Who Are We

Vilco said:

BTW - at that time I surfed for a good year or two with my ISDN
modem without antivirus and without firewall and used to catch
about a virus per year. Now they would be some dozens per minute

I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never got one. I
used a firewall before antivirus protection, believe it or not. These
days, you either have to be crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's
notice.

<[email hidden]> in news:[email hidden]:
| Most people have no idea what Usenet or user groups are. ...
|
| Where did you all hear about newsgroups and being
| online? I used to have the handle of "addman"

I actually recently put onto some HTTP sites a summary of the origins of
newsgroups and the sometimes confusing name "Usenet." It's true that these
tools have become overshadowed since 1993 by the HTTP and browser tools,
developed much later.

My own participation on RFC was mainly in the first 10-12 years, or until
1993 or so. There were memorable postings in that interval, not all readily
archived now, though the jerky/jerkey recipes from 1982-85 and other early
material are. (I still mean to try the jerky recipes. Beef, venison, etc.)
In those days and for the first 15 or more years of newsgroups, pseudonyms
were less common, attitudes were often more civil though never universally
so, and spam was of course almost unknown. (It was contrary to
Internet/Usenet culture, see RFC1855.)

To this and related newsgroups I posted occasional information e.g. on
cookbook authors who were not really mainstream in the US (Kenneth Lo, 6/88;
Morrison Wood, 3/92) but who were widely available on the used market, and
had influence or importance. Friends who read RFC in recent years have sent
me notable postings including Victor Sack's in January 2001 of a priceless
essay on "The Germans and Their Food." (Including William II, late 1800s:
"Dinner was good, but what pleased me most was the discipline with which it
was made."😉 US author Barbara Tuchman by the way, in _The Proud Tower,_
sequel of _The Guns of August,_ has many anecdotes of William II consistent
with that, though Berlin cuisine comes across less positively in Tuchman.)
I didn't realize it was Victor who posted that gem, until I re-checked it
recently. I should have guessed.

"tammym" in news:[email hidden]:
|
| ... me at my house, and I at theirs.
| I've made many many RL and virtual
| friends here over the years

I've seen several mentions of cooking enthusiasts who came to know each
other through this newsgroup. My own introduction to it was sort of the
reverse process. When Steve Upstill launched the newsgroup in January 1982,
he was part of an existing circle of cooking friends around Berkeley who
were also working with computers, as I mentioned in a recent posting on
"Origins" (29 Jun 2005). Various guests for dinner at the house where I
then lived still remember the routine but strange request to hold out their
arms in front of them to serve as short-term drying racks for the bands of
rolled pasta dough being cured briefly before being cut, or the ribbons of
cut pasta being partly dried. Steve's popular pragmatic pasta sauces were
the first posting here.

I don't think I mentioned before that besides cooking and working on
recipe-formatting software, Steve also was a computer graphics expert and
later wrote a book on the subject. In the 1980s, a few years after creating
this newsgroup, he joined a new computer graphics firm called Pixar.

Cheers -- Max

I wrote:
|
| I actually recently put onto some HTTP sites a summary of the
| origins of newsgroups and the sometimes confusing name "Usenet."

Here they are.

--------
It may be worth explaining that "Usenet" is a confusing name. It was never
a "network" but the collection of newsgroups. However, newsgroups developed
from the world of computers networked informally by the store-and-forward
message capability of UUCP, the Unix-to-Unix Copy protocol. UUCP provided
email and, from 1979, "news," or public fora; it only required a telephone
modem for one computer to talk to another. (Unix operating systems and
related software, from Bell Labs, Berkeley, etc., were lingua-franca for
much of the university and research software world from the 1970s on. The
Unix user's conference was Usenix, the news capability was Usenet, and there
were other acronyms. Versions of UUCP followed for other operating systems
such as VMS and DOS.)

Confusing this picture was that many US hub computers for UUCP were also on
the Internet, the research network that had started in the late 1960s,
called ARPAnet in the 1970s and "ARPA Internet" from early 1980s. (That
network, as many people know despite after-the-fact mythmaking, consisted of
standardized communication protocols to permit diverse grantees of US DARPA,
which supported a lot of US computer research in those days, to talk to each
other.)

Newsgroups were read in the 1980s by people on the Internet per se
(including me); Internet paths also supplemented phone modems to pass
newsgroup messages, informally at first. After 1986 the Network News
Transfer Protocol (NNTP), for high-speed networks, shifted much carriage of
newsgroups to the actual Internet. UUCP and telephone modems dwindled, and
with them, the multi-day Time Warp that formerly confused exchanges on
newsgroups, and that gelled customs such as quoting context when you reply
to an earlier message (still important but not as desperately so as
originally). I recall still addressing some email as late as the early
1990s via UUCP hops (xmachine!ymachine!username) or mixed Internet-UUCP.
There were also private email networks, SprintMail, MCIMail, CompuServe,
AOL, etc.; BITNET with its mailing-list servers. Some of these services
offered newsgroup-like capabilities internally. In time they merged their
email into the existing Internet format, and sometimes gave their
subscribers access to newsgroups, the Internet's standard forum tool. The
picture evolved further with HTTP-based fora a few years later. Despite
some confusing "tutorial" definitions, "Usenet" still denotes newsgroups,
not a network per se.

