Re: Forums Page?
On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 14:19 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote: Usenet was (well, is, but it has been dying for a long time) at 3.2Tb of data a day it's far from dead. The bad part was that the flood fill mechanism means every site in the network has to carry *all* traffic even if no one locally is reading a particular topic. ... ish. A usenet server could decide on a group by group or heirarchy by heirarchy basis what it wanted to take in a feed. Usenet admins were encouraged to take everything since that kept article propagation strongest. Someday I'd love to create a next generation Usenet that fixed all this -- I would distribute only newsgroup announcements rather than the newsgroups themselves, make the topic namespace subdivided by domain names to eliminate the global namepsace problem, and use a bit-torrent like centrally tracked but peer to peer distributed transfer method to eliminate the need for giant news spools. However, realistically, I'll never have the month to do the work. There is a project there for sure. Usenet isn't broken - it just didn't scale well. Keeping up with that volume of data now has to be done by dedicated companies. I remember when I ran an ISP I siphoned off an almost full newsfeed to my home machine. Something that isn't really possible anymore :-) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
On 2/20/07, Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's interesting to note that most youngsters seem to prefer forums, and most of us old-timers (IIRC you're my age, Joe) prefer mailing lists. I wonder why that is? I don't know how old you are, but I'm afraid I count as an oldster these days... there are some definite generational things I've noticed. Preference for forums (and the ongoing decline and slow death of usenet is related -- when my university stopped supporting it a few weeks ago because their upstream feed stopped, they told me I was the only regular usenet reader left on campus) is one of them; another is text messaging on phones. It just never occurs to me to send an SMS; I almost always email, and phone if that's impractical. It's funny that you mention that I am only 24 so I guess I would fit in the youngster category. I don't even know what usenet is. I guess that's why phones are starting to be the great meadator of communication between generations, you can e-mail now, SMS, or call. You can even use the GPS to show up at their door step. Funny how things are starting to merge together huh. Computer programs, internet programs, and phone programs. I bet in 5 - 10 years there won't be a distinguishable difference between the three. That's why I think this phone is so great. It is the start of the integration. Soon people will just have data associated with them. And they can access it from anywhere at anytime. I am excited to see where this OpenMoko and the OLPC things take us. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
* Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [070220 19:57]: My children (I've got one who just finished his undergrad degree in CS, and a second who is a pre-med) don't send much email, but are constantly texting. Well, I do texting mostly on phones with a sensible keyboard or grafitti entry system. And no, T9 is not a sensible input method IMHO. Andreas ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
* mathew davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] [070220 19:57]: It's funny that you mention that I am only 24 so I guess I would fit in the youngster category. I don't even know what usenet is. I guess that's usenet, news = it's just a very email-ish forum system. It's older than the Internet ;) Andreas ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
mathew davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's funny that you mention that I am only 24 so I guess I would fit in the youngster category. I don't even know what usenet is. Usenet was (well, is, but it has been dying for a long time) a global system in which RFC-822 style messages (same format as email) were presented to the user in semi-hierarchically structured newsgroups. The term news was the idiosyncratic name given to said messages. The messages were distributed by a flood fill mechanism among participating hosts, initially via uucp in the era of dialup and then later over TCP via the NNTP protocol. Large numbers of news readers were developed, with interesting user interfaces. Usenet had excellent the feature that it allowed people around the world to participate in discussions of technical topics without having to know a priori that the topics existed (since the news reader allowed you to browse all groups) and without having to specifically subscribe then wait (since you could see messages that had been posted before you actually joined). The bad part was that the flood fill mechanism means every site in the network has to carry *all* traffic even if no one locally is reading a particular topic. Ultimately this architectural issue and the failure to address it is what killed Usenet -- a decentralized architecture would have preserved it. Today, RSS readers somewhat simulate the feel of newsgroups, but with serious technical downsides (including polling, and needing to fetch everything and not just updates every time you do an RSS poll) and without the interactivity or standardized message format. Someday I'd love to create a next generation Usenet that fixed all this -- I would distribute only newsgroup announcements rather than the newsgroups themselves, make the topic namespace subdivided by domain names to eliminate the global namepsace problem, and use a bit-torrent like centrally tracked but peer to peer distributed transfer method to eliminate the need for giant news spools. However, realistically, I'll never have the month to do the work. -- Perry E. Metzger[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
