Prev: Click And Fill Form Instant Get $3000
Next: HTA Create User assign multiple groups
From: Mayayana on 15 Sep 2010 10:45
| The MS people weren't so
| much looking for a way to kill the newsgroups as hoping they could keep
| something of their spirit going. Any attempt to provide usenet access to
the
| forums and/or forum access to the newsgroups seemed unlikely to succeed
| because they are too different to coexist.
|

That may be the logic they placated themselves
with. (We all like to believe we're trying to be
decent people, after all.) But it lacks credibility.
The groups are active. Forums like Google groups
plug into that. So they co-exist. Microsoft is now
*trying* to kill that off.

One could say that
newsgroups are fading out because people don't
know about usenet anymore, but few such people
are likely to discover MS forums. Then there's the fact
that a "passport" tracking ID and script in the browser
are required. That combination will allow nearly
total online tracking in most cases. Then there's the
moderating. The discussion is led by MS employees.
And finally there's the issue at hand: Discussion
groups for technologies are being dropped in favor of
discussion groups for current products.

| In fairness to MS, they are a business, and business *is* all about
| marketing.

I don't buy that excuse. And neither do you. You just
got through detailing their alleged benign intentions in
your first paragraph. Now you directly refute that in your
second paragraph, offering Microsofties the excuse that
business is business, after all.

Business is not all about
marketing. Business is about taking care of the needs
of one's life. It's the medium of a society's mechanics.
I run my own business. I try to be helpful to people
while paying my own bills. I don't look to maximize
profits. I look to charge fairly and make a living. Cads
call that being a sucker, but it's really just being a decent
citizen -- trying to practice the art of living life as a
human instead of living like an animal.

I don't see any reason not to hold others to that
standard of humanity and decency. There's no "business"
excuse for descending into mindless greed "because we
owe it to the shareholders". Nobody owes *that* to the
shareholders. Rather, the shareholders share moral
resopnsibility for the actions of the company. And at
this point, this company is little more than a behemoth
living off of exploiting a monopoly. (As you may recall,
Bill Gates is well known to have bragged as much to
Warren Buffet.)

So I can't accept the excuse of "business is business".
But I might agree with the conclusion of "thugs will
be thugs". :)


From: Al Dunbar on 15 Sep 2010 19:31


"Mayayana" <mayayana(a)invalid.nospam> wrote in message
news:i6qm3j$2n9$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> | The MS people weren't so
> | much looking for a way to kill the newsgroups as hoping they could keep
> | something of their spirit going. Any attempt to provide usenet access to
> the
> | forums and/or forum access to the newsgroups seemed unlikely to succeed
> | because they are too different to coexist.
> |
>
> That may be the logic they placated themselves
> with.

Or maybe that was what they were trying to do.

> (We all like to believe we're trying to be
> decent people, after all.) But it lacks credibility.
> The groups are active.

Well this group is not nearly as active as it once was.

> Forums like Google groups
> plug into that. So they co-exist. Microsoft is now
> *trying* to kill that off.
>
> One could say that
> newsgroups are fading out because people don't
> know about usenet anymore, but few such people
> are likely to discover MS forums.

I have no idea how you could possibly demonstrate this to be the case,
however much you may think it is true. I don't find the forums particularly
useful for my purposes, but I believe knowledge of them will spread when
they are referenced by the help available in applications.

> Then there's the fact
> that a "passport" tracking ID and script in the browser
> are required. That combination will allow nearly
> total online tracking in most cases. Then there's the
> moderating. The discussion is led by MS employees.
> And finally there's the issue at hand: Discussion
> groups for technologies are being dropped in favor of
> discussion groups for current products.

You've just listed some of the things I don't like about them. The other is
that they are hard to navigate for someone interested in, for example,
vbscript.

> | In fairness to MS, they are a business, and business *is* all about
> | marketing.
>
> I don't buy that excuse. And neither do you.

Well, I did use exaggeration to some extent. But a company that is not
marketing itself will not do as well as one that does.

> You just
> got through detailing their alleged benign intentions in
> your first paragraph. Now you directly refute that in your
> second paragraph, offering Microsofties the excuse that
> business is business, after all.

There was a time lag between that MVP global summit and when support for
newsgroups started officially declining.

> Business is not all about
> marketing. Business is about taking care of the needs
> of one's life.

In the case of MS, whose life is it we are talking about. Bill's? MS
employees? Their customers? Us?

> It's the medium of a society's mechanics.
> I run my own business. I try to be helpful to people
> while paying my own bills. I don't look to maximize
> profits. I look to charge fairly and make a living. Cads
> call that being a sucker, but it's really just being a decent
> citizen -- trying to practice the art of living life as a
> human instead of living like an animal.

Even large companies can be run ethically, but I won't get into an argument
as to whether or not that applies to MS. But even ethically run large
companies operate differently than a company that is so personally
associated with its owner.

> I don't see any reason not to hold others to that
> standard of humanity and decency. There's no "business"
> excuse for descending into mindless greed "because we
> owe it to the shareholders". Nobody owes *that* to the
> shareholders. Rather, the shareholders share moral
> resopnsibility for the actions of the company. And at
> this point, this company is little more than a behemoth
> living off of exploiting a monopoly. (As you may recall,
> Bill Gates is well known to have bragged as much to
> Warren Buffet.)

All that aside, MS is not the only company that has changed directions, and
certainly not the only one whose changed directions upset some of their
customers. I have difficulty with the notion that dropping support for
newsgroups classifies as indecency, mindless greed, or lack of moral
responsibility. It's newgroups, not your iron lung, that they are pulling
the plug on.

When this whole thing came to light, my first reaction was "they can't take
my newsgroups away from me". Then I realized that they had no duty to me to
continue supporting a platform or infrastructure if it was no longer in
their interest. They didn't have to even start doing that to begin with. In
fact, even though I at first took it personally, I do not believe it was
meant personally.

I recall when I first started following these newsgroups, that a lot of
people seemed to get some good advice here, and a community kind of
developed around it. I have belonged to other organizations that kind of
died out, either for lack of interest or as the result of other changes in
the world: DECUS Canada, a community league, etc. etc.

You seem to think that this can live on, and should be allowed to. I'd be
happy too if that were the case. But, if you are right, then certainly some
other organization will come along and breathe life back into the thing,
will it not?

> So I can't accept the excuse of "business is business".
> But I might agree with the conclusion of "thugs will
> be thugs". :)

Ok, then, so business is not business. I can live with that if you can. ;-)

/Al


First  |  Prev  | 
Pages: 1 2
Prev: Click And Fill Form Instant Get $3000
Next: HTA Create User assign multiple groups