Thoth 2: the return of Thoth
Corentin Cras-Méneur
the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
Hi All,
I recently exchanged a few e-mails with Brian Clark, the author of
the newsreader Thoth. For those of you who don't know Thoth, it is a
news-reader derived from NewsWatcher, then YA-NewsWatcher (just like
VA-NewsWatcher and MT-NewsWatcher). Thoth was shareware.
A while ago (maybe two years??) Brian stopped developing Thoth because
of various factor (including the loss of revenue related to piracy:
hard to survive out there, code and pay the Web-Hosting bill if people
use the app without ever getting a license). Since then, the app hasn't
been available at all.
It looks like Biran could be ready to work on Thoth again, but the
cost of developing the app, hosting it on a server, etc, makes him
wonder whether it really is worth it.
He has a version 1.8 on the work and a version 2 is also planned
(and the few screen captures for various new ideas he has for v2 looked
pretty nice to me :-) ).
v1.8 brings various improvements, including in regard to
spell-checking (and it allows you to chose the language to spell-check
in depending on the newsgroup... pretty good for people like me :-) )
and v2 looks like a complete revamping of the app: Preferences
management for instance are regrouped in a nice pane making it much
easier to access everything (a lot of people have been complaining in
the past about the fact that preferences were hard to deal with in
Thoth).
I don't know how/when new versions will be made available. I don't
know what will be free updates and what will be paid upgrades (and I'm
not sure Brian's mind is quite set on that yet) so this is mostly a
poll to find out whether people would be interested to see Thoth
development start again.
If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
Corentin
--
"L'erreur est humaine, un véritable désastre nécessite un ordinateur"
- Loi de Murphy appliquée à l'informatique -
Pensez à retirer le "NoSpam" de mon adresse en répondant par mail.
Please remove the "NoSpam" from my address when replying by e-mail.
Donald Stidwell
For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
Currently, I'm bouncing back and forth between Entourage and Pan (under
Fink), but not really satisfied with either. But hard to tell a developer
that you want him to pick up development again on a program that you don't
know much about.
Don
Corentin Cras-Méneur
Stidwell <donalds...@192.168.5.20> wrote:
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
I wish... Brian could not afford to keep on paying for the hosting
anymore, so it currently isn't. I'm trying to get him to let me post at
least screen captures somewhere. We'll see what he says :-)
> Currently, I'm bouncing back and forth between Entourage and Pan (under
> Fink), but not really satisfied with either.
I have no my Mac:
Halime
Hogwasher
MacSOUP 2.8
MT-NewsWatcher 3.4
OSXnews
Thoth
Unison
Xnntp
an none of them really satisfy me :-\
> But hard to tell a developer
> that you want him to pick up development again on a program that you don't
> know much about.
Send him an e-mail to ask him where to see screen captures or get more
information about Thoth ;-)
I *could* host a page with screen captures and more info actually...
Garner Miller
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
> simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
> know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
I'd definitely be interested, and I'll send him a note right now. Glad
to hear he's considering it again -- I still use it happily to this
day, and just hope a future OS update won't break it. It's held up
remarkably well.
--
Garner R. Miller
Clifton Park, NY =USA=
http://www.garnermiller.com/
Dave Balderstone
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
Have a look at YA-Newswatcher.
As for Brian, there's a school of thought that he stopped distributing
Thoth because he essentially got caught violating the original
Newswatcher code license. Others dispute this.
If Brian wants to guage interest in a new version of Thoth, I think
*he* should be out here asking about it. I wonder why he isn't?
Corentin Cras-Méneur
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> As for Brian, there's a school of thought that he stopped distributing
> Thoth because he essentially got caught violating the original
> Newswatcher code license. Others dispute this.
I remember reading this as well and I believe he did.
I *think* it was said that the NewsWatcher license was open and
therefore no application derived from it could be shareware - or
something like that. It doesn't look like it actually was the case. In
any way, the fact that he is considering re-developing Thoth pleads
against this hypothesis :-)
> If Brian wants to guage interest in a new version of Thoth, I think
> *he* should be out here asking about it. I wonder why he isn't?
I clearly don't know :-)
We exchanged several e-mails in the past few weeks and he told me that
he'd need to be able to assess how much interest there would be for new
versions of Thoth. I just relayed the information and the e-mail
address. After all since I do use Thoth myself, it is also in my
interest if people know about this and e-mail Brian to get the app back
in development ;-)
Again, you could send him an e-mail and ask him directly ;-)
thoth...@earthlink.net
Corentin Cras-Méneur
<gar...@netstreet.net> wrote:
> I still use it happily to this
> day, and just hope a future OS update won't break it. It's held up
> remarkably well.
It works rather well in Tiger for me, but I can only welcome future new
additions to the app. Also, I don't currently have a MacIntel, but I
could only guess that a Universal Binary version would be welcome
too...
Howard S Shubs
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
If you've tried MT-Newswatcher, you've got the general idea.
Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
really enthused about him coming back.
--
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams.
from "Ode", Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Neill Massello
> Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
> Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
> really enthused about him coming back.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .
Dave Balderstone
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
> Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
> really enthused about him coming back.
I'm still using Thoth, but given Brian's history of snit fits I don't
think I'd give him money again. If Thoth breaks, I'll move to something
else.
Anonymous
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> he'd need to be able to assess how much interest there would be for new
> versions of Thoth.
Brian seems a bit whacky. He stopped working on Thoth twice actually,
not just once. He seems to like having people beg him to resume.
Thoth has been unavailable for so long that some programmer would have
had plenty of time to create something with the same look-and-feel but
original source code by now. That's what we need really, is a
Thoth-like app done by somebody more stable than Brian.
Anonymous
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
Not on the web exactly. It is often posted in
alt.binaries.mac.applications
Charles
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> I'm still using Thoth, but given Brian's history of snit fits I don't
> think I'd give him money again. If Thoth breaks, I'll move to something
> else.
I would gladly give Brian money for an improved version, particularly
if it supported the Intel Macs. Thoth is a great newsreader app. As for
supposed history, I percieve it differently. A vocal group of
cheapskates harping on him because they felt they had a right to the
program without paying.
--
Charles
Donald E. Stidwell
howard-34FE3D....@news.supernews.com, "Howard S Shubs"
<how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <pan.2006.04.27....@192.168.5.20>,
> Donald Stidwell <donalds...@192.168.5.20> wrote:
>
>> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
>> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
>
> If you've tried MT-Newswatcher, you've got the general idea.
Ah - well that may be unfortunate as I am in no way enamoured of
MT-Newswatcher either - in fact, if I'm going to use a non-OS X looking and
acting application, I'd prefer to use Pan (and do). I tried MT-Newswatcher
for several months, but in the end decided that Entourage and Pan are both
easier to use.
Don
Charles
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> After all since I do use Thoth myself, it is also in my
> interest if people know about this and e-mail Brian to get the app back
> in development ;-)
I hope everyone who would like to see new versions of Thoth will take
the time to e-mail Brian. As I said in another post I would gladly pay
for an improved version. The improvements that have been mentioned
would be worth it. I have been using Thoth everyday for some years now
and the paltry $25 I paid for it was a bargain.
--
Charles
Howard S Shubs
neillm...@earthlink.net (Neill Massello) wrote:
> Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . .
Exactly. It's not a way to get possible customers to think well of you.
Howard S Shubs
Dave Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> I'm still using Thoth, but given Brian's history of snit fits I don't
> think I'd give him money again. If Thoth breaks, I'll move to something
> else.
Yes, and I remember you from the threads back then. Neither one of us
was particularly happy with him.
Howard S Shubs
"Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> Ah - well that may be unfortunate as I am in no way enamoured of
> MT-Newswatcher either - in fact, if I'm going to use a non-OS X looking and
> acting application, I'd prefer to use Pan (and do). I tried MT-Newswatcher
> for several months, but in the end decided that Entourage and Pan are both
> easier to use.
Then you're all set.
Howard S Shubs
Charles <for...@mac.com> wrote:
> I would gladly give Brian money for an improved version, particularly
> if it supported the Intel Macs. Thoth is a great newsreader app. As for
> supposed history, I percieve it differently. A vocal group of
> cheapskates harping on him because they felt they had a right to the
> program without paying.
And the rest of us, who paid, got screwed.
Dave Balderstone
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> Neither one of us
> was particularly happy with him.
I was unhapppy with the tone of things on both sides, but thought that
Brian's tantrum spoke poorly of him and gave a fair bit of credence to
his critics.
D P Schreber
> Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
> Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
> really enthused about him coming back.
