Adios, for a while at least

[Thomas E.]

It's been quite a ride. My first post was in the late 1990's when this group was a lively MacOS vs Windows discussion forum. W95/98 and OS 7 or 8 were still current topics. Today CSMA is a shadow of its former self. There are only 3 of us and a few x-poster's left, arguing back and forth about most anything but Mac vs Windows. Then there is the Wally troll persona, making wild and false claims about Apple, the company ,and the customers.

In truth, Mac vs Windows was settled a long time ago. Today both are highly developed operating systems with significant differences, but vastly improved. Mac no longer needs advocacy. The forum became redundant a long time ago. Apple and Microsoft are doing just fine without this forum.

So it's goodbye for a while. We leave Friday for the annual 2-week Colorado ski trip. With Google Groups becoming a history repository tomorrow the activity level has dropped. A good time to enjoy the mountains again and focus on just having fun.

Apparently those remaining don't value CSMA enough to go to a paid service. NNTP will live on for a while, remains to seen how long. It's a primitive system, long of tooth like FTP. I'll not be surprised if it eventually dies.

[-hh]

On Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 7:51:09 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
> It's been quite a ride. My first post was in the late 1990's when this group was
> a lively MacOS vs Windows discussion forum. W95/98 and OS 7 or 8 were
> still current topics.

And of course, there was also a good deal of trolling back then too.
Searching Google, it looks like my own earliest archived CSMA post was
probably from 1997:

<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.mac.advocacy/c/JVguVCnvtog/m/4Z_MXbOuGEMJ>

For other newsgroups, my earliest still archived post is much earlier; earliest one
that I'm aware of is from the <comp.sys.mac.digest> newsgroup in 1988, using
what was then my ARPA account of <huntzing @ ardec.arpa> :

<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.mac.digest/c/UcFOfMP1IkA/m/ORiWo_gXwz8J>

> Today CSMA is a shadow of its former self. There are only 3 of us and
> a few x-poster's left, arguing back and forth about most anything but
> Mac vs Windows. Then there is the Wally troll persona, making wild and
> false claims about Apple, the company, and the customers.

That's pretty much true of all of USENET. The decline started in earnest probably
~2 decades ago with the advent of non-USENET media (eg Reddit in 2005), which
reduced the number of new incoming users, so USENET's active user base shrank,
became static, and basically (& literally) "died out".

> In truth, Mac vs Windows was settled a long time ago. Today both are highly
> developed operating systems with significant differences, but vastly improved.
> Mac no longer needs advocacy. The forum became redundant a long time ago.
> Apple and Microsoft are doing just fine without this forum.

Sure, but better not tell the remaining Linux fanboys that: those clinger-ons are still
convinced that its a vast conspiracy of evil capitalism, not product quality, for why
Linux has still pretty much gone nowhere on the desktop.

> So it's goodbye for a while. We leave Friday for the annual 2-week Colorado ski trip.

We also leave on a Friday for a holiday ... /s

> With Google Groups becoming a history repository tomorrow the activity level
> has dropped. A good time to enjoy the mountains again and focus on just having fun.

Dropping of GG might reduce the random spammers...or maybe not; time will tell.

> Apparently those remaining don't value CSMA enough to go to a paid service.
> NNTP will live on for a while, remains to seen how long. It's a primitive system,
> long of tooth like FTP. I'll not be surprised if it eventually dies.

There's free solutions for both Software and a NNTP Server.

Plus there's those non-USENET alternatives such as www.reddit.com/r/mac/ ,
.../r/osx/ , and .../r/apple/ - - although these aren't 'advocacy' troll honeypots.


-hh

[Thomas E.]

Linux is a joke. A few years back a Linux nutcase told me to write my own printer driver if Linux would not work for my HP laser printer. That's bit of a stretch for anyone with plug-and-play printer drivers.

I had some experience with a Linux machine that a car dealer had in the waiting room and used only for web browsing. I was not impressed.

I have read reviews of the free NNTP stuff. Not very positive. Agent Newsreader/Usernet is a paid service I know well, and offers a 30 day free trial. I'll probably go that route if I come back.