small test with composing news messages in HTML

Post by Dirk Munk
I like HTML, because it is better readable!

We obviously don't visit the same web pages.

bill

Rich Alderson

2017-04-07 18:40:28 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
I like HTML, because it is better readable! 

</body>
</html>

> <html>
> <head>
>
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
> </head>
> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
> I like HTML, because it is better readable! 
> 
> </body>
> </html>

In case Dirk is reading this in an HTML-automating browser, the second block
will show up as what I see with his HTML posting.

--
Rich Alderson ***@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

Dirk Munk

2017-04-07 23:22:23 UTC

Post by Rich Alderson

> <html>
> <head>
>
> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
> </head>
> <body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
> I like HTML, because it is better readable! 
> 
> </body>
> </html>
In case Dirk is reading this in an HTML-automating browser, the second block
will show up as what I see with his HTML posting.

Sure, but you are using a rather ancient newsreader, Emacs 22.3, dating
back to September 2008.......

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-07 23:26:37 UTC

Post by Rich Alderson
In case Dirk is reading this in an HTML-automating browser, the second block
will show up as what I see with his HTML posting.

Right. And we don't want to see it!

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-07 23:25:56 UTC

JUST DON'T!!!!!!!

Usenet should be unencoded plain text only. Sure, TECHNICALLY I can
post a PostScript file, or a UUENCODED executable, or whatever, as they
are all plain-text printable ASCII characters, but that is not the
point.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 08:26:56 UTC

JUST DON'T!!!!!!!
Usenet should be unencoded plain text only. Sure, TECHNICALLY I can
post a PostScript file, or a UUENCODED executable, or whatever, as they
are all plain-text printable ASCII characters, but that is not the
point.

Interesting reactions.

I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

However there is a very good reason why in general we don't use the
typewriter layout any more, it has very poor readability. Even more than
40 years back in the past we had electronic typewriters with
proportional fonts for better readability.

That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

The usenet style is most likely about the worst style possible in that
perspective.

Apart from some dogmatic reasons, I haven't read any reason why HTML
shouldn't be used these days So if any one has a real reason other than
usenet was developed with monospaced fonts and 72 character wide lines
in 500 B.C., please let me know.

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-08 10:21:13 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.

The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.

It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Post by Dirk Munk
However there is a very good reason why in general we don't use the
typewriter layout any more, it has very poor readability. Even more than
40 years back in the past we had electronic typewriters with
proportional fonts for better readability.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

Post by Dirk Munk
Apart from some dogmatic reasons, I haven't read any reason why HTML
shouldn't be used these days So if any one has a real reason other than
usenet was developed with monospaced fonts and 72 character wide lines
in 500 B.C., please let me know.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 10:42:42 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

To stay on topic for this group, I'm using the browser and newsreader
VMS had been using, Netscape or later Mozilla, or now SeaMonkey. The
news reader has been able to read HTML messages for ages, so perhaps it
is just a poor choice of news reader if you can't read HTML messages?

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

No, not really. I use LibreOffice for writing documents, no need to use
LaTex. Any wordprocessor these days can produce very good looking
documents without the need to go for real typesetting software.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-08 16:07:13 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Well, while I am using Thunderbird at the moment my preferred newsreader
is Knews. It doesn't do HTML although it can call another program to
follow a URL.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Clearer to who? I'll bet your into emoji's, too.

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

I use Office software as well (various different applications) but I
also use Latex and yes, even LyX so I can do WYSIWYG even with Latex.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

In most cases, HTML offers nothing that isn't covered by plaintext in a
Usenet discussion.

bill

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 20:51:30 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Well, while I am using Thunderbird at the moment my preferred newsreader
is Knews. It doesn't do HTML although it can call another program to
follow a URL.

I never understood why people changed from Mozilla to Firefox &
Thunderbird. The idea behind splitting Mozilla into Firefox &
Thunderbird was to decrease the memory footprint, but in fact it was
increased. There was a group of developers that was not satisfied with
the end of the Mozilla suite, so they resurrected it and called it
SeaMonkey. Software that was rejected and resurrected, doesn't that
sound familiar?

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Clearer to who? I'll bet your into emoji's, too.

No, except for the occasional smily

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

I use Office software as well (various different applications) but I
also use Latex and yes, even LyX so I can do WYSIWYG even with Latex.

OK, that's great. I wasn't trying to imply you shouldn't use Latex, of
course you should use it if you can use it.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

In most cases, HTML offers nothing that isn't covered by plaintext in a
Usenet discussion.
bill

I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-08 21:30:02 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Well, while I am using Thunderbird at the moment my preferred newsreader
is Knews. It doesn't do HTML although it can call another program to
follow a URL.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Clearer to who? I'll bet your into emoji's, too.

No, except for the occasional smily

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

I use Office software as well (various different applications) but I
also use Latex and yes, even LyX so I can do WYSIWYG even with Latex.

OK, that's great. I wasn't trying to imply you shouldn't use Latex, of
course you should use it if you can use it.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

In most cases, HTML offers nothing that isn't covered by plaintext in a
Usenet discussion.
bill

I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

Well, I didn't put any HTML in it so what you are seeing is not what I
wrote but some derivative work that probably violates US copyrights.
And my not convey the meaning I intended.

bill

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 23:31:21 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Well, while I am using Thunderbird at the moment my preferred newsreader
is Knews. It doesn't do HTML although it can call another program to
follow a URL.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of
typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Clearer to who? I'll bet your into emoji's, too.

No, except for the occasional smily

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

I use Office software as well (various different applications) but I
also use Latex and yes, even LyX so I can do WYSIWYG even with Latex.

OK, that's great. I wasn't trying to imply you shouldn't use Latex, of
course you should use it if you can use it.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

In most cases, HTML offers nothing that isn't covered by plaintext in a
Usenet discussion.
bill

I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

Well, I didn't put any HTML in it so what you are seeing is not what I
wrote but some derivative work that probably violates US copyrights.
And my not convey the meaning I intended.
bill

Sorry, but it is more the other way around. Let me give you an example.
In a few weeks time i hope to visit are national archives to have a look
at the files of a couple of war criminals. These documents are
classified, I can't make an image copy of them. That means no photocopy,
and no scan. But I am allowed to copy the contents of the document, by
writing or typing.