I second this. I paid for Thoth, I'll certainly never pay for anything
else from this source.
As for the program itself, it worked reliably and had all the required
functionality: good enough to buy at the time it first appeared. But
the design was a mess. This was the most overly complicated news reader
I've ever seen.
Lot-o-fun
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <270420062200124492%for...@mac.com>,
> Charles <for...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > I would gladly give Brian money for an improved version, particularly
> > if it supported the Intel Macs. Thoth is a great newsreader app. As for
> > supposed history, I percieve it differently. A vocal group of
> > cheapskates harping on him because they felt they had a right to the
> > program without paying.
>
> And the rest of us, who paid, got screwed.
I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
Howard S Shubs
Lot-o-fun <loto...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
> the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
Good for you. Not all of us got that.
Philo D
currently still using Thoth!
Jack Daniels
<do...@earthling.net.invalid> wrote:
> It is interesting to look at the headers in this thread, to see who is
> currently still using Thoth!
I've been using for many years, with many versions of OSX and it has
never le me down once. For me, it is the Rolls Royce among newsreader
applications. And yes, I have used Hogwasher, Unison, MT Newswatcher,
YA Newswatcher, Macsoup,...
Philo D
> And the rest of us, who paid, got screwed.
I paid. I got a good program. And I am still using it.
Steve Maser
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
> simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
> know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
>
>
> Corentin
Done! I still use it and would like to have a Universal Binary if
nothing else...
- Steve
Charles Dyer
(in article <howard-34FE3D....@news.supernews.com>):
> In article <pan.2006.04.27....@192.168.5.20>,
> Donald Stidwell <donalds...@192.168.5.20> wrote:
>
>> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
>> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
>
> If you've tried MT-Newswatcher, you've got the general idea.
>
> Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
> Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
> really enthused about him coming back.
>
>
I paid for YANW, too. I did not pay for Thoth precisely because I'd paid for
YANW and he left me high and dry. I predicted that he'd pull Thoth; his
loyalists insisted that he'd do no such thing. And when I was proved correct,
they then said that those of us who'd refused to drink the Kool-Aide 'cause
we'd been burned before were part of the reason why Their Hero bailed. I
hereby predict that if Thoth 2 actually is allowed out, sooner rather than
later he'll pull it too, leaving yet another generation of users high and
dry. This will be at least the third time he's done this. You'd think that
some people would learn, but no... (The Great Man's followers frothed that
Thoth still worked, so there was no downside. I said that future Apple
developments might cause trouble. Hmmm... how well _does_ Thoth work under
Rosetta? And, btw, I seem to recall that The Great Man had a decoding utility
also named Rosetta, quite some time ago. Hmmm...)
As anyone who can read headers can see, I have no problems paying for
software in general and newsreaders in particular. (Hogwasher is _not_
free...) If The Great Man had not taken my money and then shut down a few
weeks later, or if he'd given me back my money, or if he'd offered me a
license even at some nominal cost for his new ventures, perhaps I'd have a
different opinion. As it is, I regard him as nothing more than a thief... and
that's regardless of exactly what the NewsWatcher code license says or what
he did with any NW code. _That_ aspect is between The Great Man and
Northwestern University and John Norstrad. Not my business. Giving money to
a con artist who'll bail for any reason or no reason at all and leave his
users stranded, now that is my business.
Ah, well... the Faithful will beg him to return, and will pay up, again. And
will get burned when he bails, again. And I will laugh.
--
We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Stability is irrelevant.
Where _you_ want to go to today is irrelevant. We will add your currency to
our own. Bend over right now. Resistance is futile.
Bruce Grubb
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> [[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
> the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
>
> Hi All,
>
>
> I recently exchanged a few e-mails with Brian Clark, the author of
> the newsreader Thoth. For those of you who don't know Thoth, it is a
> news-reader derived from NewsWatcher, then YA-NewsWatcher (just like
> VA-NewsWatcher and MT-NewsWatcher). Thoth was shareware.
>
> A while ago (maybe two years??) Brian stopped developing Thoth because
> of various factor (including the loss of revenue related to piracy:
> hard to survive out there, code and pay the Web-Hosting bill if people
> use the app without ever getting a license). Since then, the app hasn't
> been available at all.
Well there were a lot of reasons Thoth went kaput (many reiterated in the
the 'Brian Clark and Thoth' thread some years ago. Many of these same
problems were evident with YA-Newsacher (which had the added headache of
trying to be both shareware and freeware)
> It looks like Biran could be ready to work on Thoth again, but the
> cost of developing the app, hosting it on a server, etc, makes him
> wonder whether it really is worth it.
IHMO the Newsreader market on the mac is now way over saturated, even more
than it was when Thoth was removed.
In addition to old standbys like MacSOUP, Newscape, THunderbird, and
MT-Newswatcher you have Unix ports/homegrown like Xnntp and NewsCarrier.
<http://www.newsreaders.com/mac/clients.html> and newcomers like OSXnews.
Madwen
Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> I paid for YANW, too. I did not pay for Thoth precisely because I'd paid for
> YANW and he left me high and dry. I predicted that he'd pull Thoth; his
> loyalists insisted that he'd do no such thing.
That's when I switched from YANW to MTNW and said never again re Brian
Clark. I vividly recall Brian's posts attacking YANW users and the
whole YANW debacle. Very bad form. So when Thoth came around and its
highly predicable demise/hiatus, I never even bothered to read most of
the ensuing bruhaha.
> ...And when I was proved correct,
Corentin Cras-Méneur
<n...@spam.invalid> wrote:
> Meh. I like Thoth, and if he offers it again I'll use it. I don't
> really care what he says or does in public, all I care about is a
> newsreader I can use.
I would tend to agree. I've paid once for Thoth ages ago and the app
worked just fine to this day.
> I do, however, hope that he would make the new Thoth so that its
> preference options aren't so complicated...that's about the only real
> gripe I have with it.
From what I understood, that should be a big focus of v2.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
> I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
> the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
So did I but I think Howard was referring to the fact that he had paid
for YA-NewsWatcher and wasn't happy not to get Thoth for free when it
was released. Since I never used YA-NewsWatcher and I don;t know the
story behind all that, I can't really comment on it myself.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> I was unhapppy with the tone of things on both sides, but thought that
> Brian's tantrum spoke poorly of him and gave a fair bit of credence to
> his critics.
Which doesn't affect the quality of the app as far as I am concerned.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
<schre...@rayban.net> wrote:
> But
> the design was a mess. This was the most overly complicated news reader
> I've ever seen.
THat's precisely why I would like v2 to see the light of day. From what
I've seen, it should be tremendously easier to setup.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
<bgr...@zianet.com> wrote:
> IHMO the Newsreader market on the mac is now way over saturated, even more
> than it was when Thoth was removed.
Yes and no. It's true that there are quite a few newsreaders out there
nowadays, they all have their strengths but I simply cannot find all
that I want in one single application.
MacSoup, Hogwasher, Thoth and Thunderbird have some representation of
the threads (I won;t even mention the other newsreaders, because it
really is all about the threads for newsgroups as far as I am
concerned).
MacSoup lacks a bit in usability IMVHO, HogWasher takes for ever to do
anything on my Mac - to the point that I don't use it at all anymore
even though I have a license. Thunderbird is not quite there yet. I
would happily pay for a new and improved version of Thoth.
Quentin Cornish
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 17:04:17 -0500, Corentin Cras-Méneur wrote:
>
> > [[ This message was both posted and mailed: see
> > the "To," "Cc," and "Newsgroups" headers for details. ]]
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> >
> > I recently exchanged a few e-mails with Brian Clark, the author of
> > the newsreader Thoth. For those of you who don't know Thoth, it is a
> > news-reader derived from NewsWatcher, then YA-NewsWatcher (just like
> > VA-NewsWatcher and MT-NewsWatcher). Thoth was shareware.
> >
> > A while ago (maybe two years??) Brian stopped developing Thoth because
> > of various factor (including the loss of revenue related to piracy:
> > hard to survive out there, code and pay the Web-Hosting bill if people
> > use the app without ever getting a license). Since then, the app hasn't
> > been available at all.
> >
> > It looks like Biran could be ready to work on Thoth again, but the
> > cost of developing the app, hosting it on a server, etc, makes him
> > wonder whether it really is worth it.
> > He has a version 1.8 on the work and a version 2 is also planned
> > (and the few screen captures for various new ideas he has for v2 looked
> > pretty nice to me :-) ).
