27 Jan
2022
27 Jan
'22
12:36 a.m.
Some of the folks here might like this FB group...
Internet Old Farts Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/
This group is for self-declared Internet Old Farts,
who want to discuss any aspect of the the Internet or its history. People in this group
had their bits walk up hill both ways.
Welcome to the Internet Old Farts group.
The
purpose of this group is both social and technical. Feel free to revisit the past,
explore the future, grouse about technical problems that you or others created. Feel free
to self-aggrandize, complain about your least favorite standards organization or its
politics, and how those young whippersnappers are running the show today.
By participating in this group you are admitting or proclaiming that you are indeed an
Internet Old Fart. Perhaps we should give a prize for the youngest and oldest Old Fart.
-r
27 Jan
27 Jan
1:55 a.m.
Rich Morin <rdm(a)cfcl.com> wrote:
Some of the folks here might like this FB group...
Internet Old Farts Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/
Kinda feel like being an Old Fart and joining a
Facebook group are mutually exclusive. Now if it was
a newsgroup, perhaps, or a FidoNet BBS, ...
-Jan
29 Jan
29 Jan
1:59 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 17:56 Jan Schaumann via TUHS <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
Kinda feel like being an Old Fart and joining a
Facebook group are mutually exclusive. Now if it was
a newsgroup, perhaps, or a FidoNet BBS, ...
We can do 'forum' on Multics.
-- Charles
2:24 a.m.
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 05:59:52PM -0800, Charles Anthony wrote:
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 17:56 Jan Schaumann via TUHS
<tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
There's a re-implementation of 'forum' called Discuss[1] that was
implemented by the MIT Student Information Board. It has a 'forum'
feel, and the ss (subsystem) library provides the CLI interface which
is reminiscent of Multics forum.
[1]
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.31.8576&rep=re…
The ss and et (error_table) libraries that were originally written for
the Discuss system are still in use today as part of Linux's ext2/3/4
userspace utilities, e2fsprogs. (The debugfs program uses the ss
library, as does a few regression test drivers for some unit tests).
The ss library is also used for the Kerberos v5 Administration
Server.
- Ted
Kinda feel like being an Old Fart and joining a
Facebook group are mutually exclusive. Now if it was
a newsgroup, perhaps, or a FidoNet BBS, ...
We can do 'forum' on Multics. 
2:36 a.m.
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 09:24:24PM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 05:59:52PM -0800, Charles
Anthony wrote:
It's amazing how long stuff lives, very cool. Just like the runoff
thread, stuff goes back to Multics and even earlier. Good ideas die
hard.
I also think that any idea of Facebook group for old Unix people is dead
in the water. I can only speak for myself but hell will freeze over
before I have a Facebook account, they have engineers that target kids,
they have to pay more because people are ashamed to work there. It
just makes me sad to think that technology is being used like Facebook
does. It's just my opinion, but the world would be a better place if
Facebook ceased to exist.
If we need another place for old farts to hang out, there are many.
I like groups.io, it's free for most stuff, it's super easy to be
a moderator, I moderate 12 groups there and am a member of a bunch
more. What they call groups, we would call an email list with a
bunch of knobs that help keep things sane.
--lm
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 17:56 Jan Schaumann via
TUHS <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
There's a re-implementation of 'forum' called Discuss[1] that was
implemented by the MIT Student Information Board. It has a 'forum'
feel, and the ss (subsystem) library provides the CLI interface which
is reminiscent of Multics forum.
[1]
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.31.8576&rep=re…
The ss and et (error_table) libraries that were originally written for
the Discuss system are still in use today as part of Linux's ext2/3/4
userspace utilities, e2fsprogs. (The debugfs program uses the ss
library, as does a few regression test drivers for some unit tests).
The ss library is also used for the Kerberos v5 Administration
Server.
- Ted
Kinda feel like being an Old Fart and joining a
Facebook group are mutually exclusive. Now if it was
a newsgroup, perhaps, or a FidoNet BBS, ...
We can do 'forum' on Multics. 
8:48 a.m.
On 1/29/22, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
If we need another place for old farts to hang out, there are many.
I like groups.io, it's free for most stuff, it's super easy to be
a moderator, I moderate 12 groups there and am a member of a bunch
more. What they call groups, we would call an email list with a
bunch of knobs that help keep things sane.
I can speak only for myself, but I love that TUHS/COFF mailing lists
are still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way. I hate
all those modern web 2.0 technologies with extremely bloated js stacks
which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome. I am
still using old Atari DOS, Amiga Workbench, MS-DOS/Win9x/WinXP and of
course Linux/FreeBSD.