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-08 23:52:48 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Well, while I am using Thunderbird at the moment my preferred newsreader
is Knews. It doesn't do HTML although it can call another program to
follow a URL.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Well, I often wished that I had been able to do a bit of
typesetting in
my messages to make things a bit more clearer.

Clearer to who? I'll bet your into emoji's, too.

No, except for the occasional smily

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

I use Office software as well (various different applications) but I
also use Latex and yes, even LyX so I can do WYSIWYG even with Latex.

OK, that's great. I wasn't trying to imply you shouldn't use Latex, of
course you should use it if you can use it.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

In most cases, HTML offers nothing that isn't covered by plaintext in a
Usenet discussion.
bill

I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

Well, I didn't put any HTML in it so what you are seeing is not what I
wrote but some derivative work that probably violates US copyrights.
And my not convey the meaning I intended.
bill

In the US, the mere creation of anything copyrights it. Amount of
protection depends on if and how that is formalized but it is
copyrighted. And, especially in your example, fair use doctrine
may come into play. I was being facetious. Copyright has become a
strange concept and varies widely from no use without permission to
no protection whatsoever depending on where in the world you are
located. Keeping this somewhat on topic for c.o.v this is one of the
prime reasons to be wary about cloud and outsourcing as some of the
most popular places for them fall into the latter category.

bill

Simon Clubley

2017-04-09 23:26:29 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I never understood why people changed from Mozilla to Firefox &
Thunderbird. The idea behind splitting Mozilla into Firefox &
Thunderbird was to decrease the memory footprint, but in fact it was
increased. There was a group of developers that was not satisfied with
the end of the Mozilla suite, so they resurrected it and called it
SeaMonkey. Software that was rejected and resurrected, doesn't that
sound familiar?

In the early days (around Firefox 3.x) it was indeed extremely fast and
lightweight and I was able to run it just fine on resource limited
systems.

Then the usual types of people gradually took control and started
making Firefox bloated and started making all kinds of UI changes
and rarely for any kind of a good reason.

The final destruction of Firefox will occur towards the end of the year
for normal users and in about a year's time for the ESR users.
(I know about the official reasons to do with multiprocess Firefox in
regards to this change. If that's the real reason, then the developers
would have made sure you can do all the old things in the new API.)

In about a year's time you should be careful to make sure that these
same people don't move onto Seamonkey/Pale Moon and destroy that as well.

Post by Dirk Munk
I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

And what about when people explain a problem (or a solution) using
ASCII art ?

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, ***@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Dirk Munk

2017-04-09 23:36:52 UTC

In the early days (around Firefox 3.x) it was indeed extremely fast and
lightweight and I was able to run it just fine on resource limited
systems.
Then the usual types of people gradually took control and started
making Firefox bloated and started making all kinds of UI changes
and rarely for any kind of a good reason.
The final destruction of Firefox will occur towards the end of the year
for normal users and in about a year's time for the ESR users.
(I know about the official reasons to do with multiprocess Firefox in
regards to this change. If that's the real reason, then the developers
would have made sure you can do all the old things in the new API.)
In about a year's time you should be careful to make sure that these
same people don't move onto Seamonkey/Pale Moon and destroy that as well.

Firefox, Seamonkey, and about a dozen other browsers all use the same
Gecko engine.

Post by Dirk Munk
I don't agree. Your message that I'm replying right now, is presented to
me in HTML, and I can assure you it is much better readable than the
same message in a monospaced font.

And what about when people explain a problem (or a solution) using
ASCII art ?
Simon.

In that case you can use the Courier monospaced font, like this:

In that case you can use the Courier monospaced font, like this.

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-08 21:42:51 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

To stay on topic for this group, I'm using the browser and newsreader
VMS had been using, Netscape or later Mozilla, or now SeaMonkey.

ONE newsreader VMS has been using. I prefer to read news with a
newsreader (NEWSRDR), and send email with an email program (VMS MAIL).
One can also send mail with a browser. I prefer tools which are lean,
quick, bug-free, and have a nice interface.

Post by Dirk Munk
The
news reader has been able to read HTML messages for ages, so perhaps it
is just a poor choice of news reader if you can't read HTML messages?

It's been around for ages, as you say, but practically no-one here wants
to post HTML messages, nor read them. Just because it is possible
doesn't mean that it is good.

Post by Dirk Munk
No, not really. I use LibreOffice for writing documents, no need to use
LaTex. Any wordprocessor these days can produce very good looking
documents without the need to go for real typesetting software.

On VMS? LaTeX is portable, works on VMS, and is MUCH better than most
wordprocessors, especially with regard to mathematics.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 22:55:49 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

To stay on topic for this group, I'm using the browser and newsreader
VMS had been using, Netscape or later Mozilla, or now SeaMonkey.

So do I, and SeaMonkey is a prime example of such software.

Post by Dirk Munk
The
news reader has been able to read HTML messages for ages, so perhaps it
is just a poor choice of news reader if you can't read HTML messages?

It's been around for ages, as you say, but practically no-one here wants
to post HTML messages, nor read them. Just because it is possible
doesn't mean that it is good.

So far no one has given me a real argument why it should be bad. The
only argument I hear as that it must be plain text, but why that should
be better, they fail to explain.

On VMS? LaTeX is portable, works on VMS, and is MUCH better than most
wordprocessors, especially with regard to mathematics.

I'm sure it is, but word processors have a very different purpose. They
are used for entering text, typesetting software is used to to shape
text. Modern word processors are quite good enough to replace
typesetting software in many cases, but for high end typesetting, you
would use real typesetting software and use the output of a word
processor as input.

Bob Koehler

2017-04-10 13:42:12 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
The
only argument I hear as that it must be plain text, but why that should
be better, they fail to explain.

It should be plaintext so we can read it. Otherwise you're just
pissin' in the wind.

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-08 16:01:20 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I still do today.
The point is, whatever you WRITE, at the NNTP-server level it is still
just characters. People with software which interprets what you write
the way you want it interpreted might have a slight advantage, but
everyone else has a HUGE disadvantage.
It's like the "site best viewed with <some version of some browser>".
What this really means is that it is probably not useful to everyone
else.

Yes, for lengthy texts. But not for usenet posts. However, HTML not
displayed as such is MUCH less readable.

Post by Dirk Munk
That is the point of typesetting, readability. That is a science in
itself, how to shape documents for the best readability, and which fonts
to use for that purpose.

Indeed. That is what LaTeX and so on are for. But I don't use it for
my shopping list.

Let's take a poll: How many people here are using an HTML-aware
newsreader? How many of those would nevertheless prefer plain text?

I've been on USENET since before the Internet came about. It worked
fine for what it was intended for then and will would today if newbies
weren't always trying to change it into something it is not. If you
want HTML go find a blog somewhere.

bill
(Who is involved in a historical network simulation of UUCP with
email and news as it was in the 80's with the hope that it will
continue after the Unix 50th Anniversary it is being created for!
Newer is not always better.)

Paul Sture

2017-04-08 15:37:24 UTC

Ever heard of Markdown?

<http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/>

--
The First of April: The only day of the year that people critically
evaluate news stories before believing them.

Michael Moroney

2017-04-08 18:36:22 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
<html>

JUST DON'T!!!!!!!
Usenet should be unencoded plain text only. Sure, TECHNICALLY I can
post a PostScript file, or a UUENCODED executable, or whatever, as they
are all plain-text printable ASCII characters, but that is not the
point.

Interesting reactions.
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I remember fairly well.

HTML is officially allowed in Usenet posts, but as you see, it is quite
unpopular.

Part of the reason: In the early days of spammers, spammers spammed Usenet
as much as they now spam email. They rarely do now, because first the
newer spammers don't even know what Usenet is, plus the spams would often
draw responses for everyone to see, ranging from "quit spamming us!" to
discussions why the thing being spammed was a scam. Spam to email can't
start such discussions. Second, spammers were among the first to adopt
HTML Usenet posts, so many people started associating HTML Usenet with
spam and by extension, illegitimate. Many filter out HTML Usenet,
initially because of spammers. Also, sometimes lowlifes would post HTML
Usenet posts that were boobytraps that would download malware or something
when you read them. Many people would just go to the next post and bang!
You just caught something! Again, this rarely happens now.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-08 23:01:16 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
<html>

JUST DON'T!!!!!!!
Usenet should be unencoded plain text only. Sure, TECHNICALLY I can
post a PostScript file, or a UUENCODED executable, or whatever, as they
are all plain-text printable ASCII characters, but that is not the
point.

Interesting reactions.
I'm sure that at some time far back in the past, people used something
like a KSR33 to write their messages in usenet. Monospaced characters,
and 72 character wide lines.

I remember fairly well.
HTML is officially allowed in Usenet posts, but as you see, it is quite
unpopular.
Part of the reason: In the early days of spammers, spammers spammed Usenet
as much as they now spam email. They rarely do now, because first the
newer spammers don't even know what Usenet is, plus the spams would often
draw responses for everyone to see, ranging from "quit spamming us!" to
discussions why the thing being spammed was a scam. Spam to email can't
start such discussions. Second, spammers were among the first to adopt
HTML Usenet posts, so many people started associating HTML Usenet with
spam and by extension, illegitimate. Many filter out HTML Usenet,
initially because of spammers. Also, sometimes lowlifes would post HTML
Usenet posts that were boobytraps that would download malware or something
when you read them. Many people would just go to the next post and bang!
You just caught something! Again, this rarely happens now.

Thanks Michael,

So from a security perspective there are no real reasons not to use
HTML. You should have a proper virus checker on your PC anyway, I'm
using Sophos.

Bob Koehler

2017-04-10 13:42:41 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
So from a security perspective there are no real reasons not to use
HTML. You should have a proper virus checker on your PC anyway, I'm
using Sophos.

What PC? Why would I have a PC?

Paul Sture

2017-04-09 10:07:13 UTC

Post by Michael Moroney
HTML is officially allowed in Usenet posts, but as you see, it is quite
unpopular.
Part of the reason: In the early days of spammers, spammers spammed Usenet
as much as they now spam email. They rarely do now, because first the
newer spammers don't even know what Usenet is, plus the spams would often
draw responses for everyone to see, ranging from "quit spamming us!" to
discussions why the thing being spammed was a scam.

It would also motivate people to dig into the identity of the spammer,
and get them blacklisted.

Post by Michael Moroney
Spam to email can't start such discussions. Second, spammers were
among the first to adopt HTML Usenet posts, so many people started
associating HTML Usenet with spam and by extension, illegitimate.
Many filter out HTML Usenet, initially because of spammers.

Also because with a news reader which doesn't understand HTML, legibility.

Another tell-tale was anyone posting via Google Groups. I do filter out
HTML-only posts and do drop Google Groups postings in newsgroups other
than comp.os.vms. comp.os.vms is an exception purely because quite a few
contributors were (still are?) stuck behind corporate firewalls which
didn't allow posting to Usenet directly (Compaq & HP folks in particular).

Post by Michael Moroney
Also, sometimes lowlifes would post HTML Usenet posts that were
boobytraps that would download malware or something when you read
them. Many people would just go to the next post and bang! You just
caught something! Again, this rarely happens now.

Apart from HTML redirection, where you get HTML, Javascript inevitably
follows. When using Netscape 3.03 on VMS to read newsgroups, disabling
Javascript was the only safe way to read newsgroups. Another habit I
developed using Netscape 3.03 on VMS was to run it from the DCL prompt.
CTRL-Y to halt the process was infinitely better than trying to close
a window that displayed the symptoms of redirection to a booby trap.

--
The First of April: The only day of the year that people critically
evaluate news stories before believing them.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-09 10:51:09 UTC

Post by Paul Sture

It would also motivate people to dig into the identity of the spammer,
and get them blacklisted.

Also because with a news reader which doesn't understand HTML, legibility.
Another tell-tale was anyone posting via Google Groups. I do filter out
HTML-only posts and do drop Google Groups postings in newsgroups other
than comp.os.vms. comp.os.vms is an exception purely because quite a few
contributors were (still are?) stuck behind corporate firewalls which
didn't allow posting to Usenet directly (Compaq & HP folks in particular).

Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

Post by Paul Sture

Netscape 3.03? That was over 20 years ago. Do you really think that any
problems back then are still relevant today?

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-09 11:47:51 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.

Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.

A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you don't have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Dirk Munk

2017-04-09 13:07:12 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you don't have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

All valid arguments Scott, but they have nothing to do with HTML, except
that Google uses HTML as well.

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-09 13:39:48 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you don't have
to. That helps a lot.

All valid arguments Scott, but they have nothing to do with HTML, except
that Google uses HTML as well.

Yes, dropping google groups postings has really nothing to do with HTML.
But it is a pretty good idea and it will as a side effect eliminate pretty
much all HTML postings.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-09 14:25:26 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.

Inability or lack of desire? Reminds me a lot of the old AOL days.

bill

Michael Moroney

2017-04-09 15:33:07 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

Google Groups of today is what AOL was when "Eternal September" started.
It is how the clueless access Usenet. A substantial percentage of their
Usenet posters have no idea what Usenet even is, and this seems to be
deliberate by the part of Google. Their interface is broken. Quoting is
broken. The clueless routinely respond to posts old enough to vote as if
written yesterday.

It's a good way to eliminate 95% of noisemakers/the clueless, but it's not
perfect. Many good people do use Google Groups perhaps because they
don't have a choice.

Post by Scott Dorsey
A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.

Inability or lack of desire? Reminds me a lot of the old AOL days.

I came up with a theory why Google Groups is so horrible, despite most
of their other creations being excellent.

Google, like any other large company, hires incompetent programmers by
mistake once in a while. Google has a dungeon in a subbasement of their
headquarters building where they send all their incompetent programmers to
screw up Google Groups even worse than it already is, rather than fire
them or lay them off.

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-09 15:43:29 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that, other
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

Google Groups of today is what AOL was when "Eternal September" started.
It is how the clueless access Usenet. A substantial percentage of their
Usenet posters have no idea what Usenet even is, and this seems to be
deliberate by the part of Google. Their interface is broken. Quoting is
broken. The clueless routinely respond to posts old enough to vote as if
written yesterday.
It's a good way to eliminate 95% of noisemakers/the clueless, but it's not
perfect. Many good people do use Google Groups perhaps because they
don't have a choice.

I can't understand that at all. Real newsreaders are readily available
and a good newsfeed with decent filtering and all the groups that matter
is available for about $10 US a year. If you can afford the Internet
access needed to get to Google surely you could afford that.

Inability or lack of desire? Reminds me a lot of the old AOL days.

I came up with a theory why Google Groups is so horrible, despite most
of their other creations being excellent.
Google, like any other large company, hires incompetent programmers by
mistake once in a while. Google has a dungeon in a subbasement of their
headquarters building where they send all their incompetent programmers to
screw up Google Groups even worse than it already is, rather than fire
them or lay them off.

Cute story, but the industry seems otherwise. A simple configuration
change in a router or firewall would eliminate the majority of the spam
and malware and yet the people who have this power refuse to do so. I
realize there is the adage: "Never attribute to malice that which can be
adequately explained by stupidity" but this has gone on a long time.
Long past the point where incompetence can be blamed. There in another
adage taken from a book by Ian Fleming: "Once is happenstance, twice is
coincidence, three times is enemy action."

bill

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-09 16:20:50 UTC

Post by Michael Moroney
I came up with a theory why Google Groups is so horrible, despite most
of their other creations being excellent.
Google, like any other large company, hires incompetent programmers by
mistake once in a while. Google has a dungeon in a subbasement of their
headquarters building where they send all their incompetent programmers to
screw up Google Groups even worse than it already is, rather than fire
them or lay them off.

This may be possible, but I think more likely Google Groups doesn't
actually have many people working for it, and the system runs completely
unattended without any supervision.

Every time I meet anyone from Google, which is pretty often these days
seeing how big the company has become, I mention the disaster that is
Google Groups. Nobody has ever worked there, but nobody I have ever met
at Google, from executives down to bottle washers, from the bay area to
Boston... none of them have known or even heard of anyone who ever worked
there.

So I am thinking it's just a runaway train without any engineer in the cab.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

David Froble

2017-04-09 17:11:45 UTC

This may be possible, but I think more likely Google Groups doesn't
actually have many people working for it, and the system runs completely
unattended without any supervision.
Every time I meet anyone from Google, which is pretty often these days
seeing how big the company has become, I mention the disaster that is
Google Groups. Nobody has ever worked there, but nobody I have ever met
at Google, from executives down to bottle washers, from the bay area to
Boston... none of them have known or even heard of anyone who ever worked
there.
So I am thinking it's just a runaway train without any engineer in the cab.
--scott

It may be the old "you're getting what you paid for". You pays nothing, and you
gets mostly nothing ....

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-09 21:08:21 UTC

Post by David Froble

Post by Michael Moroney
I came up with a theory why Google Groups is so horrible, despite most
of their other creations being excellent.
Google, like any other large company, hires incompetent programmers by
mistake once in a while. Google has a dungeon in a subbasement of their
headquarters building where they send all their incompetent
programmers to
screw up Google Groups even worse than it already is, rather than fire
them or lay them off.

This may be possible, but I think more likely Google Groups doesn't
actually have many people working for it, and the system runs completely
unattended without any supervision.
Every time I meet anyone from Google, which is pretty often these days
seeing how big the company has become, I mention the disaster that is
Google Groups. Nobody has ever worked there, but nobody I have ever met
at Google, from executives down to bottle washers, from the bay area to
Boston... none of them have known or even heard of anyone who ever worked
there.
So I am thinking it's just a runaway train without any engineer in the cab.
--scott

It may be the old "you're getting what you paid for". You pays nothing,
and you gets mostly nothing ....

With the antithesis being my newsfeed which has none of those problems
and cost ~$10 US a year. High cost is no more of a guarantee than free.
Microsoft software costs a fortune. What do people here think of it?
Based on your previous statement everyone should be perfectly happy
with it.

bill

Simon Clubley

2017-04-09 23:29:05 UTC

Post by Scott Dorsey
Every time I meet anyone from Google, which is pretty often these days
seeing how big the company has become, I mention the disaster that is
Google Groups. Nobody has ever worked there, but nobody I have ever met
at Google, from executives down to bottle washers, from the bay area to
Boston... none of them have known or even heard of anyone who ever worked
there.

Have you tried looking in the buildings that used to host DejaNews ? :-)

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, ***@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-10 18:11:12 UTC

Have you tried looking in the buildings that used to host DejaNews ? :-)

9430 Research Blvd, Echelon II, Austin?

Looks like it's up for lease still.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Simon Clubley

2017-04-11 12:27:15 UTC

Have you tried looking in the buildings that used to host DejaNews ? :-)

9430 Research Blvd, Echelon II, Austin?

I don't remember where it was; I just remember when Google acquired
DejaNews and the archives. I also remember the Google Groups Usenet
interface actually being much more usable and lightweight back in
those days than it is today.

Post by Scott Dorsey
Looks like it's up for lease still.

Oh well, scratch that idea. :-)

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, ***@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Kerry Main

2017-04-09 16:11:10 UTC

-----Original Message-----
Dorsey via Info-vax
Sent: April 9, 2017 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] small test with composing news messages in
HTML

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that,

other

Post by Dirk Munk
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge amount of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to make
their interface look like an independent messaging system rather than
a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam advertisements,
clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that are
twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total inability
of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you

don't

have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

In addition - most people have no idea of just how much privacy they
give up when they use any type of Google services. Most just ignore
anything between them and getting "free" email and storage.

Free - remember what your elders taught you .. there is no such thing as
"free" - there is always a cost. Its just hidden away.

Google's privacy policy can be viewed here:

<https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>

Here is an interesting tidbit extract:
"We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted
businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions
and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures."

So Google shares your info with their paying customers with some legal
disclaimer that covers themselves if their Customer (targeting
marketers) use the info in a different way.

While perhaps UUCP is not the right technology, I think Bill has a valid
point about looking for alternative email solutions than what is
generally available today.

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com

David Froble

2017-04-09 17:14:56 UTC

-----Original Message-----
Dorsey via Info-vax
Sent: April 9, 2017 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] small test with composing news messages in
HTML

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that,

other

Post by Dirk Munk
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

are

twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total

inability

of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you

don't

have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

In addition - most people have no idea of just how much privacy they
give up when they use any type of Google services. Most just ignore
anything between them and getting "free" email and storage.
Free - remember what your elders taught you .. there is no such thing as
"free" - there is always a cost. Its just hidden away.
<https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>
"We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted
businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions
and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures."
So Google shares your info with their paying customers with some legal
disclaimer that covers themselves if their Customer (targeting
marketers) use the info in a different way.
While perhaps UUCP is not the right technology, I think Bill has a valid
point about looking for alternative email solutions than what is
generally available today.

If you don't get everyone to use the alternative, then you cannot talk to
everyone, which just may include people you really want to talk to.

If you would get everybody over to the alternative, what's the odds that the
spammers and hackers won't find ways to have their way on the alternative?

Kerry Main

2017-04-09 19:45:45 UTC

-----Original Message-----
David Froble via Info-vax
Sent: April 9, 2017 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] small test with composing news messages in
HTML

-----Original Message-----

Scott

Dorsey via Info-vax
Sent: April 9, 2017 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] small test with composing news messages in
HTML

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that,

other

Post by Dirk Munk
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

A lot of people drop google groups postings because of the huge

amount

of
spam and detritus from google groups. Google works very hard to

make

their interface look like an independent messaging system rather

than

a connection to Usenet, and so we get stuff like spam

advertisements,

clueless people who are convinced that they have a right to post whatever
they want because it's Google, people who are replying to posts that

are

twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total

inability

of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you

don't

have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

thing

Post by Scott Dorsey
"free" - there is always a cost. Its just hidden away.
<https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>
"We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted
businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our

instructions

Post by Scott Dorsey
and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures."
So Google shares your info with their paying customers with some legal
disclaimer that covers themselves if their Customer (targeting
marketers) use the info in a different way.
While perhaps UUCP is not the right technology, I think Bill has a valid
point about looking for alternative email solutions than what is
generally available today.

If you don't get everyone to use the alternative, then you cannot talk to
everyone, which just may include people you really want to talk to.
If you would get everybody over to the alternative, what's the odds

that

the
spammers and hackers won't find ways to have their way on the
alternative?

Number of ways .. as long as you assume it is not free (even some small
amount per year). If you want free, then go see Gmail.

With 10TB drives now costing less than USD $500 (google "10TB Seagate"),
this makes it easier.

Yes, there is no 100% perfect solution, but one can combine things like:
- everyone needs an account with multi-factor authentication to logon
(username/pwd + code texted back to phone/email on record).
- whitelists (yes, many companies still use for exactly this reason) ..
- to have domain added to whitelist, requires an existing member to
request addition.
- might be different for receiving vs. sending i.e. authenticated users
can send to just about anyone (except already barred sites), but can
only receive from the whitelist. If a strange email is received, a info
message could be sent to see if user wants to receive.
- max numbers of recipients in distribution lists (spammers use many
thousands lists, but most people likely happy with no more than 100-200)
- requiring IPV6 (see Cisco link on HIP / IPsec below)
- standard antispam tools as well

Something which might be of future interest - HIP (host identity
protocol) TCPIP protocol - its an IETF std. btw. Not just email, but
other Internet apps as well.
<http://www.temperednetworks.com/what-is-hip/>
"HIP allows consenting hosts to securely establish and maintain shared
IP-layer state, allowing separation of the identifier and locator roles
of IP addresses. HIP uses public key identifiers from a new Host
Identity namespace for mutual peer authentication. The protocol is
designed to be resistant to denial-of-service (DoS) and
man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. When used together with another
suitable security protocol, such as the Encapsulated Security Payload
(ESP), it provides integrity protection and encryption for upper-layer
protocols, such as TCP and UDP. HIP has matured over 15 years of
research, development, and deployment from companies like Boeing,
Verizon, and Ericsson, as well as research institutions around the
world."

"November 19, 2014 is a remarkable day for HIP. After many years of
development, testing, and consensus building, HIP RFC 5201-bis was just
approved by the IETF as a proposed standard."

Also, from Cisco:
<http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/press/internet-protocol-journal/back
-issues/table-contents-43/121-host.html>

Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-09 21:01:49 UTC

Post by David Froble

-----Original Message-----
Dorsey via Info-vax
Sent: April 9, 2017 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Info-vax] small test with composing news messages in
HTML

Post by Dirk Munk
Why do you drop Google Groups postings? You don't explain that,

other

Post by Dirk Munk
than they are written in HTML. Why should that be bad?

are

twenty years old.
Some of it is the horrible user interface, some of it is the total

inability

of Google to enforce their TOS.
A lot of backbone sites now just drop all google postings, so you

don't

have
to. That helps a lot.
--scott

In addition - most people have no idea of just how much privacy they
give up when they use any type of Google services. Most just ignore
anything between them and getting "free" email and storage.
Free - remember what your elders taught you .. there is no such thing as
"free" - there is always a cost. Its just hidden away.
<https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/>
"We provide personal information to our affiliates or other trusted
businesses or persons to process it for us, based on our instructions
and in compliance with our Privacy Policy and any other appropriate
confidentiality and security measures."
So Google shares your info with their paying customers with some legal
disclaimer that covers themselves if their Customer (targeting
marketers) use the info in a different way.
While perhaps UUCP is not the right technology, I think Bill has a valid
point about looking for alternative email solutions than what is
generally available today.

If you don't get everyone to use the alternative, then you cannot talk
to everyone, which just may include people you really want to talk to.

Do you think that one day everyone just turned off UUCP (and BITNET for
that matter) and started using SMTP exclusively? The two operate very
well together. The MTA's in use today (well, maybe not the MS stuff)
can handle multiple protocols and have the ability to mark which
transport an email came in on allowing email to marked as trusted (came
from the UUCP side) or non-trusted (came from the Internet morass) thus
making aggressive MUA filtering much easier to do.

Post by David Froble
If you would get everybody over to the alternative, what's the odds that
the spammers and hackers won't find ways to have their way on the
alternative?

1. Everyone doesn't need to move over at once. A slow bleed will work
and be an improvement for those who make that move.
2. It is the wide open protocol used by SMTP that makes spoofing and
spamming possible. UUCP does not suffer from this as only previously
arranged peers can pass traffic.
3. The lack of any form of agreement between MTA's exchanging email is
a major problem. If someone send spam, you have no recourse but to
stop accepting email from them (thus the RBL's) but then you run the
risk of dropping legitimate email as well as spam as everyone at an
ISP is not necessarily a spammer. There is no fix for this. With UUCP
getting a peer can (and should) involve signing an agreement that is
legally binding under contract law. Now you have legal recourse
against the damages caused by sites sending spam and malware. When
they can't hid behind anonymity social misfits are much less likely to
behave as they do.
4. There is a UUCP network being set up right now that is mostly just
a bunch of guys having fun. Feel free to setup a system and join us.
Then, try breaking the system without getting caught. Kinda like VMS
when you think of it. The only spoofed machines I can remember were
"kremvax", "kgbvax" and "ciavax" and, yes, we all knew they weren't
real.

bill

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-09 22:38:51 UTC

Post by Bill Gunshannon
Do you think that one day everyone just turned off UUCP (and BITNET for
that matter) and started using SMTP exclusively? The two operate very
well together. The MTA's in use today (well, maybe not the MS stuff)
can handle multiple protocols and have the ability to mark which
transport an email came in on allowing email to marked as trusted (came
from the UUCP side) or non-trusted (came from the Internet morass) thus
making aggressive MUA filtering much easier to do.

You never actually ran a mail gateway did you?

Jesus, my sendmail.cf must have had a thousand lines of rewrite rules just
to deal with uucp users and simplify bang paths. Every remote machine
treated as a special case.

Yeah, I know there were a lot of sites out there whose solution to getting
a uucp address was to send it to inhp4 and let those guys deal with it.
Which makes me even sorrier for the poor sods running inhp4.

"Very well together" sort of in the way Hitler and Churchill worked together...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Bill Gunshannon

2017-04-09 23:52:55 UTC

You never actually ran a mail gateway did you?

Your joking, right? 30 years. Thousands of users.

Post by Scott Dorsey
Jesus, my sendmail.cf must have had a thousand lines of rewrite rules just
to deal with uucp users and simplify bang paths. Every remote machine
treated as a special case.

Should have had someone else do your .cf for you. Sendmail was
complex, but not that bad. Of course, there is a reason why I
don't run Sendmail now and didn't for quite some time when I did
it for a living.

Post by Scott Dorsey
Yeah, I know there were a lot of sites out there whose solution to getting
a uucp address was to send it to inhp4 and let those guys deal with it.
Which makes me even sorrier for the poor sods running inhp4.
"Very well together" sort of in the way Hitler and Churchill worked together...

It took me less than an hour to set up Postfix to do UUCP and SMTP.

I have to admit I am amazed. I thought people here were much less
likely to subscribe to "old bad, new good". SMTP as it is implemented
today is a total disaster and it can't be fixed. Kinda like what
people here try to say about the difference between Unix and VMS.
The current system was designed with all its weaknesses at a time when
they were seen as strengths. The only solution is to scrap it and
replace it. Choices for that are design and implement something
entirely new or look at something that already exists, can do the job
and doesn't have the same weaknesses. But, once again we see people
saying if it is old it can't be good. No matter how many times I point
out that the way things were done decades ago were good ideas,
frequently ahead of their time, dismissed and later re-implemented
badly the continue to repeat those same mistakes.

bill

j***@yahoo.co.uk

2017-04-10 13:46:56 UTC

Post by Paul Sture

It would also motivate people to dig into the identity of the spammer,
and get them blacklisted.

Also because with a news reader which doesn't understand HTML, legibility.
Another tell-tale was anyone posting via Google Groups. I do filter out
HTML-only posts and do drop Google Groups postings in newsgroups other
than comp.os.vms. comp.os.vms is an exception purely because quite a few
contributors were (still are?) stuck behind corporate firewalls which
didn't allow posting to Usenet directly (Compaq & HP folks in particular).

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of
near-universally acceptable document format, which could
be safely acceptable as plaintext where that was what
apps/users/admins wanted, or accepted as something shinier
where the added extras provided genuine added value.

Markdown doesn't quite do this but does have a great deal
of useful related stuff. JavaScript is frequently the
reverse - the added shiny adds so much hassle and risk
that in many cases a low-tech basic-HTML standard (the
2000s equivalent of ANSI X3.64) would actually be a better
choice in many cases (for everyone except advertisers,
malware authors, etc).

Maybe a goal might be something that could be usefully
handled by a data access layer on top of a file system or
a data transport layer (ideally with similar/shared
interfaces). Do it in a langage-independent [1],
OS-independent, application-independent way. Maybe even
in an object-centric kind of way.

If something like that existed and was safe and
ubiquitous, we hopefully wouldn't need the "HTML or not"
discussion. Neither users nor application designers nor
system admins etc would need to think about it, it would
all happen automagically.

