From: John Bokma on
Lie Ryan <lie.1296(a)gmail.com> writes:

> If you look at Stack Overflow, the highest voted questions are:
>
> - Hidden Features of C#?
> - What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?
> - What's your favorite "programmer" cartoon?
> - What is your best programmer joke?
> ... and so on
>
> many of them are nearly out-of-topic.

What do you mean with out-of-topic? (off topic?)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python

But to be honest I mostly end up on Stack Overflow when I google for a
specific problem, and most of the time I find a nice concise answer
without much noise.

--
John Bokma j3b

Hacking & Hiking in Mexico - http://johnbokma.com/
http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development
From: John Bokma on
Steven D'Aprano <steve(a)REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> writes:

> On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:56:34 -0500, Jim Byrnes wrote:
>
>> I thought his point was they are big enough to have the resources to
>> offer newsgroups but don't. If I want fast internet I must use Comcast
>> and Comcast doesn't offer newsgroups either. Sadly is seems getting
>> access to newsgroups is getting harder and harder.
>
> I'm sorry for all you people who don't live in a place with a genuinely
> free market,

If such a thing exists it still doesn't mean that each and every place
where one can live has plenty of choice. Even in the Netherlands, where
I am originally from, which is quite crowded there are plenty of places
where the number of provider options are limited. But I don't think you
should feel sorry for those people, because the majority is not
interested in Usenet (well, the "text" part) and the few who do will
find a way. On top of that, not every provider has the expertise to
handle Usenet resulting in a very crappy service nobody cares about.

> and instead have to suffer with the lack of competition and
> poor service of a monopoly or duopoly masquerading as a free market. But
> *my* point was that your woes are not universal, and Usenet is alive and
> well. It might be declining, but it's a long, slow decline and, like
> Cobol, it will probably still be around a decade after the cool kids
> declared it dead.

Well, I've noticed quite some groups I used to follow have become "dead"
in less than a year, so while I have no doubt you're correct with the
decade, I don't think there is much fun in being subscribed to 20 groups
only to find one message a month :-D. I use email to stay in contact
with some regulars of groups that indeed do have just one message /
month. I doubt it has anything to do with being a cool kid or not. Some
groups also dry up because the topic has been discussed to dead and/or
it's easier to nowadays find the information on line somewhere else. And
yet others, in my opinion, dry up because the people who are holding the
fort are IMO sitting in ivory towers and have extremely little patience
with newbies but are also somewhat tired with each other because they
don't want to end up in the same discussion again.

So, yeah, Usenet will be around for decades, I don't doubt it. I am
convinced that in a decade from now the total number of users will still
be higher than 20 years ago so it's far from dead then. But I guess that
will make it only more so that one has to pay for access.

--
John Bokma j3b

Hacking & Hiking in Mexico - http://johnbokma.com/
http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development
From: Lie Ryan on
On 06/05/10 12:34, John Bokma wrote:
> Lie Ryan <lie.1296(a)gmail.com> writes:
>
>> If you look at Stack Overflow, the highest voted questions are:
>>
>> - Hidden Features of C#?
>> - What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?
>> - What's your favorite "programmer" cartoon?
>> - What is your best programmer joke?
>> ... and so on
>>
>> many of them are nearly out-of-topic.
>
> What do you mean with out-of-topic? (off topic?)

yeah, "off-topic", that's the word.

> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python
>
> But to be honest I mostly end up on Stack Overflow when I google for a
> specific problem, and most of the time I find a nice concise answer
> without much noise.

Same here. But the point is, since Google bypasses the voting system,
that's why I don't see much added value in having a voting system.
From: John Bokma on
Lie Ryan <lie.1296(a)gmail.com> writes:

> On 06/05/10 12:34, John Bokma wrote:
[..]
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python
>>
>> But to be honest I mostly end up on Stack Overflow when I google for a
>> specific problem, and most of the time I find a nice concise answer
>> without much noise.
>
> Same here. But the point is, since Google bypasses the voting system,
> that's why I don't see much added value in having a voting system.

There is also voting on the answers ;-).

--
John Bokma j3b

Hacking & Hiking in Mexico - http://johnbokma.com/
http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development
From: Aahz on
In article <mailman.872.1275580208.32709.python-list(a)python.org>,
Monte Milanuk <memilanuk(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Decent NNTP access is harder to find. Not impossible, but no longer
>a 'free' part of most standard ISP access any more.

This seems like a good time to promote my ISP: panix.com
--
Aahz (aahz(a)pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not
start writing it." --Dijkstra
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