> > v1.8 brings various improvements, including in regard to
> > spell-checking (and it allows you to chose the language to spell-check
> > in depending on the newsgroup... pretty good for people like me :-) )
> > and v2 looks like a complete revamping of the app: Preferences
> > management for instance are regrouped in a nice pane making it much
> > easier to access everything (a lot of people have been complaining in
> > the past about the fact that preferences were hard to deal with in
> > Thoth).
> >
> > I don't know how/when new versions will be made available. I don't
> > know what will be free updates and what will be paid upgrades (and I'm
> > not sure Brian's mind is quite set on that yet) so this is mostly a
> > poll to find out whether people would be interested to see Thoth
> > development start again.
> >
> > If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
> > simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
> > know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
> >
> >
> > Corentin
>
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
>
> Currently, I'm bouncing back and forth between Entourage and Pan (under
> Fink), but not really satisfied with either. But hard to tell a developer
> that you want him to pick up development again on a program that you don't
> know much about.
>
> Don
>
You can find it posted every few days or so, on
<alt.binaries.mac.applications> because people have kept on asking for
it. Clark left no way for people to pay for it, so 1.7.2 has continued
doing the rounds. It'll work in a limited fashion without registering -
enough for you do see what you think. Most people who've used it don't
want to see it go.
I'm one of those who mailed Clark in the first place, encouraging him
to keep with it - I'm one of those who paid.
Q.
Chip G.
> > And the rest of us, who paid, got screwed.
>
> I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
> the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
ditto
--
--Chip
remove dots in prefix to fix email address
TaliesinSoft
<280420061015390224%cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr>):
> HogWasher takes for ever to do anything on my Mac - to the point that I
> don't use it at all anymore even though I have a license.
I've been using Hogwasher for a number of years now (currently I'm using
Hogwasher 4.2.2 under OS X 10.4.6) and have never felt that it was slow.
--
James Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... talies...@mac.com
Dave Balderstone
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <270420062158274174%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>, Dave
> Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
>
> > I was unhapppy with the tone of things on both sides, but thought that
> > Brian's tantrum spoke poorly of him and gave a fair bit of credence to
> > his critics.
>
> Which doesn't affect the quality of the app as far as I am concerned.
No, but it affects my willingness to give the man any more of my money.
I am not interested in a new version of Thoth. When it breaks under
whatever version of the OS, I'll move on to something else.
Phil Stripling
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> Which doesn't affect the quality of the app as far as I am concerned.
I agree that it doesn't affect the quality of his application. I'm
using Thoth right now, in fact, paid for and registered.
But Thoth isn't the first application he started and quit. I don't
recall what the program was, but I do recall reading in Usenet the
argument he got into with someone and quit in anger because he wasn't
happy with the feedback.
Then he came up with Thoth and a couple of other applications and quit
them, too.
And you're saying now he's back? Again? I'll predict a year or two and
another quit. Again. It's not the quality of programming, it's the
failure to keep the program going for the long haul.
Meanwhile, so long as Thoth isn't broken by my Mac, its OS, and the
processor, I'll stick with it.
--
Phil Stripling | email to the replyto address is presumed
The Civilized Explorer | spam and read later. email from this URL
http://www.cieux.com/ | http://www.civex.com/ is read daily.
Urra Dipschitt
Howard S Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> Having been one of the people who /paid/ for YA-NW and then watched
> Brian go away in a snit and yank everything of his from the Net, I'm not
> really enthused about him coming back.
Maybe we should e-mail him and tell him not to bother. Is he still an
old crank who's likely to get all pissy again and shut down shop?
Likely. Caveat emptor.
Donald E. Stidwell
"Corentin Cras-Méneur" <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <bgrubb-5388D7....@news.zianet.com>, Bruce Grubb
> <bgr...@zianet.com> wrote:
>
>> IHMO the Newsreader market on the mac is now way over saturated, even more
>> than it was when Thoth was removed.
>
> Yes and no. It's true that there are quite a few newsreaders out there
> nowadays, they all have their strengths but I simply cannot find all
> that I want in one single application.
> MacSoup, Hogwasher, Thoth and Thunderbird have some representation of
> the threads (I won;t even mention the other newsreaders, because it
> really is all about the threads for newsgroups as far as I am
> concerned).
> MacSoup lacks a bit in usability IMVHO, HogWasher takes for ever to do
> anything on my Mac - to the point that I don't use it at all anymore
> even though I have a license. Thunderbird is not quite there yet. I
> would happily pay for a new and improved version of Thoth.
>
> Corentin
I've not really tried anything but MT-Newswatcher (horrible interface), Pan
(used for years on Linux, so it was a natural under X11 on Mac OS X) and
Entourage. The only thing Entourage (which I'm using at the moment) really
has in it's favour is a usable interface, but it treats newsgroups more like
mail than a true newreader. And of course, since I use Entourage for email,
it's just too easy to use it to read news while you're in the program. But
the threading is lackluster at best and there's no way that I can see to
mark messages as read across groups and servers.
If MT-Newswatcher had a better interface, it'd be acceptable. But the
disjointed interface is painful, and it's hardly an OS X looking
application. Yuck!
Pan is more unified and easier to use, but it's an X11 application and
misses out on all the Aqua goodness.
I'll probably just go ahead and hit the binary group and find Toth and give
it a whirl just to see what's it's like.
Don
Donald E. Stidwell
bgrubb-5388D7....@news.zianet.com, "Bruce Grubb"
<bgr...@zianet.com> wrote:
>
> In addition to old standbys like MacSOUP, Newscape, THunderbird, and
> MT-Newswatcher you have Unix ports/homegrown like Xnntp and NewsCarrier.
> <http://www.newsreaders.com/mac/clients.html> and newcomers like OSXnews.
OSXnews has potential, but it has a long way to go to be really usable. I
looked at Xnntp back when I first got my Mac mini last year but haven't
looked at it since. Can't remember why I didn't like it. Never heard of
NewsCarrier.
I also recall that the newsreader I used under BeOS - Pineapple News - is
available for Mac OS X as well although I've not looked at it. I didn't
particularly care for it under BeOS but it was essentially the only thing
available for that platform. Not sure it's worth another look under OS X.
Don
Craig L. Stevenson
try it. If I like it, and I probably would, I'll buy it. I will email
him this.
Having been burnt in the YA-NW deal, though, I have no confidence in
this man and would consider that purchase a one shot deal. The fact
that a poll is required to bring this about is not a good sign. This is
not the first "on behalf of Brian Clark" poll.
On 2006-04-27 16:04:17 -0500, Corentin Cras-Méneur
Howard S Shubs
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> So did I but I think Howard was referring to the fact that he had paid
> for YA-NewsWatcher and wasn't happy not to get Thoth for free when it
> was released. Since I never used YA-NewsWatcher and I don;t know the
> story behind all that, I can't really comment on it myself.
It was more related to the fact that I paid for it and maybe a week
later he pulled it. Support? What's that?
I just hope that if I ever put out an app for you lot that I have a
thicker skin than he has shown. You can't please everyone. I suspect
people still ask when Mailsmith will render HTML!
Howard S Shubs
> As it is, I regard him as nothing more than a thief... and
> that's regardless of exactly what the NewsWatcher code license says or what
> he did with any NW code.
I won't go that far. He delivered an app. I paid for the app. I don't
remember what my issue was that made me dump YA-NW, but I suspect that
something went wrong with it later, and there was no support, which I'd
*thought* I was paying for.
Maybe RMS has it right, that we should pay for support rather than the
software itself. Personally, I'd say there should be something to cover
both R&D *and* support, assuming there's decent documentation available.
Howard S Shubs
Urra Dipschitt <U.R.N...@stupidpeople.net> wrote:
> Maybe we should e-mail him and tell him not to bother. Is he still an
> old crank who's likely to get all pissy again and shut down shop?
> Likely. Caveat emptor.
Key point in that last line. Hard to argue with.
I read a book by Bob Tasca called _You WILL Be Satisfied_.
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0887308597/sr=1-1/qid=1146250790/ref=pd
_bbs_1/102-8877928-3571317?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books> IIRC, in it, he
says that it's a lot harder to get back a customer who has left than to
keep the customer satisfied in the first place.
Brian may need help overcoming his rep. Maybe he needs someone to help
him with support?
Corentin Cras-Méneur
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> > HogWasher takes for ever to do anything on my Mac - to the point that I
> > don't use it at all anymore even though I have a license.
>
> I've been using Hogwasher for a number of years now (currently I'm using
> Hogwasher 4.2.2 under OS X 10.4.6) and have never felt that it was slow.
I experience slowdowns using it and it is 3 times slower for me to
download posts than Thoth or MacSoup.