Ladies and gentlemen, set the wayback machine to the late
1980s/early 1990s, and look up DEC's Compound Document
Architecture (CDA). It predates the Interweb so it's
relatively hard to find out about, except in those pesky
things called 'books' and their specialist variants
called 'manuals' or 'technical summaries'.

CDA features somewhere in the parentage of Windows OLE
but most of CDA's value had been lost by the time it was
reborn under different management as OLE.

Btw: Apologies for *still* posting via Google groups. It
started due to a somewhat nomadic set of work/access
requirements, combined with silly corporate firewalls
and PC app policy. My work circumstances have changed
but my usenet access hasn't (yet). It's on my ToDo
list, as are a few more things.

What I would say here about Google Groups is that if
contributors are linking to previous Usenet posts, it
may well be better in the long term to *not just* link
to a Google Groups URL, due (amongst other reasons) to
Google/Alphabet's willingness to drop products and
servioes at short notice regardless of the impact on
users. Remember it isn't Google's users (you, me, etc)
that pay Google's wages.

Have a lot of fun

[1] Language-independent: English vs Chinese. Fortan
vs Rust. Maybe even both.

Bob Koehler

2017-04-11 13:18:32 UTC

Post by j***@yahoo.co.uk
Wouldn't it be nice if there were some kind of
near-universally acceptable document format, which could
be safely acceptable as plaintext where that was what
apps/users/admins wanted, or accepted as something shinier
where the added extras provided genuine added value.

Although I appreciate the uman interface features of variable-width
fonts, they just don't seem to eb all that powerfull to me.

Which leaves plain text as just fine for a universally accepted
format. I don't need the bling.

Simon Clubley

2017-04-09 23:15:26 UTC

Fine. Here's a nice simple answer: Do you want people to killfile you
(or simply automatically drop your HTML messages) or do you want people
to read your postings and reply to them if they can ?

You don't get to decide what newsreaders your potential readers use
and it's extremely arrogant to tell people that they have to change
their newsreaders in order to accommodate just you.

You do however get to post your messages using community established
conventions if you wish.

Nobody's stopping you from posting HTML if you wish. However, you can
expect to get killfiled or simply ignored by a good number of people
(including those who may be able to help you) if you do.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, ***@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Dirk Munk

2017-04-09 23:31:27 UTC

Fine. Here's a nice simple answer: Do you want people to killfile you
(or simply automatically drop your HTML messages) or do you want people
to read your postings and reply to them if they can ?
You don't get to decide what newsreaders your potential readers use
and it's extremely arrogant to tell people that they have to change
their newsreaders in order to accommodate just you.
You do however get to post your messages using community established
conventions if you wish.
Nobody's stopping you from posting HTML if you wish. However, you can
expect to get killfiled or simply ignored by a good number of people
(including those who may be able to help you) if you do.
Simon.

Simon Clubley

2017-04-09 23:40:03 UTC

On 2017-04-09, Dirk Munk <***@home.nl> wrote:

The following mess is what I see. Do that enough times and people
are going to start killfiling you.

Oh, and in a free country people get to decide who they are going
to read and under what conditions. Nothing's stopping you from
posting more examples of the following mess but people can choose
whether they want to read it or not.

If you want your message to get across to the largest number of people
then you have to conform to various community norms. This is as true
on social media as it is on Usenet.

Oh, and in case you want a couple of reasons: the plain text version is
a lot smaller than the HTML version is and can be read in a larger number
of environments than the HTML version can.

(Yes, I know I am top posting (sorry) but I wanted to leave the following
untouched.)

Simon.

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--------------DC5C096F97068E402628DE9A
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Fine. Here's a nice simple answer: Do you want people to killfile you
(or simply automatically drop your HTML messages) or do you want people
to read your postings and reply to them if they can ?
You don't get to decide what newsreaders your potential readers use
and it's extremely arrogant to tell people that they have to change
their newsreaders in order to accommodate just you.
You do however get to post your messages using community established
conventions if you wish.
Nobody's stopping you from posting HTML if you wish. However, you can
expect to get killfiled or simply ignored by a good number of people
(including those who may be able to help you) if you do.
Simon.

Like Michael explained several postings back, HTML is now officially
supported in usenet. So a newsreader that can't deal with HTML doesn't
conform to today's standards for usenet. And again you don't come up
with a reason why it should be bad to use HTML. Blacklisting just
because messages are written in HTML is nothing else than amplified
dogmatic reasoning.
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.
--------------DC5C096F97068E402628DE9A
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
Apart from some dogmatic reasons, I haven't read any reason why HTML
shouldn't be used these days So if any one has a real reason other than
usenet was developed with monospaced fonts and 72 character wide lines
in 500 B.C., please let me know.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">
Fine. Here's a nice simple answer: Do you want people to killfile you
(or simply automatically drop your HTML messages) or do you want people
to read your postings and reply to them if they can ?
You don't get to decide what newsreaders your potential readers use
and it's extremely arrogant to tell people that they have to change
their newsreaders in order to accommodate just you.
You do however get to post your messages using community established
conventions if you wish.
Nobody's stopping you from posting HTML if you wish. However, you can
expect to get killfiled or simply ignored by a good number of people
(including those who may be able to help you) if you do.
Simon.
</pre>
</blockquote>
 
Like Michael explained several postings back, HTML
is now officially supported in usenet. So a newsreader that can't
deal with HTML doesn't conform to today's standards for usenet.
And again you don't come up with a reason why it should be bad to
use HTML. Blacklisting just because messages are written in HTML
is nothing else than amplified dogmatic reasoning. 
 
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I
wonder what everyone will see in their newsreader. 

</body>
</html>
--------------DC5C096F97068E402628DE9A--

--
Simon Clubley, ***@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Michael Moroney

2017-04-10 01:20:09 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
Like Michael explained several postings back, HTML is now officially
supported in usenet. So a newsreader that can't deal with HTML doesn't
conform to today's standards for usenet. And again you don't come up
with a reason why it should be bad to use HTML. Blacklisting just
because messages are written in HTML is nothing else than amplified
dogmatic reasoning.

Boobytrap Usenet posts are still a potential issue although it has been
some time since I've seen any. Also, pretty much any MIME type, not just
HTML, is technically supported, should newsreaders support every single
possible MIME type?

