On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Shaul Karl wrote:
> Coming to think about it, haven't you just described some major problems of
> the news service?
> 1) People are using http combined with search utilities to look on-line in the
> huge bank of information that was gathered by news messages, thus enabling
> their ISPs not carry the large BW that is needed for a proper news service.
this is not a bug, it's a feature. read on to see why this is not as good
as actually participating in the discussion.
> 2) One can use the information without actively and continually follow news
> groups.
yes, but then one misses on taking part in the discussion. what is it
like? the difference between participating in an interesting lesson,
taking an active part in the discussion (i think its called the socrates
method of teaching, through dialog), and reading someone else's notes
before the test. many times, the second course will suffice, but it is
quite obvious to anyone who's tried both you learn much more by taking
part.
> 3) No central managing for a news group, which makes it pretty hard to
> enforce some standards on its content.
not true. moderated news groups exist and (most of the time) are excellent
sources of information.
> Doesn't a mailing list solve those problems, at least partially?
no. mailing lists and news groups differ pretty much only in the method of
information retrieval- push vs. pull. there are mailing list <-> news
gateways, too.
the biggest problem news groups have is spam.
ObNews: can anyone recommend interesting news groups?
my favorites are:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
and the monastery.
--
mulix
http://www.advogato.com/person/mulix
linux/reboot.h: #define LINUX_REBOOT_MAGIC1 0xfee1dead
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