This is probably one of the last places on the Internet that is still
preserving one of its core ideas in the 80s/90s -- plain text
communication. It has been slowly dying in the last 15 years. Text
based Internet of the 80s and 90s has slowly been replaced by binary
protocols and image based interaction with a computer.
I still just love using text based protocols and command line and read
it on a real CRT monitor in full screen text mode. We lost something
when the world moved on.
So please do not go anywhere....
--Andy
5:15 p.m.
Andy Kosela writes:
On 1/29/22, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I completely agree with you. Maybe one of the problems is the
book-burners opposed to CRT. Don't know if any of you have
ever run across this guy: http://unixsheikh.com/index.html
Seems to be a younger-ish person who seems to get it.
Jon
If we need another place for old farts to hang out, there are many.
I like groups.io, it's free for most stuff, it's super easy to be
a moderator, I moderate 12 groups there and am a member of a bunch
more. What they call groups, we would call an email list with a
bunch of knobs that help keep things sane.
I can speak only for myself, but I love that TUHS/COFF mailing lists
are still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way. I hate
all those modern web 2.0 technologies with extremely bloated js stacks
which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome. I am
still using old Atari DOS, Amiga Workbench, MS-DOS/Win9x/WinXP and of
course Linux/FreeBSD.
This is probably one of the last places on the Internet that is still
preserving one of its core ideas in the 80s/90s -- plain text
communication. It has been slowly dying in the last 15 years. Text
based Internet of the 80s and 90s has slowly been replaced by binary
protocols and image based interaction with a computer.
I still just love using text based protocols and command line and read
it on a real CRT monitor in full screen text mode. We lost something
when the world moved on.
So please do not go anywhere....
--Andy 
5:20 p.m.
Andy Kosela <akosela(a)andykosela.com> writes:
I can speak only for myself, but I love that TUHS/COFF mailing lists
are still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.
[...]
So please do not go anywhere....
At the risk of sounding like a luddite, you're not alone, I'm right
there with you. I'm certainly not opposed to innovation, not at all!
There are some modern technologies that absolutely excite me and make me
giddy to play around with. Unfortunately, all too often if feels like
we're just spinning our wheels by doing the same things over and over
again, but this time, more bloated.
Increasingly, I'm asking myself: "Does this actually innovate, or is it
just performative? Have I failed to research and read about existing
techniques before I try to invent something that's already been
invented, but this time in a 3 GB Electron app? Does the UX help, or
hurt? Can colorblind people use it? Can people with vision impairment
use it? Can people without access to broadband use it?"
The Internet was a much more level playing field 20-30 years ago than it
is now, and I'd like to keep what's left of that level playing field
level as long as I can.
--Andy
-Seth
1 Feb
1 Feb
2:12 a.m.
On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
I can speak only for myself, but I love that TUHS/COFF
mailing lists
are still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.
Usenet is still a thing that I use daily.
I hate all those modern web 2.0 technologies with
extremely bloated js
stacks which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome.
I too
dislike what the Web 2.0 world has turned into.
I believe that it's possible for web pages to by dynamic via AJAX
without all the bloat. Sadly this isn't done.
I am still using old Atari DOS, Amiga Workbench,
MS-DOS/Win9x/WinXP
and of course Linux/FreeBSD.
:-)
This is probably one of the last places on the
Internet that is
still preserving one of its core ideas in the 80s/90s -- plain
text communication. It has been slowly dying in the last 15 years.
Text based Internet of the 80s and 90s has slowly been replaced by
binary protocols and image based interaction with a computer.
Usenet.
I still just love using text based protocols and
command line and
read it on a real CRT monitor in full screen text mode. We lost
something when the world moved on.
I used to have similar thoughts. Then I realized that things like
OpenSSL's s_client and curl allow interaction with encrypted and other
protocols. So, that got me to questioning "what is the command line"
(UI / UX) really?
Does OpenSSL's s_client (Secure / TLS) client provide a textual
interface to TLS encrypted servers? Yes it does. Does it count as
"command line"? I think so.
So, what if there was a different command line utility that allowed
similar interface with HTTP2 / QUIC connections. Would that mean that
they are similarly CLI? I think so.
Extrapolating out even further, does it actually matter that the bits on
the wire are ASCII and / or unencrypted if I have a UI / UX that is akin
to a Network Virtual Terminal interface (e.g. telnet, OpenSSL's
s_client, etc.)? Or does the client provide an abstraction to fulfill
my CLI desires? I think that it probably would.
I agree completely that HTTPS is decidedly different on the wire than
venerable HTTP which I can communicate with using telnet (et al.).
