Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more 
> modern like a bugzilla or else ???

No.

RE: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tech]

... and why not ?


As an example, with a bugzilla, you dont have to dig in n*thousands of "unread" 
mails,. You can organized, have a clear view with a dashboard... and so on.

And bugzilla is just one possibility.


Since augusth 1st:

I received around 12 familly mails, 62 pro-mails, 147 spam/pishing/bullshit 
mails

Between all the debian mails list who exist, i receives  also 168 emails.

I have maybee read 20 of them, and deleted all the others...


Too much informations, help, news, updates  simply making those listing 
useless !


I have sent the following emails, received zero anwsers. With a "modern" system 
like a bugzilla/forum/tracker/else and their moder options, i can know how many 
peoples have read it ( 23 answer for 9876 readsfor example ) ... with the 
mailings list, how many people took relly the time to read it ( as i 
direct-delete most of he amils i receive ) ...


with your "no" spirit, we would still have an horse and wagon like my 
old-old-old grandpa !




De : Greg Wooledge 
Envoyé : jeudi 9 août 2018 19:47:24
À : debian-user@lists.debian.org
Objet : Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more 
> modern like a bugzilla or else ???

No.

RE: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tech]

as i dont want to troll the debian-list, and as i already received several 
mails ( a first for me ) saying i am a dumbass, a stupid eager young  for 
the audience, i will stop the broadcast of bad words here.


i need to go to the post office to send a letter, so i will take my horse ... 
as i leave approximatly at 39 km, iand my horse is running at 21 Km/h, it will 
take for the round trip around 4 hours to come back ...




De : tech 
Envoyé : jeudi 9 août 2018 20:05:41
À : Greg Wooledge; debian-user@lists.debian.org
Objet : RE: mailing list vs "the futur"



... and why not ?


As an example, with a bugzilla, you dont have to dig in n*thousands of "unread" 
mails,. You can organized, have a clear view with a dashboard... and so on.

And bugzilla is just one possibility.


Since augusth 1st:

I received around 12 familly mails, 62 pro-mails, 147 spam/pishing/bullshit 
mails

Between all the debian mails list who exist, i receives  also 168 emails.

I have maybee read 20 of them, and deleted all the others...


Too much informations, help, news, updates  simply making those listing 
useless !


I have sent the following emails, received zero anwsers. With a "modern" system 
like a bugzilla/forum/tracker/else and their moder options, i can know how many 
peoples have read it ( 23 answer for 9876 readsfor example ) ... with the 
mailings list, how many people took relly the time to read it ( as i 
direct-delete most of he amils i receive ) ...


with your "no" spirit, we would still have an horse and wagon like my 
old-old-old grandpa !




De : Greg Wooledge 
Envoyé : jeudi 9 août 2018 19:47:24
À : debian-user@lists.debian.org
Objet : Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more 
> modern like a bugzilla or else ???

No.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Ric Moore]

On 08/09/2018 01:39 PM, tech wrote:

Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something 
more modern like a bugzilla or else ???


Why?? There already are plenty of such sites, you need only pick and 
choose. I like it here as I don't have to read a "me too!" message with 
a meg of attachments, html ads and rainbow snorting unicorns. If you 
really are a "tech", you would know better than ask.


--
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
http://linuxcounter.net/user/44256.html

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[James H. H. Lampert]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:


Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to
something more modern like a bugzilla or else ???


On 8/9/18, 10:47 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:


No.



What? A list server isn't good enough for you? It's good enough for the 
Tomcat community, and for the IBM Midrange community, not to mention the 
thousand-odd organ geeks subscribed to PIPORG-L.


--
JHHL

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Ben Finney]

tech  writes:

> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> more modern like a bugzilla or else ???

It's 2018. Shouldn't we move away from an old “keyboard” to something
mroe modern like a data-glove?

Less sarcastically: You have said nothing that demonstrates why a
mailing list is not fit for the purpose.

Merely because some things are newer does not make those things better.

To argue for replacing an established system that works fine today, you
have to actually demonstrate how it fails, and demonstrate how that
failure is sufficiently bad for it to be replaced. Otherwise it stays,
by default.

-- 
 \“I was in Las Vegas, at the roulette table, having a furious |
  `\ argument over what I considered to be an odd number.” —Steven |
_o__)   Wright |
Ben Finney

RE: mailing list vs "the futur"

[deloptes]

tech wrote:

> as i dont want to troll the debian-list, and as i already received several
> mails ( a first for me ) saying i am a dumbass, a stupid eager young 
> for the audience, i will stop the broadcast of bad words here.
> 
> 
> i need to go to the post office to send a letter, so i will take my horse
> ... as i leave approximatly at 39 km, iand my horse is running at 21 Km/h,
> it will take for the round trip around 4 hours to come back ...

you are free to move to a city where they drive electric cars. good luck

You can't simply replace something working, while people are using it. It is
enormous effort with consequences you can obviously not imagine. At the end
nothing is for free, so who will pay for all the work? Or how will you
motivate someone to move the mailing lists to something else, that even you
can not guarantee that it will work?

think of those

regards

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more 
> modern like a bugzilla or else ???

No.  This is an absolutely terrible idea.  Here's why mailing lists
are (along with Usenet newsgroups) vastly superior to web-based anything:

1. They're asynchronous: you don't have to interact in real time.
You can download messages when connected to the Internet, then read
them and compose responses when offline.

2. They work reasonably well even in the presence of multiple outages
and severe congestion -- because they queue.

3. They're push, not pull, so new content just shows up.  Web forums
require that you go fishing for it.

4. They scale beautifully.

5. They allow you to use *your* software with the user interface of *your*
choosing rather than being compelled to learn 687 different web forums
with 687 different user interfaces, all of which range from "merely bad"
to "hideously bad".

6. You can archive them locally...

7. ...which means you can search them locally with the software of *your*
choice.  Including when you're offline.  And provided you make backups,
you'll always have an archive -- even if the original goes away.
(Those of who've been around for a while have seen a lot of web-based
discussions vanish forever because a host crashed or a domain expired or
a company went under or a company was acquired or someone made a mistake
or there was a security breach or a government confiscated it.)

8. They're portable: lists can be rehosted relatively easily.

9. (When properly run) they're relatively free of abuse vectors.

10. They're low-bandwidth, which is especially important at a point in
time when many people are interacting via metered services that charge by
the byte and are WAY overpriced, and getting more overpriced every day.

11. They impose minimal security risk.

12. They impose minimal privacy risk.

13. They can be freely interconverted -- that is, you can move a list
hosted by A using software B on operating system C to host X using
software Y on operating system Z.

14. They're archivable in a format that is likely to be readable long
into the future.  (I have archives of lists from the early 1980's.
Still readable with contemporary software because they're in mbox format.
I see no sign that this will cease to be true.)

15. They can be written to media and read from it.  This is a very
non-trivial task with web forums: just try doing the equivalent of
#13 above.  Good luck with that.

16. They handle threading well.  And provided users take a few seconds
to edit properly, they handle quoting well.

17. Numerous tools exist for handling mbox format: for example, "grepmail"
is a highly useful basic search tool.  Most search engines include
parsers for email, and the task of ingesting mail archives into search
engines is very well understood.  Excellent archiving tools exist as well.

18. The computing resources require to support them are minimal -- CPU,
memory, disk, bandwidth, etc.  (I recently set up an instance of Mailman
for someone that's working perfectly fine on a 10-year-old laptop.)

19. Mailing lists interoperate.  I can easily forward a message from this
list to another one.  Or to a person.  I can send a message to multiple
lists.  I can forward a message from a person to this list.  And so on.
Try doing this with web forum software A on host B with destinations
web forum software X and Y on hosts X1 and Y1.  Good luck with that.

20. Mailing lists can be uni- or bidirectionally gatewayed to Usenet.
(The main Python language mailing list is an example of this.)  This can
be highly useful.

There's more, but I think this easily suffices to make a slamdunk case.

---rsk

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[David Wright]

On Thu 09 Aug 2018 at 18:05:41 (+), tech wrote:
> 
> ... and why not ?
> 
> 
> As an example, with a bugzilla, you dont have to dig in n*thousands of 
> "unread" mails,. You can organized, have a clear view with a dashboard... and 
> so on.
> 
> And bugzilla is just one possibility.
> 
> 
> Since augusth 1st:
> 
> I received around 12 familly mails, 62 pro-mails, 147 spam/pishing/bullshit 
> mails
> 
> Between all the debian mails list who exist, i receives  also 168 emails.
> 
> I have maybee read 20 of them, and deleted all the others...
> 
> 
> Too much informations, help, news, updates  simply making those listing 
> useless !
> 
> 
> I have sent the following emails, received zero anwsers. With a "modern" 
> system like a bugzilla/forum/tracker/else and their moder options, i can know 
> how many peoples have read it ( 23 answer for 9876 readsfor example ) ... 
> with the mailings list, how many people took relly the time to read it ( as i 
> direct-delete most of he amils i receive ) ...
> 
> 
> with your "no" spirit, we would still have an horse and wagon like my 
> old-old-old grandpa !

You could consider unsubscribing from this mailing list with
List-Unsubscribe: 

and, instead, reading the archives with

whose postings are usually not many minutes behind.

Cheers,
David.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Darac Marjal]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
   The way most people keep up to date on network news is through subscription to a number of mail reflectors (also known as  
   mail exploders). Mail reflectors are special electronic mailboxes which, when they receive a message, resend it to a list of   
   other mailboxes. This in effect creates a discussion group on a particular topic.  
   - E. Krol; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet; RFC 1118; Sept. 1989.
  
   Seem's the first "bitnic listserv" is dated from 1984 ! More than 34 years ago !   
  
   Just as a reminder, we are now in 2018 ... something called the XXI century ... with 4G, optical FTTH connection,  
   smartphones ...
  
   Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more modern like a bugzilla or else ???   


OK. Done. There's a forum at http://forums.debian.net. As Maui said: 
"You're welcome."


--
For more information, please reread.


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Description: PGP signature

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:

Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
more modern like a bugzilla or else ???


Assuming you are talking about systems for discussion, rather than
filing bugs: Debian has  and has had for a
long time, but it gets relatively little use.

Personally I'd love to see the list archive software get an overhaul,
and mailman3's "HyperKitty" archiver looks very promising to me, but I'm
not sure whether it has delivered on the promise, which was to offer a
very forum-like interface to mailing lists, permitting people to reply
via web, or click "+1" buttons (thus freeing the mail interface of lots
of "+1" mails, a blight that debian-user fortunately doesn't suffer)

--

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
>> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
>> more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>
> No.

Do HTML archives of said mailing lists count as "more modern"?

Granted, they're not "methods of communication" so much as "a lifesaver
when I'm trying to figure out some cryptic error message."


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 06:05:41PM +, tech wrote:
> 
> ... and why not ?
> 
> 
> As an example, with a bugzilla, you dont have to dig in n*thousands of 
> "unread" mails,. You can organized, have a clear view with a dashboard... and 
> so on.
> 
> And bugzilla is just one possibility.

Are you aware that bugs.debian.org exists already?

> Since augusth 1st:
> 
> I received around 12 familly mails, 62 pro-mails, 147 spam/pishing/bullshit 
> mails
> 
> Between all the debian mails list who exist, i receives  also 168 emails.
> 
> I have maybee read 20 of them, and deleted all the others...


I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
right tools, it's easy to deal with.

1. Spam filter. Spamassassin is good. If you can add greylisting
to your mail server, you should try that, too.

2. Automatic mail folders. The only mail that ends up in your
inbox should be mail that your ruleset is not certain about.
Each mailing list should get its own folder. Maildrop is easy
to learn.

3. Indexed mail searching. Whatever works with your preferred
mail client. Have cron run a re-index every morning before you
wake up.

4. Mail threading in your mail client. If it doesn't do threads
properly, time to change clients. I like mutt.


> I have sent the following emails, received zero anwsers. With a "modern" 
> system like a bugzilla/forum/tracker/else and their moder options, i can know 
> how many peoples have read it ( 23 answer for 9876 readsfor example ) ... 
> with the mailings list, how many people took relly the time to read it ( as i 
> direct-delete most of he amils i receive ) ...

Who cares who read your mail? Only the answers are important.


> with your "no" spirit, we would still have an horse and wagon like my 
> old-old-old grandpa !

This isn't "No", this is "Why are you insisting on the
superiority of a tack hammer in all circumstances when we have a variety
of tools available? Including a torque-calibrated power driver
that works much better on the bolts you are trying to hammer."

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> The way most people keep up to date on network news is through
> subscription to a number of mail reflectors [...]

To add to other people's responses here (with which I do agree), perhaps
you should consider using a more modern mail user agent: guessing by
your headers (the User-Agent header is missing, so I can only guess),
you are using a Microsoft user agent, perhaps Outlook. Microsoft actually
never "got" email right, and these days downright hates it, because it
is decentralized and can't be controlled as centralized platforms can
be[1].

So your experience will always be second-rate with such a user agent.

[1] I know what I'm talking about: I've watched the slow and painful
   process of replacing mail with something more "modern" (O365) in
   a big corp, and the underhanded tactics of badmouthing and
   marginalizing fueled by a Microsoft-supported "team".

cheers
- -- t
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
> right tools, it's easy to deal with.

This is an excellent point.  Many of the people who lodge complaints
like the one that started this discussion thread have chosen very poor
tools and thus have conflated the failings of those tools with some
non-existent inherent problems with mailing lists.

Serious email users should be using mutt, which is fast, compact,
resistant to attack, and has an astonishing number of features.
Those who receive large volumes of mail should be using procmail
to pre-sort it, and they should be aware of RFC 2919 (and thus
the existence of List-Id) as an excellent means for doing so.
These two tools in combination make dealing with large amounts
of traffic to large numbers of mailing lists quite easy.

Furthermore, everyone using mailing lists should be maintaining
their own archive, simply because there's no reason not to.  The
storage required is small by contemporary standards and doing so
allows the use of local search tools (e.g., grepmail) which can
invaluable in locating relevant messages.  (Those who haven't
been doing this can usually backfill by downloading the archives
maintained by the site running the mailing list.  in turn, everyone
running a mailing list should take care to see that those archives
are fully accessible, unredacted, and downloadable on demand.)

---rsk

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 06:05:41PM +, tech wrote:
>> [...]
>> Since augusth 1st:
>> 
>> I received around 12 familly mails, 62 pro-mails, 147
>> spam/pishing/bullshit mails.
>>
>> Between all the debian mails list who exist, i receives  also 168
>> emails.
>> 
>> I have maybee read 20 of them, and deleted all the others...
>
>
> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
> right tools, it's easy to deal with.
>
> 1. Spam filter. Spamassassin is good. If you can add greylisting
> to your mail server, you should try that, too.

Both are amazing, as are some of the less intensive checks before asking
the more computationally expensive tools.

>
> 2. Automatic mail folders. The only mail that ends up in your
> inbox should be mail that your ruleset is not certain about.
> Each mailing list should get its own folder. Maildrop is easy
> to learn.

I use sieve(?) scripts.  Took maybe 10 minutes to learn the syntax
enough to get the auto redirects working.  

Although, I use my inbox somewhat more heavily than "just for things the
rules don't know", since navigating the directories via phone is more
painful than "I really didn't need to see that one".

>
> 3. Indexed mail searching. Whatever works with your preferred
> mail client. Have cron run a re-index every morning before you
> wake up.

Care to expand on this one a bit? Not entirely sure what you mean here,
and it's intriguing.

>
> 4. Mail threading in your mail client. If it doesn't do threads
> properly, time to change clients. I like mutt.

Mutt is quite nice, though I connect to the linux.debian.* MLs via
Usenet ... really ought to dig out that howto and stash it in my "don't
lose these things" directory.


>> I have sent the following emails, received zero anwsers. With a
>> "modern" system like a bugzilla/forum/tracker/else and their moder
>> options, i can know how many peoples have read it ( 23 answer for
>> 9876 readsfor example ) ... with the mailings list, how many people
>> took relly the time to read it ( as i direct-delete most of he amils
>> i receive ) ...
>
> Who cares who read your mail? Only the answers are important.

^ This.  Also it seems you're getting quite a number of responses on
this today.

Perhaps you (tech) just happen to be somwehere that the list is
"generally quiet" during your "day".


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Piotr]

[This mail was also posted to linux.debian.user.]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 13:30:01 +0200, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
>> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the right
>> tools, it's easy to deal with.
> 
> This is an excellent point.  Many of the people who lodge complaints
> like the one that started this discussion thread have chosen very poor
> tools and thus have conflated the failings of those tools with some
> non-existent inherent problems with mailing lists.

The best was NNTP, but sadly there are not many places where it is still 
used. Web and e-mail approach is for more "handicaped" users, and as the 
exampes shows, there are many of them. Otherwise the trend would be to 
stick to NNTP and not to move to no powerfull solutions.

Regards,
Piotr

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[zaxonxp]

 rH8U]On)GIf;w1ZqdMj$nbYY.Ix8o\C
&

 auM`4jC,sl5vR&@dR!_,^'*^6+Udo[>g^ruiad#l{:lJ?&mGQ{VKGRV_nM~oBgfJm"TpFZ=!t0yw!
$
 UN
References: 
User-Agent: Pan/0.141 (Tarzan's Death; 168b179 git.gnome.org/pan2)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

On Thu, 09 Aug 2018 19:40:02 +0200, tech wrote:

> The way most people keep up to date on network news is through
> subscription to a number of mail reflectors (also known as mail
> exploders). Mail reflectors are special electronic mailboxes which, when
> they receive a message, resend it to a list of other mailboxes. This in
> effect creates a discussion group on a particular topic.
> - E. Krol; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet; RFC 1118; Sept. 1989.
> 
> 
> Seem's the first "bitnic listserv" is dated from 1984 ! More than 34
> years ago !
> 
> 
> Just as a reminder, we are now in 2018 ... something called the XXI
> century ... with 4G, optical FTTH connection, smartphones ...
> 
> 
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> more modern like a bugzilla or else ???

NNTP was a way to go. Sadly not many portals supports it promoting only 
web access or mail list. Personally I do not like to polute my mailbox 
with a tons of e-mails and clean them up later on. NNTP client does this 
when I want it and you can configure it the way you want it. What else 
would you need for a news groups?

Regards,
Piotr

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[zaxonxp]

 rH8U]On)GIf;w1ZqdMj$nbYY.Ix8o\C
&

 auM`4jC,sl5vR&@dR!_,^'*^6+Udo[>g^ruiad#l{:lJ?&mGQ{VKGRV_nM~oBgfJm"TpFZ=!t0yw!
$
 UN
References:  
 

User-Agent: Pan/0.141 (Tarzan's Death; 168b179 git.gnome.org/pan2)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 13:30:01 +0200, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
>> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the right
>> tools, it's easy to deal with.
> 
> This is an excellent point.  Many of the people who lodge complaints
> like the one that started this discussion thread have chosen very poor
> tools and thus have conflated the failings of those tools with some
> non-existent inherent problems with mailing lists.

The best was NNTP, but sadly there are not many places where it is still 
used. Web and e-mail approach is for more "handicaped" users, and as the 
exampes shows, there are many of them. Otherwise the trend would be to 
stick to NNTP and not to move to no powerfull solutions.

Regards,
Piotr

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
>> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
>> right tools, it's easy to deal with.
>
> This is an excellent point.  Many of the people who lodge complaints
> like the one that started this discussion thread have chosen very poor
> tools and thus have conflated the failings of those tools with some
> non-existent inherent problems with mailing lists.

To expand on that with my own personal prejudice -- the people using
these "sub-par" tools are also the ones who're the cause of some of the
existent (modern?) problems with mailing lists.

