Re: emacs stackexchange beta site

[Emanuel Berg]

Udyant Wig <udyantw@gmail.com> writes:

> Is there no way out of this mess?

No. Just live and be active. Don't waste your very
short time in the sun.

> [IIRC, once you outlined the difference (in
> comp.lang.lisp) between a world (such as the original
> ARPANET) where each person has his own mail server
> and one (such as ours) wherein everyone used a single
> mail server (like the one for Google Mail.) I think
> you gave the example of Minitel.

That sounds like an interesting post. Perhaps you or
the OP can provide a URL or downright yank it here?

Anyway, your (Mr. Wig) description of the Internet is
somewhat but not entirely correct. The internet is
distributed. Google Mail (Gmail) is an interface
(i.e., a client, a web client) but Google also stores
the mails themselves.

If you, on the other hand, use a client that is a
program on your computer - e.g., Gnus - you have your
own mails on the disk and you don't hand anything over
to Google automatically, by using their interfaces and
having them store your mails.

However, if you send mails to people with Gmail mails,
your mails end up in their inboxes. When they quote you
in their replies, what you write is stored that way, as
well. So there is no escape - but not using Gmail still
makes a huge difference (for the better) if you are
concerned with this issue (as for me, I'm aware of it,
not exactly concerned; I use Gnus mainly because I
think it is a much better interface and more powerful
client; and, it makes sense for me to have all the
mails myself as I often use the Linux shell tools on
them, collectively, as they are represented 1 message =
1 file).

Read this, if you like:

http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours

Off topic, but still a good opportunity to ask: how do
you reference a Usenet (NNTP) post? I take it there are
web archives - I only know of Google Groups (if you
don't count those that archive specific mailing lists).
The coolest thing would be to get the post straight in
Gnus or whatever news client, and that shouldn't be
that difficult for posts that are still on the
newsserver (I don't know for how long they are stored;
I use Aioe.org).

Actually, I'm on comp.lang.lisp though I very seldom
read it because I don't do CL or Scheme or anything but
Elisp actually.

> So, now, instead of an N * M network we have an N * 1
> network.

Not exactly but it sure feels like that.

> This may or may not be relevant.

Relevant!

> I suppose that the end is a good one, even though not
> all the new users will stay on to become better than
> newbies, and fewer experts.

They won't. No one believes that. It is like a book in
the public library on Debian or Fedora. No one will
read it for several years and then some guy stumbles
upon it when browsing the shelf for a book on game
programming in C++ (perhaps C# those days). That guy
then becomes a Linux user and forgets about stupid
games. That makes it worth it and that is why the
library board shouldn't throw that book away, or
else...!

-- 
underground experts united