🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 20 Jul 2018 02:12:11 -0500, Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com>
wrote:
>On 7/19/2018 12:47 PM, Richard Thiebaud wrote:
>> On 07/19/2018 12:25 PM, Charles Richmond wrote:
>>> On 7/19/2018 9:33 AM, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>> Charles Richmond <nume...@aquaporin4.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/18/2018 2:27 PM, Stephen M. Jones wrote:
>>>>>> The past couple of weeks I've been thinking about MRC a lot.  He was a
>>>>>> fixture on alt.sys.pdp10 and I'm sure people thought of him as a 
>>>>>> pretty
>>>>>> difficult person.  I knew him in person and I know the MRC face to 
>>>>>> face was
>>>>>> different than what you might come across on alt.sys.pdp10.  I 
>>>>>> recently came
>>>>>> across a memo authored by BAH regarding 3M and the shortage of 
>>>>>> DECTAPES,
>>>>>> et cetera and I also came across boxes carefully arranged by MRC from
>>>>>> Stanford that had not been opened until now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> MRC was a private person and if he was a friend you could get to him.
>>>>>> For instance, he once gave me a DTMF code that would bypass his anti-
>>>>>> telemarketer setup on his phone when I need to all him on 
>>>>>> Bainbridge.  But
>>>>>> MRC could also turn on you and if he thought you had nothing to 
>>>>>> say, he'd
>>>>>> write an SMTP response that you'd get that would say something like:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 451: STOP TALKING ABOUT IT ALREADY
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think I still have that response somewhere.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> ISTM that MRC did *not* "suffer fools lightly"... nor should he have
>>>>> done that IMO.  If you asked a question on <alt.sys.pdp10> ... a
>>>>> question that showed the asker had *not* worked much on his problem
>>>>> ... MRC would deride you and *not* offer any answers (other than to
>>>>> suggest you go away).  If a person's question indicated that the asker
>>>>> had done a lot of work on the problem, MRC was willing to offer help.
>>>>>
>>>>> MRC was *not* a baby sitter ... if you understood that, you'd get
>>>>> along fine with him.  IMHO
>>>>>
>>>>> I miss his presence on <alt.sys.pdp10> .
>>>>
>>>> This MRC fellow doesn't sound like a nice person.
>>>>
>>>> I've met more than a few people that acted like that and
>>>> never found it to be an endearing trait.
>>>>
>>>> I know I'm smarter than average but don't see any point in
>>>> lording over the less gifted.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Mr. Espen, even you can get tired of people with stupid questions... 
>>> people who waste your time and talents because they are too lazy (or 
>>> not really interested enough) to do a *little* work and look things up 
>>> themselves.
>>>
>> Yes, but he doesn't have to get unpleasant about it.
>
>You need to understand the tone of Usenet back 25 or 30 years ago. 
>(That's where the old timers come from.)  Usenet was technical and dealt 
>with technical details.  Those who did *not* measure up technically were 
>encouraged to go away.  It was sort of self-policing...  people were 
>discouraged from being nice to "hangers on".

I must strongly disagree with this characterization.  By the mid-1980s, only a
few years after Usenet was begun, DEC had an e-mail to Usenet gateway that
allowed nearly all of its almost 100,000 employees to participate in Usenet
discussions.  By that time there were already many non-technical newsgroups,
and their number continued to grow.  I recall reading many non-technical
threads at that time.

Yes, most Usenet users at that time were more technically sophisticated.  But
even they participated in discussions about other topics.  Nor do I recall ever
seeing non-technical people being encouraged to "go away," or people being
discouraged from being nice to them.

What was met with some opprobrium were violations of early "netiquette," the
rules of which were largely the result of bandwidth and memory limitations of
the day.  Lots of sites got their Usenet feeds via UUCP (Unix to Unix CoPy),
i.e. making connections at night with modems over phone lines.  In order to
reduce possible toll charges and disk space usage, posters were urged not to
quote entire messages they replied to, not to make "me too" posts, to limit
signature files to four lines or fewer, etc.  Regular violators of these
guidelines did face some wrath.

None of this necessarily excused any nasty behavior on Mark's part.  He was
under no obligation to participate in Usenet discussions, and he could have
simply said, "I"m sorry, I can't help you" to any direct requests for
assistance.


>With the flood of n00bs who know very little, but still presume to post 
>and participate, it's understandable that the technically savvy have 
>little patience for them.  Unlike many forums and message groups on the 
>web, Usenet has a fairly long history...  I recommend trying to 
>understand it in this light.

Every September, new University students would get accounts on their school's
computers, and some would discover Usenet.  They often would need to be
"educated" about its proper use.  When AOL introduced Usenet access for its
users in 1993, this became a year-round phenomena, hence the term "eternal
September."  Around the turn of the millennium, WebTV briefly took the clueless
crown from AOL.  Now we see the occasional Google Groups user who thinks it's
just another Google service, not a world-wide network.