Namely:

 - HTML Messages
 - Not wrapping messages at ~80 characters
 - top posting


>
> Serious email users should be using mutt, which is fast, compact,
> resistant to attack, and has an astonishing number of features.

Guess I'm not a "serious" email user then.  Half the time I'm still
using Tbird.

> Those who receive large volumes of mail should be using procmail
> to pre-sort it, and they should be aware of RFC 2919 (and thus
> the existence of List-Id) as an excellent means for doing so.
> These two tools in combination make dealing with large amounts
> of traffic to large numbers of mailing lists quite easy.

Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as opposed
to say something on the mailserver itself?


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Curt]

On 2018-08-10, Rich Kulawiec  wrote:
>
> Serious email users should be using mutt, which is fast, compact,
>

...

> Furthermore, everyone using mailing lists should be maintaining

...

> maintained by the site running the mailing list.  in turn, everyone
> running a mailing list should take care to see that those archives
> are fully accessible, unredacted, and downloadable on demand.)
>

...

Should should should. And furthermore, too. Crikey! Have any toothpaste
recommendations for serious carnivores? I feel like ripping something
apart with my teeth.

-- 
You are an ugly little monster, you know, I shouted in my mind’s
loudest voice – so loud it made my heart reverberate. 
Haruki Murakami, “The Little Green Monster”

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 10 August 2018 07:24:18 zaxonxp wrote:

> 
> rH8U]On)GIf;w1ZqdMj$nbYY
>.Ix8o\C &
>
> 
> auM`4jC,sl5vR&@dR!_,^'*^6+Udo[>g^ruiad#l{:lJ?&mGQ{VKGRV_nM~oBgfJm"TpFZ
>=!t0yw! $
>  UN
> References: 
> User-Agent: Pan/0.141 (Tarzan's Death; 168b179 git.gnome.org/pan2)
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
> On Thu, 09 Aug 2018 19:40:02 +0200, tech wrote:
> > The way most people keep up to date on network news is through
> > subscription to a number of mail reflectors (also known as mail
> > exploders). Mail reflectors are special electronic mailboxes which,
> > when they receive a message, resend it to a list of other mailboxes.
> > This in effect creates a discussion group on a particular topic.
> > - E. Krol; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet; RFC 1118; Sept.
> > 1989.
> >
> >
> > Seem's the first "bitnic listserv" is dated from 1984 ! More than 34
> > years ago !
> >
> >
> > Just as a reminder, we are now in 2018 ... something called the XXI
> > century ... with 4G, optical FTTH connection, smartphones ...
> >
> >
> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> > more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>
> NNTP was a way to go. Sadly not many portals supports it promoting
> only web access or mail list. Personally I do not like to polute my
> mailbox with a tons of e-mails and clean them up later on. NNTP client
> does this when I want it and you can configure it the way you want it.
> What else would you need for a news groups?
>
> Regards,
> Piotr

And NNTP will never get there. Why? Its the most bandwidth hungry thing 
in an ISP's closet of tools. To fully support it needs 2000 times the 
bandwidth of an email server.  And bandwidth like that to the backbone 
can bankrupt the ISP. Even web access to a forum wastes 90% of the 
bandwidth it uses with html crap you can't read. TANSTAAFL. 


-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Erik Christiansen]

On 10.08.18 11:46, Dan Purgert wrote:
> Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> To expand on that with my own personal prejudice -- the people using
> these "sub-par" tools are also the ones who're the cause of some of the
> existent (modern?) problems with mailing lists.
> 
> Namely:
> 
>  - HTML Messages
>  - Not wrapping messages at ~80 characters
>  - top posting
> 

It is easy to delete posts so egregiously presented that reading them is
too much trouble. (When I return from a week out in the country, every
month, there's usually over 1200 emails waiting - down to half that after
procmail has done some weeding. So a post should also chop out all
quoted text not explicitly related to the reply, if it is to be read in
the time which can be given to it.)

> >
> > Serious email users should be using mutt, which is fast, compact,
> > resistant to attack, and has an astonishing number of features.
> 
> Guess I'm not a "serious" email user then.  Half the time I'm still
> using Tbird.

Having moved to mutt between 15 & 20 years ago, I've found it powerful
and highly configurable. It'll see me out.

> > Those who receive large volumes of mail should be using procmail
> > to pre-sort it, and they should be aware of RFC 2919 (and thus
> > the existence of List-Id) as an excellent means for doing so.
> > These two tools in combination make dealing with large amounts
> > of traffic to large numbers of mailing lists quite easy.

And then with the list mailboxes arranged in order of interest in
"mailboxes" line(s) in ~/.muttrc, they are presented in priority order.
If domestic management, kids, or walking the dog intrude, then it's
automatically the less important emails which must wait for another day.

> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
> indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as opposed
> to say something on the mailserver itself?

Yup. Details on how to direct its filtering/distribution are in the
procmailrc manpage. Its development stabilised some time ago, and those
of us who use it are very content with that.

Erik

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:46:12AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:
> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
> indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as opposed
> to say something on the mailserver itself?

Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:

:0:
* ^X-Mailing-List:.*
/home/rsk/linux/debian-user

Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
will be appended to the file named in the last line.  (It would be nice
if the debian lists complied with RFC 2919 by using List-Id, but at least
this header works and is consistent throughout.)  The small regexp in
there is present because the functional part of the header is the text
in angle brackets; any text preceding it is for human consumption,
and may change (or not be present at all).

A typical usage pattern for procmail might be something like this:

mail server -> fetchmail -> procmail -> mail client

In other words, a program like fetchmail is used to retrieve mail
(via POP or IMAP) from a mail server.  Fetchmail hands off each message
to procmail.  Procmail decides what to do with each message, which usually
means filing it. [1]  The user can then read each mailing list by pointing
their mail client at it.  This also accumulates a per-mailing list
archive (in mbox format), which is useful.

This is a highly scalable, very robust setup for anyone who has to
deal with lots of mailing lists or with correspondence involving diverse
groups of people.  It scales to thousands of rules (I have 3000+ as
of this morning), it executes quickly, and because procmail is careful
to Do The Right Thing even under adverse circumstances, it's rather
tolerant of configuration errors.  Happily, most mailing lists now
support RFC 2919 (or at least something functionally equivalent,
as we see here) so it's not often necessary to craft procmail rules
based on other headers.

---rsk

[1] Although it could also mean forwarding it, duplicating it, discarding
it, etc.  For example, there exists a mailing list called "outages", which
is used to announce and track outages of networks and other operations
of interest.  If you're subscribed to outages and have a particular
interest in certain ASNs or operations, you can easily craft a procmail
ruleset specific to those that (a) files a copy of the message as above
and (b) upon a relevant Subject-line match, submits a duplicate copy of
the message to an internal ticketing system so that it becomes visible
to operations staff, and so that it can be tracked in the same way as
other trouble reports.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dave Sherohman]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 08:29:34AM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
> presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
> headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:
> 
>   :0:
> * ^X-Mailing-List:.*
> /home/rsk/linux/debian-user
> 
> Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
> will be appended to the file named in the last line.

I used to use procmail a couple decades ago, then I switched to Debian,
and Debian installed exim by default, and I started using exim to sort
my mail instead.  My corresponding rule is:

if $h_X-Mailing-List: contains "debian-" then
  save $home/Mail/deb/
  finish
endif

No translation required.  (And I prefer a single mailbox for all my
debian lists, which is why I just match on "debian-" instead of the full
name/address of the list.)

-- 
Dave Sherohman

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michael Stone]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 10:29:53PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:

Yup. Details on how to direct its filtering/distribution are in the
procmailrc manpage. Its development stabilised some time ago, and those
of us who use it are very content with that.


I would not recommend procmail for new deployments. Its configuration 
syntax is obscure, it's no longer maintained, and there are better 
options available. maildrop is a good choice, with a very simple 
filtering syntax. sieve is another option that's a bit more complex but 
capable of being managed via a gui in a mail client.


Mike Stone

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[The Wanderer]

On 2018-08-10 at 08:29, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:46:12AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:
> 
>> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems
>> to indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as
>> opposed to say something on the mailserver itself?
> 
> Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
> presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
> headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:
> 
>   :0:
> * ^X-Mailing-List:.*
> /home/rsk/linux/debian-user
> 
> Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
> will be appended to the file named in the last line.  (It would be nice
> if the debian lists complied with RFC 2919 by using List-Id, but at least
> this header works and is consistent throughout.)

Hm? The Debian mailing lists I'm on *do* have List-Id; that's how I
filter them into folders on my end, although I do it via Thunderbird's
built-in filtering mechanism rather than via procmail.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 10.08.18 11:46, Dan Purgert wrote:
>> Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>> To expand on that with my own personal prejudice -- the people using
>> these "sub-par" tools are also the ones who're the cause of some of the
>> existent (modern?) problems with mailing lists.
>> 
>> Namely:
>> 
>>  - HTML Messages
>>  - Not wrapping messages at ~80 characters
>>  - top posting
>> 
>
> It is easy to delete posts so egregiously presented that reading them is
> too much trouble. (When I return from a week out in the country, every
> month, there's usually over 1200 emails waiting - down to half that after
> procmail has done some weeding. So a post should also chop out all
> quoted text not explicitly related to the reply, if it is to be read in
> the time which can be given to it.)

Yeah, and if we all do that, the people who don't know any better don't
get any help. :)

Not that I don't delete (or otherwise outright ignore) the exceptionally
bad mails.

>> Guess I'm not a "serious" email user then.  Half the time I'm still
>> using Tbird.
>
> Having moved to mutt between 15 & 20 years ago, I've found it powerful
> and highly configurable. It'll see me out.

I have it for my "main" email account - but still use tbird for
alternate accounts.  It's just "easier" to see all the mail there.  That
being said, I have taken steps to make tbird behave properly.

>> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
>> indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as opposed
>> to say something on the mailserver itself?
>
> Yup. Details on how to direct its filtering/distribution are in the
> procmailrc manpage. Its development stabilised some time ago, and those
> of us who use it are very content with that.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, it'd end up doing the same
thing as sieve is already doing on the mailserver (or perhaps a
secondary pass for things sieve missed).


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 10 August 2018 07:24:18 zaxonxp wrote:
>> [...]
>> NNTP was a way to go. Sadly not many portals supports it promoting
>> only web access or mail list. Personally I do not like to polute my
>> mailbox with a tons of e-mails and clean them up later on. NNTP client
>> does this when I want it and you can configure it the way you want it.
>> What else would you need for a news groups?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Piotr
>
> And NNTP will never get there. Why? Its the most bandwidth hungry thing 
> in an ISP's closet of tools. To fully support it needs 2000 times the 
> bandwidth of an email server.  

Maybe eternal-september is simply an extremely quiet news server, but
the stats page shows they've been transferring at just under 100kbps
(max) over the past month (avg 55kbps).


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Brad Rogers]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 08:29:34 -0400
Rich Kulawiec  wrote:

Hello Rich,

>will be appended to the file named in the last line.  (It would be nice
>if the debian lists complied with RFC 2919 by using List-Id, but at
>least

All the Debian lists I'm subbed to have a List-Id header.  Maybe they
didn't in the past, IDK

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Gary don't need his eyes to see, Gary and his eyes have parted company
Gary Gilmore's Eyes - The Adverts


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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:46:12AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:
>> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
>> indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as opposed
>> to say something on the mailserver itself?
>
> Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
> presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
> headers, but don't have to be.  [...]
>

Thanks for the explanation.  At some point I may have to look into it in
more detail -- although since I run my MTA (well, at least for the mail
that matters) that does sorting serverside, might not do me any good.

-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michael Stone]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 08:29:34AM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:

:0:
   * ^X-Mailing-List:.*
   /home/rsk/linux/debian-user

Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
will be appended to the file named in the last line.  (It would be nice
if the debian lists complied with RFC 2919 by using List-Id, but at least
this header works and is consistent throughout.)


Debian lists have had List-Id for years. This is classic procmail rule 
bitrot. :)


The equivalent maildrop syntax is:

 if (/^List-Id: /)
   to linux/debian-user

It's hard to argue that the procmail version is less error-prone or more 
readable. Especially when you get to things like


 :0 Whc: $HOME/msgid.lock
 | formail -D 8192 $HOME/msgid.cache

 :0 a
 .duplicate/

versus

 `reformail -D 8192 msgid.cache`
 if ( $RETURNCODE == 0 )
   to Maildir/.duplicate

Very few people can read and understand the procmail version without 
looking up what the 'W', 'h', 'c', and 'a' mean, and why there's 
sometimes two ':' and sometimes one. It was a great program back in the 
day, but that day was back when we were still writing sendmail.cf by 
hand and the procmail syntax was comparatively easy to read. If you're 
starting from scratch, this is not the place to start.


Mike Stone

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:33:39AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
> > 3. Indexed mail searching. Whatever works with your preferred
> > mail client. Have cron run a re-index every morning before you
> > wake up.
> 
> Care to expand on this one a bit? Not entirely sure what you mean here,
> and it's intriguing.

Full-text searching of all your mail folders is a reasonable
thing to ask your mail server and/or client to do.

notmuch, maildir-utils, mairix, nmzmail are all Debian packaged
utilities that will look through all your mail and construct an
index so that when you ask for things like:

I want the mail from people who have "Dan" in their email
addresses and had a subject with "GNU"

it can compile that list for your mail client in a second or
three, instead of reading through all your mail when you make
the query and thus taking several minutes or hours.

Each package is a little different: some want to add new
messages to an index on arrival, others want to roll through
all your mail archives each time you re-index. 

If you're a mutt user, you should also be using the amazing
power of limits to do things like "show me mail in this folder
that arrived yesterday and I replied to it" or "show me mail
in this folder that is not from my company's domain".

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 07:55:00AM -0500, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 08:29:34AM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> > Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
> > presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
> > headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:
> > 
> > :0:
> > * ^X-Mailing-List:.*
> > /home/rsk/linux/debian-user
> > 
> > Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
> > will be appended to the file named in the last line.
> 
> I used to use procmail a couple decades ago, then I switched to Debian,
> and Debian installed exim by default, and I started using exim to sort
> my mail instead.  My corresponding rule is:
> 
> if $h_X-Mailing-List: contains "debian-" then
>   save $home/Mail/deb/
>   finish
> endif

And maildrop says:

if (/^X-Mailing-List:.*debian-/:h)
to $home/Mail/deb/

although I would recommend sorting each Debian list to a
different folder. 

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[cyaiplexys]

On 08/10/2018 08:58 AM, The Wanderer wrote:

On 2018-08-10 at 08:29, Rich Kulawiec wrote:


On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 11:46:12AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:


Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems
to indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as
opposed to say something on the mailserver itself?


Correct.  Procmail uses a set of rules to decide what to go with messages
presented to it; those rules are usually based on the contents of message
headers, but don't have to be.  For example, for this mailing list:

:0:
 * ^X-Mailing-List:.*
 /home/rsk/linux/debian-user

Translating, this means that any message which has the specified header
will be appended to the file named in the last line.  (It would be nice
if the debian lists complied with RFC 2919 by using List-Id, but at least
this header works and is consistent throughout.)


Hm? The Debian mailing lists I'm on *do* have List-Id; that's how I
filter them into folders on my end, although I do it via Thunderbird's
built-in filtering mechanism rather than via procmail.


I use Thunderbird as well. Only I have set up a separate email account 
special for getting mail list messages, ads, etc. What I do then is set 
that account up to use collapsable threads. I delete all threads I don't 
think I'd be interested in and then keep the threads I think I want to 
read. I'm only on a couple Debian lists though (Security announcements 
being one, and this one and I think News). This Users one has the most 
activity but it really isn't too much trouble for me.


I also set up my email check to once every 720 minutes (12 hours). This 
way I'm not getting popups every 10 minutes that there's new messages 
while I'm trying to work or watch a tutorial video full screen or something.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[deloptes]

Piotr wrote:

> The best was NNTP, but sadly there are not many places where it is still
> used. Web and e-mail approach is for more "handicaped" users, and as the
> exampes shows, there are many of them. Otherwise the trend would be to
> stick to NNTP and not to move to no powerfull solutions.

If someone wants to put his/her news system on non NNTP base it is his/her
own free will.
I guess there are enough people who understand the difference and major user
groups are hosted on nntp - somehow supply and demand question. May be at
some point of time it will be replaced by something else, but I don't see
it coming

regards

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Shea Alterio]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:59 AM Jonathan Dowland  wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> >Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> >more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>
> Assuming you are talking about systems for discussion, rather than
> filing bugs: Debian has  and has had for a
> long time, but it gets relatively little use.
>
> Personally I'd love to see the list archive software get an overhaul,
> and mailman3's "HyperKitty" archiver looks very promising to me, but I'm
> not sure whether it has delivered on the promise, which was to offer a
> very forum-like interface to mailing lists, permitting people to reply
> via web, or click "+1" buttons (thus freeing the mail interface of lots
> of "+1" mails, a blight that debian-user fortunately doesn't suffer)
>
>
> I've set up mailman3 servers and messed with the code quite a bit. It's a
huge step up from mailman v2, and not just cause the web interface is a
whole lot slicker.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Mark Rousell]

On 09/08/2018 18:39, tech wrote:
> Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> more modern like a bugzilla or else ???

No. Mail lists works as well now as they did then.

Mail lists are efficient, to the point, simple to use.

Don't try to fix what isn't broken.


-- 
Mark Rousell
 
 
 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Mark Rousell]

On 10/08/2018 00:03, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>
> No.  This is an absolutely terrible idea.  Here's why mailing lists
> are (along with Usenet newsgroups) vastly superior to web-based anything:
> [excellent list redacted for brevity]

Well said! What a very useful list of the reasons that mail lists
continue to have great practical utility.

-- 
Mark Rousell
 
 
 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[arne]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 22:35:19 +0100
Mark Rousell  wrote:

> On 09/08/2018 18:39, tech wrote:
> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> > more modern like a bugzilla or else ???  
> 
> No. Mail lists works as well now as they did then.
> 
> Mail lists are efficient, to the point, simple to use.
> 
> Don't try to fix what isn't broken.
> 
> 
try to fix? try to ruin IMHO

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michelle Konzack]

Hiello,
Am sometime in the past hackte Dan Purgert in die Tasten:
> Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
>>> I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
>>> right tools, it's easy to deal with.

1+

> Not familiar with procmail.  A quick perusal of the manpage seems to
> indicate this is a local mail "processor" for sorting things, as
> opposed
> to say something on the mailserver itself?

I run my own Courier Server and I use procmail since 2007 on it.
Works like a charm.

I can access my Mails sorted using Squirrelmail
or even using mutt with IMAP protocol.

Have a nice weekend

-- 
Michelle KonzackMiila ITSystems @ TDnet
GNU/Linux Developer 00372-54541400

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michelle Konzack]

Am DATE hackte Dan Purgert in die Tasten:
> Thanks for the explanation.  At some point I may have to look into it
> in
> more detail -- although since I run my MTA (well, at least for the
> mail
> that matters) that does sorting serverside, might not do me any good.

I would say, your MTA has nothing to do with it.

If you run your own Server and your MTA receive a new message,
let it point to procmail and sort it. I assum, you access the
server trough IMAP so the next time you connect with your
prefered MUA or Squirrelmail you will see the mesages nicely
sorted.

I get today per day arround 700 messages (10 years ago it was
more then 2500 per day) and i have go only in mailfolders I am
interested in.