However, the /telnet/ *client* is still there and being used. So when
you back up and look at what that /client/ does in providing an
abstraction between the end user and the underlying / backing protocol,
it turns out that the underlying / backing protocol is less important.
So please do not go anywhere....
I'm not planing on discontinuing using mailing lists or Usenet any time
soon. Despite the fact that they have migrated from unencrypted to
encrypted communications. Even my MUA / NUA is using encrypted
connections to the servers. But /my/ /personal/ /interaction/ with my
MUA / NUA hasn't changed.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
2:21 a.m.
On Mon, 31 Jan 2022, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
The solution to bloat has, sadly, tended to be "throw more CPU/RAM/hard
drive at it". That's one big reason WordPerfect 5.0 on a 486 is faster
than a modern word processor on a recent i7.
<snip>
IRC. ;)
<snip>
On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
As do I.
I can speak only for myself, but I love that
TUHS/COFF mailing lists are
still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.
Usenet is still a thing that I use daily. I hate all those modern web 2.0 technologies with
extremely bloated js
stacks which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome.
I too
dislike what the Web 2.0 world has turned into.
I believe that it's possible for web pages to by dynamic via AJAX without all
the bloat. Sadly this isn't done. This is
probably one of the last places on the Internet that is still
preserving one of its core ideas in the 80s/90s -- plain text
communication. It has been slowly dying in the last 15 years. Text based
Internet of the 80s and 90s has slowly been replaced by binary protocols
and image based interaction with a computer.
Usenet. I'm not planing on discontinuing using mailing
lists or Usenet any time soon.
Despite the fact that they have migrated from unencrypted to encrypted
communications. Even my MUA / NUA is using encrypted connections to the
servers. But /my/ /personal/ /interaction/ with my MUA / NUA hasn't changed.
I still use the same software, in many cases, I've used since the 1990s.
-uso.
2:23 a.m.
On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 07:12:32PM -0700, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
So I used to be very active on Usenet, comp.arch and comp.unix.wizards
were my jam. soc.singles, yeah, hung out there and I was not well
loved for my views.
I don't think I've been on usenet since the 1990's because it just
turned into a cesspool of crap. Sort of Facebook but text.
Are you saying there is still some decent value in Usenet or are you
hanging on just because?
I can speak only for myself, but I love that
TUHS/COFF mailing lists are
still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.
Usenet is still a thing that I use daily.
2:31 a.m.
On Mon, 31 Jan 2022, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 07:12:32PM -0700, Grant Taylor
via TUHS wrote:
Well, I mostly lurk on comp.sys.apple2 and comp.os.cpm... there's
sometimes interesting stuff going on there still.
-uso.
On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
So I used to be very active on Usenet, comp.arch and comp.unix.wizards
were my jam. soc.singles, yeah, hung out there and I was not well
loved for my views.
I don't think I've been on usenet since the 1990's because it just
turned into a cesspool of crap. Sort of Facebook but text.
Are you saying there is still some decent value in Usenet or are you
hanging on just because? I can speak only for myself, but I love that
TUHS/COFF mailing lists are
still _the real_ mailing lists managed the old school way.
Usenet is still a thing that I use daily.
2:51 a.m.
On 1/31/22 7:23 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
So I used to be very active on Usenet, comp.arch and
comp.unix.wizards
were my jam. soc.singles, yeah, hung out there and I was not well
loved for my views.
I'll check out the comp.* groups and let you know what I see.
I don't think I've been on usenet since the
1990's because it just
turned into a cesspool of crap. Sort of Facebook but text.
It seems to be a lot better as the number of people went down, there
were fewer people for the trolls to feed on.
Are you saying there is still some decent value in
Usenet or are you
hanging on just because?
Yes, I have some good conversations in multiple newsgroups on the weekly
basis and probably many on the monthly basis.
My Thunderbird newsrc file has 427 lines of subscribed groups. I see
worth while articles in 20-200 of them a day.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
6:24 p.m.
Clem Cole wrote in
<CAC20D2Onfa9y3GAN19b2+o3QoqRvq+KRDAykz0v4dxb6FPV+8w(a)mail.gmail.com>om>:
|On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 9:23 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
|
|> I don't think I've been on usenet since the 1990's because it just
turned
|> into a cesspool of crap.
|>
|My line at the time was that 'the signal to noise ratio seems to have
|disappeared'.
To be fair it is not different to almost anything else thus.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
12:45 p.m.
On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 8:13 PM Grant Taylor via TUHS <tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org>
wrote:
On 1/29/22 1:48 AM, Andy Kosela wrote:
[...]
