"Slaves of the Lamp" ??
Martha Adams
"Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf library, but
who was the author and in which ASFs?
Thanks -- mha [rasff 2009 Jun 25]
Paul Dormer
(Martha Adams) wrote:
>
> Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a
> serial "Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf
> library, but who was the author and in which ASFs?
You should try the ISFDb - Slaves of the Lamp
Author: Arthur Leo Zagat
Astounding Science Fiction, August 1946
and also Sept. 1946.
David Friedman
p...@pauldormer.cix.co.uk (Paul Dormer) wrote:
That's also the title of a play put on by Stalky and Company.
Considerably earlier.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
Paul Dormer
dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com (David Friedman) wrote:
>
> That's also the title of a play put on by Stalky and Company.
> Considerably earlier.
And presumably both derive the title from Aladdin.
Dorothy J Heydt
Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
>Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a serial
>"Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf library, but
>who was the author and in which ASFs?
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi
Arthur Leo Zagat, August and September 1946.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
Keith F. Lynch
> mh...@verizon.net (Martha Adams) wrote:
>> Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a
>> serial "Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf
>> library, but who was the author and in which ASFs?
> You should try the ISFDb - Slaves of the Lamp
> Author: Arthur Leo Zagat
> Astounding Science Fiction, August 1946
> and also Sept. 1946.
I agree. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, isfdb.org, is a
wonderful resource. Among much else, I go there whenever I want to
read a partcular short story, but don't remember which magazine or
anthology of mine, if any, it's in. It's also useful for looking up
the author if I know the title, or vice versa.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Martha Adams
news:KLt3E...@kithrup.com...
====================================================
Interesting! I went over to http://www.isfdb.org/ and had a look at it.
Such a resource is needed in today's world. I'll need to spend some
time there to know better how it works: when I did a simple Author
search on LeGuin, -- it didn't find any. 784 authornames starting with
'Le' and no LeGuin? Odd. But over so many years there are so many
writers and all their works, we need databases like this.
Titeotwawki -- mha [rasff 2009 Jun 26]
GeekGirl
> "Dorothy J Heydt" <djhe...@kithrup.com> wrote in messagenews:KLt3E...@kithrup.com...
>
>
>
> > In article <_0L0m.1138$NF6....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>,
> > Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a
> >>serial
> >>"Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf library, but
> >>who was the author and in which ASFs?
>
> >http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi
>
> > Arthur Leo Zagat, August and September 1946.
>
> > Dorothy J. Heydt
> > Vallejo, California
> > djheydt at hotmail dot com
> > Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
> > Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
>
> ====================================================
>
> Such a resource is needed in today's world. I'll need to spend some
> time there to know better how it works: when I did a simple Author
> search on LeGuin, -- it didn't find any. 784 authornames starting with
> 'Le' and no LeGuin? Odd. But over so many years there are so many
> writers and all their works, we need databases like this.
Seems she spells it Le Guin. See: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/
GeekGirl
Dorothy J Heydt
Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
[ISFDB]
>
>Interesting! I went over to http://www.isfdb.org/ and had a look at it.
>Such a resource is needed in today's world. I'll need to spend some
>time there to know better how it works: when I did a simple Author
>search on LeGuin, -- it didn't find any.
The search engine for ISFDB is by no means as flexible as
that for Google, e.g. If you had searched for "Ursula K.
Le Guin", not omitting the space between the parts of the
last name, you would have found her.
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Ursula_K._Le_Guin
Its AI just isn't very I. The other day I was searching for
a story called "The Martian Star Gazers." Couldn't find it
nohow. Turned out it was "The Martian Star-Gazers," and the
hyphen was crucial.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at hotmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.
Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.
784 authornames starting with
William December Starr
"Martha Adams" <mh...@verizon.net> said:
> Interesting! I went over to http://www.isfdb.org/ and had a look
> at it. Such a resource is needed in today's world. I'll need to
> spend some time there to know better how it works: when I did a
> simple Author search on LeGuin, -- it didn't find any. 784
> authornames starting with 'Le' and no LeGuin? Odd.
