[TUHS] FYI: Internet Old Farts Club

[Larry McVoy]

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:
> > On Wed, Jan 26, 2022, 17:56 Jan Schaumann via TUHS <tuhs at 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.
> 
> 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=rep1&type=pdf
> 
> 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

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