Having many years developing development frameworks, and having a need for
a simple way to write business applications for the Web, I ended up writing
my own Java-based, open-source web development framework called KISS. KISS
stands for exactly what you think it does!
KISS supports the front-end and back-end already configured and running
out-of-the-box. It runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows (and probably most
other Unix-like environments that support Java).
On the back-end, it supports writing your application in Java, Groovy, or
Common Lisp. On the front-end, it is just plain HTML, CSS, and
JavaScript. It comes with a new build system of my own making. That makes
the whole system as easy as possible. For example, after downloading, you
can download any needed libraries, build, and run the entire system by
typing:
./bld develop
That's it! You type the above and you have a complete, running web
application built and running.
It communicates over REST Web services. It also uses microservices and is
designed so that both the front-end and back-end can be developed on a
running system without the need for rebuilds or re-booting the server.
This is also great for updating a production environment without bringing
the system down!
KISS also supports custom HTML controls, an SQL API, built-in
authentication, reporting (using Groff & Tbl!), and a lot more.
The system is being used in production environments today, so it isn't a
beta.
It comes with documentation. There is also a YouTube training series, and
there has been a couple of articles written about it.
With KISS, you can have an up-and-running web application running from
scratch in less than five minutes. After that, you can build on it while
it is running.
Check it out! https://kissweb.org
Blake McBride
I hate all those modern web 2.0 technologies with
extremely bloated js
stacks which you can only use if you have the latest version of Chrome.
I too
dislike what the Web 2.0 world has turned into.
I believe that it's possible for web pages to by dynamic via AJAX
without all the bloat. Sadly this isn't done.
29 Jan
29 Jan
5:20 p.m.
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 8:37 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
[...]
If we need another place for old farts to hang out, there are many.
I like groups.io, it's free for most stuff, it's super easy to be
a moderator, I moderate 12 groups there and am a member of a bunch
more. What they call groups, we would call an email list with a
bunch of knobs that help keep things sane.
--lm
Thanks! I just created two groups:
https://groups.io/g/kiss
https://groups.io/g/dynace
Blake McBride
2:10 a.m.
On 1/29/22 7:20 PM, Adam Thornton wrote:
On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 7:37 PM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I can only speak for myself but hell will freeze over
before I have a Facebook account
In this instance you're speaking for me too.
FB and I went round and round in
2018 when I opened an account and they
disabled it that same day and demanded verification of my identity. They
were never willing/able to enable the account for more than a few hours,
even after I got the Better Business Bureau involved. The only single
piece of content I ever posted to the account was a background image (a
pic I took in Fort Collins, Colorado of a mountainside). After BBB got
involved, they would enable the account (after I provided ID
verification), only to disable it again after a few hours. This went on
for about 5 months (I was tenancious and curious to see if it could ever
be resolved). Eventually, I got bored and tired of going back and forth
with BBB and the faceless monstrosity that FB is. An intelligence buddy
of mine said it was all for the better anyway... I'm on the hell
freezing over side of things :).
27 Jan
27 Jan
2:07 a.m.
On 1/26/22 5:36 PM, Rich Morin wrote:
Some of the folks here might like this FB group...
I probably would be.
Internet Old Farts Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/
But sadly FaceBook is a walled garden that you have to be a member of to
be able to partake in any capacity, even read only.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
2:40 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 07:07:41PM -0700, Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote:
On 1/26/22 5:36 PM, Rich Morin wrote:
Yeah, I feel the same way, not gonna be part of facebook ever. It's toxic.
Some of the folks here might like this FB group...
I probably would be.
Internet Old Farts Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/
But sadly FaceBook is a walled garden that you have to be a member of to be
able to partake in any capacity, even read only. 
9:11 p.m.
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 04:36:25PM -0800, Rich Morin wrote:
Some of the folks here might like this FB group...
Internet Old Farts Club
https://www.facebook.com/groups/internetoldfarts/
[...]
> Welcome to the Internet Old Farts group.
[...]
problems that you or others created. Feel free to
self-aggrandize,
complain about your least favorite standards organization or its
politics, and how those young whippersnappers are running the show
today.
[...]
Oh wait, so falsebook now has a special group where folks can post a
critique of... a falsebook? Do they have to monopolize even this?
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **
816
days inactive
821
days old
21 comments
16 participants
participants (16)
-
Adam Thornton -
Andy Kosela -
Blake McBride -
Charles Anthony -
Clem Cole -
Grant Taylor -
Jan Schaumann -
Jon Steinhart -
Larry McVoy -
Rich Morin -
Seth J. Morabito -
Steffen Nurpmeso -
Steve Nickolas -
Theodore Y. Ts'o -
Tomasz Rola -
Will Senn