My main concern with it is the slowdowns in the UI though. I wonder
what's different between our setups that could explain that :-\
Bruce Grubb
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <270420061807540421%gar...@netstreet.net>, Garner Miller
> <gar...@netstreet.net> wrote:
>
> > I still use it happily to this
> > day, and just hope a future OS update won't break it. It's held up
> > remarkably well.
>
> It works rather well in Tiger for me, but I can only welcome future new
> additions to the app. Also, I don't currently have a MacIntel, but I
> could only guess that a Universal Binary version would be welcome
> too...
So does Simon Fraser's MT-Newswatcher which for what I want to do is
better. I am hoping that Simon Fraser is working on a Universal Binary for
MT-Newswatcher.
Bruce Grubb
Phil Stripling <phi...@alumni.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> In article <280420061006216731%cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr>, Corentin
> Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
>
> > Which doesn't affect the quality of the app as far as I am concerned.
>
> I agree that it doesn't affect the quality of his application. I'm
> using Thoth right now, in fact, paid for and registered.
>
> But Thoth isn't the first application he started and quit. I don't
> recall what the program was, but I do recall reading in Usenet the
> argument he got into with someone and quit in anger because he wasn't
> happy with the feedback.
YA-Newswatcher was the program. See google archives
<http://tinyurl.com/nj9zd> and <http://tinyurl.com/pzvy7>
for a replay of the whole mess.
> Then he came up with Thoth and a couple of other applications and quit
> them, too.
>
> And you're saying now he's back? Again? I'll predict a year or two and
> another quit.
I agree. He seems to have no staying power.
Bruce Grubb
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <280420060750581769%loto...@yahoo.com>, Lot-o-fun
> <loto...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
> > the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
>
> So did I but I think Howard was referring to the fact that he had paid
> for YA-NewsWatcher and wasn't happy not to get Thoth for free when it
> was released. Since I never used YA-NewsWatcher and I don;t know the
> story behind all that, I can't really comment on it myself.
See the google Usenet archives
for the details of the whole sorry mess.
Bruce Grubb
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <pan.2006.04.27....@192.168.5.20>, Donald
> Stidwell <donalds...@192.168.5.20> wrote:
>
> > For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> > a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
>
> I wish... Brian could not afford to keep on paying for the hosting
> anymore, so it currently isn't.
Which is smoke and mirrors as back in those days if you couldn't afford to
support a website of your own you sent the file to Info-mac and several of
the other Mac distribution sites. That effectively ended the download
problem
Tom Harrington
Corentin Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> In article <0001HW.C077A7D6...@news.supernews.com>,
> TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> > > HogWasher takes for ever to do anything on my Mac - to the point that I
> > > don't use it at all anymore even though I have a license.
> >
> > I've been using Hogwasher for a number of years now (currently I'm using
> > Hogwasher 4.2.2 under OS X 10.4.6) and have never felt that it was slow.
>
> I experience slowdowns using it and it is 3 times slower for me to
> download posts than Thoth or MacSoup.
> My main concern with it is the slowdowns in the UI though. I wonder
> what's different between our setups that could explain that :-\
So if there is a Thoth 2, will it be "Thoth 2: Electric Boogaloo"?
Sorry, I couldn't hold back any longer...
--
Tom "Tom" Harrington
Macaroni, Automated System Maintenance for Mac OS X.
Version 2.0: Delocalize, Repair Permissions, lots more.
See http://www.atomicbird.com/
Corentin Cras-Méneur
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> You can't please everyone. I suspect
> people still ask when Mailsmith will render HTML!
and support IMAP :-\
anon
> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
Sure. You can download it here:
Donald E. Stidwell
"anon" <an...@none.com> wrote:
Wonderful! Got it - thanks!
Howard S Shubs
Bruce Grubb <bgr...@zianet.com> wrote:
> So does Simon Fraser's MT-Newswatcher which for what I want to do is
> better. I am hoping that Simon Fraser is working on a Universal Binary for
> MT-Newswatcher.
Has anyone heard from Simon about anything in progress?
Thoth Rocks
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
> simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
> know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth. I implore
you all to send an email to Brian encouraging him to release Thoth 2.0.
I've got my VISA ready now. How about you?
Also, Brian passed along some information that might prove beneficial
to those who are wondering what he has been up to the past couple of
years, and said I could share this...
Below is some information that you might find interesting and which can
be passed along.
Thoth 2.0 does exist. It's a significant overhaul of Thoth 1.x. It's an
OS X only application, and all the various file and memory related
parts of the code were modified to perform best on OS X. It's also
developed under Apple's Xcode, and already has all the changes I know
to make to permit creating a universal or Intel version. But I don't
have an Intel Mac, just a second generation dual G5 desktop, so I can't
yet really compile and test an Intel version. The program is
code-complete and has gotten a fair amount of testing on my G5 machine,
but some more testing would be needed before release.
One of the things I wanted to accomplish in Thoth 2 was to make it
easier to use and manage filters and newsgroup settings, to eliminate
the overlap between preferences and newsgroup settings, and to let
people accomplish more with many fewer newsgroup settings or filter
groups. There are various other changes as well, some cosmetic as in
the use of sheet dialogs were that makes sense and non-button style
icons in window toolbars, etc.
Thoth 1.8 also exists. It's effectively the next revision of Thoth 1.7
that was never released. The revision history for it is as follows:
1.8.0
€ The OS X only version of Thoth now offers spelling checking for
message windows. In message windows misspelled words can optionally be
displayed in a distinct color and underlined (similar to URL styling,
and enabled or disabled the same way in the łFonts and Styles˛ pane of
Preferences) to make them more obvious. When a single misspelled word
is selected and there are guesses available, the contextual menu will
have a submenu listing the guesses to paste in to correct the spelling.
The Messages pane of the Preferences and Newsgroup Settings dialogs now
allow you to set the default spelling check language for message
windows. That setting, along with the one to display misspelled text in
a distinct color and underlined, can also be adjusted for individual
open message windows via the łMessage Options˛ dialog opened via the
appropriate toolbar button.
€ Added support for SMTP authentication (PLAIN and CRAM-MD5 methods).
Note that for mail sending to work, you probably must specify a valid
email address for your email address (which you'd want to do for a
private email message anyway) and not one that ends in .invalid or
which is otherwise invalid or nonexistent. Note that mac.com will
reject email if the From address isn't your mac.com email address.
Other SMTP servers may impose comparable rules.
€ Tried to work around an OS X bug with drawing checkmark and other
special system symbols on non-Roman systems.
€ Fixed a problem with the column formatting of the thread view in
article list windows.
€ Added detection and support for JPEG2000 image files (viewable only
under OS X with QuickTime 6). JPEG2000 images may not display correctly
due to possible problems with non-standards compliance by the encoding
application or QuickTime, since JPEG2000 is a new and evolving
standard.
€ The View menu Resort command can now be used with the Queued
Transfers List to re-sort items alphabetically by the name of the
article being downloaded or posted. Holding down the shift key resorts
only the selected items. Holding down the option key causes reverse
order sorting. This command was also added to the contextual menu for
the Queued Transfers List window.
€ When using the option to add new binaries to extract to the top of
the Queued Transfers list (by holding down the shift key), the items
are now added in such a way that their order in the article list window
is maintained. Previously, since each item in succession was added to
the then-top of the list, the newly added items would appear in the
reverse order of how they were shown in the article list window.
€ Fixed a problem with background window updates when editing a filter
from the łMatching Filters˛ window.
€ Added łShow Post Info˛ command to Special menu for article list
windows to display a text window with header information for the
selected posts. This is similar to the Export command, except the
headers are shown in a text window as they would appear in the original
posts, in a more human readable form that the tab-delimited table of
data produced by the Export command. The main keyboard short for this
new command is 'h.' This command was also added to the contextual menu
for article list windows.
€ Modified the 'm' shortcut key to also work in locked size image
windows to change the magnification so that the image is as large as
possible (while not zooming the window larger as is done with
non-locked windows).
€ Added Date and Newsgroups headers to the post information text
(optionally) saved with extracted binaries.
€ Changed how decoder and queued transfer error sounds are played to
try to work around an OS bug that sometimes causes crashes when playing
the sounds.
€ Fixed a bug that erroneously caused filter actions to be done for
article list windows opened from a search window (they should only be
done for article list windows opened from a subscribed group list
window).
€ It is now possible to set a long łExpire Active Connections After˛
value to deal with news servers that abruptly close connections that
have been open and active a long time.
€ If the connection to the news server is lost while downloading a
binary attachment, an attempt to try again with a new connection is now
done automatically.