You've already been told that the author, and the database, spell it
"Le Guin," with a blank space, but a bit of advice for the future:
if you again encounter an apparent omission like this, try doing
title searches for a few of the author's works and, assuming you get
results, see what form the database expresses the author's name in.
-- wds
Keith F. Lynch
> Interesting! I went over to http://www.isfdb.org/ and had a look at
> it. Such a resource is needed in today's world.
And the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com, does the same thing for
movies, TV shows, actors, actresses, screenwriters, producers,
directors, and characters, only with much more information and detail.
Butch Malahide
> In article <NcY0m.1227$9l4...@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>,
> "Martha Adams" <mh...@verizon.net> said:
>
> > at it. Such a resource is needed in today's world. I'll need to
> > spend some time there to know better how it works: when I did a
> > simple Author search on LeGuin, -- it didn't find any. 784
> > authornames starting with 'Le' and no LeGuin? Odd.
>
> You've already been told that the author, and the database, spell it
> "Le Guin," with a blank space, but a bit of advice for the future:
> if you again encounter an apparent omission like this, try doing
> title searches for a few of the author's works and, assuming you get
> results, see what form the database expresses the author's name in.
Alternatively, try searching on a partial name, such as "guin" or
"ursula".
Butch Malahide
> The search engine for ISFDB is by no means as flexible as
> that for Google, e.g. If you had searched for "Ursula K.
> Le Guin", not omitting the space between the parts of the
> last name, you would have found her.
A search for "ursula" would have found her; no need to guess the
spelling of her last name. For that matter, a search for "rsu" works
fine (16 matches, including one each for "Ursula Le Guin" and "Ursula
K. Le Guin"); try *that* with Google!
> Its AI just isn't very I. The other day I was searching for
> a story called "The Martian Star Gazers." Couldn't find it
> nohow. Turned out it was "The Martian Star-Gazers," and the
> hyphen was crucial.
But *why* would you enter the whole 23-character title, and have to
*hope* that you and the ISFDB both spelled it exactly right? A title
search for "gazer" gets 26 matches, 7 of which are for the story you
wanted.
Ahasuerus
[snip]
> The search engine for ISFDB is by no means as flexible as
> that for Google, e.g. If you had searched for "Ursula K.
> Le Guin", not omitting the space between the parts of the
> last name, you would have found her.
>
> http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Ursula_K._Le_Guin
>
Well, Google is a multi-billion dollar company with 20,000+ employees.
ISFDB's capitalization has been stuck at $0 for the last 14 years and
we have a grand total of 0 paid employees (but we do plan to hire
twice as many this year!)
On the other hand, it's at least arguable that we do a better job of
searching our data than Google does of searching groups.google.com :-\
Ahasuerus
> In article <_0L0m.1138$NF6....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>,
>
> Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a serial
> >"Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf library, but
> >who was the author and in which ASFs?
>
> http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi
>
> Arthur Leo Zagat, August and September 1946.
Keep in mind that Zagat was a pre-Golden Age writer and the story has
a 1930s feel to it. Campbell ran it in _Astounding_ to see whether his
audience still liked that kind of stuff post-WWII. The answer was an
overwhelming "Heck, no!", so he never did it again.
Dorothy J Heydt
Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
>On Jun 26, 1:10�am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
>[snip]
>> The search engine for ISFDB is by no means as flexible as
>> that for Google, e.g. �If you had searched for "Ursula K.
>> Le Guin", not omitting the space between the parts of the
>> last name, you would have found her.
>>
>> http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Ursula_K._Le_Guin
>>
>> Its AI just isn't very I. [snip]
>
>Well, Google is a multi-billion dollar company with 20,000+ employees.
>ISFDB's capitalization has been stuck at $0 for the last 14 years and
>we have a grand total of 0 paid employees (but we do plan to hire
>twice as many this year!)
