TheSwamp
CAD Forums => CAD General => Topic started by: Kerry on May 28, 2010, 09:25:59 PM
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I've spent the morning synchronising my Newsgroup listings.
In case you've missed the news, Autodesk are stopping the NNTP service, so the Newsgroups will no longer be accessable by any means other that through their forums.
Here's the notification :
http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=775779&tstart=0
Just as a matter of interest, the website forum quoted shows 0 replies.
The Newsgroup shows numerous replies, mostly expressing distain.
Looks like my newsreader grabbed the replies before 'someone' erased them from the server.
[erased comment cause this is not the place for them. :kdub]
so I now have confirmed my access to millions half a million peer to peer posts that I can search locally.
If [you] want to do the same, be quick about it :|
[edit: fixed my exagerated post count : kdub]
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My personal feelings aside.... I suspect in the short term, several NNTP only people will stay away, but they will either eventually come around and participate, or be 'replaced' by other 'experts' - I doubt there will be any real measurable effect in the long run.
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Just as a matter of interest, the website forum quoted shows 0 replies.
The Newsgroup shows numerous replies, mostly expressing distain.
Looks like my newsreader grabbed the replies before 'someone' erased them from the server.
Kerry, nothing's been erased. The thread you linked here to was in the VBA forum, and I don't see any replies there on the webside or NNTP. The change notice was posted in all discussion groups, and has generated some lively (un-erased) discussions, especially in the 2011 forum.
Before you bail on the forums entirely, see what the webside actually looks like later this week -- I don't know details of the changes, but don't judge it based on what it looks like today.
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Sniffing and Spoofing because of "infringements" and even the legit bite the dust too (It was just a matter of time.).
Duke, Microsoft, Autodesk, ...?
Next order of buisness:
BB's next?
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Dear Lord, one look at the thread in the 2011 forum reminds just why I hadn't been to that part of the autodesk site in so very, very long.
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That's kinda eerie weird. I read your post and the name Tony Tanzillo popped into my head. Imagine my surprise...
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Good to read Cadaver is still ticking....
I do miss the old fart. :-)
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subst in http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=33535.msg389475#msg389475 "ticking" "trolling"
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Well played, sir.
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RE: http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=775707&tstart=0
Who here thinks money savings or controlling content is part of Autodesk's decision to shutdown nntp servers?
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Who here thinks money savings or controlling content is part of Autodesk's decision to shutdown nntp servers?
My guess. The IT guy that kept the NNTP server running is retiring soon and there isn't anyone at Adesk that knows the system well enough to run it. That and they don't want to pay someone with that kind of experience so it ultimately comes down to money. I personally don't feel Adesk is that hung-up on controlling the content.
:-)
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Back when I -did- frequent the boards on a heavy basis...
The only censorship I -ever- saw was exactly what some other rational person in that thread mentioned... someone was being EXCESSIVELY inflammatory to another person on a personal level. Imagine why TT seems to be the one with the censorship problems. Go figure.
I've had discussions regarding Solidworks and Inventor on the AD boards before. I do not recall the conversation being limited or removed in part of in full. Funny how that worked out. I have even had discussions about alternative software rendering capabilities in a thread started frequented by an Autodesk employee, and surprise, surprise... nothing happened. /shrug
I think if you are decently civil, you'll not have your posts edited. However, if you go off the FAR DEEP end with your inflammatory posting habits, you may get snipped, which may -happen- to include some references to other software, but it most likely was not at all motivated by anti-competition clauses in their moderation handbook.
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I have seen a few posts about how to bypass certain features like the EDU plot stamp get removed, and some script-kiddie nonsense posts but yeah - they are pretty liberal about moderation. More liberal than a number of other places, in fact - makes me wish for Deathshadow, a moderator from another discussion group I used to frequent. *Anybody* stepped outside the ground rules and punishment was swift but evenhanded.
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RE: http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=775707&tstart=0
Who here thinks money savings or controlling content is part of Autodesk's decision to shutdown nntp servers?
Money savings, yes. While the respected posters who make the majority of posts use the service I suspect (personal opinion here) that the majority of readers/loiterers use the web side. They don't post anything and only link in through Google search results, so there is no real record of them from our side of the screen.
Controlling content, maybe. Better moderation? We can only hope. "Evil empire/we will only allow our own opinions and filter out anything contrary", we can only hope not. Of course doing that would cost money and invalidate point 1.
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For one, the only people who give a poop enough to vote are going to be the whiners who use the newsfeed, for the most part. The people who voted for the web side are probably like me, and don't really care, but wanted to vote for whatever the whiners were opposed to, just to spite them.
Above all of that, I'm reasonably sure that the votes -maybe- comprise such a small fraction of the populace, probably a fraction of one whole percent... that it doesn't mean jack crap anyways, not to mention the obvious vote jacking and compromised vote tallying. The poll is retarded and irrelevant. How big must their egos be to think that the newsfeed authors are the experts on the software, and that without the newsfeed users, the forums will not have anyone to teach them (or belittle them). How big must their egos be, to think that out of the entirety of the Autodesk user base, and forum user base, that the... what... 30-40 people who voted in favor of newsfeeds (assuming they were actually one vote per person...) are at all significant enough to be a blip on anyone's radar? Add to that the fact that any change is going to bring about people who want to complain for the sake of complaining and.... yea.
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Duke, Microsoft, Newsbin (down then "backup"), Autodesk ....all coincidence?
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Man I haven't used NNTP since Gopher and Eworld :laugh:
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So, Mr Tanzillo decided that he didn't like 27 of the votes, one of them mine, and deleted them. Gotta love it.
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So, Mr Tanzillo decided that he didn't like 27 of the votes, one of them mine, and deleted them. Gotta love it.
I'm pretty sure mine happened about that time, as well.
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So, Mr Tanzillo decided that he didn't like 27 of the votes, one of them mine, and deleted them. Gotta love it.
At least we know about the number-twiddling now. The "two to one" crowing was occuring before that particular fact surfaced.
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> biased vote
yep, and you expected anything else? *lol*
Whats behind all of this is the fact that NNTP is dying, along with bit-torrent. ISP's are either not indexing nntp servers (not getting headers) or sniffing packets for both nntp and bit-torrent (spying on you).
My home ISP is Comcast and they are not exactly hiding the fact that they sniff and or shape my packets...I'm afraid to download NetBSD or Linux OS' via bit-torrent because of all the crap that i think will hit the fan.
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Even if he hadn't tampered with the votes, the problem with polls like that, as shown here with the ignore user mod poll, is that you end up with the people who are most offended by the idea being the main ones who vote, so the position of the oppressed always appears to be the majority. Then it gets touted as "The users here are against it 2:1" with maybe 0.05% of the users actually voting to begin with.
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Even if he hadn't tampered with the votes, the problem with polls like that, as shown here with the ignore user mod poll, is that you end up with the people who are most offended by the idea being the main ones who vote, so the position of the oppressed always appears to be the majority. Then it gets touted as "The users here are against it 2:1" with maybe 0.05% of the users actually voting to begin with.
A vocal minority. Happens in a lot of situations. Whoever is making the most noise gets perceived as having the majority opinion.
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I surely wont miss it. I haven't been over there in years. After checking that thread I am quickly reminded why I left. When I did frequent I did go through the NNTP side simply because it was much faster.
There are many other great places to get the same information without all of the hassle.
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Here's the notification :
http://discussion.autodesk.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=775779&tstart=0
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request.
Explanation
The server is unable to service a request because a needed resource is unavailable.
Solution
Please try again later.
[BACK BUTTON]
*shrug*
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I think the entire thing can be summed up by saying most long time newsgroup users started out on NNTP (when it was the only choice) and never moved to HTML since NNTP is generally ASCII based (faster), there is no login, no advertising, it's much quicker to switch from group to group, view unread messages, highlight your own messages, etc. etc.
Some of us will drop and others will migrate. In the end, I doubt any change will be noticed.
We all survived the change in plotting in 2000, the CUI in 2006 and most recently, the Ribbon. I'm sure we'll survive this also.
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why not start your own server?
http://aplawrence.com/Unixart/newsserver.html
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anyone remember us talking about NNTP here? Or am I dreaming ....
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Mark, that was you and i talking --i.e. we never talked about it with everyone else.
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I really do not care hwat protocal Autodesk supports, as long as there is a decent interface.
Offline stuff (like how Agent or thunderbird does things) is so stinking fast, I don't know how you can beat it.
Is there some way to download headers and bodies later, through some other means?
Of all the things that made AutoCad great, was the easy discussion group access. Will they cut of LISP next?
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> Is there some way to download headers and bodies later, through some other means?
If they remove the server... Ask a friend?
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Well, looks like the new interface is accessable ..
http://forums.autodesk.com/
I tried to follow an old link in ... didn't seem to work ... so that will be what the first 237 posts will be about :)
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define:molasses slow as
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That's prolly cause they are just collecting information from your PC without your knowledge. ...I wouldn't worry.
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...I wouldn't worry.
My userName is JohnK .. so I'm not concerned about that at all :wink:
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I'm, so far, pleasantly surprised with the new interface. For me it has been fairly quick, with most things working....one that doesn't are the links Kerry mentions.
One of the more important things (to me) I had inquired about long ago has been addressed and works well...that being able to post code without it being mangled into something completely unusable.
It still is a far cry from the nntp groups I'm used to, but I don't think it will keep me from using it....which is exactly what the old interface did for me.
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http://lithium.com/
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You can sign in...?
I can get to the site, and browse through forums, but when I try to sign in, it says "Service Unavailable".
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I was able to a while ago, but not now.. same error message
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looks the same... as the previous one
what it is the * in front of a now named contributor ? - have not use it - just lurk around there (one will need to sing in?)
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I tried to follow an old link in ... didn't seem to work ... so that will be what the first 237 posts will be about :)
Looks like this has been corrected. I have followed a dozen, or so, links without a problem now, including the ones Kerry posted in the .NET group there.
Right now my biggest complaint is that they told us the RSS feeds would help ease the transition form nntp. Which they might, except right now the feeds are only feeding new topics....any new replies go unnoticed.
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I was wondering if they's see my comment about links ...
next should be the editor text size if we're lucky :)
Then the use of < and > characters in posts ...
re RSS : I think RSS will be useless unless we have some way to collate the posts ... If they just get splattered into the ether as the posts occur it will just be a mess.
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Then the use of < and > characters in posts ...
re RSS : I think RSS will be useless unless we have some way to collate the posts ... If they just get splattered into the ether as the posts occur it will just be a mess.
The < > characters seem to be working for me...at least they did in the test code I did last night. Or maybe you want to use them in some other way?
I've never used RSS much, but I think it will be more of notice that posts are being made. Which is a better alternative than getting an email whenever a post is added. But then again, it may prove to be a waste of time & effort....
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This had me on the floor ... family thought I was having a fit :)
This is funny at SO many levels ...
(http://www.kdubpro.com/Home/Speechless.png)
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*lmao*
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Well, it's been about 6 weeks since the change over to the new format.
Any different thoughts at this point?
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Its... different. In some areas, its better, like quickly seeing who replied to what under the pseudo-threaded view. In others, its worse, like the lack of a "true" thread view, or the default email when posting. I don't spend all day there (or here, for that matter), so its mostly a "meh". You?
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Well, it's been about 6 weeks since the change over to the new format.
Any different thoughts at this point?
Nope, I still dislike it. While it does seem mostly better than it's predecessor, it still lacks too many things to warrant me spending as much time there as I used to via nntp.
One thing I don't understand...and this has NOTHING to do with the Adesk newsgroups, but I thought it fits best here....with all of the programming which has been done in the Web Forum Arena (SMF, vBulletin, etc.) it strikes me as odd that not one, that I could find anyway, has attempted to give the end user a format even close to the simplicity of a newsreader. Can anyone explain that to me? I've seen Web Mail readers that look a lot like standalone mail/news readers, why can't that same functionality be carried over to forums?
All this hype about "give the users the rich Web experience they've come to expect" is bunk, IMHO. I don't WANT a rich Web experience, I want to post/read/search/answer questions in as little time as possible, without having to constantly use the Back button, refresh button, re-hit the bookmark because the re-login has negated using the Back button, hit a link that takes me away from the current message just to view a screenshot, etc, etc.
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I was already using the web interface before the latest changes. And the latest changes fixed a bunch of the problems they've had ever since they switched forum software last year.
It's still slow, but it works better than before. And I already used the web interface before, because I'm not a fan of NNTP. I like being able to read newsgroups from multiple computers, and having the read/unread indicators update appropriately regardless of which computer I happen to be using. I also never liked the search functionality in NNTP - it seemed to involve downloading a lot of message headers, and then the search would only search the message headers. The Search in the AD forums still kind of sucks, but Google searches it pretty well.
So all in all, I view things as better now than before. The web side works better, and the death of NNTP is a non-issue for me.
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ing I don't understand...and this has NOTHING to do with the Adesk newsgroups, but I thought it fits best here....with all of the programming which has been done in the Web Forum Arena (SMF, vBulletin, etc.) it strikes me as odd that not one, that I could find anyway, has attempted to give the end user a format even close to the simplicity of a newsreader. Can anyone explain that to me? I've seen Web Mail readers that look a lot like standalone mail/news readers, why can't that same functionality be carried over to forums?
This argument has been raging over at RPLS.com (a Land Surveyor site), where they recently replaced the old, fast, board with a new-fangled Facebook-style board that is worse than Autodesk's.
One of the members started a competing forum, which works much better. It's much like a newsreader format, and is very fast. Check it out:
http://beerleg.com/
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One of the members started a competing forum, which works much better. It's much like a newsreader format, and is very fast. Check it out:
http://beerleg.com/
Now that's not too bad. Add a few adjustable frames so that with a click on the message it would show in another frame instead of another window/tab, and show all of the subscribed categories along a side, it would be pretty darn close.
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This argument has been raging over at RPLS.com (a Land Surveyor site), where they recently replaced the old, fast, board...
Well, you got the "old" part right. That was almost the worst message board type forum I had ever seen. I can't comment on the new one since I have not seen it, but the old one was bad....
One of the members started a competing forum, which works much better. It's much like a newsreader format, and is very fast. Check it out:
http://beerleg.com/
That looks almost as bad... But if the users there like it, that is all that matters...
What is wrong with vBulletin people?
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> What is wrong with vBulletin
It's proprietary. It's bloated. It tries to be smart. It looks horrible. I dont like the shape of its button for... Prolly not much overall but its all up to the admin (how long is a string); whats wrong with SMF?
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I have nothing against vBulletin people. :-)
One of the biggest hangups I have with every web-based forum I've ever used, including the Swamp, is the need to "click, read, back, click, read, back, click, read, etc." in order to read multiple threads. With a newsreader I can select the message to read, do so in the lower pane, click the next one to read, read in the lower pane, etc, without ever needing a "back" button. And if I ever wanted to re-read that message, even offline, I just have to scroll back to that message and read it. not relevant to current discussion, sorry
FWIW, I really don't like the AUGI forums, either, and those are powered by vBulletin. Perhaps it's the layout, I don't know...they seem fast, and do allow inline images...sort of, normally have to open in new window to actually see them... but I don't frequent them very often for some reason...
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... whats wrong with SMF?
The only irritating thing at the moment is that there is no way to 'unsubscribe' from a thread.
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This smells a lot like the Editor wars. ...*blink* are you a member of the Cult of VI?!
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... whats wrong with SMF?
The only irritating thing at the moment is that there is no way to 'unsubscribe' from a thread.
wha? R U sure (that sounds pretty...beta to me)?
EDIT:
Ah, I see. Let me check around a bit.
REF: http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=15482.15
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Now that's not too bad. Add a few adjustable frames so that with a click on the message it would show in another frame instead of another window/tab, and show all of the subscribed categories along a side, it would be pretty darn close.
Did you notice the "Preview" feature (the little balloon in the thread title)? It's close to that, as long as you only want to see a single post.
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Well, you got the "old" part right. That was almost the worst message board type forum I had ever seen. I can't comment on the new one since I have not seen it, but the old one was bad....
The funny thing is, the "old" RPLS board sounds a lot like what Jeff is asking for... It had a newsreader-style thread list in the pane on the left side, and when you clicked on a thread, the messages appeared in a pane on the right side.
Of course, it was also pretty minimal, since it was developed many years ago now. The big thing was the way it forced users to hand-type any desired HTML, and a malformed piece of HTML could easily "trash" a thread, preventing others from posting to it. It also did not allow inline images, and users had to post any images to some other public server, and post a link to the image in the forums.
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Wait a sec.... the discussion groups are still around? Is Bean Saladhead still there? :lol:
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... whats wrong with SMF?
The only irritating thing at the moment is that there is no way to 'unsubscribe' from a thread.
Nope, i couldn't find anything. Well i found out that the SMF team (or at least some of them) dont want to add it because its too much of a performance hog.
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Nope, i couldn't find anything. Well i found out that the SMF team (or at least some of them) dont want to add it because its too much of a performance hog.
OK, Thanks for the info.
To me, it's annoying to see a thread pop up as updated when it's a few years old and you don't care about it any longer -or- one of these threads that has tens of thousands of posts and gets a new post every 30 minutes...