€ After clicking on the Reset button in the Statistics pane of the
łNews Server Settings˛ dialog, the displayed start date wasn't updated
to reflect the change. Fixed.
€ Shift-clicking in an image window now works like Ptah to create a
selection rectangle that can then be used to change the magnification
of the image to make the rectangle fill the window, etc. Previously the
change in magnification would happen immediately as soon as the
shift-click and drag was completed.
€ Added a work-around for the changed behavior of the Drag Manager in
OS X 10.3 that causes TrackDrag to block when the mouse is not moved,
which interfered with dragging something to the top of bottom of a view
and having the view autoscroll unless the mouse was constantly wiggled.
€ Modified how Date headers are parsed to handle the most common forms
of non-RFC compliance. When filtering on dates it is now possible to
specify a filter that just matches such bad dates without also
specifying that the post be older or newer than a specified number of
days. With these changes it's still possible to filter on bad dates
(most often found in posts by spammers) while still showing a date
(instead of a question mark) in article list windows.
€ Renamed łmatches the pattern˛ style live filtering and group Find
searches to łstarts with the pattern˛ to more clearly indicate what it
is supposed to do, and added the similar łcontains the pattern˛ style
live filtering and Find searches. Also, formerly if a newsgroup didn't
match the pattern but did include the pattern in literal form as part
of its name, that group would count as a match (i.e. if the pattern was
ła.b˛ then both łaaa.bbb.ccc˛ and łxxa.bbb.ccc˛ would match, as the
first matches the pattern, and the second name contains it as part of
its name). This is no longer the case, since it was inconsistent and
would lead to unwanted matches, and because the łcontains the string˛
option is available when this type of matching is desired.
€ Fixed a problem in how sorting reply threads by subject was performed
and also ensured than in non-threaded mode replies will follow
non-replies with the same subject.
€ When editing multiple selected filters in the filters list window, if
the expiration settings for a filter are changed, the filter will now
also be unexpired if it was previously expired by removing the leading
'€' character from the filter group name. This means it's now easy to
batch unexpirations of filters (if the option to keep expired filters
is enabled, and you find that you wish to again use some expired
filters. When editing a single expired filter, it is still necessary to
manually change the filter group name to remove the leading '€' to
unexpire the filter.
€ Added support for new "smooth scrolling" scrollwheels and trackpads
that send a new, different mouse scroll event to applications. Also
modified the old-style scrollwheel support. Now, for both types of
scrollwheels, holding down the control key while scrolling will
accelerate scrolling by a factor of 4 (previously the option key was
used for scrollwheel acceleration). Holding down the option key while
using the scrollwheel now acts the same as holding down the option key
while clicking in the scrollbar arrow buttons, typically causing page
by page scrolling.
€ Added a graphical tree display to the thread list in article windows
(when reference threading is enabled). This works with the indenting to
help show the relationship of the various posts in the thread, as does
the preexisting feature of bolding the parent and child posts for the
currently displayed thread. Also, since a single-click is always used
to choose a new post from the thread list, which is always drawn
selected in the list, the asterisk that was formerly used to indicate
the current post in the list is no longer drawn. Finally, when the
graphical thread tree is drawn, any gaps in the thread caused by a
missing parent post are indicated by a gap with an x in the tree's
horizontal limb rather than prefacing the author's name with an
ellipsis.
Donald E. Stidwell
howard-34FE3D....@news.supernews.com, "Howard S Shubs"
<how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <pan.2006.04.27....@192.168.5.20>,
> Donald Stidwell <donalds...@192.168.5.20> wrote:
>
>> For those of us who never used Thoth, is there anywhere on the web to get
>> a look-see of it or a description of its capabilities?
>
> If you've tried MT-Newswatcher, you've got the general idea.
Downloaded and installed Thoth and I see your point. I've only played with
it for about 10 minutes so far (as you can see I'm posting from the comfort
of Entourage) but first impression is that it has the same interface issues
as MT-Newswatcher.
I'll have to give it a serious workout to decide if I want to see it
resurrected.
Donald E. Stidwell
Rocks" <br...@thoth.back> wrote:
> In article <270420061604171326%cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr>, Corentin
> Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
>
>> If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
>> simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
>> know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
>
> I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
> Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
> a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
> development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
> a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
> people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth. I implore
> you all to send an email to Brian encouraging him to release Thoth 2.0.
> I've got my VISA ready now. How about you?
>
> Also, Brian passed along some information that might prove beneficial
> to those who are wondering what he has been up to the past couple of
> years, and said I could share this...
>
> Below is some information that you might find interesting and which can
> be passed along.
Seriously interesting list... I could probably be persuaded to invest $25 in
this... But I have to wonder how many Mac users use _any_ newsreader and if
there is in fact a real audience for this.
I am thinking that to use anything outside of Entourage, you've got to be a
real newsgroup junkie - I could be - I primarily use Entourage because of
reasons mentioned earlier, but I'm hardly wedded to it.
Howard S Shubs
"Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> Downloaded and installed Thoth and I see your point. I've only played with
> it for about 10 minutes so far (as you can see I'm posting from the comfort
> of Entourage) but first impression is that it has the same interface issues
> as MT-Newswatcher.
There's something you should be aware of before you continue going on
about "interface issues". There are multiple people out here on the
Net. Not everyone likes the kind of interface which divides one window
up in 50 ways just to include everything in one window. Some of us like
separate windows we can resize, move individually, and organize as we
wish. In other words, your personal preferences aren't a general rule.
Please keep that in mind.
Dave Balderstone
<br...@thoth.back> wrote:
> I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
> Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
> a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
> development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
> a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
> people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth.
Wait...
He's done all the development?
The product is ready to go?
All he wants is a critical mass of acolytes? And you're one of them...
(Running 1.8.0, which apparently was only released to the Chosen Ones)
I say:
If he releases the product, he'll find out if there's a market. This
"email Brian and ask him to please release the work he's sitting on"
campaign is so transparently bullshit I can smell it from here in the
Canadian Prairies.
Brian, I assume you're reading this thread. I registered Thoth and
continue to use it. But after this little game, you'll never see
another dime of my money. Take your ego and stuff it.
In other words... Take your sock puppets and fuck off.
"promptly received a response from him"? I think there's a reasonable
chance you *are* him.
Dave Balderstone
<n...@spam.invalid> wrote:
> I also got a response when I e-mailed Brian. I'm prepared to believe
> him. I like Thoth and I would like it to continue to be developed.
> That's the bottom line, really.
You've quoted me entirely out of context.
Thoth apparently is being developed, but Brian needs some sort of
critical mass of people saying "please release your work, we will be
grateful" before he'll release the software.
That's his choice, of course.
But "Homey don't play that."
He can either release Thoth as shareware for people to try, release it
as commercial software with a moneyback guarantee, or he can stop using
sock puppets and proxies to do his market research.
Donald E. Stidwell
howard-A52428....@news.supernews.com, "Howard S Shubs"
<how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <C0782A48.7374%d...@nospam.net>,
> "Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
>
>> Downloaded and installed Thoth and I see your point. I've only played with
>> it for about 10 minutes so far (as you can see I'm posting from the comfort
>> of Entourage) but first impression is that it has the same interface issues
>> as MT-Newswatcher.
>
> There's something you should be aware of before you continue going on
> about "interface issues". There are multiple people out here on the
> Net. Not everyone likes the kind of interface which divides one window
> up in 50 ways just to include everything in one window. Some of us like
> separate windows we can resize, move individually, and organize as we
> wish. In other words, your personal preferences aren't a general rule.
> Please keep that in mind.
Without a doubt, and if you like that kind of interface, I'm certainly not
going to say you're wrong.
BUT, I don't like that type of interface and it is an important
consideration to ME. And in no sense am I trying to imply that everyone
should like what I like - now that would be just plain silly, wouldn't it?
And who knows - over time, perhaps I could get used to it, but for me it's
such a radical change of paradigm that it feels "un-natural." But given how
little enamoured I am of Entourage for news reading it may well be that if I
want the power of a Newswatcher type program, I'll just have to get used to
the interface. We'll see.
Don
Urra Dipschitt
Dave Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> Brian, I assume you're reading this thread. I registered Thoth and
> continue to use it. But after this little game, you'll never see
> another dime of my money. Take your ego and stuff it.
>
> In other words... Take your sock puppets and fuck off.
Typical Brian. The shit never ends with this jackass. Fuck 'im, indeed.
Urra Dipschitt
"Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> And who knows - over time, perhaps I could get used to it, but for me it's
> such a radical change of paradigm that it feels "un-natural."