My IMAP structure is

INBOX
 .BTS_debian
.
 .ML_debian
   .arm
   .embedded
   .security
   .user
   .user-german
 .ML_mail
 .courier-users@lists_sourceforge_net
 .mutt-announce@mutt_org
 .mutt-users@mutt_org
 .squirrelmail-users@lists_sourceforge_net
 .ML_misc
 .bind-users@lists_isc_org
 .ML_pgsql
  .general
 .ML_php
.general
 .ML_xwindow
.fvwm@fvwm_org
.xorg@lists_freedesktop_org
...

Mutt and Squirrelmail marke the folders where are new messages.
and if I am only interested in mutt, I have not to search in a
mailbox with several 100 (or several 1000 after holliday)
unrelated messages.

I hope this give you a clue.

No chance for Webbased Forum especially with all this trackers in it!

-- 
Michelle KonzackMiila ITSystems @ TDnet
GNU/Linux Developer 00372-54541400

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[dekkzz78]

On 08/09, tech wrote:

The way most people keep up to date on network news is through subscription to 
a number of mail reflectors (also known as mail exploders). Mail reflectors are 
special electronic mailboxes which, when they receive a message, resend it to a 
list of other mailboxes. This in effect creates a discussion group on a 
particular topic.
- E. Krol; The Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet; RFC 1118; Sept. 1989.


Seem's the first "bitnic listserv" is dated from 1984 ! More than 34 years ago !



Just as a reminder, we are now in 2018 ... something called the XXI century ... 
with 4G, optical FTTH connection, smartphones ...


Don't assume there are areas  which don't have all the high tech your quoting, 
great swathes of the US still have only access to copper wire at circa 2000 
speeds.


Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more 
modern like a bugzilla or else ???



--
regards.

Dekks Herton

Thinkpad T61 2.0Ghz 2GB WSXGA+

Jabber IM: dekkz...@jabber.hot-chilli.net


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michelle Konzack]

Am DATE hackte Ben Finney in die Tasten:
> It's 2018. Shouldn't we move away from an old “keyboard” to
> something
> mroe modern like a data-glove?

I would prefer the Star Trek version:

"Computer, show me Ben Finneys last 10 postings on debian user"

-- 
Michelle KonzackMiila ITSystems @ TDnet
GNU/Linux Developer 00372-54541400

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Rob van der Putten]

Hi there


On 10/08/18 01:03, Rich Kulawiec wrote:




No.  This is an absolutely terrible idea.  Here's why mailing lists
are (along with Usenet newsgroups) vastly superior to web-based anything:


I prefer Usenet to mailing lists. I read dozens of mailing lists and I 
don't want all that data on my computer. This is why I use a mail to 
news gateway.
What I really like about Usenet, is the way everything is neatly 
organized by subject. The same applies to mailing lists when using a 
gateway.
Further more I don't have to create an account for each group. I just 
subscribe.





Regards,
Rob

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 10 Aug 2018 at 12:42, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> [1] I know what I'm talking about: I've watched the slow and painful
>process of replacing mail with something more "modern" (O365) in
>a big corp, and the underhanded tactics of badmouthing and
>marginalizing fueled by a Microsoft-supported "team".

+1.

I've been forced to use O365 at work.  Luckily, there's still pop access
to this so I can manage my email with the tools I want (which, in my
case, is gnus in Emacs giving me splitting, adaptive scoring,
expiry, ...; YMMV).

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.13 on Debian 9.4

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 02:19:49PM +0200, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Friday, 10 Aug 2018 at 12:42, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > [1] I know what I'm talking about: I've watched the slow and painful
> >process of replacing mail with something more "modern" (O365) in
> >a big corp, and the underhanded tactics of badmouthing and
> >marginalizing fueled by a Microsoft-supported "team".
> 
> +1.
> 
> I've been forced to use O365 at work.  Luckily, there's still pop access
> to this so I can manage my email with the tools I want (which, in my
> case, is gnus in Emacs giving me splitting, adaptive scoring,
> expiry, ...; YMMV).

In my case they even had imap running (guess they didn't know [2]...)

Cheers

[2] Although with the years, I am more and more prone to what I call
   tomas's bastard: "Any sufficiently advanced malice can't be
   distinguished from stupidity" -- a kind of unholy cross-over
   between Hanlon's Razor and Clarke's Third Law. Some call this
   "plausible deniability", I guess.

- -- t
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DBMAni8bBidpQp+41ThJvAxFKwYrorvy
=FKes
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dale Forsyth]

https://www.mycause.com.au/page/183259/a-smile-will-change-a-day-love-that-changed-my-world

From: arne 
Sent: Saturday, 11 August 2018 8:34 AM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Cc: sp113...@telfort.nl
Subject: Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 22:35:19 +0100
Mark Rousell  wrote:

> On 09/08/2018 18:39, tech wrote:
> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something
> > more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>
> No. Mail lists works as well now as they did then.
>
> Mail lists are efficient, to the point, simple to use.
>
> Don't try to fix what isn't broken.
>
>
try to fix? try to ruin IMHO

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Am DATE hackte Dan Purgert in die Tasten:
>> Thanks for the explanation.  At some point I may have to look into it
>> in
>> more detail -- although since I run my MTA (well, at least for the
>> mail
>> that matters) that does sorting serverside, might not do me any good.
>
> I would say, your MTA has nothing to do with it.
>
> If you run your own Server and your MTA receive a new message,
> let it point to procmail and sort it. I assum, you access the
> server trough IMAP so the next time you connect with your
> prefered MUA or Squirrelmail you will see the mesages nicely
> sorted.

Yeah, and as part of that, the MTA hands off to sieve (or perhaps
that's the Dovecot process that invokes sieve).  So *also* handing off
to procmail makes no real improvement.


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 07:06:11AM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 06:24:55AM -0400, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > I get more mail than that before breakfast. If you've got the
> > right tools, it's easy to deal with.
> 
> This is an excellent point.  Many of the people who lodge complaints
> like the one that started this discussion thread have chosen very poor
> tools and thus have conflated the failings of those tools with some
> non-existent inherent problems with mailing lists.
> 
> Serious email users should be using mutt, which is fast, compact,
> resistant to attack, and has an astonishing number of features.
> Those who receive large volumes of mail should be using procmail
> to pre-sort it,

pre-sorting is essential but dang, procmail drove me crazy for a few
years (so slow, clunky rules, ugh!) and I finally tore into sieve
like a carnivore! Damn that felt good.

Oh, and batching the downloads with getmail (and the every friendly
Osamu pipes up on this list) or mpop - both a blindingly fast
compared to anything and everything else including TBird! for a
decade I've NEVER looked back.

And batching the sieve sorting too - not only are sieve rules a
breath of fresh air compared to procmail, it's essentially instant to
sort your "temp email download mail box" into their destination
folders (since the rules are only "compiled" once), and for the big
FTW win, give yourself a little summary output too (see attached and
very hackish script).

Last step is I need to migrate off of Gnu sieve and onto the other
one (Dovecot perhaps?) since Gnu sieve is a pompous prig which spits
the occasional "Malformed email address" - hey, perhaps it's more
secure, IDK, but the attached script even color highlights the
leftover emails from your temp download folder. Did I mention FTW?


> and they should be aware of RFC 2919 (and thus
> the existence of List-Id) as an excellent means for doing so.
> These two tools in combination make dealing with large amounts
> of traffic to large numbers of mailing lists quite easy.
> 
> Furthermore, everyone using mailing lists should be maintaining
> their own archive, simply because there's no reason not to.  The

Ack!

Once I'm subbed to a list, I simply never delete the emails (except
the occasional spam which squeaks through e.g. Debian's lists - but
it really is occasional - and for very lazy personal email spam
protection - just use the big G's email).


> storage required is small by contemporary standards and doing so
> allows the use of local search tools (e.g., grepmail) which can
> invaluable in locating relevant messages.  (Those who haven't
> been doing this can usually backfill by downloading the archives
> maintained by the site running the mailing list.  in turn, everyone
> running a mailing list should take care to see that those archives
> are fully accessible, unredacted, and downloadable on demand.)

I've used forums when no ML was available, and damn it's frustrating
- email is inherently a batch process, which is most efficient of my
time especially in the face of boondocks-class (slow) internet
connections, offline thread viewing, greppability, threads read
trackability (I can trivially see what I have and have not read yet,
and keep not reading those things I want to read later, etc) etc.

Literally nothing else compares to a comfortable offline email
setup... good luck all,

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 03:03:49PM -0400, Ric Moore wrote:
> On 08/09/2018 01:39 PM, tech wrote:
> 
> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more
> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> 
> Why?? There already are plenty of such sites, you need only pick and choose. I
> like it here as I don't have to read a "me too!" message with a meg of
> attachments, html ads and rainbow snorting unicorns. If you really are a
> "tech", you would know better than ask.

“Rainbow snorting unicornds” DAMN! I tried to come up with some witty
response, anything, and for the first time in the last minute, my
brain utterly failed me.

That's good. Very good wordsmithing. ;)

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 12:07:53PM +0300, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Am DATE hackte Ben Finney in die Tasten:
> > It's 2018. Shouldn't we move away from an old “keyboard” to
> > something
> > mroe modern like a data-glove?
> 
> I would prefer the Star Trek version:
> 
> "Computer, show me Ben Finneys last 10 postings on debian user"

I think this is quicker, more elegant and MUCH more intuitive:

 L~f finneyG

Oh.

Dear me!

You mean you're NOT using mutt?

;D

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 07:03:29PM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

... mighty fine list you've got there - mailing lists are even better
than I thought they were.

> 19. Mailing lists interoperate.  I can easily forward a message from this
> list to another one.  Or to a person.  I can send a message to multiple
> lists.  I can forward a message from a person to this list.  And so on.
> Try doing this with web forum software A on host B with destinations
> web forum software X and Y on hosts X1 and Y1.  Good luck with that.

Oh come on - this one's a no-brainer on the web - you click the Like
button on the website, which takes you to a "Share with friend", and
if it doesn't then see if there's a "Tweet" button and click that.

