading Evenier is like eating potato chips.
--
Hank Gillette
SoCalMike
> I consider afca as close to blogging as I will get.
yup. me too. the thing i dont get about blogs is the same thing i dont
get about "dead" newsgroups, yahoo groups, or IRC chatrooms with only
one person in em. whos to know or say what is good, what is bad, whats
worth even looking for? and how would you look for a certain blog,
anyway? is there a search engine for blogs? some online "authority" on
what blogs are worth looking at?
SoCalMike
> I dare you to read his story about Redd Foxx
> <http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL097.htm> and not start clicking all
> over his web site. Reading Evenier is like eating potato chips.
heh... i feel the same about http://www.lileks.com/
spent the better part of a day just going through everything on there.
Erich
SoCalMike <mikein562...@hotmail.com> wrote:
The DAOU Report does something like that for political blogs.
It's part of Salon now, so you will have to watch an ad before reading:
<http://daoureport.salon.com/entry.aspx>
... Erich
xho...@gmail.com
> > nutcase with a keyboard. If you want the pro-grade stuff, you're gonna
> > hafta pay me a hell of a lot more.
> >
>
> I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
> software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
> read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
> searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't
> trust them.
I've been interested enough to read them enough to know whether I like them
or not. (But I won't let that me from having an opinion.)
> Are they any different from what goes on here, except that one person,
> the blogger, gets to egotrip to his/her heart's content, whereas we are
> at least to some degree moderated by the collective aesthetic and moral
> consciousness of AFCA?
How much moderation does the collective moral consciousness actually
convey?
> Or are they rather much like AFCA, where one person (the blogger)
> moderates the discussion but they are largely interactive types of
> things? That is, is it really like Usenet but which doesn't use
> newsreaders and thus is more accessible to the masses?
Is it really that hard to use newsreaders?
> It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I
> don't trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even
> less than regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just
> make shit up. Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some
> self-regulation here at least.
I'm not convinced there is much difference. Sure, if you find a dumb ass
post on AFCA, there *might* be a followup explaining it as being dumb ass,
but then again maybe everyone else has killfiled the dumbass so their
gabbering goes unrebutted.
>
> Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
I'm going to hang out here until the last dog is hung.
Xho
--
-------------------- http://NewsReader.Com/ --------------------
Usenet Newsgroup Service $9.95/Month 30GB
xho...@gmail.com
> Previously, and snipped:
>
> MC:
> >It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I
> >don't trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even
> >less than regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just
> >make shit up. Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some
> >self-regulation here at least.
>
> Agreed. I see no point to the blogs. Or man-on-the-street
> interviews. Or letters to the editor.
>
> I want to know what people smarter than I am know; not what everyone
> with access to a computer thinks.
What gives you confidence that you get that (what people smarter than you
are know) here at AFCA? Why can't you use that source of confidence with
blogs, just as you do with AFCA? Surely there are other USENET groups
which you don't view as favorably as AFCA, right?
> Blogs? MIght as well depend on Dilbert to explain things.
I don't think blogs have any structural or intrinsic deficiencies that
would make it imposssible for at least one of them to be like AFCA is.
But sorting through all blogs to find the good ones is not a task I would
relish, considering that I already have AFCA I have little reason to do it.
xho...@gmail.com
> > I may be a professional writer by trade, but here, I'm just another
> > nutcase with a keyboard. If you want the pro-grade stuff, you're gonna
> > hafta pay me a hell of a lot more.
> >
>
> I don't get blogs. They just seem to me like open forums, with enabling
> software, for all manner of nutcases with keyboards. Seriously, I don't
> read any blogs, and have scarcely ever read any blogs except when I'm
> searching for particular information. I don't like them and I don't
> trust them.
I've *NOT* been interested enough to read them enough to know whether I
like them or not. (But I won't let that me from having an opinion.)
> Are they any different from what goes on here, except that one person,
> the blogger, gets to egotrip to his/her heart's content, whereas we are
> at least to some degree moderated by the collective aesthetic and moral
> consciousness of AFCA?
How much moderation does the collective moral consciousness actually
convey?
> Or are they rather much like AFCA, where one person (the blogger)
> moderates the discussion but they are largely interactive types of
> things? That is, is it really like Usenet but which doesn't use
> newsreaders and thus is more accessible to the masses?
Is it really that hard to use newsreaders?
> It bothers me that blogs turn up so often during Google searches. I
> don't trust the information in blogs; that is to say, I trust it even
> less than regular web sites. They seem like avenues for people to just
> make shit up. Yeah, we do that too, but again we have some
> self-regulation here at least.
I'm not convinced there is much difference. Sure, if you find a dumb ass
post on AFCA, there *might* be a followup explaining it as being dumb ass,
but then again maybe everyone else has killfiled the dumbass so their
gabbering goes unrebutted.
>
> Or should I join the stampede to blogs?
I'm going to hang out here until the last dog is hung.
Xho
M C Hamster
news:20050402215422.673$l...@newsreader.com...
>
> But sorting through all blogs to find the good ones <rest snipped>
Ay, there's the rub.
kay w
Me(kay):
>> I want to know what people smarter than I am know; not what everyone
>> with access to a computer thinks.
Xho:
>What gives you confidence that you get that (what people smarter than you
>are know) here at AFCA? Why can't you use that source of confidence with
>blogs, just as you do with AFCA? Surely there are other USENET groups
>which you don't view as favorably as AFCA, right?
Because with my individual review of a person's comments, all I have
is my own perspective.
Here's where there are people such as yourself, sort of
equal-opportunity assholistic pinchers, who can be counted on to say
*something* critical about nearly everything. About 80% of the time,
I think, "Damn that Xho; what a bitch" and move on. About 15% of the
time, I think, "Damn that Xho; that's a pretty good point."
(About 5% of the time, I'm thinking, "What the hell was *that*
supposed to mean?")
>Surely there are other USENET groups
>which you don't view as favorably as AFCA, right?
*All* USENET groups are groups I don't view as favorably as AFCA,
right.