Which is why I can never go over to Unison. Feels "weird". Too bad since
it looks like the Usenet app most likely to not die a premature death.
Charles
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> All he wants is a critical mass of acolytes? And you're one of them...
> (Running 1.8.0, which apparently was only released to the Chosen Ones)
I just looked at his headers. You are mistaken, "Thoth Rocks" is not
running 1.8.
I also e-mailed Brian and got a quick response. I am just a long time
user of Thoth. No special in with Brian. I don't have 1.8 but I would
like to have it. I would guess that he has a group of users who test
new versions so some might have it.
I don't have any problem with Brian testing the waters. He is the one
doing the work. To me an upgrade is worth a payment to support the
developer and his work. It seems fair to me. I pay for programs and
upgrades all the time. It just so happens there is a name behind this
one instead of a faceless company. Companies do the same thing before
they release products. They do surveys and polls.
--
Charles
Dave Balderstone
<for...@mac.com> wrote:
> I just looked at his headers. You are mistaken, "Thoth Rocks" is not
> running 1.8.
He's superceded his post, then. I know the headers I saw.
Dave Balderstone
> Companies do the same thing before
> they release products. They do surveys and polls.
They don't use sockpuppets to do them, though. And when they're thrying
to rehabilitate a reputation that has been damaged they act much
differently than Brian is acting.
The business literature is full of examples of how to and how not to
behave in a hostile market. Brian is a classic example of how not to.
But hey, send him money of you want to. Just don't ask for sympathy or
empathy when Brian behaves like Brian.
Charles Dyer
(in article <280420061931009472%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
> In article <280420062018430887%br...@thoth.back>, Thoth Rocks
> <br...@thoth.back> wrote:
>
>> I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
>> Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
>> a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
>> development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
>> a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
>> people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth.
>
> Wait...
>
> He's done all the development?
>
> The product is ready to go?
>
> All he wants is a critical mass of acolytes? And you're one of them...
> (Running 1.8.0, which apparently was only released to the Chosen Ones)
He did this before. IIRC YANW 5 (or perhaps 4, it's been a while) was
released only to the Chosen Few, who then posted over and over about how
great it was.
>
> I say:
>
> If he releases the product, he'll find out if there's a market. This
> "email Brian and ask him to please release the work he's sitting on"
> campaign is so transparently bullshit I can smell it from here in the
> Canadian Prairies.
Well, it worked last time...
>
> Brian, I assume you're reading this thread. I registered Thoth and
> continue to use it. But after this little game, you'll never see
> another dime of my money. Take your ego and stuff it.
>
> In other words... Take your sock puppets and fuck off.
>
> "promptly received a response from him"? I think there's a reasonable
> chance you *are* him.
I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we have
here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
--
We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Stability is irrelevant.
Where _you_ want to go to today is irrelevant. We will add your currency to
our own. Bend over right now. Resistance is futile.
Charles Dyer
(in article <howard-2C5780....@news.supernews.com>):
> In article <0001HW.C077937E...@news.newsguy.com>,
> Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>> As it is, I regard him as nothing more than a thief... and
>> that's regardless of exactly what the NewsWatcher code license says or what
>> he did with any NW code.
>
> I won't go that far. He delivered an app. I paid for the app. I don't
> remember what my issue was that made me dump YA-NW, but I suspect that
> something went wrong with it later, and there was no support, which I'd
> *thought* I was paying for.
That's exactly what happened. I downloaded the app, tried it out, liked it,
sent the $20 (or $25, I forget) to Kagi, and about 15-20 days later
encountered a few problems. I then found out that in the interval he'd yanked
support... after taking my money. And he failed to answer emails requesting
help. This pissed me off. He got my money once. He never will again.
>
> Maybe RMS has it right, that we should pay for support rather than the
> software itself. Personally, I'd say there should be something to cover
> both R&D *and* support, assuming there's decent documentation available.
>
Or at least there should be some warning that the support you thought you had
will vanish softly, silently, in less than three weeks.
bgr...@zianet.com
Donald E. Stidwell wrote:
> On 4/28/06 8:18 PM, in article 280420062018430887%br...@thoth.back, "Thoth
> Rocks" <br...@thoth.back> wrote:
>
> > In article <270420061604171326%cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr>, Corentin
> > Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> >
> >> If you want a v1.8 or 2... of Thoth to ever see the light of day,
> >> simply send an e-mail to Brian at thoth...@earthlink.net to let him
> >> know so that he can figure out roughly how many people are interested,
> >
> > I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
> > Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
> > a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
> > development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
> > a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
> > people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth. I implore
> > you all to send an email to Brian encouraging him to release Thoth 2.0.
> > I've got my VISA ready now. How about you?
> >
> > Also, Brian passed along some information that might prove beneficial
> > to those who are wondering what he has been up to the past couple of
> > years, and said I could share this...
> >
> > Below is some information that you might find interesting and which can
> > be passed along.
>
> Seriously interesting list... I could probably be persuaded to invest $25 in
> this... But I have to wonder how many Mac users use _any_ newsreader and if
> there is in fact a real audience for this.
Oh we use newreaders but as I pointed out the market has really become
saturated to the point that they seem to be tripping over each other.
> I am thinking that to use anything outside of Entourage, you've got to be a
> real newsgroup junkie - I could be - I primarily use Entourage because of
> reasons mentioned earlier, but I'm hardly wedded to it.
I prefer MT-Newswatcher myself; it is very fast compared to some
current offerings, very easy to subscribe, unsubscribe, and mark
articles. Others like Thunderbird have interface aspects that annoy me
no end and few that showed promice have had work stopped on them (like
Halime at http://halime.imdat.de/)
IMHO unless it have a feature you *REALLY* need or it is part of a
package you need it makes no sense to pay for a newsreader as they are
too many free ones out there.
Donald E. Stidwell
1146290766.5...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "bgr...@zianet.com"
<bgr...@zianet.com> wrote:
Now THAT (Halime) is the kind of newsreader I'm looking for - at least in
the interface. Looks like it belongs on a Mac - seems Apple Mail was the
inspiration for that one. Well, shoot, now another one to play with. Not
sure what's missing in it or what's broken in it, but the version I
downloaded seems to be pretty complete. Not sure why I've never heard of
this one before or why the developer stopped work on it. Looks like it could
have been a hit.
> IMHO unless it have a feature you *REALLY* need or it is part of a
> package you need it makes no sense to pay for a newsreader as they are
> too many free ones out there.
>
Seems you're right. I actually didn't realise how many newsreaders there are
available out there until I started paying attention to this thread!
Don
Mark Edwards
>
> I paid, and I use the program all the time. I have more than gotten
> the value for my money. In no way did I get screwed.
Agreed!
Charles
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> He's superceded his post, then. I know the headers I saw.
More likely you are tripping.
--
Charles
Howard S Shubs
"Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> Without a doubt, and if you like that kind of interface, I'm certainly not
> going to say you're wrong.
Thanks!
> BUT, I don't like that type of interface and it is an important
> consideration to ME. And in no sense am I trying to imply that everyone
> should like what I like - now that would be just plain silly, wouldn't it?
But you've been saying that it has interface issues, when what you
apparently mean is that YOU have interface issues (with IT). :-) Not so?
> And who knows - over time, perhaps I could get used to it, but for me it's
> such a radical change of paradigm that it feels "un-natural." But given how
> little enamoured I am of Entourage for news reading it may well be that if I
> want the power of a Newswatcher type program, I'll just have to get used to
> the interface. We'll see.
Or maybe you DO want what, say, MacSoup has. I *think* that's one of
the "one window 50 different ways" programs. That's why there's a
choice. I don't claim that everyone should take it my way, though they
should, of course, because it's clearly not going to happen. <sigh>
Then again, I started with rn, went to nn, and then to Norstad's
original Newswatcher IIRC. It was a very compatible sequence.
One thing which really "gets" me, and this isn't an issue with you
specifically, is how some people seem to think that programs should
change just because Apple has decreed that, for instance, brushed metal
is "cool" this week. It ignores the fact that brushed metal, for
instance, isn't and never will be "cool". And that people are used to
using what they've BEEN using, and programmers are therefore hesitant to
mess with their users' heads. People refuse to upgrade, or change
programs, for reasons like that.
Howard S Shubs
Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we have
> here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
Then it hasn't been working very well, has it? All it's done is bring
back the old threads and shown that many of us are still here, and still
upset with him.
I'm willing to let him show that he's changed and won't repeat his old
ways, but if this IS just a marketing campaign, then he's not only not
changed, but he's gone further in the wrong direction. <shakes head>
Brian: No! Bad Brian! Bad. No fee for you!