Dirk Munk

2017-04-10 08:15:44 UTC

Perhaps that is the advantage of a program like SeaMonkey, that combines
a browser, mail client, newsreader, IRC client and composer. Everything
is to handle all kind of MIME types is already there.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-10 08:22:36 UTC

Perhaps that is the advantage of a program like SeaMonkey, that
combines a browser, mail client, newsreader, IRC client and composer.
Everything is to handle all kind of MIME types is already there.

By the way, when Mozilla discontinued the Mozilla browser in favour of
Firefox, VMS engineering also planned to move to Firefox. At some
meeting (most likely DECUS) I pointed out to engineering that the
Mozilla browser was resurrected as SeaMonkey, so that they could
continue with the CSWB. I assume others told them as well, because that
is what happened.

Jan-Erik Soderholm

2017-04-10 05:20:43 UTC

Fine. Here's a nice simple answer: Do you want people to killfile you
(or simply automatically drop your HTML messages) or do you want people
to read your postings and reply to them if they can ?
You don't get to decide what newsreaders your potential readers use
and it's extremely arrogant to tell people that they have to change
their newsreaders in order to accommodate just you.
You do however get to post your messages using community established
conventions if you wish.
Nobody's stopping you from posting HTML if you wish. However, you can
expect to get killfiled or simply ignored by a good number of people
(including those who may be able to help you) if you do.
Simon.

Not talkning for "everyone", but... :-)

If I "view message source" in Thunderbird, it shows just that, a message
with the same text twice, first using:

--------------DC5C096F97068E402628DE9A
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

And then using:

--------------DC5C096F97068E402628DE9A
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Since I only see the version using different fonts and so on, I guess
that it is the HTML version that is rendered. I don't see both and
your post displays just fine. And the other post also, with the same
line in two differnt font sizes.

A little more payload to get the same massage through, but a better
presentation in the end.

So I have no issues reading your post, but on the other hand
*I* do not have "Send as HTML" ticked in Thunderbird, so I use
the principle to "accept more than you send", which usually
is a good choise.

Jan-Erik.

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-10 11:25:04 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.

As expected, first the plain text, then I see the HTML code. I would
much rather see that than a post formatted with HTML. HTML is great for
the web, but not for usenet.

I don't WANT my newsreader to interpret the HTML.

Jan-Erik Soderholm

2017-04-10 11:34:39 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.

That is fine, of course. Then you have to see and interpret it
yourself. Or simply ditch any HTML post, of course. Probably
in most cases a "good enough" solution... :-)

It is much easier, in particular for myself, if I don't care if
someone sends news in HTML. It's the general rule of design, be
specific with what you send but forgiving with what you receive.

My Thunderbird nicely renders any HTML but it is set to only send
plain text. So any replies to an HTML post will be in plain text
(the HTML tags are removed automatically, of course).

Dirk Munk

2017-04-10 23:28:58 UTC

Post by Jan-Erik Soderholm

Post by Dirk Munk
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.

That is fine, of course. Then you have to see and interpret it
yourself. Or simply ditch any HTML post, of course. Probably
in most cases a "good enough" solution... :-)
It is much easier, in particular for myself, if I don't care if
someone sends news in HTML. It's the general rule of design, be
specific with what you send but forgiving with what you receive.
My Thunderbird nicely renders any HTML but it is set to only send
plain text. So any replies to an HTML post will be in plain text
(the HTML tags are removed automatically, of course).

In SeaMonkey, when I select my news organization (not the actual
server), then there are settings for "Composition & Addressing". There I
can select HTML.

The result is that when I click 'send', I will be asked to select plain
text, HTML, or HTML + plain text.

Jan-Erik Soderholm

2017-04-11 10:48:32 UTC

Post by Jan-Erik Soderholm

Post by Dirk Munk
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.

That is fine, of course. Then you have to see and interpret it
yourself. Or simply ditch any HTML post, of course. Probably
in most cases a "good enough" solution... :-)
It is much easier, in particular for myself, if I don't care if
someone sends news in HTML. It's the general rule of design, be
specific with what you send but forgiving with what you receive.
My Thunderbird nicely renders any HTML but it is set to only send
plain text. So any replies to an HTML post will be in plain text
(the HTML tags are removed automatically, of course).

In SeaMonkey, when I select my news organization (not the actual server),
then there are settings for "Composition & Addressing". There I can select
HTML.

Right, same in Thunderbird, more or less. And I have not checked the
HTML box. Just fine with me (and with everyone else, I guess). So far
noone has specifically requested to receive HTML posts.

Dirk Munk

2017-04-10 23:29:22 UTC

Post by Jan-Erik Soderholm

Post by Dirk Munk
By the way, I will post this answer in text as well as HTML, I wonder
what everyone will see in their newsreader.

That is fine, of course. Then you have to see and interpret it
yourself. Or simply ditch any HTML post, of course. Probably
in most cases a "good enough" solution... :-)
It is much easier, in particular for myself, if I don't care if
someone sends news in HTML. It's the general rule of design, be
specific with what you send but forgiving with what you receive.
My Thunderbird nicely renders any HTML but it is set to only send
plain text. So any replies to an HTML post will be in plain text
(the HTML tags are removed automatically, of course).

David Froble

2017-04-10 00:34:15 UTC

Wait Simon ....

He was able to dictate that everyone must use DECnet V, right?

Oh, wait, ....

:-)

Bob Koehler

2017-04-10 13:38:40 UTC

Most folk post on usenet because they want others to read them. If
it's not plain text, my favorite reader won't read it. And I'm not
changing that for you.

Scott Dorsey

2017-04-08 00:45:09 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
<html>
<head>

Please don't ever, ever do this again. This is Usenet, not the web.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Paul Sture

2017-04-08 06:23:33 UTC

Post by Dirk Munk
<html>
<head>

Please don't ever, ever do this again. This is Usenet, not the web.

Seconded.

FWIW I didn't see Dirk's original post due to the anti-HTML filters
I use.

Technical note: I use leafnode[1] as a news server for my LAN, and apply
various filters to incoming posts on that. It doesn't matter which
news reader I use when talking to the leafnode server, those filtered
posts have already been dropped.

[1] <http://leafnode.org/>

--
The First of April: The only day of the year that people critically
evaluate news stories before believing them.

Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)

2017-04-08 10:16:58 UTC