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From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 22:09 On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:56:34 -0500, Jim Byrnes wrote: > I thought his point was they are big enough to have the resources to > offer newsgroups but don't. If I want fast internet I must use Comcast > and Comcast doesn't offer newsgroups either. Sadly is seems getting > access to newsgroups is getting harder and harder. I'm sorry for all you people who don't live in a place with a genuinely free market, and instead have to suffer with the lack of competition and poor service of a monopoly or duopoly masquerading as a free market. But *my* point was that your woes are not universal, and Usenet is alive and well. It might be declining, but it's a long, slow decline and, like Cobol, it will probably still be around a decade after the cool kids declared it dead. -- Steven
From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 22:14 On Sat, 05 Jun 2010 05:22:21 +1000, Lie Ryan wrote: > Probably. A vote up/down feature tend to highlight popular problems, but > it also buries less popular problems that might have perfectly good > answers. I think Google Groups have 5-star-rating system? You might want > to check on that. I don't remember the URL, but I read an article about Yahoo Answers which explained that the Yahoo team started off with 5-star ratings for answers, but quickly discovered that most ratings were either 0 or 5, and so changed to a Vote Up/Down system. According to Yahoo's experience, the extra complexity just adds an illusionary sense of precision with no additional benefit. -- Steven
From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 22:29 On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:29:58 -0400, D'Arcy J.M. Cain wrote: > On 04 Jun 2010 05:41:17 GMT > Steven D'Aprano <steve(a)REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote: >> Sure, a lot of those 1,800 posts are spam, but the spammers wouldn't >> waste their time if they didn't think there were people still on >> Usenet. > > Kidding, right? Cost to spam is virtually zero so the ROI is pretty > close to infinite no matter how many people they reach. What, you think the Russian mob hands out their botnets for free? Spam is a business. An evil, unethical, immoral, scum-sucking business, but still a business, and like all businesses, spammers care about cost and profit. The marginal cost of sending spam might be approaching zero, but the total cost isn't, and spammers try to maximise the number of eyeballs they reach while minimising the cost. If they weren't, they would still be using the same spam techniques from the 90s, instead of engaged in an arms race with anti-spam apps. This is why things like picture spam comes in waves. Every few months, some newbie spammer hits on the brilliant idea of putting his spam in a jpg image, carefully obfuscating it so that OCR software can't recognise the URL but humans can, pays his $200 (or whatever it is) to rent a botnet, and for two weeks everybody gets an uptick in spam because the anti-spam apps can't filter picture spam very well. And then they discover that the morons who buy from spammers aren't just stupid, they're lazy too. Nobody is going to type the URL into their browser, that's too much like actual work. So the spammer learns that his investment didn't make him any profit, and he tries something else, or gives up, and the picture spam disappears for a few more months until some other newbie fails to think things through. If there weren't people reading the spam on Usenet and buying whatever junk is being sold, the spammers would move on. -- Steven
From: John Bokma on 4 Jun 2010 22:29 Grant Edwards <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> writes: > On 2010-06-04, John Bokma <john(a)castleamber.com> wrote: >> Lie Ryan <lie.1296(a)gmail.com> writes: >> >>> On 06/05/10 04:19, John Bokma wrote: >>>> Steven D'Aprano <steve(a)REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> writes: >>>> >>>>> But the really sad thing is that you think that "bigger" automatically >>>>> equals "better". >>>> >>>> I don't think that was the point. >>>> >>>> Anyway, not everbody can pick a provider, there are plenty of places >>>> that have only one or maybe two. And if that's the choice and neither >>>> carries Usenet you have to pay for Usenet like I do. Note that I >>>> consider it well worth the 10 euros I pay for it. >>> >>> Isn't gmane available where you live? I've used gmane for newsgroups >>> that my local server doesn't carry. The only problem is that there's a >>> slight delay in opening new posts (0.5 seconds or so). >> >> I am aware of Gmane [1] but in their own words: "Gmane is a mailing list >> archive.", so it's not Usenet. It's a Usenet server which provides >> access to mailing lists. (A very cool idea). > > No, it's not a Usenet server. OK, it's an NNTP server, but on the other hand I think one can argue that an NNTP server also implies Usenet since Usenet doesn't imply that all groups available on Usenet should be available, nor does it imply -- like you already mentioned below (snipped) -- how exactly that data arrives or that is has to be complete. Since this posting ends up on Gmane, I think it's correct to call Gmane part of Usenet, and hence, they're running a Usenet server. -- John Bokma j3b Hacking & Hiking in Mexico - http://johnbokma.com/ http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development
From: Steven D'Aprano on 4 Jun 2010 22:31
On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:55:08 -0500, John Bokma wrote: > "Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps(a)start.no> writes: [...] >> It started, as I see it, back in the early 90's with Playboy attempting >> to sue anyone who used the Lena picture in photo processing tests etc. >> (it's the standard image for that). They failed in that particular >> endeavour, but did succeed in shutting down thousands of sites >> worldwide displaying Playboy pictures. > > I know of the use of Lena. And to be honest, I agree with Playboy that > they have the copyright. I don't think that anyone argues that Playboy don't own the copyright. What they don't own is the principle of fair use. > Some of the articles published on image > processing end up behind a paywall or in a book. Perhaps. So what? Publishing dozens of photos from Playboy isn't fair use. Publishing a single copy of Lena is. Fair use doesn't cease to be fair use if you put it in a book. > And I don't think the > authors will be very happy if I convert their work in PDFs and offer it > as free download on my site. Everybody wants a free ride until they have > to create and maintain the rides in their own precious time with their > own money. I'm sorry, Playboy took that photo of Lena, what, thirty years ago? In what possible sense do they have to maintain it? Do they have to photoshop out the wrinkles each year to maintain the photo's youthful appearance? -- Steven |