Supplemental milestone recollections in case of interest:

On April 1, 1984, Piet Beertema, a Netherlands networking engineer who'd
worked to get co-operation across the Atlantic for higher bandwidth, staged
a practical joke with forged UUCP paths from the Kremlin. I posted on the
20th anniversary a summary of this "Kremvax" caper and sequelae (the Kremlin
sys admin actually named a first networking machine Kremvax, honoring
Beertema, and so on), archived currently here:

http://tinyurl.com/4zo5j

In May 1987, after a dinner, Brian Reid and associates launched a secondary
set of newsgroups within Usenet but with looser creation and distribution
requirements, the "alt" groups. Reid's motivation actually was recipes.
Among the resulting new newsgroups, alt.drugs appeared after debate. Then
Reid created alt.sex and posted the following remarks (April 3, 1988):

"That meant that the alt network now carried alt.sex and
alt.drugs. It was therefore artistically necessary to create
alt.rock-n-roll, which I have also done. I have no idea what
sort of traffic it will carry. If the bizzarroids take it over I
will rmgroup it or moderate it; otherwise I will let it be."

Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:

Quoted message said:

I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.

Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.
--
Vilco
Think Pink , Drink Rose'

"Vilco" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:

Quoted message said:

I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.

Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.

Uh oh. That will hurt you at some point.

Doug Kanter said:

"Vilco" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:

Quoted message said:

I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.

Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.

Uh oh. That will hurt you at some point.

Not if s/he only uses the computer for web surfing. If you don't keep
anything of any importance on the computer, you can reformat the
moment a virus or trojan rears it's ugly head.

sf
fighting off vx2 <ceres> on a (relative's) unprotected computer

"sf" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Doug Kanter said:

"Vilco" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:

> I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
> got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
> believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
> crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.

Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.

Uh oh. That will hurt you at some point.

Not if s/he only uses the computer for web surfing. If you don't keep
anything of any importance on the computer, you can reformat the
moment a virus or trojan rears it's ugly head.

What operating system?

Doug Kanter said:

"sf" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Doug Kanter said:

"Vilco" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
> Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:
>
>> I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
>> got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
>> believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
>> crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.
>
> Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.

Uh oh. That will hurt you at some point.

Not if s/he only uses the computer for web surfing. If you don't keep
anything of any importance on the computer, you can reformat the
moment a virus or trojan rears it's ugly head.

What operating system?

I'm not advocating that method for anyone or OS, because I think it's
just plain dumb to be on the internet w/o av (or malware) protection.

Surfing the net unprotected is like having unprotected sex with
strangers.

"sf" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Doug Kanter said:

"sf" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:26:11 GMT, Doug Kanter wrote:

>
> "Vilco" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
> news:[email hidden]...
> > Mi e' parso che sf abbia scritto:
> >
> >> I didn't use anti-virus until about 5 years ago and never
> >> got one. I used a firewall before antivirus protection,
> >> believe it or not. These days, you either have to be
> >> crazy or ready to reformat at a moment's notice.
> >
> > Yes, and I'm just using only the firewall at home, no AV, never.
>
> Uh oh. That will hurt you at some point.
>
Not if s/he only uses the computer for web surfing. If you don't keep
anything of any importance on the computer, you can reformat the
moment a virus or trojan rears it's ugly head.

What operating system?

I'm not advocating that method for anyone or OS, because I think it's
just plain dumb to be on the internet w/o av (or malware) protection.

Surfing the net unprotected is like having unprotected sex with
strangers.

Well, I asked about the OS because I've done enough reformats to know that
it's a stupid way to deal with a virus, when you should've had AV software
to begin with. Reformat/reinstall takes hours, and maybe a day or two if you
take into account all the other software you may have had installed.

You also said "only uses the computer for web surfing". Not true. Various
nasty web sites cause the java machine to load into memory, and that
sometimes downloads virus-laden files.

Doug Kanter said:

You also said "only uses the computer for web surfing". Not true.

I was implying: it's a dedicated web surfing computer. IOW the
computer isn't being used to store files, photos or anything that
you'll wish you had once it's been compromised.

Quoted message said:

Various
nasty web sites cause the java machine to load into memory, and that
sometimes downloads virus-laden files.

Of course! I didn't say that couldn't happen... in fact it most
definately will. So, I repeat: Surfing the net unprotected is like
having unprotected sex with strangers.

"sf" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Doug Kanter said:

You also said "only uses the computer for web surfing". Not true.

I was implying: it's a dedicated web surfing computer. IOW the
computer isn't being used to store files, photos or anything that
you'll wish you had once it's been compromised.

Fine, but it'll still take an absurd amount of time to reformat and
reinstall, if you include all the MS updates and restarts and blah blah
blah. Hours and hours, compared to installing even one of the decent, free
AV things just once.

I guess if your time's utterly worthless, then no AV software is the way to
go. I like doing a reformat/reinstall every year or two, but for
housekeeping reasons, not because of an oversight.