Quite. I do understand. Sometimes you pay for what you get.
>
>On the other hand, it's at least arguable that we do a better job of
>searching our data than Google does of searching groups.google.com :-\
That is entirely possible. There's certainly more
information per kilobyte on ISFDB than on Google. But the
former is a lot less forgiving of people who don't know how
to spell something than the latter.
Robert A. Woodward
<d7a3200a-6fed-47df...@l31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
,
Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
_Astounding SF_ in 1945 & 1946 had a lot of stuff that wasn't up to
snuff. I suspect that Campbell was scraping the bottom of the
barrel. If Zagat was a pre-Golden Age writer, could it be possible
that "Slaves of the Lamp" had been sitting in the files since
Tremaine bought in the late 30s?
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
Ahasuerus
snip]
> That is entirely possible. There's certainly more
> information per kilobyte on ISFDB than on Google. But the
> former is a lot less forgiving of people who don't know how
> to spell something than the latter.
True, they have very robust matching algorithms for some languages.
Not only do they handle punctuation, misspellings, and other standard
spellchecker issues, but they also handle things like word proximity
and know that "Dr. Smith" is not the same as "Smith Dr.", which is
harder to do.
We'll never be as good as Google in this area, but I may experiment
with approximate string matching later this year. Once we are done
with the current backlog of 60 reported bugs and 75 requested
features, that is...
Ahasuerus
> In article
> <d7a3200a-6fed-47df-975c-3dade5e79...@l31g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
> Ahasuerus<ahasue...@email.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 25, 2:01 pm, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:
> > > In article <_0L0m.1138$NF6....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>,
>
> > > Martha Adams <mh...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > >Back in the later 1940's in my recollection, in ASF, there was a serial
> > > >"Slaves of the Lamp." I can find old ASFs in a local sf library, but
> > > >who was the author and in which ASFs?
>
> > >http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi
>
> > > Arthur Leo Zagat, August and September 1946.
>
> > Keep in mind that Zagat was a pre-Golden Age writer and the story has
> > a 1930s feel to it. Campbell ran it in _Astounding_ to see whether his
> > audience still liked that kind of stuff post-WWII. The answer was an
> > overwhelming "Heck, no!", so he never did it again.
>
> _Astounding SF_ in 1945 & 1946 had a lot of stuff that wasn't up to
> snuff. I suspect that Campbell was scraping the bottom of the
Well, the effects of WWII were still very much felt in 1945-1946. At
the time, the term "the Golden Age" was often used to refer to
1938-1942, before the war had its unfortunate effect on the field.
> If Zagat was a pre-Golden Age writer, could it be possible
> that "Slaves of the Lamp" had been sitting in the files since
> Tremaine bought in the late 30s?
Hm, if I recall Campbell's post-mortem correctly, he made it sound
like it was a conscious experiment, but his words may have been more
ambiguous than I recall.
William December Starr
Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> said:
> Well, Google is a multi-billion dollar company with 20,000+
> employees. ISFDB's capitalization has been stuck at $0 for the
> last 14 years and we have a grand total of 0 paid employees
Could you express that on a per-capita basis please?
-- wds
Butch Malahide
Seems to me ISFDB is *easier* to search than Google. Google, as far as
I know, and unlike ISFDB, only lets you search for whole words. If Ms.
Adams didn't know whether Ursula's last name is "Le Guin" or "LeGuin",
she could have just searched for "guin" or "ursula"; if Ms. Heydt
wasn't sure whether "The Martian Star-Gazers" had a hyphen (or if she
knew about the hyphen but just wanted to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome)
she could have just typed "gazer" in the title search box.
Keith F. Lynch
> Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
>> On the other hand, it's at least arguable that we do a better
>> job of searching our data than Google does of searching
>> groups.google.com :-\
Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't they
realize what it's doing to their reputation?
> That is entirely possible. There's certainly more information per
> kilobyte on ISFDB than on Google. But the former is a lot less
> forgiving of people who don't know how to spell something than
> the latter.
