Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site masscomp.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!trb
From: trb@masscomp.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Personal Translations?
Message-ID: <193@masscomp.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Feb-84 16:40:35 EST
Article-I.D.: masscomp.193
Posted: Sat Feb 25 16:40:35 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Feb-84 04:54:49 EST
References: <3348@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: MASSCOMP, Littleton, MA
Lines: 36

S.P. of Toronto, Ontario asks:

	... what happened to the good old days when 1/2 the articles
	came from trb?  Bring back the days of the AI projects!

Yes, friends, I'm still up and running, though in a different venue.
I've left BTL to hack in northeastern Massachusetts.  I haven't had
much time to play the mail and netnews game recently, I've a hundred
messages in my mbox and until recently I was a month behind on
netnews.  Of course, in the old days I could post a reasonable number
of articles and it would be half of the ones on netnews.  Those days
are gone.  These days, the volume is such that I usually just skip the
really long articles, unless they are written by someone who I know is
worth reading.

In the olden days, when I saw something in netnews that upset or moved
me, I would follow it up with an article.  These days, there seem to be
so many articles where the impressions are so fucking moronic, or worse
yet, where there seems to be no insight invested at all, that I feel
better just ignoring them rather than trying to right what I see is
wrong.  The volume has gotten out of hand, and not because of the
number of contributors.  I think that netnews will once again be
managable when we make use of the reference fields in the headers to be
able to skip entire senseless conversations.  To let the truth (well,
my opinion) be known, I'd also like to put an options line in my
.newsrc which said let me always see netnews by author X, and never see
netnews by author Y.

I still enjoy netnews, but sometimes I get overwhelmed with the volume
because the tools I have for dealing with it are inadequate (though I
notice that they're improving).  I still believe that netnews is
worthwhile, especially considering its benefits when weighed opposite
our individual investments (which are negligible).

	There you have it, S.P. of Toronto, because You Asked for It!
	Andy Tannenbaum   Masscomp Inc  Westford MA   (617) 692-6200 x274