Subj : Still holding the fort. To : alexander koryagin From : Lee Lofaso Date : Sun Aug 18 2013 02:53:48 Hello Alexander, JF>>>> Wow, you guys are still here. Last time I logged on here I think JF>>>> Peter Brady was still with us. What about ole John Wilson? Is he JF>>>> still around? I still have my old rig tucked away in a box. A JF>>>> 286, 512k ram, 2400 baud modem, 5 1/4 inch disks, and monochrome JF>>>> screen (Gotta love those green letters) and 40mb, full height, JF>>>> hard disk, which I sometimes use as a boat anchor. :-) JF>>>> If you guys wanna lock horns on some hot topics where the debate JF>>>> is viewed by 100s, possibly 1000s, go to Wikipedia and check out JF>>>> the talk pages on some of the pages like '2003 invasion of Iraq', JF>>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:2003_invasion_of_Iraq) JF>>>> 'Separation of church and state': JF>>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Separation_of_church_and_stat JF>>>> e) In any case it's nice to know not everything is washed away by JF>>>> the tides of change. ak>>> The quotation system of forums are so poor and miserable; it makes ak>>> impossible to have a long deep discussions as people have had in ak>>> Fidonet. Going to Web forums is degradation for a discussion. ak>>> Well, probably such a thing is possible in Usenet if you have a ak>>> good NNTP client. ak>>> Just look at my answer "Re: Clandestine activity is a holy cow of ak>>> democracy" from August 6. The text in the message itself is piece ak>>> of art! ;-) JF>> Nonsense. The forum works fine for 99% of the people who JF>> participate. Every message is signed by the user and each new entry JF>> is indented from the one above it, so only the idiots who need road JF>> signs every ten feet are left confused. Piece of art? Are we having JF>> a discussion or admiring text? AK> ak> A discussion text must look nice, too. Especially, a good quoting is ak> important when a discussion is written by many persons. In this case it ak> is important to see clearly the authorship of every paragraph, every ak> line, because it is very important to shorten opponents phases as much ak> as possible, so that all the discussion was before your eyes. That is ak> why, despite what you had said, you cannot find in web forums an example ak> of a long, deep, clever discussion -- only the discussions that sound ak> like dog's barking or sparrow's twitting. The form of debate most frequently used in fidonet forums is didactic, rather than a true discussion or exchange of ideas in essay form. The software used makes it easy to quote and delete whatever text one wants to include or exclude. I am not saying that this is the best form of debate. Only that it is the most convenient, given the software and means of communication. AK> ak> In other words, the conferences like this one is an ideal place for ak> discussions. It can be. Not that it is. Much is dependent on the participants themselves. Along with the moderator/facilitator. AK> ak> But unfortunately people on Earth have changed. We eat better. We put on nicer clothes. Most men shave, along with some women. People continue to have sex, with others as well as themselves. And sometimes within oh never mind there are no gays and lesbians in Russia ... AK> ak> Signing in to the Fidonet, using cool client programs is too difficult for ak> modern (even young) people. The dumbing down of America reached its zenith with the erection of George W. Bush. And since then, look at what Fidonet has become. Much, much smaller than it ever was before. Kind of like GWB's penis. AK>Just look at the quotation style of your message to me! Er, I'm not sure I want to go there. But since you started it ... ak> -----Beginning of the citation----- AK>>>> ;=) Well, well, who doubts around the world that American history AK>>>> books tell that the Vietnam war was victorious for the US? AK>>>> Propaganda doesn't allow the opposite, especially if the opposite AK>>>> is humiliating. JF>>> Actually, American history books do not describe Vietnam as a JF>>> victory for America. And we know the US lost the war. Not all know JF>>> it, but most of us do. JF>>> We could have won that war if we 'wanted to'. Do you really think JF>>> we "lost" the war because the Viet Cong had a more formidable JF>>> military the the U. S.? We could have wiped them out any time we JF>>> pleased. ->> Good argument, of a computer gamer. ;-/ ak> Poor reply, even for a computer gamer. The US could have turned up the ak> heat any number of ways. The war was purposely dragged out for several ak> reasons, mostly concerning the (then) USSR, who was supplying the North. ak> -----The end of the citation----- The French had been there, and told us not to get involved. But did we listen? Nooooooo. We knew better. We had the guns. We had the bombs. We had the manpower. We thought we were like Jim Morrison, our boys having wankers just like his, and could do anything! And look what it got us. 58,000+ dead American soldiers, hundreds of thousands more maimed/wounded, too many broken families to count. Along with our idol Jim Morrison lying dead in a bathtub in Paris, France. AK> ak> If somebody wants to participate in our discussion he/she would have ak> a pain in his/her ass because making quotes from such messages is very ak> difficult (well, for those people who don't use a cool Quoter program ak> made by me :)) A most excellent program, but it still takes somebody to type in messages. :) AK> ak> So, modern people prefer to go in places where interface so easy that ak> every dog is capable to start barking there. Generally, it is another ak> explanation for the poor intellectual content of web forums. Like I said earlier in this message, the dumbing down of America reached its peak with the erection of a moron president. I wrote erection rather than election because GWB was never legitimate elected president of anything. But, as you well know, everything in Texas is big. And Texans love to brag. So now you know how GWB beat Ann Richards for Governor of Texas ... Yeah, I know. That was pretty low. Two alcoholics running for Governor of Texas, one having gone through rehab the other never admitting to being a drunk. We found out the truth about George W. Bush when he showed up at the White House with a black eye after he got beaten up by a pretzel. AK> ak> No new young generation has come to Fidonet. Current Fidonet/Usenet ak> users are old, cool guys, who have already discussed every possible ak> interesting subject many times. That is why they are mostly silent now. ak> You can see in Fidonet only messages written by the people who are ak> always young. ;=) You got that right. We are all Clint Eastwood wannabes. :) "Make my day!" - Dirty Harry --Lee --- MesNews/1.06.00.00-gb * Origin: news://felten.yi.org (2:203/2) .