At 18:54 08/03/2005, you wrote:
From: "Adrian Vickers" <javickers at
solutionengineers.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 12:14 PM
At 16:27 08/03/2005, you wrote:
<snip>
NNTP is a great protocol, and has a real use.
Personally, I happen to
think it's NOT ideal for this list, but I should stress that's just my opinion.
In defence of e-mail I shall make only one point, & let others do as they
wish... Personally, I *like* having all the messages commingled in one
place. There's a number of times when I've clicked into a message I never
thought I'd be interested in, & ended up following the whole discussion &
been fascinated by it. An NNTP setup with separated subject areas would
make it more difficult to "dip in" like that.
OK, 2 points (I know, Spanish Inquisition). Every NNTP client I've used
has deleted old posts after a certain period of time... An NNTP post is
for a few weeks, an e-mail is forever...
NNTP is a great fit for this list.
An email is forever if your server lets you keep a large enough back-log
or if you download it to your machine and it never ever fails (who ever
hear of a computer having trouble anyway).
Well, touch wood - I've lost very few (if any) e-mails since 1996, when I
first got connected to the Internet. Proper backups are the key, something
too many people have forgotten these days, now that hardware is reliable[1].
NNTP is forever through people like google groups.
You can't rely on that, though, because:
1/ It's hosted on a remote server as a "free" service which could be
removed (or made subs-only) at any time
2/ You can avoid having posts stored by setting the header "X-No-Archive: Yes"
3/ The search mechanism is dire
The true problems with NNTP are: not everyone has
access to Usenet will
and those that do would have to talk their Usenet provider into including it.
I love NNTP and have several groups I follow on it. I see no practical
way to switch to Usenet. The list works, it may not be perfect
Agreed: The list is far from perfect. IMHO, it's better than Usenet.
Another reason: I can receive list items on my 'phone while travelling[2]
around the UK's rail network[3], which I couldn't do via Usenet, as I don't
know of a suitable NNTP client for my Phone (which I won't mention here, as
it's less than 10 years old).
Cheers,
Ade.
[1] Not 100% reliable, but a hell of a lot more reliable than it used to
be. Thing is, though, what's the loss of a 10mb disk pack which is backed
up daily to tape, compared to a 200gig disk drive which was probably never
backed up as the tape h/w required to do 200 gig is immensely expensive...
[2] I say "travelling". This usually means waiting on a station for yet
another delayed or cancelled train.
[3] I use the word "network" in a sort of thin-Ethernet kind of way: One
little isolated problem and the whole damn lot goes down.