Ain't the same without Ed

[Bill Blevins‏]

Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.

Ed, get your ass back on asp.

Bill

[David Griffith‏]

Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.

> Ed, get your ass back on asp.

I'm hoping for a revival of Usenet in the wake of Facebook censoring
itself out of relevance and usability.


--
David Griffith
da...@661.org

[Bill Blevins‏]

That's an interesting thought, but it would require a couple of things. First, providers would have to start carrying a news feed. Second, they would have to make the masses aware of it. We have an entire generation that doesn't even know what usenet is.

[David Griffith‏]

Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 5:00:16 PM UTC-6, David Griffith wrote:
>> Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.
>>
>> > Ed, get your ass back on asp.
>> I'm hoping for a revival of Usenet in the wake of Facebook censoring
>> itself out of relevance and usability.

> That's an interesting thought, but it would require a couple of
> things. First, providers would have to start carrying a news feed.
> Second, they would have to make the masses aware of it. We have an
> entire generation that doesn't even know what usenet is.

It wouldn't necessarily require ISPs to run newsservers. It's easy and
cheap enough for someone to start a VM at some hosting company to run a
server.


--
David Griffith
da...@661.org

[Daniel‏]

Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> writes:

> Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.

Congrats on deleting facebook. I did that in 2009.

> Ed, get your ass back on asp.

I feel you brother.

--
Daniel
Visit me at: gopher://gcpp.world

[Daniel‏]

da...@661.org (David Griffith) writes:

> Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.
>
>> Ed, get your ass back on asp.
>
> I'm hoping for a revival of Usenet in the wake of Facebook censoring
> itself out of relevance and usability.

Kids are saying that facebook is for the boomers. They don't realize the
other shit they use is still facebook.

[Daniel‏]

You would think... Until you look at the demands a usenet node would
have.

https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/comments/7xnymz/run_your_own_server/

This is one such discussion about this very topic.

[Daniel‏]

da...@661.org (David Griffith) writes:

> Bill Blevins <bblev...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Puffing on some John Rolfe Match in an old Kaywoodie. Deleted my Facebook account. I prefer the old ways.
>
>> Ed, get your ass back on asp.
>
> I'm hoping for a revival of Usenet in the wake of Facebook censoring
> itself out of relevance and usability.

I'm an avid member of a new grass roots effort to build a brand new
8-bit computer called the Commander X16. On the forum, I suggested that
we stand up a usenet newsgroup to expand our reach.

Wow, I did not expect such debate and such negative naysaying.

The biggest complaint was spam, pirated everything, and flame wars on
star wars vs star trek. Nothing was relly relevant to my request and
pointed to old biases.

Anyway, even on the retro scene, usenet gets alot of flak.

[Tim Daneliuk‏]

On 2/19/21 5:00 PM, David Griffith wrote:
> I'm hoping for a revival of Usenet in the wake of Facebook censoring
> itself out of relevance and usability.

So long as the transport is owned by Big Tech, the elites that run these
giant technology companies - any of them - are in the position to decide
who does- and does not get a platform to speak. That includes, most
especially, the companies that control internet connectivity. Whether
it is your local 5G, broadband, or even copper provider, they ultimately
can decide who does- and does not get internet access.

I personally think that we're better off when everyone gets to speak
their minds, even when I hate what they say. Bad ideas die more quickly
if they are given public voice. The peaks of insanity you see on both
the left and right politically are more easily spotted when they are public.
So whether they are white supremacists, Nazis, moonbat conspiracists, Marxists,
or AOC, I want them all to be given voice ... so the majority of us who
are still sane can keep an eye on them. Censoring them just drives
them underground where they are harder to track.

I am not a conspiracist but I do think that Big Tech has way too much power.
The problem is that their users gave them that power, they didn't seize it
and now they own - as privately owned property - the platforms that
give- or deny people a place to speak and be heard. I am unsympathetic
to arguments that government should regulate them. The least fit people to
run anything are regulators. If people really value privacy and uncensored
speech they have to take communications into their own hands.

One way around this is to go back to a UUCP style store-and-forward (what
USENET originally ran on) over a low power packet radio. Store and forward
to avoid having to have any one centralized server with all the content on it,
and low power to avoid having to license the radio transmissions.

"Free Speech" doesn't mean you should be forced to listen. It does mean
you'll be around people you can't stand.

'Glad I hung on to my old uucp manuals :)

[Al Lanman‏]

Well Ed is alive and well and posting on BriarPatch as of two hours ago:

I quote:
"good on me for a change....posting in right thread! Tea at desk, Exotique in LaughingBacchus meer in smoking room. Heard it no longer being produced, a great one for the lata-lover

34, drizzly rain, some snow melt/sloppy out

Ed Duncan, Batavia, NY
gots 'em, smokes 'em since '62"

[David Griffith‏]

The 37.35 TiB per month figure seems based on including binary groups,
which is not what I want to do.


--
David Griffith
da...@661.org

[David Griffith‏]

I too have been thinking of using radio to link Usenet servers.
Traditional packet, even going with 9600 bps will work. Wifi with
highly-directional antennas set up point-to-point seem like the best
approach. That seems to work well with standard APs as long as you get
the antennas up high enough and aimed right.