On the other hand, often I don't *want* Google to correct my spelling.
I wish there were a way to turn that feature off. They've long since
turned "Did you mean?" into "Oh, you meant," and it's annoying and
frustrating. Machines shouldn't presume they're smarter than I am,
until such time as they really are.
Ahasuerus
[snip]
> Seems to me ISFDB is *easier* to search than Google. Google, as far as
> I know, and unlike ISFDB, only lets you search for whole words. If Ms.
> Adams didn't know whether Ursula's last name is "Le Guin" or "LeGuin",
> she could have just searched for "guin" or "ursula"; if Ms. Heydt
> wasn't sure whether "The Martian Star-Gazers" had a hyphen (or if she
> knew about the hyphen but just wanted to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome)
> she could have just typed "gazer" in the title search box.
Well, we have only 385,000 titles at the moment (385,323 as of this
minute), so we can do substring searches without overwhelming our
users with redundant results or killing our server's performance.
Google, on the other hand, knows of more than a million Web pages that
use the word "gazer", so they are in an inherently more difficult
position.
Anyway, it shouldn't be that hard to allow approximate searches using
our database's (MySQL) built-in capabilities, it's just a question of
finding enough free time now that we have resumed our software
development efforts. We also need to allow searches that ignore cover
art, interior art, reviews, etc since they make the results page hard
to read.
Keith F. Lynch
> Google, on the other hand, knows of more than a million Web pages
> that use the word "gazer", so they are in an inherently more
> difficult position.
Indeed. If they allowed substring searches, what if some prankster
searches for "e"? Or for the empty string?
They do seem to have a problem with searches that return millions of
results. Searches are supposed to always be case-insensitive, right?
So why do I get:
Results 1 - 10 of about 242,000,000 for obama.
Results 1 - 10 of about 49,600,000 for Obama.
Ben Yalow
>Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>> Ahasuerus <ahas...@email.com> wrote:
>>> On the other hand, it's at least arguable that we do a better
>>> job of searching our data than Google does of searching
>>> groups.google.com :-\
>Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't they
>realize what it's doing to their reputation?
Essentially nothing. To the extent that it's used for Usenet access, then
since Usenet is a backwater that nobody cares about, then anything they do
there is irrelevant to their reputation in things that people care about.
>> That is entirely possible. There's certainly more information per
>> kilobyte on ISFDB than on Google. But the former is a lot less
>> forgiving of people who don't know how to spell something than
>> the latter.
>On the other hand, often I don't *want* Google to correct my spelling.
>I wish there were a way to turn that feature off. They've long since
>turned "Did you mean?" into "Oh, you meant," and it's annoying and
>frustrating. Machines shouldn't presume they're smarter than I am,
>until such time as they really are.
>--
>Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
>Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Ben
--
Ben Yalow yb...@panix.com
Not speaking for anybody
David Friedman
Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
> >Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't they
> >realize what it's doing to their reputation?
>
> Essentially nothing. To the extent that it's used for Usenet access, then
> since Usenet is a backwater that nobody cares about, then anything they do
> there is irrelevant to their reputation in things that people care about.
I wonder if you are right.
I'm sure Usenet readers represent a very small minority of internet
users nowadays. But my impression is that it's a minority that is both
considerably older and considerably more involved with computers and the
net than the average, so might have a larger than average affect on
reputation in that world.
Keith F. Lynch
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>> Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't
>> they realize what it's doing to their reputation?
> Essentially nothing. To the extent that it's used for Usenet
> access, then since Usenet is a backwater that nobody cares about,
> then anything they do there is irrelevant to their reputation in
> things that people care about.
Google Groups is listed on, and liked to from, their main page.
And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
Philip Chee
> Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>> Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't
>>> they realize what it's doing to their reputation?
>
>> Essentially nothing. To the extent that it's used for Usenet
>> access, then since Usenet is a backwater that nobody cares about,
>> then anything they do there is irrelevant to their reputation in
>> things that people care about.
