Re: Puzzled about KDE or GNOME or what?

On Friday 25 September 2009 00:36, someone identifying as *Bill Marcum*
wrote in /comp.os.linux.misc:/

On 2009-09-24, Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Wanna-Be Sys Admin wrote:

Well, anything is better/more interesting than engaging that moron.
Not a lot of actual useful or on topic posts in the Linux groups
these days, I suppose we should take what we can get, just so long
as it's not his lame posts.

Lack of posts reflects lack of problems?

Or it could reflect ISPs dropping newsgroup service, and users not
knowing about alternate servers, or even knowing that Usenet exists.

I'd say the latter. The same applies for IRC as a medium. I happen to
be running an IRC server/network - in transition now to a new domain
name - and I have gradually seen the number of users on IRC drop over
the years.

Most of the new generations simply use MSN Messenger - which as of
Windows XP came installed with Windows by default - instead of
installing some third-party application, and recently it's things like
MySpace, Twitter and Facebook that have become the default "chat
boxes". Facebook even has its own "chat service", and if you invite or
even suggest IRC to those people, then you get to hear "no thanks, I
would rather stay on Facebook", as if you can't use both at the same
time. They simply don't understand the concept of IRC anymore.

So it is with Usenet. Most people these days who pick up something
about newsgroups will go look for them on Google Groups, and will use
Google Groups to post to Usenet, thinking that Usenet is just Google
Groups itself. They don't have a clue anymore.

In addition to the above, I happen to have an anecdote from today...
Ever since yesterday, I could not post to Usenet anymore, using my ISPs
newsserver and SMTP. Every message I tried to send simply timed out.
I called their helpdesk this afternoon, and I was told that "my account
could have gotten corrupted" and that I needed to "delete it and try
again". I was also suggested to try another newsreader - which I did,
thinking that one of the recent hardware-induced crashes of my system
had left my newsreader corrupted or something. All to no avail.

So... I call them again. This time I get some young chick on the phone
who obviously doesn't know what she's there to do. So I tell her the
same thing, can't post to newsgroups anymore, blah blah. She asks me
for my username and so forth, and then she sees that I called in
earlier this afternoon, and that I'm running GNU/Linux. "We don't
support Linux, Sir." I explain to her that it doesn't matter, and then
she says "Then you have to call Linux". I swear! I know this showed
up in another post from another poster a while ago, but this time I was
told the same thing myself. I have to call Linux, wow. I don't know
whether the kernel I'm using has a phone number, but I could try, I
guess... :p

Anyway, I assure her that everything on my system is as it should be,
and that a message is a message, whether you send it from Windows,
MacIntosh or GNU/Linux. Then she says she'll ask someone else. She
puts me on hold for five minutes, and then she comes back and tells me
that newsgroups are not supported anymore. No matter what I try to get
her to realize that this is a ludicrous statement - although I'm not
using that exact word - she gets more stringent and irritated with me
by the minute, and so I finally say, "Okay, thank you" and I hang up.

So they are offering newsgroups as a service to their clients and have
even transfered their newsgroup pool onto an American company - which,
as Google was kind enough to tell me, is having serious problems at the
moment with regard to spam flood attacks and which doesn't seem eager
to do anything about that - but they are not supporting it?

Okay, now if *this* is the level of competence you must accept from
helpdesks, then what must the level of knowledge (or absence thereof)
be for the newer generations of internet denizens? And all those New
Agers talking about an upcoming shift in consciousness... Well, if
they mean a downward shift, then I would concur with that.

<frightened>

"I see stupid people... They're everywhere..."

</frightened>

<evil grin>

So this afternoon I registered at Eternal September, and I am now
happily using their excellent free news service. ;-)

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
.

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