Howard S Shubs
Dave Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> But hey, send him money of you want to. Just don't ask for sympathy or
> empathy when Brian behaves like Brian.
Quite. Instead, we'll be more likely to laugh and say "we told you so".
Meanwhile, has anyone heard from Simon?
Charles
Shubs <how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> Quite. Instead, we'll be more likely to laugh and say "we told you so".
You are being silly. I spent $25 for Thoth when it came out for OS X
years ago and still use it all the time. That was a bargain for all the
use I have had with it. It has been a positive experience. Also I have
tried all the other Mac newsreaders and to this date and Thoth
continues to be the one I like best. He is adding many new features,
only a few that I personaly need, but if he does come out with new
versions I absolutely will pay for an upgrade and won't lose any sleep
about what Brian does in the future. Many act like this is a program
that costs a fortune. It does not.
--
Charles
Dave Balderstone
<for...@mac.com> wrote:
> Many act like this is a program
> that costs a fortune. It does not.
There's been virtually no reference to price in this thread. Price
isn't the issue, Brian is the issue.
Charles Dyer
(in article <290420060833122671%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
That's it exactly. As I said upthread, I have no problem paying for software;
I paid for YANW, and I paid for Hogwasher, just to name two relevant
examples. The difference is that in under 3 weeks after I paid for YANW,
Brian Clark yanked all support for no reason which made sense, while nothing
of the sort applies to Hogwasher, and it's been literal _years_ since I
started using it. Kurt Spaker doesn't throw hissy fits, yank his software,
and have shills post to usenet how we should beg him to relent and allow us
the great boon of giving him money. Brian Clark does exactly that. And has
done this several times already.
I paid Clark once. He burned me. He isn't getting a second chance, come what
may. I wouldn't use his stuff it were free. Going out of your way to irritate
customers is not the most successful of business plans, not if the customers
have any choice at all. As there is a _lot_ of choice in the OS X newsreader
market...
Donald E. Stidwell
howard-284E40....@news.supernews.com, "Howard S Shubs"
<how...@shubs.net> wrote:
> In article <C0783F4A.74A8%d...@nospam.net>,
> "Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
>
>> Without a doubt, and if you like that kind of interface, I'm certainly not
>> going to say you're wrong.
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>> BUT, I don't like that type of interface and it is an important
>> consideration to ME. And in no sense am I trying to imply that everyone
>> should like what I like - now that would be just plain silly, wouldn't it?
>
> But you've been saying that it has interface issues, when what you
> apparently mean is that YOU have interface issues (with IT). :-) Not so?
True - I should have been more specific. The way I phrased it made it seem
that something was wrong with the program for it's interface and that's not
actually the case.
>
>> And who knows - over time, perhaps I could get used to it, but for me it's
>> such a radical change of paradigm that it feels "un-natural." But given how
>> little enamoured I am of Entourage for news reading it may well be that if I
>> want the power of a Newswatcher type program, I'll just have to get used to
>> the interface. We'll see.
>
> Or maybe you DO want what, say, MacSoup has. I *think* that's one of
> the "one window 50 different ways" programs. That's why there's a
> choice. I don't claim that everyone should take it my way, though they
> should, of course, because it's clearly not going to happen. <sigh>
>
> Then again, I started with rn, went to nn, and then to Norstad's
> original Newswatcher IIRC. It was a very compatible sequence.
It's been a LONG time since I used my first newsreader - sometime in the
late 80s I think, and I don't even remember what it was except that it was
through a Unix shell account. Probably tin or nn or something like that.
> One thing which really "gets" me, and this isn't an issue with you
> specifically, is how some people seem to think that programs should
> change just because Apple has decreed that, for instance, brushed metal
> is "cool" this week. It ignores the fact that brushed metal, for
> instance, isn't and never will be "cool". And that people are used to
> using what they've BEEN using, and programmers are therefore hesitant to
> mess with their users' heads. People refuse to upgrade, or change
> programs, for reasons like that.
Uh - I actually like brushed metal. :) But you hit the nail on the head in
saying that folks are used to what they've been using. One of the things I
look for in any Mac program is how consistent it is with the rest of the
programs interface-wise. MT-Newswatcher really threw me for a loop the first
time I used it - I'd never ever seen anything like it. So I went running to
Pan - a program that I knew from my Linux days and which felt comfortable to
use, although hardly anything like the rest of Mac OS X. I downloaded Halime
yesterday and that is the interface I'm looking for. Haven't played with it
enough yet to see how it compares, but on first look I like. The question is
whether it really has the features I want. We'll see.
I'm usually a lurker in this group, but this thread has been way
interesting. Sure have learned a lot about the various newsreaders out there
which I was never aware of.
Don
Corentin Cras-Méneur
<d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> Seriously interesting list... I could probably be persuaded to invest $25 in
> this... But I have to wonder how many Mac users use _any_ newsreader and if
> there is in fact a real audience for this.
That can easily be answered by looking at the headers in the posts in
the newsgroups.
It looks like a lot of people still use newsreaders.
Corentin
--
"L'erreur est humaine, un véritable désastre nécessite un ordinateur"
- Loi de Murphy appliquée à l'informatique -
Pensez à retirer le "NoSpam" de mon adresse en répondant par mail.
Please remove the "NoSpam" from my address when replying by e-mail.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> Wait...
>
> He's done all the development?
>
> The product is ready to go?
From what I understand, he's worked on 1.8 quite a bit, but I'm not
sure the current version is final yet. Probably still in some sort of
beta-state.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
> > All he wants is a critical mass of acolytes? And you're one of them...
> > (Running 1.8.0, which apparently was only released to the Chosen Ones)
>
> I just looked at his headers. You are mistaken, "Thoth Rocks" is not
> running 1.8.
I do have a pre-release version of 1.8, so I can attest it exists.
Brian sent it to me to test whether or not an issue with the previous
1.7 version in Tiger was properly corrected in the 1.8b or not.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
> > I just looked at his headers. You are mistaken, "Thoth Rocks" is not
> > running 1.8.
>
> He's superceded his post, then. I know the headers I saw.
I see "User-Agent: Thoth/1.7.2 (Carbon/OS X)" in his headers. You must
have mistaken it with one of my posts.
Corentin Cras-Méneur
>
> I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we have
> here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
All I can say in this regard is that Brian never specifically asked me
to post in the newsgroups and I have no personal interest in Thoth
except maybe that if Thoth 1.8 (the version I have still has issues)
and 2.0 are released, I'll be able to use them just like everybody else
(and I'll buy my upgrade license - just like everybody else).
Dave Balderstone
Cras-Méneur <cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr> wrote:
> I see "User-Agent: Thoth/1.7.2 (Carbon/OS X)" in his headers. You must
> have mistaken it with one of my posts.
I suppose that's possible. Lord knows I've been wrong before.
Howard S Shubs
"Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
> It's been a LONG time since I used my first newsreader - sometime in the
> late 80s I think, and I don't even remember what it was except that it was
> through a Unix shell account. Probably tin or nn or something like that.
Sounds like you have more experience with this than I do. I started
with the Internet in 1991 via a shell account.
> Uh - I actually like brushed metal. :)
Thpt. :-D
> I'm usually a lurker in this group, but this thread has been way
> interesting. Sure have learned a lot about the various newsreaders out there
> which I was never aware of.
Yep, lotta options out there these days. I guess I could even install
nn or tin, as you mention. I seem to remember not caring for tin,
though. <shrug>
Howard S Shubs
Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> I paid Clark once. He burned me. He isn't getting a second chance, come what
> may. I wouldn't use his stuff it were free. Going out of your way to irritate
> customers is not the most successful of business plans, not if the customers
> have any choice at all. As there is a _lot_ of choice in the OS X newsreader
> market...
I dunno. I kept Rosetta after he pulled it. It doesn't get much *use*
these days, granted.
Bruce Grubb
Dave Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> In article <280420062018430887%br...@thoth.back>, Thoth Rocks
> <br...@thoth.back> wrote:
>
> > I've followed your advice, Corentin, and sent Brian an email regarding
> > Thoth, asking him to continue development of Thoth. I promptly received
> > a response from him, and can confirm that Brian has continued
> > development in house and is thinking of releasing it to the public for
> > a fee. In order to do this, however, he wishes to hear from enough
> > people to convince him there is a viable market for Thoth.
>
> Wait...
>
> He's done all the development?
>
> The product is ready to go?
>
> All he wants is a critical mass of acolytes? And you're one of them...