>
> Google Groups is listed on, and liked to from, their main page.
>
> And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
> reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
Including or excluding alt.binaries.*?
Phil
--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.
Keith F. Lynch
> Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>> And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
>> reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
> Including or excluding alt.binaries.*?
I don't know what proportion is binaries. Does it matter, except
to text-only users such as myself? The point is that Usenet is not
a backwater.
Jay E. Morris
On 5-Jul-2009, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my> wrote:
> > Keith F. Lynch wrote:
> >> And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
> >> reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
>
> > Including or excluding alt.binaries.*?
>
> I don't know what proportion is binaries. Does it matter, except
> to text-only users such as myself? The point is that Usenet is not
> a backwater.
Unless 90% of it's use is binaries for warez and porn, which is what the
ISPs claimed. If true, we live in a backwater of usenet, let alone the
internet.
The Doctor
WEll ISPs have the option to reject.
--
Member - Liberal International This is doc...@nl2k.ab.ca
Ici doc...@nl2k.ab.ca God, Queen and country! Beware Anti-Christ rising!
Never Satan President Republic!
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God". They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good. - Ps 53:1
Keith F. Lynch
> Jay E. Morris <mor...@epsilon3.com> wrote:
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>>> I don't know what proportion is binaries. Does it matter, except
>>> to text-only users such as myself? The point is that Usenet is
>>> not a backwater.
>> Unless 90% of it's use is binaries for warez and porn, which is
>> what the ISPs claimed. If true, we live in a backwater of usenet,
>> let alone the internet.
What's the appropriate metric for deciding what proportion is
binaries? The number of bits? By that metric, I'm much more into
movies than books, since my DVDs contain far more bits than all my
books. But in fact I own far more books than movies, and spend far
more time reading books than watching movies.
The point is that if Google thinks that Usenet is a backwater, then
Google is mistaken. Anyhow, Google Groups isn't just for Usenet.
They commingle their own groups there. I wish they had an option
to search just Usenet.
> WEll ISPs have the option to reject.
Certainly. And users have the option to reject such ISPs, and opt
for a full-service ISP: One which supports the web, email, *and*
Usenet, not just one or two of these three.
Ben Yalow
>Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
>> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> writes:
>>> Yes, it's baffling how bad groups.google.com has become. Don't
>>> they realize what it's doing to their reputation?
>> Essentially nothing. To the extent that it's used for Usenet
>> access, then since Usenet is a backwater that nobody cares about,
>> then anything they do there is irrelevant to their reputation in
>> things that people care about.
>Google Groups is listed on, and liked to from, their main page.
>And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
>reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
And the volume consists essentially entirely of binaries.
alt.binaries.multimedia got a few tens of thousands of postings today.
That's where the volume is -- not in the text groups.
If you're claiming the binaries groups aren't entirely a backwater, that's
a possibly defensible claim based on volume -- but that would mean
recognizing that Usenet is there to propogate warez, pr0n, and copyright
violations. And, oh yeah, sometimes some text -- but only tiny traces of
it, and that part is a backwater.
No provider drops the web. No provider drops email. No providers drops
P2P. Providers drop Usenet, and nobody cares -- their customer base
grows. If people cared about Usenet, then providers wouldn't drop it, or
their customers would leave -- instead, the few customers that care either
get Usenet from one of the few outside free providers, or they pay a
trivial amount to buy it from one of the commercial providers.
And, if you look at what the commercial providers sell, it's clear they're
providing a way to download binaries. So APN, one of the biggest
commercial providers, has, as its lowest plan, one for 12G/month. That's
a *lot* of text, but only a few hours of video, or a few unlocked/hacked
software packages. It's a bit cheaper than newsfeeds.com, which charges
the same for only 3G/month -- but even that is bigger than the text part
of Usenet. And Giganews is the same price as newsfeeds, with the same 3G
limit.