Then all you have to do is log into your Facebook account and upload
a photo of the latte coffee art you just purchased - to make sure the
target of your message takes interest in this post on your wall.

If your forwardee friend fails to notice your fine coffee art photo,
simply create a new Facebook group for them to join called
"MyDebianPrinterProblemForJohn" or something, and then log into that
group and send an invite to your friend, tweet that you've created
the group, hope the tweet helps massage your tech cred daily profile,
tumblr the coffee art and send a reply to the mailing list with links
to the above if all else fails.

It's like, not exactly, like hard or anything. Like.


> 20. Mailing lists can be uni- or bidirectionally gatewayed to Usenet.
> (The main Python language mailing list is an example of this.)  This can
> be highly useful.
> 
> There's more, but I think this easily suffices to make a slamdunk case.

Except for the clear superiority of the web uptions above.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Miles Fidelman]

On 8/12/18 8:10 AM, Zenaan Harkness wrote:


On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 07:03:29PM -0400, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

... mighty fine list you've got there - mailing lists are even better
than I thought they were.


19. Mailing lists interoperate.  I can easily forward a message from this
list to another one.  Or to a person.  I can send a message to multiple
lists.  I can forward a message from a person to this list.  And so on.
Try doing this with web forum software A on host B with destinations
web forum software X and Y on hosts X1 and Y1.  Good luck with that.

Oh come on - this one's a no-brainer on the web - you click the Like
button on the website, which takes you to a "Share with friend", and
if it doesn't then see if there's a "Tweet" button and click that.


And then there's LinkedIn - which makes it nearly impossible to share 
things with anything other than another LinkedIn user (except by using 
one's browser to mail the item or a link).


Nope.  Forwarding by email is about the only universal way to share 
stuff, or to move it from some service or another to one's personal 
storage (I can't tell you how often I email stuff to myself).


Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Miles Fidelman wrote:
> [...]
> Forwarding by email is about the only universal way to share 
> stuff, or to move it from some service or another to one's personal 
> storage (I can't tell you how often I email stuff to myself).

Thankfully I only have to do the "mail it to myself" approach rarely,
like when some "i'm a pro admin" type locks things down tighter than an
Everlast Chastity Belt.

"Look bud, connecting to port 22 is kind of important".

Although, I have recently started running an owncloud instance for just
that reason.

-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Purgert]

Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> [...]
> If your forwardee friend fails to notice your fine coffee art photo,
> simply create a new Facebook group for them to join called
> "MyDebianPrinterProblemForJohn" or something, and then log into that
> group and send an invite to your friend, tweet that you've created
> the group, hope the tweet helps massage your tech cred daily profile,
> tumblr the coffee art and send a reply to the mailing list with links
> to the above if all else fails.
>
> It's like, not exactly, like hard or anything. Like.

I'm pretty sure that just gave me a stroke.

Also, https://xkcd.com/763/


-- 
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5  4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 03:26:16PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> [2] Although with the years, I am more and more prone to what I call
>tomas's bastard: "Any sufficiently advanced malice can't be
>distinguished from stupidity" -- a kind of unholy cross-over
>between Hanlon's Razor and Clarke's Third Law. Some call this
>"plausible deniability", I guess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

  "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is
  utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone
  won't mistake for the genuine article."

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 09:24:44AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 03:26:16PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > [2] Although with the years, I am more and more prone to what I call
> >tomas's bastard: "Any sufficiently advanced malice can't be
> >distinguished from stupidity" -- a kind of unholy cross-over
> >between Hanlon's Razor and Clarke's Third Law. Some call this
> >"plausible deniability", I guess.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
> 
>   "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is
>   utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone
>   won't mistake for the genuine article."

:-)

I think it's impossible to parody a Creationist. Full stop. And I
feel one shouldn't do it...

Cheers
- -- t
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 10:16:17AM -, Dan Purgert wrote:
> Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > [...]
> > Forwarding by email is about the only universal way to share 
> > stuff, or to move it from some service or another to one's personal 
> > storage (I can't tell you how often I email stuff to myself).
> 
> Thankfully I only have to do the "mail it to myself" approach rarely,
> like when some "i'm a pro admin" type locks things down tighter than an
> Everlast Chastity Belt.
> 
> "Look bud, connecting to port 22 is kind of important".
> 
> Although, I have recently started running an owncloud instance for just
> that reason.

Solving tech problems without email is ... like gas chambers with
rickety wooden paling-fence doors.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 03:53:18PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 09:24:44AM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 03:26:16PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> > > [2] Although with the years, I am more and more prone to what I call
> > >tomas's bastard: "Any sufficiently advanced malice can't be
> > >distinguished from stupidity" -- a kind of unholy cross-over
> > >between Hanlon's Razor and Clarke's Third Law. Some call this
> > >"plausible deniability", I guess.
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
> > 
> >   "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is
> >   utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone
> >   won't mistake for the genuine article."
> 
> :-)
> 
> I think it's impossible to parody a Creationist. Full stop. And I
> feel one shouldn't do it...

If it is in fact impossible, and that 'so attempting' simply appears
as being a Creationist, therefore there would be no parody (at least,
none observed, only, at most, felt by the creator of said parody) in
any attempt to so parody, and so perhaps your feeling is suggesting
you ought in fact demonstrate the wisdom of "attempting" to so
parody?

Don't get me wrong, you may prefer to fail in your own duty to your
conscience pursuant to your Creator by failing to "attempt to" parody
being a Creationist - IDK, it's frankly a matter for you?

Now, we can debate whether your duty is one owed -only- to your
conscience, or in fact to your Creator, or p'raps most likely to
both, and if the latter, that you might be seriously deficient in
said duty in your failure to "attempt" to parody said Creator, but
notwithstanding, also that doing so could conceivably encroach on the
grounds of cultural creativity intended to be protected (and safe
spaces so created) by the creators of the Debian Code of Conduct, but
it is likely that this would give rise within you to a conflict of
duties - to your Creator, vis a vis, to the Debian CoC creators.

Certainly I do not envy your dilemma here... may you have wisdom in
the exercise of your authority and power in regards to your
"attempts" to parody one or another Creator or creators respectively.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[rhkramer]

On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more
> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> 
> No.

+1

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[rhkramer]

On Friday, August 10, 2018 07:33:39 AM Dan Purgert wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
> > 3. Indexed mail searching. Whatever works with your preferred
> > mail client. Have cron run a re-index every morning before you
> > wake up.
> 
> Care to expand on this one a bit? Not entirely sure what you mean here,
> and it's intriguing.

I'm not Dan Ritter, and he or some others may have responded, but, for me, I 
have used recol for that -- it creates an index of all the words in the emails 
and then allows full text searches.  Results can be displayed in various ways, 
including re-opening the email in an email client.

(Must be my day to plug recol, in which I have no financial interest (and it is 
free, anyway.)

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 04:05:52PM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, August 10, 2018 07:33:39 AM Dan Purgert wrote:
> > Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > 3. Indexed mail searching. Whatever works with your preferred
> > > mail client. Have cron run a re-index every morning before you
> > > wake up.
> > 
> > Care to expand on this one a bit? Not entirely sure what you mean here,
> > and it's intriguing.
> 
> I'm not Dan Ritter, and he or some others may have responded, but, for me, I 
> have used recol for that -- it creates an index of all the words in the 
> emails 
> and then allows full text searches.  Results can be displayed in various 
> ways, 
> including re-opening the email in an email client.

Debian package name is "recoll". Looks interesting.

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Martin McCormick]

rhkra...@gmail.com writes:
> On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> > > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something 
> more
> > > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> >
> > No.
> 
> +1

Ditto.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Piotr Martyniuk]

On 2018-08-23, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
> On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
>> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more
>> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???

NNTP was the way. You do not need more than this.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 05:54:47AM +, Piotr Martyniuk wrote:
> On 2018-08-23, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
> > On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> >> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> >> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more
> >> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> 
> NNTP was the way. You do not need more than this.

ed, awk and fast typing to filter those convos of interest "on
demand" ought be plenty for anyone ... sheesh!

Man, when we wuz yung unz, we were -lucky- to even have cosmic rays
for editing.
https://xkcd.com/378/

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Piotr Martyniuk]

On 2018-08-24, Zenaan Harkness  wrote:
> ed, awk and fast typing to filter those convos of interest "on
> demand" ought be plenty for anyone ... sheesh!
>
> Man, when we wuz yung unz, we were -lucky- to even have cosmic rays
> for editing.
> https://xkcd.com/378/

No need to go for extreemes. Good NNTP client would do what you want.
And for these who want learn nothing e-mail access was invented. :)

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:47:59AM +, Piotr Martyniuk wrote:
> On 2018-08-24, Zenaan Harkness  wrote:
> > ed, awk and fast typing to filter those convos of interest "on
> > demand" ought be plenty for anyone ... sheesh!
> >
> > Man, when we wuz yung unz, we were -lucky- to even have cosmic rays
> > for editing.
> > https://xkcd.com/378/
> 
> No need to go for extreemes. Good NNTP client would do what you want.
> And for these who want learn nothing e-mail access was invented. :)

I am certain that NNTP is useful and has its place - but that's not
nearly so much fun as suggesting folks should simply "awk on demand"
to filter their 15GiB-and-growing set of emails - like, who needs
folders?

;)

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Rodolfo Medina]

rhkra...@gmail.com writes:

> On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
>> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to something more
>> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>> 
>> No.
>
> +1

+2

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 24 August 2018 09:23:14 Rodolfo Medina wrote:

> rhkra...@gmail.com writes:
> > On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> >> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> >> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to
> >> > something more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> >>
> >> No.
> >
> > +1
>
> +2
-100


-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Curt]

On 2018-08-24, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> On Friday 24 August 2018 09:23:14 Rodolfo Medina wrote:
>
>> rhkra...@gmail.com writes:
>> > On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> >> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
>> >> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to
>> >> > something more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>> >>
>> >> No.
>> >
>> > +1
>>
>> +2
> -100
>

-97


-- 
"She understands everything, recognizes everyone, but through her half sleep,
she simply cannot understand what power binds her hand and foot, oppresses her,
and keeps her from living."  -- Anton Chekhov, “Sleepy”

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Reco]

Hi.