Andreas Kostyrka [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: * mathew davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] [070220 19:57]: It's funny that you mention that I am only 24 so I guess I would fit in the youngster category. I don't even know what usenet is. I guess that's usenet, news = it's just a very email-ish forum system. It's older than the Internet ;) Technically it isn't -- the Internet dates to the mid-1970s and the creation of IPv4 and TCP, where Usenet dates to early 1980s work done at UNC. Perry ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
mathew davis writes: It's funny that you mention that I am only 24 so I guess I would fit in the youngster category. I don't even know what usenet is. I guess that's why usenet is a huge, distributed bulletin board system with topics groups on every conceivable (and many inconceivable) subject. If you're familiar with Google Groups, that's actually a huge usenet server with a really, really bad interface. phones are starting to be the great meadator of communication between generations, you can e-mail now, SMS, or call. You can even use the GPS to show up at their door step. Funny how things are starting to merge together huh. Computer programs, internet programs, and phone programs. I bet in 5 - 10 years there won't be a distinguishable difference between the three. I believe you're exactly right. I'm a little surprised it's taken this long; when I saw my first PalmOS phone in something like 1999 I thought the convergence was just around the corner. A friend of mine mentioned the other day that his Windows Mobile phone works just like his PC: he turns it on, the keyboard locks up, he has to reboot... That's why I think this phone is so great. It is the start of the integration. Soon people will just have data associated with them. And they can access it from anywhere at anytime. I am excited to see where this OpenMoko and the OLPC things take us. Yep. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
Paul Bonser wrote: On 2/20/07, Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: which seems to have a lot of what you're looking for (a lot of the discussion on the various mailling lists seems to end up getting distilled into wiki articles). It's interesting to note that most youngsters seem to prefer forums, and most of us old-timers (IIRC you're my age, Joe) prefer mailing lists. I wonder why that is? The youngsters have seen a lot of web based posting systems, don't remember usenet, don't have decent email systems that segregate lists into different boxes, and thus don't understand why anyone would use email or what the problems of web posting systems are. Perry You talk about it like usenet isn't around anymore. I'm 23 and I remember usenet. It came in handy back in the day when I was learning C++. I think that proper threading is much more useful than the linear threads in web forums these days.. its fully possible in some forums to have proper threading... and yes, im familiar with usenet. i even have a list of groups set up in thunderbird that i have not checked in ages... Anyway, I suppose that despite the fact that I might be considered a youngster, I consider myself much less technologically young that most people my age. good for you :) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Forums Page?
Sorry to bend the thread a little, but I wanted to respond to Andreas' T9 comment. My position is neutral; T9 seems to work well for some people and some purposes, not so well for others. These folks did a decent usability test that should be useful to consider when designing the onscreen keypad/board. It compares T9 to Fastap: (You'll want a new-fangled browser) http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/video_fastap/ Conclusion: T9 has a steeper learning curve but is more efficient for a new user. I think the Fastap layout sacrifices familiarity to conserve space. What should work better (imo, ymmv) with an onscreen input is a quick way to flip between a numeric keypad and a qwerty/configurable keyboard. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andreas Kostyrka Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 2:05 PM To: Joe Pfeiffer Cc: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Re: Forums Page? * Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [070220 19:57]: My children (I've got one who just finished his undergrad degree in CS, and a second who is a pre-med) don't send much email, but are constantly texting. Well, I do texting mostly on phones with a sensible keyboard or grafitti entry system. And no, T9 is not a sensible input method IMHO. Andreas ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community NOTICE: This e-mail message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information of Motricity. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Forums Page?
On Tue, 2007-02-20 at 21:20 +0100, kenneth marken wrote: Gabriel Ambuehl wrote: On Tuesday 20 February 2007 21:05:35 kenneth marken wrote: its fully possible in some forums to have proper threading... And that's mostly true (leaving mails from broken email clients aside) for mailinglists as well. I think in Thunderbird you should barely be able to tell whether you are using a newsgroup or a mailinglist if you configure it correctly (but it's been a while since I used Thunderbird for either). well, as newsgroups go in their own folder tree its not hard at all. mailing lists is a different story, but you can allways set up a filter that puts new mails from the list into its own folder. and yes, you can have them all sorted by thread if you want to... Hi all, this is all interesting. It is key for us all to focus our energy on OpenMoko on these lists. I would recommend if you all are into forums, you have everything to create them on your own as user forums or whatever. This is the approach we took with Inkscape, as developers time is for focused attention on the project and not on infrastructure development. Jon -- Jon Phillips San Francisco, CA USA PH 510.499.0894 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rejon.org MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto Jabber Chat: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