To the extent ISPs still offer Usenet, it's usually outsourced to people
like Giganews.
>--
>Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
>Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Ben
Richard Kennaway
> In <h2qq4v$6pu$1...@panix3.panix.com> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net>
> writes:
> >And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
> >reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
>
> And the volume consists essentially entirely of binaries.
Some ISPs take Usenet except binary groups. My own recently dropped
binaries (which I haven't looked at in years). What is the volume trend
of Usenet non-binaries?
--
Richard Kennaway
David Friedman
<1j2g5ji.1b5tz4gla8p5wN%drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku>,
drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku (Richard Kennaway)
wrote:
I don't know the answer to that question, but I do have a related
observation. I've been repeatedly struck with how high the average age
of posters, at least on the groups I read, seem to be. That suggests
that those who are now posting are largely people who started using
Usenet back before the web and email groups played as large a role as
they now do.
That said, a smaller fraction of a much bigger online population might
still be a larger number of people.
Keith F. Lynch
> I don't know the answer to that question, but I do have a related
> observation. I've been repeatedly struck with how high the average
> age of posters, at least on the groups I read, seem to be. That
> suggests that those who are now posting are largely people who
> started using Usenet back before the web and email groups played
> as large a role as they now do.
Very likely true. Usenet doesn't advertise. Proprietary sites such
as LiveJournal and Facebook presumably do. When I speak to younger
people about Usenet, many of them have never heard of it. Others have
heard of it, but express skepticism of my claim that it's still around.
(I guess the latter means that they don't support me in disputes with
the rest of you because they think the rest of you are imaginary. :-) )
I like Usenet largely because it *isn't* proprietary. I do not want
to spend a large proportion of my life building content for some
for-profit company unless I'm being paid for it. Besides, any one
proprietary system might suddenly go away, taking all my content
with it.
As for email groups, they actually came first, and were largely
replaced by Usenet. For instance this newsgroup descended from
the old SF-LOVERS email list, whose 30th anniversary is this year.
It's puzzling that the trend would reverse, especially since, what
with all the spam, email is more problematic than ever before.
> That said, a smaller fraction of a much bigger online population
> might still be a larger number of people.
Very true. I can remember when the volume of all email lists and
newsgroups put together was smaller than the current volume of this
newsgroup. Obviously, nobody at that time claimed that email lists
or newsgroups were obsolete.
Ben Yalow
A quick look shows that many groups are down substantially compared to
their volume a decade ago.
>--
>Richard Kennaway
Ben Yalow
>In article
><1j2g5ji.1b5tz4gla8p5wN%drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku>,
> drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku (Richard Kennaway)
> wrote:
>> Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
>> > In <h2qq4v$6pu$1...@panix3.panix.com> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net>
>> > writes:
>> > >And I don't believe Usenet is in any sense a backwater. From all
>> > >reports, total volume is higher than it's ever been before.
>> >
>> > And the volume consists essentially entirely of binaries.
>>
>> Some ISPs take Usenet except binary groups. My own recently dropped
>> binaries (which I haven't looked at in years). What is the volume trend
>> of Usenet non-binaries?
>I don't know the answer to that question, but I do have a related
>observation. I've been repeatedly struck with how high the average age
>of posters, at least on the groups I read, seem to be. That suggests
>that those who are now posting are largely people who started using
>Usenet back before the web and email groups played as large a role as
>they now do.
Right. Essentially, almost no new people use Usenet, and the old ones
slowly migrate off.
>That said, a smaller fraction of a much bigger online population might
>still be a larger number of people.
It could be -- but the groups I look at show fewer users than they did a
decade ago, and fewer posts.
>--
> http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
>Author of
>_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
>Cambridge University Press.
Ben
Keith F. Lynch
> drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku (Richard Kennaway) writes:
>> Some ISPs take Usenet except binary groups. My own recently
>> dropped binaries (which I haven't looked at in years). What is the
>> volume trend of Usenet non-binaries?
> A quick look shows that many groups are down substantially compared
> to their volume a decade ago.
A slower look shows that others are up substantially compared to
their volume a decade ago. For isntance alt.fan.cecil-adams (see
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil-adams/about). And the
total number of newsgroups is way up, even if you exclude the binary
newsgroups. So the total volume of text may be up, even if the
average amount of text per newsgroup is down.
David Friedman
"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
> > drachirREVERSE...@yawannek.gro.ku (Richard Kennaway) writes:
> >> Some ISPs take Usenet except binary groups. My own recently
> >> dropped binaries (which I haven't looked at in years). What is the
> >> volume trend of Usenet non-binaries?
>
> > A quick look shows that many groups are down substantially compared
> > to their volume a decade ago.
>
> A slower look shows that others are up substantially compared to
> their volume a decade ago. For isntance alt.fan.cecil-adams (see
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil-adams/about). And the
> total number of newsgroups is way up, even if you exclude the binary
> newsgroups. So the total volume of text may be up, even if the
> average amount of text per newsgroup is down.
Interesting. a.f.c-a increased a lot--ten fold from 1996 to 2006,
holding roughly steady since then.
r.a.sf.c seems to have peaked in 2003, been declining since then, last
year about 35% of the peak.
r.a.sf.f peaked in 2001, declining since. Last year was about a quarter
of the peak.
r.a.sf.w peaked in 2000, but declined more slowly--by last year, it was
at about 59% of the peak.
Fairly consistent pattern for the sf groups.
Of course, I don't know how many of those posts were spam--if the
percentage has increased then the real decline is more than it appears.
Keith F. Lynch
> Interesting. a.f.c-a increased a lot--ten fold from 1996 to 2006,
> holding roughly steady since then.
I notice that you're a major poster there too. I don't know where
you find the time.
> r.a.sf.f peaked in 2001, declining since. Last year was about a
> quarter of the peak.
I find the current volume here to be comfortable. The past volume
here, and afca's current volume, is too much for me.
> Of course, I don't know how many of those posts were spam--if the
> percentage has increased then the real decline is more than it
> appears.
That's why I didn't cite newsgroups I'm not familiar with -- or ones
that I know *are* overrun with spam, such as the alt.sex groups. As
you know, there's not much spam here or on afca.
David Friedman
"Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> > Interesting. a.f.c-a increased a lot--ten fold from 1996 to 2006,
> > holding roughly steady since then.
>
> I notice that you're a major poster there too. I don't know where
> you find the time.
Only recently. Things were a bit dull in the groups I had been posting
in. Also, it's summer, I don't teach in the summer, and I'm not involved
in any major projects at the moment so doing a bit too much lotus eating.
> > Of course, I don't know how many of those posts were spam--if the
> > percentage has increased then the real decline is more than it
> > appears.
>
> That's why I didn't cite newsgroups I'm not familiar with -- or ones
> that I know *are* overrun with spam, such as the alt.sex groups. As
> you know, there's not much spam here or on afca.
I don't know, because I don't know if a substantial amount is filtered
out before it gets to me.
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>> A quick look shows that many groups are down substantially compared
>> to their volume a decade ago.
>
> A slower look shows that others are up substantially compared to
> their volume a decade ago. For isntance alt.fan.cecil-adams (see
> http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.cecil-adams/about). And the
> total number of newsgroups is way up, even if you exclude the binary
> newsgroups. So the total volume of text may be up, even if the
> average amount of text per newsgroup is down.
How many of those are joke groups in the alt.* hierarchy, like
alt.fan.karl-maldens.nose? And how many of them are nothing but spam?
--
Sean O'Hara <http://www.diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
New audio book: As Long as You Wish by John O'Keefe
<http://librivox.org/short-science-fiction-collection-010/>
Seth
Ben Yalow <yb...@panix.com> wrote:
>No provider drops the web. No provider drops email. No providers drops
>P2P.
The latter isn't true.
Seth