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 04:31:40PM +, Curt wrote:
> On 2018-08-24, Gene Heskett  wrote:
> > On Friday 24 August 2018 09:23:14 Rodolfo Medina wrote:
> >
> >> rhkra...@gmail.com writes:
> >> > On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
> >> >> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to
> >> >> > something more modern like a bugzilla or else ???
> >> >>
> >> >> No.
> >> >
> >> > +1
> >>
> >> +2
> > -100
> >
> 
> -97

-INT_MAX. I win.

Reco

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Reco wrote:
> -INT_MAX. I win.

It is time for projective geometry.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
> -INT_MAX. I win.

-1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.13 on Debian buster/sid

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Reco]

Hi.

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:45:00PM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
> > -INT_MAX. I win.
> 
> -1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!

Damn. Should've seen this. Will use long int next time.

Reco

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[mick crane]

On 2018-08-24 19:06, Reco wrote:

Hi.

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:45:00PM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:

On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
> -INT_MAX. I win.

-1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!


Damn. Should've seen this. Will use long int next time.

Reco
mailing list are great until one of the threads gets really, really, 
really long

mick
--
Key ID4BFEBB31

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 07:23:15PM +0100, mick crane wrote:
> On 2018-08-24 19:06, Reco wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:45:00PM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> > > On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
> > > > -INT_MAX. I win.
> > > 
> > > -1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!
> > 
> > Damn. Should've seen this. Will use long int next time.
> > 
> > Reco
> mailing list are great until one of the threads gets really, really, really
> long

At which point it's still much better than a web page where
every previous message is quoted in full, or even a web page
where you need to scroll carefully to find the right message.

To replicate the features of good email clients, you wind up embedding
most of the functionality of a good email client.

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Michelle Konzack]

Hi,
Am 2018-08-24 hackte Piotr Martyniuk in die Tasten:
> On 2018-08-23, rhkra...@gmail.com  wrote:
>> On Thursday, August 09, 2018 01:47:24 PM Greg Wooledge wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 09, 2018 at 05:39:36PM +, tech wrote:
>>> > Should'nt be time to move away from an old mail-listing to
>>> something more
>>> > modern like a bugzilla or else ???
>
> NNTP was the way. You do not need more than this.

Definitively not.

MANY IAP forbid the use of NNTP (e.g. the french Providers Bougues and
Orange) because of the HUGE traffic it produce.

Also you can not access NNTP from mobile devices without killing your
data traffic allowance...

Telia in Estonia has no restrictions, but downloading the index of a
Kernel Devel Newsgroup has just produced 356MByte traffic!  WTF?
96.000 Messages?

NO THANKS!

-- 
Michelle KonzackMiila ITSystems @ TDnet
GNU/Linux Developer 00372-54541400

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 09:52:25PM +0300, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> MANY IAP forbid the use of NNTP (e.g. the french Providers Bougues and
> Orange) because of the HUGE traffic it produce.

NNTP is about the same efficiency as email.

Usenet with binaries groups, on the other hand, matches what you
are thinking about.

> Also you can not access NNTP from mobile devices without killing your
> data traffic allowance...

As above.

> Telia in Estonia has no restrictions, but downloading the index of a
> Kernel Devel Newsgroup has just produced 356MByte traffic!  WTF?
> 96.000 Messages?
> 
> NO THANKS!

96000 messages sounds like a couple of years worth of traffic --
and kernel groups tend to send patches.

You're letting specific weird cases frighten you away from a
perfectly reasonable protocol.

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[The Wanderer]

On 2018-08-24 at 15:12, Dan Ritter wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 09:52:25PM +0300, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> 
>> MANY IAP forbid the use of NNTP (e.g. the french Providers Bougues
>> and Orange) because of the HUGE traffic it produce.
> 
> NNTP is about the same efficiency as email.
> 
> Usenet with binaries groups, on the other hand, matches what you are
> thinking about.

Any given news provider can choose not to carry the binaries groups.

Any given user can choose not to subscribe to any of the binaries
groups.

If the user chooses a provider which carries those groups, and chooses
to subscribe to one or more of them, then surely that is what that user
is choosing to do with the bandwidth which that user purchases from that
user's provider - and as long as the user's bandwidth limits are not
exceeded, surely it's none of the provider's business what is
transported over that bandwidth.

>> Telia in Estonia has no restrictions, but downloading the index of
>> a Kernel Devel Newsgroup has just produced 356MByte traffic!  WTF?
>> 96.000 Messages?
>> 
>> NO THANKS!
> 
> 96000 messages sounds like a couple of years worth of traffic -- and
> kernel groups tend to send patches.

Actually, assuming that this "kernel devel newsgroup" is a gatewayed
mirror of the Linux Kernel Mailing List, and based on my archive of the
LKML over the course of several years (or my memory of such, as it's on
another box to which I don't have immediate access), that's about four
to eight months worth of traffic - depending on which year it's from.
The per-month message count has been trending upwards over time; it's
even possible that by now this might represent as little as three
months. (I'm a ways behind.)

Yes, it is - or, when I was up to date with such things, was - routine
to see well over 20,000 E-mails per month through the LKML.

> You're letting specific weird cases frighten you away from a
> perfectly reasonable protocol.

The LKML is indeed a fairly extreme outlier, however. Very, very few
mailing lists get that kind of traffic; it may even be the only one.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[John Hasler]

The Wanderer writes:
> If the user chooses a provider which carries those groups, and chooses
> to subscribe to one or more of them, then surely that is what that
> user is choosing to do with the bandwidth which that user purchases
> from that user's provider - and as long as the user's bandwidth limits
> are not exceeded, surely it's none of the provider's business what is
> transported over that bandwidth.

For marketing reasons they like to advertise very high bandwidth, beyond
what they can actually support on shared channels, and then block
potentially high-bandwidth services that most of their customers will
never use and therefor never miss.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[David Wright]

On Fri 24 Aug 2018 at 16:18:40 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> The Wanderer writes:
> > If the user chooses a provider which carries those groups, and chooses
> > to subscribe to one or more of them, then surely that is what that
> > user is choosing to do with the bandwidth which that user purchases
> > from that user's provider - and as long as the user's bandwidth limits
> > are not exceeded, surely it's none of the provider's business what is
> > transported over that bandwidth.
> 
> For marketing reasons they like to advertise very high bandwidth, beyond
> what they can actually support on shared channels, and then block
> potentially high-bandwidth services that most of their customers will
> never use and therefor never miss.

I thought their concern was usage, not bandwidth (ie speed).
360MB is small beer. Downloading a day's House Judiciary Committee
hearing from youtube is around 3-4GB. With TV (all off internet),
we use 15-30GB per day.

Cheers,
David.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 07:23:15PM +0100, mick crane wrote:
> On 2018-08-24 19:06, Reco wrote:
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:45:00PM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> > > On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
> > > > -INT_MAX. I win.
> > > 
> > > -1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!
> > 
> > Damn. Should've seen this. Will use long int next time.
> > 
> > Reco
> mailing list are great until one of the threads gets really, really, really
> long

Dude! Like I said, cat $ALL_EMAILS >> ONE_BIG_FOLDER; awk 'to hearts
content'; ed #(MUA)

You're missing out...

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[John Hasler]

I wrote:
> For marketing reasons they like to advertise very high bandwidth, beyond
> what they can actually support on shared channels, and then block
> potentially high-bandwidth services that most of their customers will
> never use and therefor never miss.

David writes:
> I thought their concern was usage, not bandwidth (ie speed).

What sort of providers?  Those with shared channels need to worry about
bandwidth.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 25/08/2018 05:45, Eric S Fraga wrote:

On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:

-INT_MAX. I win.

-1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!


No, it is the other way around for two's complement:

INT_MIN = -INT_MAX - 1

Two's complement is unbalanced. You do not know the power of the dark 
(negative) side.


For example, for signed 32-bit integers using two's complement (C/C++ 
int on most current architectures and JVM int).


INT_MAX = 2**31 - 1 = 2147483647

INT_MIN = -2**31 = -2147483648

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_(computer_science)

Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 21:06, Reco wrote:
>   Hi.
>
> On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 06:45:00PM +0100, Eric S Fraga wrote:
>> On Friday, 24 Aug 2018 at 20:15, Reco wrote:
>> > -INT_MAX. I win.
>> 
>> -1 (wraps around so = INT_MAX) and I win!
>
> Damn. Should've seen this. Will use long int next time.

:-)
-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.13 on Debian buster/sid

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/24/2018 06:08 PM, David Wright wrote:

On Fri 24 Aug 2018 at 16:18:40 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:

The Wanderer writes:

If the user chooses a provider which carries those groups, and chooses
to subscribe to one or more of them, then surely that is what that
user is choosing to do with the bandwidth which that user purchases
from that user's provider - and as long as the user's bandwidth limits
are not exceeded, surely it's none of the provider's business what is
transported over that bandwidth.


For marketing reasons they like to advertise very high bandwidth, beyond
what they can actually support on shared channels, and then block
potentially high-bandwidth services that most of their customers will
never use and therefor never miss.


I thought their concern was usage, not bandwidth (ie speed).
360MB is small beer. Downloading a day's House Judiciary Committee
hearing from youtube is around 3-4GB. With TV (all off internet),
we use 15-30GB per day.

Cheers,
David.



As single data point:
I am subscribed to 17 mailing lists and follow 22 USENET groups.
All that plus my routine browsing and downloading system updates from 
Debian keeps me well under my 2GB monthly data cap [typically <1.2GB]

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[John Hasler]

Richard writes:
> I am subscribed to 17 mailing lists and follow 22 USENET groups.