Andy,

You can never put yourself in someone else's shoes. Once you get into
them, with your points of view and your own lifestyles, you've lost
your impartiality and you've lost your ability to judge for someone
else.

If you stick your hand in fire, you'll be in lots of pain and can do
permantent damage. Everyone has the exact same reaction and the exact
same consequences. Your hand is no different than anyone else's.
However, you cannot use the same kind of test for relationships and
lifestyles.

For some, a polyamorous lifestyle would be tough emotionally and
physically. That's why they don't do it. For other's it might be
difficult not to be polyamorous.

Sometimes, monogomous relationships can be tough emotionally too. For
me it's the best way but I wouldn't speak for anyone else.

alan

Andy Q said:

"salgud" <[email hidden]> wrote in news:1121804850.618272.270790
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Quoted message said:

But the "polyamory" thing sounds far more interesting....

It's a twisted and risky lifestyle on both the emotional and physical
levels.

Imho,

Andy

[email hidden] wrote in news:mtsvd19l86pqhe5ofedb0j6qpest0nq8j7@
4ax.com:

Quoted message said:

Andy,

You can never put yourself in someone else's shoes.
alan

alan,

Stop right there! It's my opinion, no more, no less and I said so.

Andy

Andy,

You're right, it is just your opinion but opinions once decided that
witches should be burned at the stake, women shouldn't vote, and that
black people couldn't think and George W. Bush could. Once you call
it twisted, that turns it into an attack.

Andy Q said:

[email hidden] wrote in news:mtsvd19l86pqhe5ofedb0j6qpest0nq8j7@
4ax.com:

Quoted message said:

Andy,

You can never put yourself in someone else's shoes.
alan

alan,

Stop right there! It's my opinion, no more, no less and I said so.

Andy

There were people who were able to put web sites on Apple IIE
computers. They were called DDials and I think they were able to do 7
people at once. Then if they linked up to another computer, they
could do 12. I remember seeing huge networks. That was a result of
the huge charges by The Source $7.95 an hour, Compuserve was at $4.95,
People Link at $3.00.

Then there was PC Pursuit that let you call another computer and chat
or download or whatever for 100 hours a month for, I can't remember
the amount but it might have been $29. That's when I went on Portal
and where I first saw usenet

In the early 90s a bunch of us, from the other systems went to BIX (I
think McGraw Hill ran it). I'll never forget one night talking in an
open channel to a girl from Yugoslavia. She was on their Olympic Ski
Team and she busted up her leg and wanted to try tennis. While she
was online with us, her husband called. He was a little panicky
because he heard bombs going off very near where he worked. She said
they were Croatians but most of us had no idea what that was. We
were hearing about the beginnings of all the trouble in
Yugoslavia/Bosnia and didn't know until later what actualy happening
there.

jmcquown said:

Quoted message said:

Most people have no idea what Usenet or user groups are. The first
time I saw newsgroups was almost 2 decades ago and I was on a system
called Portal. I was also on The Source, People Link, Compuserve, Bix
and a host of other systems.

Where did you all hear about newsgroups and being online? I used to
have the handle of "addman"

Mid 1980's. Bulletin boards and a few chat rooms. Back when people were
polite and didn't show their ignorance by dumbing things down to 'u' and
'ur'. Acronyms (AFIAK! LOL) were reserved for the military 🙂

Jill

[email hidden] wrote in news:0340e1l3qjpvbgora80sm1ecg81kqraj3m@
4ax.com:

Quoted message said:

Once you call
it twisted, that turns it into an attack.

alan,

Opinions didn't burn witches at the stake, lynch mobs did--incapable of
free thought, power in numbers mentality won the day.

I'll rest on the 7th and 10th commandments as the basis for my opinion.

You call an opinion an attack? I'm not going to entertain that idea!

Andy

Andy said:

[email hidden] wrote in news:0340e1l3qjpvbgora80sm1ecg81kqraj3m@
4ax.com:

Quoted message said:

Once you call
it twisted, that turns it into an attack.

alan,

Opinions didn't burn witches at the stake, lynch mobs did--incapable
of free thought, power in numbers mentality won the day.

Most executions for witchcraft weren't due to mob action, but through
the court system.

Brian

"Default User" <[email hidden]> wrote in news:3kambmFtgigiU2
@individual.net:

Quoted message said:

Most executions for witchcraft weren't due to mob action, but through
the court system.

LOL!

Andy

Taking [email hidden] COMPLETELY out of context:

Quoted message said:

They were called DDials and I think they were able to do 7 people at once.

Now THAT'S polyamory!

Bob

Doug Kanter said:

I guess if your time's utterly worthless, then no AV software is the way to
go. I like doing a reformat/reinstall every year or two, but for
housekeeping reasons, not because of an oversight.

The person I know who has that attitude has a Mac and he acts like
reformatting is as easy as brushing your teeth. The computer is a
work computer (used for what? I dunno), but he's the boss. The
computer will be a write off if it's a gonner.... and I'd be willing
to bet he doesn't do/keep anything of importance on that one.