I'm uncertain how this can be made to work with omnidirectional antennas
and remain unlicensed. A Usenet backbone run by hams with users
connecting through the internet certainly is possible. I'm unclear
though if passing traffic by non-hams would run afoul of the rules of
amateur radio.


--
David Griffith
da...@661.org

[Daniel‏]

I really love this discussion. I'm not, by any means, a HAM
guy... Yet. I really want to get my license at some point. My dream is
to do packet radio and do some packet bbs work. I've seen a few youtube
vids where they've done some marvelous work moving the technology
forward.

One mustn't be a conspiracy nut to fear big tech.

[Tim Daneliuk‏]

On 2/26/21 12:21 AM, David Griffith wrote:

> Tim Daneliuk <in...@tundraware.com> wrote:

>> 'Glad I hung on to my old uucp manuals :)
>
> I too have been thinking of using radio to link Usenet servers.
> Traditional packet, even going with 9600 bps will work. Wifi with
> highly-directional antennas set up point-to-point seem like the best
> approach. That seems to work well with standard APs as long as you get
> the antennas up high enough and aimed right.
>
> I'm uncertain how this can be made to work with omnidirectional antennas
> and remain unlicensed. A Usenet backbone run by hams with users
> connecting through the internet certainly is possible. I'm unclear
> though if passing traffic by non-hams would run afoul of the rules of
> amateur radio.

There are a number of unlicensed low-power radio models to use. First,
one could use meshed WiFi - much like you see in large building or - these
days - even in your own home.

There are also sub-100mw radio allocations that require no licensing.

Since USENET is entirely text, one could imagine heavy compression and
encryption being used to minimize the size and visibility of the
payloads. Another to deliver them would be over a peer-to-peer UUCP
style delivery over a cell phone network.

The salient points here are:

- Distribute the content widely so no single server is a deadly
point of failure or under the control of a single entity.
This comes at the cost of speed of delivery. You eventually get
the groups you care about, but not in real time.

- Use multiple transports, not just one, to replicate the delivery
as many ways as possible using existing infrastructure.

- Use compression, encryption, and TOR routing type models to
anonymize as much as possible.

But let's not kid ourselves. Such models also have big downsides. Witness the
use of TOR for really evil purposes like murder for hire, child abuse, and so on.

I don't quite know what the answer to this is, but letting Google, LinkedIn, Reddit,
AWS, Azure, FaceBook, etc. decide what is "acceptable" speech is not ... acceptable
to me. The tech giants depend on central control to decide who does- and does
not get platform access. Remove that centralization and no one controls
anything.

Make no mistake, they just targeted "undesirable" political
speech. But they are absolutely going to target anything their woke
insanity dictates. Do you smoke a pipe? Do you eat red meat? Are you devout in
your traditional religious practices? All of these and more are already under
attack by the elites. They hide behind claims of virtue, but what they
really want is control.

Bad ideas thrive in the dark. They die in sunlight.

[Eric Kristian‏]

Facebook provides an easy way of putting up a photo or video, and provides some almost instantaneous feedback on one's post. But I'm with Bill on this one - I like the older ways too. ASP is rich with information and resources if you can take the time to dig through everything.

My pipe smoking mentor "Rusty" from CPS really enjoyed ASP. He kept his toe dipped in some of the other Forums (Kansas City, Pipes.org (Mel), Smokers Forums to name a couple off the top of my head.

So many of these are now gone or gathering thick layers of dust these days. The back rooms of Smokerforums are on life support. Sad really.

I always thought of ASP as the 'modern' version of Tom Dunn's "Ephemeris" so to speak.

<Sigh>

[Brian Barcus‏]

On 2021-05-21, Eric Kristian <berline...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The back rooms of Smokerforums are on life support. Sad really.
>

I'd love to see ASP get new life and be what it used to be but that
probably won't happen. There's still a few of us keeping the lights on
so I'll keep poking my head in occasionally to see what's happening.

--
The pipe smoker’s equivalent to a riot: a bunch of
guys raising their eyebrows and temporarily engaging
in a paroxysm of heavy puffing. --G. L. Pease

Brian Barcus
br...@barcus.org

[Eric Kristian‏]

Hi Brian,

Nice to make your acquaintance! I love digging through these old threads to follow the old conversations. So many personalities and excellent topics to read.

E

[Daniel‏]

Brian Barcus <bgba...@barcus.org> writes:

> On 2021-05-21, Eric Kristian <berline...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The back rooms of Smokerforums are on life support. Sad really.
>>
> I'd love to see ASP get new life and be what it used to be but that
> probably won't happen. There's still a few of us keeping the lights on
> so I'll keep poking my head in occasionally to see what's happening.

I lurk mostly, but I'm here. I hold onto my old ASP zippos like it's a
prized family posession.

[Louis F Carbone‏]

We miss you Ed!

Lou, NYPC

[Jim‏]

Concur.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly, it merely
expects users to be computer friendly.

[Brad‏]

I can hope. but being a really old fart, I don't know that I'll live long enough. I spent many hours on ASP, have several of the specials like pipes and Zippos, and miss seeing posts from all the contributors.
Brad
the old fogey.