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From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 01:41 On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:15:20 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote: > So? NNTP is the living dead. Time to let it go. So you say. I think the millions of posts on Usenet say different. According to Wikipedia, the average number of all text posts in the Big-8 newsgroups is 1,800 new messages every hour. That excludes binary groups, where the amount of traffic is much, much bigger. Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on Usenet. > Most people use this list via e-mail, How do you know? Do you have evidence for this, or are you just making it up? In a later post, you claimed the evidence is: "Scan through a bunch of threads with show-headers. Watch the User-Agent value (set by the senders client). The results become obvious pretty quickly." Or in other words, a non-random selection of posts followed by an error- prone and subjective test. I've picked seven posts from this thread, from seven different users, and I get these User Agents: User-Agent Count Mail or News? none 1 unknown Mozilla/5.0 1 Both Gnus/5.13 2 Both G2/1.0 2 Web (interface to News) Thunderbird 1 Both I happen to know at least one of the Gnus users is using News, so that's 1 definite News, 2 Web, 4 either News or email, and no definite email. -- Steven
From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 02:08 On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 22:05:19 -0700, Phlip wrote: > On Jun 3, 9:54 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st...(a)REMOVE-THIS- > cybersource.com.au> wrote: > >> I don't know what rubbish ISPs you're dealing with > > You've heard of a little fly-by-night outfit called AT&T? Yes I have. Aren't they the people who were engaged in a long-running criminal conspiracy to break the law and commit illegal warrantless surveillance of American citizens? If you look at the reviews here: http://www.dslreports.com/gbu/ they are a distinct second-class ISP, with average B scores. Perhaps that's better than "rubbish", but it's nothing to be proud about when you are a company the size of AT&T. When you have that many resources, anything less than straight A+ is a failure. And that's not even mentioning their lack of News access, their ham- fisted and clueless blocking of 4chan (whether in legitimate self-defence or not), or their stance on net neutrality. But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically equals "better". -- Steven
From: John Nagle on 4 Jun 2010 02:43 Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:16:03 -0700, Pierre Quentel wrote: > >> So the OP's initiative should be an incentive to think on the format of >> the interaction between all the range of Python users, from newbees to >> gurus. We are in the 2.0 era, with social networks all over the place >> using a pleasant interface, > > Really? I can't think of any 2.0 era social networks using pleasant > interfaces. All the ones I've seen or used start with mediocre interfaces > and get worse from there. > > >> while c.l.p has a rather austere look and feel, with text only, > > Thank goodness for that! > > >> no way to present code snippets in a different >> font / background than discussions, > > If somebody can't distinguish code from comments in a post by the > context, they aren't cut out to be a programmer and should probably stick > to posting "OMG LOL" on a social networking site. > >> and even an unintuitive way of entering links... > > Pasting or typing a URL is unintuitive? > > If somebody can't take the time and effort to post a URL in a form that > is not broken, well, that doesn't say much for their skills as a coder > does it? If you can't handle the fact that URLs can't be broken over > multiple lines in email and news posts, how do you expect to handle even > more vigorous requirements while programming? > > >> I'm not saying that pythonforum.org is the best solution but it >> certainly looks more attractive than c.l.p. to the new generation of >> Python users > > I get: > > While trying to retrieve the URL: http://pythonforum.org/ > The following error was encountered: > Connection to 173.83.46.254 Failed > The system returned: > (111) Connection refused > > > Oops. Looks like they can't handle the millions of new users joining up. > > Despite my sarcasm, I actually do wish them the best. I'm not thrilled about having to deal with yet another forum system This one is at best mediocre. It took 14 seconds to deliver its home page. It wants me to "register". Which probably means I'll be spammed. Forum Software Review gives "Informer Technologies" a 2 out of 5 on their system. I know USENET is obsolete, but the alternatives are worse. If we're going to have a forum system, it probably should be on "Python.org", which already has mailing lists, a wiki, an IRC server, and a way to order T-shirts. John Nagle
From: D'Arcy J.M. Cain on 4 Jun 2010 02:29 On 04 Jun 2010 05:41:17 GMT Steven D'Aprano <steve(a)REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote: > Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't > waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on Usenet. Kidding, right? Cost to spam is virtually zero so the ROI is pretty close to infinite no matter how many people they reach. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy(a)druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner.
From: Adam Tauno Williams on 4 Jun 2010 07:03
On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 15:40 -0700, Phlip wrote: > On Jun 3, 3:20 pm, geremy condra <debat...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > You mean like how I never get answers, to my super-easy GED-level > > > questions, here??! > > I agree. This proves conclusively that a web forum is the right > > place for you. > Ah, so you feel up to my "xsl for xmlrunner.py" question? I do a fair amount of xslt, but I don't have any idea what xmlrunner.py is. It isn't a GED-level question if it involves specific knowledge about a tertiary product/project. -- Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam(a)whitemice.org> LPIC-1, Novell CLA <http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com> OpenGroupware, Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba |