Python Forum

[John Bokma]

On 06/05/10 12:34, John Bokma wrote: [..]

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python

But to be honest I mostly end up on Stack Overflow when I google for a
specific problem, and most of the time I find a nice concise answer
without much noise.

Same here. But the point is, since Google bypasses the voting system,
that's why I don't see much added value in having a voting system.

There is also voting on the answers ;-).

 

[Aahz]

Decent NNTP access is harder to find. Not impossible, but no longer
a 'free' part of most standard ISP access any more.

This seems like a good time to promote my ISP: panix.com

 

[Aahz]

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.

Your position is the same as mine as of about two weeks ago, before
someone sent this to me:

http://news.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html

Now I think that if even a top-tier educational institution isn't
willing to serve as a living museum for a technology it created, maybe
the death of Usenet is closer than I'd like to think. :-(

Sucks because nothing replaces a good netnews client.

 

[Monte Milanuk]

This seems like a good time to promote my ISP: panix.com

Used to have an account with them... but of less value to someone on
local fiber with an essentially static IP and their own Linux server.

 

[Aahz]

Used to have an account with them... but of less value to someone on
local fiber with an essentially static IP and their own Linux server.

Less perhaps, but I prefer to rely on someone else's sysadmin and I
really don't want to allow remote connections into my home network.

 

[rantingrick]

Hello,

I would like to let the community know that there is a new web-based
forum for Python enthusiasts over at PythonForum.org (http://
pythonforum.org).

There has been many arguments here for and against Usenet. Personally
I say the rein of Usenet is coming to its logical conclusion. Dead as
a clavo! Much better interfaces abound. But most importantly the
newbies are never aware of Usenet for some time (sadly).

Some would say keeping out the baby noobs is a good thing, i could not
disagree more! I ask of you, what is this group for if not to help the
very noobs you wish to keep out? Without the banner of help the only
flag left to fly is that of a troll fest nation.

I have seen even the most tangential issues linger on and on in
perpetual infantile poop tossing contests that only the following
thirsty orangutan could hold his candle to...

....notice the url on separate line.

Yes the die is cast people, the new generation awaits to claim their
stakes in the footholds of Pythonia. This is the natural course of
things really. But the old timers will linger for some time hashing
and re hashing old war stories that fall on placid ears.

Yes my friends, Rock n Roll is dead, Elvis has left the building,
Johnny's no longer here (or there), and whilst Usenet is not quite yet
dead, it is rapidly approaching putrefaction on the on the grapevine
of history.

 

[Monte Milanuk]

but I prefer to rely on someone else's sysadmin and I
really don't want to allow remote connections into my home network.

To each their own... while Panix is fairly relaxed as a shell host, I
prefer to not have someone else telling me what I can and can't install
or use, especially when I'm paying. To be honest I can't SSH out from
work anymore, so the remote connections / static IP is somewhat of a
moot point. What I was trying to say was I don't get the point of
paying for an account on a provider clear across the country simply for
the sake of getting Usenet access... especially when more and more large
institutions are shutting theirs down (i.e. the death knoll for usenet
as others have pointed out). Perhaps it would count for 'geek' points,
but I'm not too worried about that

YMMV,

Monte

 

[Monte Milanuk]

but I prefer to rely on someone else's sysadmin and I
really don't want to allow remote connections into my home network.

To each their own... while Panix is fairly relaxed as a shell host, I
prefer to not have someone else telling me what I can and can't install
or use, especially when I'm paying. To be honest I can't SSH out from
work anymore, so the remote connections / static IP is somewhat of a
moot point. What I was trying to say was I don't get the point of
paying for an account on a provider clear across the country simply for
the sake of getting Usenet access... especially when more and more large
institutions are shutting theirs down (i.e. the death knoll for usenet
as others have pointed out). Perhaps it would count for 'geek' points,
but I'm not too worried about that

YMMV,

Monte

 

[Aahz]

To each their own... while Panix is fairly relaxed as a shell host, I
prefer to not have someone else telling me what I can and can't install
or use, especially when I'm paying. To be honest I can't SSH out from
work anymore, so the remote connections / static IP is somewhat of a
moot point.

And that is one reason why Panix is helpful (assuming your work does
simple port blocking and they don't have a formal policy banning SSH):

starfury:~> ssh -p 80 panix1.panix.com
(e-mail address removed)'s Password:

What I was trying to say was I don't get the point of paying for
an account on a provider clear across the country simply for the
sake of getting Usenet access... especially when more and more large
institutions are shutting theirs down (i.e. the death knoll for usenet
as others have pointed out). Perhaps it would count for 'geek' points,
but I'm not too worried about that

Obviously, I don't use Panix only for Usenet, but Usenet is still a large
part of my social life. I have no idea what I'll do when Usenet really
starts dying.

 

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

So you say. For the interface to be “better†it needs to keep the good
features of the existing interface. I include among the good features of
Usenet:

That's a great list of features. But they all apply to mailing lists as
well.

* No need for creating a new identity; my email address is enough.

Obviously true for mailing lists.

* No need for balkanising my identity; messages cross to all
participating Usenet servers.

Ditto. Also, good word. I usually use "ghetto" when talking about FB,
MS, etc. Same idea.

* Forums are kept distinct, but the easy option to cross-post is there
when appropriate.

Ditto although I'm not sure that this is a feature. Mailing lists
sometimes have options to prevent this which might be a good thing. In
any case, it's nice to be able to choose on a list by list basis.

* The forums don't live in any single server or organisation, and new
servers in different organisations can be added to carry the load of
distributed messaging, so there is no machine nor organisation acting
as single point of failure.

As with mailing lists but MLs allow even better distribution. With
Usenet the hubs still have to carry every group. With mailing lists
only the servers involved need to carry it. I guess the trade-off with
mailling lists is that you get one point of failure for a particular ML
but distribute the load much better.

* A single program allows me to subscribe to one, dozens, hundreds, or
thousands of forums, and use exactly the same interface to participate
two-way in all of them.

Yes. This is probably my second biggest issue with forums.
Ghettoization (balkanization) is number one.

* I can replace that single program with any other program that follows
the open standards, and the same messaging interface applies exactly.

With mail that is also true. In addition, its a program that you
already have if you have email.

Where is the “much better interface†that improves on all of that?

I have always been a big fan of Usenet. I was using it back when you
could subscribe and almost read every group. For a while I was
a hub and downloaded the entire distribution to my little home
computer. Binaries, what the heck is that? But I just gave it up a long
time ago. Mailing lists just made so much more sense to me. I now run
a number of mailing lists. I can't even run a news server on my own
little ISP any more and have to contract out.

In fact, my biggest complaint with this mailing list is that it
gateways to Usenet. That's where most of the spam on this list comes
from albeit the bulk of that is Google groups which I can easily filter
out.

By the way, what is the generic term for Usenet groups, mailing lists
and forums? They all have a common overall purpose and it seems as if
there should be a word.

Hey, we could all go back to FIDO-Net.

 

[Lie Ryan]

That's a great list of features. But they all apply to mailing lists as
well.

I think Ben Finney was making comparison between Usenet/Mailing-List vs
Forum. The argument basically sums up to Distributed vs. Centralized.

I have always been a big fan of Usenet. I was using it back when you
could subscribe and almost read every group. For a while I was
a hub and downloaded the entire distribution to my little home
computer. Binaries, what the heck is that? But I just gave it up a long
time ago. Mailing lists just made so much more sense to me. I now run
a number of mailing lists. I can't even run a news server on my own
little ISP any more and have to contract out.

My only problem with mailing list is that for large lists, it can easily
overflows my inbox. Having a separate interface (e.g. NNTP) is quite
useful. For large list, I wouldn't be able to read all the posts anyway,
so from time-to-time I'd "Mark Everything as Read", you cannot reliably
do that in your Inbox even with filtering and all that stuffs.

 

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

I think Ben Finney was making comparison between Usenet/Mailing-List vs
Forum. The argument basically sums up to Distributed vs. Centralized.

I don't know what Ben was thinking so I was just making it explicit.

My only problem with mailing list is that for large lists, it can easily
overflows my inbox. Having a separate interface (e.g. NNTP) is quite
useful. For large list, I wouldn't be able to read all the posts anyway,
so from time-to-time I'd "Mark Everything as Read", you cannot reliably
do that in your Inbox even with filtering and all that stuffs.

It's trivial to filter into separate folders and trivial to empty a
folder. For me it's simply "^A" and "Del".

However, it would be nice to have an expire function so that messages
that I don't read for a specified time simply disappear. Do any email
clients do that?

 

[Aahz]

So you say. For the interface to be "better" it needs to keep the good
features of the existing interface. I include among the good features of
Usenet:

[...]

You skipped over the crowning glories of Usenet:

* Threaded messaging (more robust than mailing lists, generally speaking,
because the behavior of the References: header is better defined, and
References: includes more than just the immediate parent)

* Marking articles as read does *not* delete them; they are still
available for walking through the threading, but by default you never
see them again

NOTHING else has these, thirty years later.

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

So you say. For the interface to be “better” it needs to keep the good
features of the existing interface. I include among the good features of
Usenet:

<snip>

You forgot the big one...

NNTP permits downloading all new messages in the background as a
batch, and (for those who may be on limited-time dial-up when traveling)
the ability to read/respond off-line, then batch the replies back the
next day.

MUCH preferable to having to be connected on-line continuously, and
waiting for each message to load/display...

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

claim to the word. The existing forums are still forums.

I favor "fora" <G>

Like the difference between fish (plural species) and fishes (which
I tend to use for plural of one specie)

 

[Steven D'Aprano]

I favor "fora" <G>

I see your smiley, but the Oxford dictionary does suggest that "fora" is
only acceptable as the plural when talking about more than one ancient
Roman forum. When using it in the context of English, as we are doing
here, the accepted plural is "forums". After all, we don't use Inuit
pluralisation rules when talking about more than one anorak.

Like the difference between fish (plural species) and fishes
(which I tend to use for plural of one specie)

That's a hypercorrection. The singular of species is species, not specie.
Specie is a different word: coins or hard cash.

There is a phrase "in specie", which means "in kind", which is formed
from the same root as species, but the words are different and species is
its own plural.

"Fish" can be either singular (as in "I fed the fish") or a collective
noun ("there are many fish that live in salt water"). Plural is "fishes",
as in "I ate three fishes", although in common use people tend to use
fish/fishes as both plural and collective nouns.

 

[python]

However, it would be nice to have an expire function so that messages that I don't read for a specified time simply disappear. Do any email clients do that?

I use Fastmail.fm as my email service (and browser based email client).
Fastmail supports the ability to automatically delete messages > a
specific age on a folder by folder basis. Fastmail also supports a
variety of ways to file messages into folders - from simple to
sophisticated (Sieve based).

Highly recommended!

Malcolm

 

[rantingrick]

"Fish" can be either singular (as in "I fed the fish") or a collective
noun ("there are many fish that live in salt water"). Plural is "fishes",
as in "I ate three fishes", although in common use people tend to use
fish/fishes as both plural and collective nouns.

Do you use the word "fishes". I don't think i've ever heard anyone use
that word -- well except for children before being corrected. I ate
three fishes just sounds wrong to me. What's the plural of sheep
Stephen :-D

@ Ben
Ok Ben you convinced me, after absorbing your arguments i do now
believe that Usenet is better.

 

[News123]

I thought fishes is used when talking about different species.
and fish for multile ones of the same species.
Most people not interested in animals don't care though and mix them up
randomly.

So you would see ten gold fish
but during snorkeling or in some aquariums you can see multiple fishes





even

 

[MRAB]

According to the Oxford Dictionary:

*fish** noun <http://www.oup.com/oald-bin/#fish_noun>**, **verb
<http://www.oup.com/oald-bin/#fish_verb>*noun *(**pl.**fish** or
**fishes**)*Fish is the usual plural form. The older form, fishes, can
be used to refer to different kinds of fish...

However, I would correct anyone that ever used "fishes".

There's the phrase "sleep with the fishes", used by mobsters (in films,
at least). Would you correct such a person?