> (Running 1.8.0, which apparently was only released to the Chosen Ones)
>
> I say:
>
> If he releases the product, he'll find out if there's a market. This
> "email Brian and ask him to please release the work he's sitting on"
> campaign is so transparently bullshit I can smell it from here in the
> Canadian Prairies.
I agree. Again unless a newsreader has some feature you can not do without
by pay for one? There are plenty of free newsreaders out there.
Charles Dyer
(in article <howard-AAEEE2....@news.supernews.com>):
> In article <0001HW.C078FF3F...@news.newsguy.com>,
> Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>> I paid Clark once. He burned me. He isn't getting a second chance, come
>> what
>> may. I wouldn't use his stuff it were free. Going out of your way to
>> irritate
>> customers is not the most successful of business plans, not if the
>> customers
>> have any choice at all. As there is a _lot_ of choice in the OS X
>> newsreader
>> market...
>
> I dunno. I kept Rosetta after he pulled it. It doesn't get much *use*
> these days, granted.
>
>
IIRC Rosetta did something silly after a few days or a few uses or something
unless you paid up. Frankly, there were and are free Windows utilities which
do everything Rosetta does, and which I have (had) on Windows machines on my
home net, so I could just move over to the WinThing and decode there. There
are also other Mac-based decoders which, between them, do all I need. In
addition, I wasn't paying for a license for something else which would have
no support because Brian Clark is Brian Clark and therefore untrustworthy.
Also, didn't he pull Rosetta when he pulled Thoth, and for the same (lack of)
reason?
I simply don't trust Clark and won't have his stuff on my machines, even for
free. (Which is fairly easily done, even now; there are websites and
newsgroups where you can get Thoth & Co., either hacked so you don't need a
code, or with the activation code. I choose not to bother. I don't want his
stuff on my machines. Period. YMMV.)
Charles Dyer
(in article <howard-A780EA....@news.supernews.com>):
> In article <0001HW.C078643C...@news.newsguy.com>,
> Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we
>> have
>> here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
>
> Then it hasn't been working very well, has it? All it's done is bring
> back the old threads and shown that many of us are still here, and still
> upset with him.
He doesn't care. So far as I can see, he thinks he did no wrong.
>
> I'm willing to let him show that he's changed and won't repeat his old
> ways, but if this IS just a marketing campaign, then he's not only not
> changed, but he's gone further in the wrong direction. <shakes head>
>
> Brian: No! Bad Brian! Bad. No fee for you!
Exactly. My credit card stays in my wallet. There has to be an element of
trust before I buy, and I don't trust him. Or, rather, I do trust that he'll
be off into the hinterlands as soon as he gets his hands on my money. He's
done it before. He will not get a chance to do it again.
Charles Dyer
(in article <290420061522545337%cra...@NoSpam.magic.fr>):
> In article <0001HW.C078643C...@news.newsguy.com>, Charles
> Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we
>> have
>> here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
>
>
> All I can say in this regard is that Brian never specifically asked me
> to post in the newsgroups and I have no personal interest in Thoth
> except maybe that if Thoth 1.8 (the version I have still has issues)
> and 2.0 are released, I'll be able to use them just like everybody else
> (and I'll buy my upgrade license - just like everybody else).
>
>
> Corentin
>
>
I will not be buying a damn thing from Brian Clark. Once bitten, twice shy.
And I remember the run-up to the Return of YANW. Various people posted on how
great the new version was, and asked that everyone beg Clark to release it.
The main difference between then and now is that there is, so far, just one
Beg Brian Thread. And, of course, that his actions in pulling Thoth in the
first place, particularly in the light of his past hisory of hissy fits, has
irritated a lot more people.
If you want to give him money, more power to you. I'll just wait until the
next hissy fit, thanks.
Bruce Grubb
Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:39:48 -0400, Howard S Shubs wrote
> (in article <howard-A780EA....@news.supernews.com>):
>
> > In article <0001HW.C078643C...@news.newsguy.com>,
> > Charles Dyer <char...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I wouldn't go that far. I _would_ say that the probability that what we
> >> have
> >> here is a marketing campaign is fairly high.
> >
> > Then it hasn't been working very well, has it? All it's done is bring
> > back the old threads and shown that many of us are still here, and still
> > upset with him.
>
> He doesn't care. So far as I can see, he thinks he did no wrong.
> >
> > I'm willing to let him show that he's changed and won't repeat his old
> > ways, but if this IS just a marketing campaign, then he's not only not
> > changed, but he's gone further in the wrong direction. <shakes head>
> >
> > Brian: No! Bad Brian! Bad. No fee for you!
>
> Exactly. My credit card stays in my wallet. There has to be an element of
> trust before I buy, and I don't trust him. Or, rather, I do trust that he'll
> be off into the hinterlands as soon as he gets his hands on my money. He's
> done it before. He will not get a chance to do it again.
I agree especially given his attitude towards people who WANTED to pay him
for YA-Newswatcher for the short time it had its very weird "freeware, but
pay-me-or-I'll-bailware" as Steve Kayner and NT so quaintly put it
<http://tinyurl.com/5qzbm> with Dan Cottler's boss being a poster child.
<http://tinyurl.com/278te>
Dan Cottler's boss wanted two and really only two things:
1) Make all the documents for the program in something other MS Word
2) a firm commitment to supporting the product due to the long turn
around time for approval
I talked with Dan Cottler and as I guessed his place was government related
so if you wanted to do business with the government you do it the way the
government wants.
Instead of immediately reformating the documents and showing clear long
tern support Brian Clark came back with little gems like "I'm sorry you're
feeling unwell. Perhaps you should seek other forms of therapy besides
posting drivel like this to usenet."
<http://tinyurl.com/3dfp4>
When I correctly pointed out that that many HTML 2.0 (the standard of the
day) broswers used less RAM and resources than contempoary newsreaders
Simon Fraser complimented me on my insight.
<http://tinyurl.com/39cbp>
Brian by contrast insulted Dan Cottler, his boss, and in the process blew
what could have been a deal worth THOUSANDS of dollars over something that
involved just a little common sense. (ie don't use proprietary formats if
there are other alternatives available)
Tom Harrington
Urra Dipschitt <U.R.N...@stupidpeople.net> wrote:
> In article <C0783F4A.74A8%d...@nospam.net>,
> "Donald E. Stidwell" <d...@nospam.net> wrote:
>
> > And who knows - over time, perhaps I could get used to it, but for me it's
> > such a radical change of paradigm that it feels "un-natural."
>
> Which is why I can never go over to Unison. Feels "weird". Too bad since
> it looks like the Usenet app most likely to not die a premature death.
Yeah, same here. I've been using different versions of Newswatcher for
years, and Unison is Just Not Right (as far as I'm concerned, anyway).
I hope Simon can update MT-NW soon or I'm going to have to write my own
just so I can duplicate the UI in something that'll be more stable on
Intel. :-)
--
Tom "Tom" Harrington
Macaroni, Automated System Maintenance for Mac OS X.
Version 2.0: Delocalize, Repair Permissions, lots more.
See http://www.atomicbird.com/
Chip G.
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
> There's been virtually no reference to price in this thread. Price
> isn't the issue, Brian is the issue.
Why. If you think the software is worth the price (lets say $25 for
arguments sake) and you pay the price, and you are satisfied, then who
cares about Brian? The point is to get good, stable software for a
reasonable price. Regardless of whether the author is a jerk or an
angel doesn't matter. It's just icing on the cake if he's an angel.
Apple can be jerkish at times too, but I like the product, so I keep
coming back for abuse. I've tried the other newsreaders, but I've yet
to find one that I like as much as Thoth. Brian has nothing to do with
that (other than the programming). I've had no interaction with Brian
other than sending him a check and receiving a registration number. Who
cares. If you releases an update, I'll give it a try. If I like it I'll
pay for it. The $25 is chump change and is worth getting rid of the
annoyance messages and the like.
The truly amazing thing is the hate mail this Brian gets on this and
other groups. He may have the personality of a wet blanket (or worse),
but I'm fairly certain he doesn't deserve that degree of hate mail.
--
--Chip
remove dots in prefix to fix email address
Dave Balderstone
<n.1....@myeastern.com> wrote:
> Why. If you think the software is worth the price (lets say $25 for
> arguments sake) and you pay the price, and you are satisfied, then who
> cares about Brian?
I get to choose who and what I support with my money. Brian's on the
"not" list, for reasons I've already made clear.
Whether you agree with me or not is irrelevant.
And for the record, I've never sent Brian "hate mail". The only emaiil
exchange I've ever had with him was about using regular expressions
when filtering in Thoth.