> Alain : Yes, I know. What I meant to convey is :
> why should one use the news protocol if one already
> has electronic mail ? What advantages does one gain
> by using news instead of Email ?
Anthony: The ability to quickly and effortlessly loose massive
quantities of messages to the Gremlins thereby disrupting
communications as some people are left in the dark from an important
message. You get, without any effort or want on your part, in excess of
300 messages pleding for your to stare at some pornography, or, if
you're lucky, to participate in a "100% legal" illegal pyramid money
scheme.
Alain : Is News THAT bad ? Are all news services so unscrupulous
about pornography and pyramid schemes ? My "complaint" was that News
didn't add anything more to mail to justify the investment of getting
into News. If you're right, though, there are some very good reasons to
NOT get involved with News.
Anthony: You also get nice threading.
Alain : As far as I can tell, the difference is that mail comes from
many servers but it is destined to one user, while News on the other
hand is kind of like the mailbox of a virtual person, open to anyone
who cares to read "his" mail, where messages are NOT removed from the
server when you read them. Instead, they are removed by the server when
the messages become "stale".
Alain : News also has another feature that I find endearing. News works
similarly to the Gopher and Harvest protocols eg. News servers are
networked together to selectively share info, automatically. Similar to
a server-push scheme.
Alain : What's more, I have a scriptable news/gopher client with which
I will be able to script to: (a) search (b) filter (c) manage (d)
report ... on the vast repositories of information made available in
the News and Gopher spaces.
Alain : The scripting language above is AppleScript, of course. There
is also an XCMD so that xCard apps, like HyperCard for instance, can
also do the above.
> Alain : By the way, I have come across several
> methods of testing CGI programs WITHOUT being
> connected to the Internet.
Anthony : Send your copy of Netscape to the local machine -- IP address
127.0.0.1 <http://127.0.0.1/> will connect to your machine 100% of the
time.
Alain : I did not know THIS trick. Evidently there is more than one way
to "skin a cat".
Alain : Regards.
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