The providers that block NNTP are concerned about binary groups (which
they most likely believe to be the only kind that exist).
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Richard Owlett]

On 08/25/2018 07:18 AM, John Hasler wrote:

Richard writes:

I am subscribed to 17 mailing lists and follow 22 USENET groups.


The providers that block NNTP are concerned about binary groups (which
they most likely believe to be the only kind that exist).



Yes. I was just trying to give a data point to give a real use-case 
perspective.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[David Wright]

On Fri 24 Aug 2018 at 19:16:35 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> I wrote:
> > For marketing reasons they like to advertise very high bandwidth, beyond
> > what they can actually support on shared channels, and then block
> > potentially high-bandwidth services that most of their customers will
> > never use and therefor never miss.
> 
> David writes:
> > I thought their concern was usage, not bandwidth (ie speed).
> 
> What sort of providers?  Those with shared channels need to worry about
> bandwidth.

Sorry, but I was was looking at this from the point of view of we
consumers rather than the ISPs. The OP started the discussion, I
think, with a pitch to persuade us to prefer channels other than
email to follow mailing lists. Some have said that using newsgroups
works fine for them. The only mention of speed, bandwidth and usage
I've seen was the person who downloaded the Kernel Development index,
and that complaint was about its size, not the speed at which it was
delivered. I assume the index gets cached somewhere on the user's
machine.

I can understand that were a mailing list to be delivered via the web
on a free service supported by advertising, the discussion of
bandwidth would be highly significant, particularly for those on
dial-up.

Or are you talking about some type of "shared channel" of which I have
no knowledge?

Cheers,
David.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[John Hasler]

David writes:
> Or are you talking about some type of "shared channel" of which I have
> no knowledge?

Cable providers may have a great many customers on a single cable with
large (but limited) bandwidth.  Some rural providers may have limited
backhaul bandwidth.  They make promises to customers based on optimistic
estimates of peak usage.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dave Sherohman]

On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 07:23:15PM +0100, mick crane wrote:
> mailing list are great until one of the threads gets really, really, really
> long

...and then they're *REALLY* great.

The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and long
threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying to.

-- 
Dave Sherohman

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[rhkramer]

On Monday, August 27, 2018 04:12:32 AM Dave Sherohman wrote:
> The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and long
> threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying to.

That never happens on this list, does it (with tongue deeply in cheek).

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 07:48:01AM -0400, rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Monday, August 27, 2018 04:12:32 AM Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and long
> > threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying to.
> 
> That never happens on this list, does it (with tongue deeply in cheek).

Not that I knew of, oh no, Sir ;-)

Cheers
- -- t
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Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 27 August 2018 07:48:01 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Monday, August 27, 2018 04:12:32 AM Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and
> > long threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying
> > to.
>
> That never happens on this list, does it (with tongue deeply in
> cheek).

Don't byte down, guy. You'll be ending your posts with frownies for a 
while. ;-)

-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[David Wright]

On Sat 25 Aug 2018 at 14:27:38 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> David writes:
> > Or are you talking about some type of "shared channel" of which I have
> > no knowledge?
> 
> Cable providers may have a great many customers on a single cable with
> large (but limited) bandwidth.

Oh, like me, you mean. When we wanted to get our cable strung from the
pole with the least obstructed view of our house, the linesman first
told us that all the terminations were taken, but on ringing the
office, he found that one line was not subscribed to, so we were able
to connect to that pole. When I walk down the back alleys, I can see
other poles connected to the same main coax feed that links the poles.

I'm still scratching my head why subscribing to NNTP newsgroups should
lead to bandwidth problems rather than usage ones. I can hit my
bandwidth limits in many other ways like downloading youtube videos,
watching TV, etc, but the hard limit is my usage, where I would end up
paying money for any excess.

> Some rural providers may have limited backhaul bandwidth.  They make
> promises to customers based on optimistic estimates of peak usage.

Now it appears that you're using "usage" where I would write "bandwidth".
Am I in a minority of one here? Bandwidth is the rate of transfer of
bits, whereas usage is the quantity of bits transferred irrespective
of how fast they accumulated.

Cheers,
David.

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[rhkramer]

On Monday, August 27, 2018 10:18:28 AM dekkz...@gmail.com wrote:
> On 08/27, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> >The only problem I can ever recall seeing with mailing lists and long
> >threads is when people don't trim the posts they're replying to.
> 
> Isn't that usually due to topic drift in which case break the thread under
> a new title?

No, I would say not -- well, maybe topic drift, but, too often I see an email 
with several points or suggestions in it, then someone quotes the entire post 
and says something like "I agree" or "that worked for me" at the bottom.  

Well, which do you agree with, which worked for you?

I try to trim so that only points that I am responding to remain in the post, 
with just enough contextual information so someone can (imho, should) be able 
to make sense of it.

And, even if the agree with everything (or everything worked), why leave all 
that old text in the post -- it is just extra stuff that my eye (and maybe 
brain) has to deal with.

I don't always follow or manage to comply with the following rule, but have it 
as one of my goals:  "The writer should make it easy on the reader -- there is 
only one writer, but there could be millions of readers."

(Now, granted, there is also the aphorisim (right word) that: "I did not have 
time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one", and, indeed, 
sometimes I don't take the time to write a short letter (or enough knowledge / 
understanding to do so.)

Hope everyone has a good day!

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 27 August 2018 11:11:37 David Wright wrote:

> On Sat 25 Aug 2018 at 14:27:38 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> > David writes:
> > > Or are you talking about some type of "shared channel" of which I
> > > have no knowledge?
> >
> > Cable providers may have a great many customers on a single cable
> > with large (but limited) bandwidth.
>
> Oh, like me, you mean. When we wanted to get our cable strung from the
> pole with the least obstructed view of our house, the linesman first
> told us that all the terminations were taken, but on ringing the
> office, he found that one line was not subscribed to, so we were able
> to connect to that pole. When I walk down the back alleys, I can see
> other poles connected to the same main coax feed that links the poles.
>
> I'm still scratching my head why subscribing to NNTP newsgroups should
> lead to bandwidth problems rather than usage ones. I can hit my
> bandwidth limits in many other ways like downloading youtube videos,
> watching TV, etc, but the hard limit is my usage, where I would end up
> paying money for any excess.
>
That bandwidth limit is not on your side of the isp, its the bandwidth 
from the main trunk lines to the isp. NNTP is a huge bandwidth hog 
regardless of how much of it your isp accepts for spooling on local disk 
to serve you.

> > Some rural providers may have limited backhaul bandwidth.  They make
> > promises to customers based on optimistic estimates of peak usage.
Here at least, thats gradually getting better.
>
> Now it appears that you're using "usage" where I would write
> "bandwidth". Am I in a minority of one here? Bandwidth is the rate of
> transfer of bits, whereas usage is the quantity of bits transferred
> irrespective of how fast they accumulated.

Thats a pretty good view of the differences.
>
> Cheers,
> David.



-- 
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[Dan Ritter]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 11:37:48AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> 
> That bandwidth limit is not on your side of the isp, its the bandwidth 
> from the main trunk lines to the isp. NNTP is a huge bandwidth hog 
> regardless of how much of it your isp accepts for spooling on local disk 
> to serve you.
> 

This is not the case.

The NNTP server-to-server algorithm is analogous to rsync,
if you think of:

- each message is a file
- each newsgroup is a directory
- if the receiver doesn't have a directory, it won't be
  sync'd over from the sender
- the sender/receiver don't bother looking at contents
  of each file to decide whether to update, just the name-timestamp

And it always goes in exactly one direction; when the receiver
wants to send messages back upstream, that's a different
connection in which they swap places.

NNTP is a bandwidth hog in exactly the same proportion as the
space it occupies on disk.

I have simplified for the sake of a familiar analogy.

-dsr-

Re: mailing list vs "the futur"

[David Wright]

On Mon 27 Aug 2018 at 11:37:48 (-0400), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 27 August 2018 11:11:37 David Wright wrote:
> 
> > On Sat 25 Aug 2018 at 14:27:38 (-0500), John Hasler wrote:
> > > David writes:
> > > > Or are you talking about some type of "shared channel" of which I
> > > > have no knowledge?
> > >
> > > Cable providers may have a great many customers on a single cable
> > > with large (but limited) bandwidth.
> >
> > Oh, like me, you mean. When we wanted to get our cable strung from the
> > pole with the least obstructed view of our house, the linesman first
> > told us that all the terminations were taken, but on ringing the
> > office, he found that one line was not subscribed to, so we were able
> > to connect to that pole. When I walk down the back alleys, I can see
> > other poles connected to the same main coax feed that links the poles.
> >
> > I'm still scratching my head why subscribing to NNTP newsgroups should
> > lead to bandwidth problems rather than usage ones. I can hit my
> > bandwidth limits in many other ways like downloading youtube videos,
> > watching TV, etc, but the hard limit is my usage, where I would end up
> > paying money for any excess.
> >
> That bandwidth limit is not on your side of the isp, its the bandwidth 
> from the main trunk lines to the isp. NNTP is a huge bandwidth hog 
> regardless of how much of it your isp accepts for spooling on local disk 
> to serve you.

I didn't know they were asking the ISP to *host* the newsgroups,
just to allow NNTP stuff to pass from whoever is hosting it to
the user, who pays for the usage they make of it.

> > > Some rural providers may have limited backhaul bandwidth.  They make
> > > promises to customers based on optimistic estimates of peak usage.
> Here at least, thats gradually getting better.

I read that improvements are very patchy in the US.

> > Now it appears that you're using "usage" where I would write
> > "bandwidth". Am I in a minority of one here? Bandwidth is the rate of
> > transfer of bits, whereas usage is the quantity of bits transferred
> > irrespective of how fast they accumulated.
> 
> Thats a pretty good view of the differences.

But I get the impression that we have another baud/bitrate muddle.

Cheers,
David.