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Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

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Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#151

Post by [deleted] »

andi999 wrote: post #125
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #54

Some fun comp.lang.c history: Dennis Ritchie posted, sharing an extremely early version of a C compiler. Richard Heathfield (well known C book author) jokingly chided Ritchie for posting something off-topic, as it was not part of ANSI C. In typical Usenet fashion, this triggered a huge thread, arguing over the appropriateness of the joke. Even Linus Torvalds got involved. Apparently Heathfield emailed Ritchie private…

Actually the annoying thing here is, that the pointless discussion is achieved, while the link to the source code doesn't work (maybe temporarily overloaded from HN? Maybe dead)

[deleted]

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#152

Post by kmeisthax »

john_moscow wrote: post #34

I am wondering if we could solve the current madness with arbitrary content policing by waiving copyright protection for monopolistic platforms and enforcing interoperability. Imagine if anyone was legally allowed to create their own fork of Reddit, or Google Groups, preserving the original content , and even being able to post new content through the fork, as if they did it directly. If google decided to ban some co…

Waiving copyright protection for FAANG wouldn't let you get at the content of the platforms - it'd just give you some poorly-debugged code for running your own platform.

What you're asking for is some kind of legally-mandated interoperability between platforms.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#153

Post by simonh »

hvocode wrote: post #109
andybak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno. History matters and historians would probably strongly disagree. Some things are more important than you think. Too much gets lost too easily.

Not everything is deserving of being treated as historical artifacts worthy of retention. A friend has lamented that when he was in college in the late 80s, he used USENET as a way to connect with people and work through some pretty heavy emotional challenges. Retaining his personal struggles is hardly "history" - if anything, the historical value of retaining the struggles of one inconsequential person is far lower…

Once you publicly post something, or even post something privately to someone else, it’s not entirely yours anymore, in an important sense it’s theirs.

Yes Usenet used to gave a spool lifetime, but that was clearly variable and there were no guarantees about it. Anybody could set up a mirror and frequently did. Also anyone could copy out content to other media and there was no expectation that they couldn’t do that.

We are all responsible for what we post to other people and in some cases also the effect it has on them. Consider bullying, abuse, criminal conspiracy, the record of receiving a message belongs to the receiver not the sender.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#154

Post by pts_ »

mdani wrote: post #119

Another case of ML based moderation. This ML based judging with no appeal must end. I was only mildly disturbed so far, but when it started affecting me personally, it really hit home. I wrote a book on third battle of Panipat and when I tried to advertise it on Facebook, the ML banned me because it thought that I am violating their guidelines and promoting violence. Alas, it can't differentiate between a 260 year ol…

Needs a blockchain and AI based classification cluster.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#155

Post by ybroze »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #54

Some fun comp.lang.c history: Dennis Ritchie posted, sharing an extremely early version of a C compiler. Richard Heathfield (well known C book author) jokingly chided Ritchie for posting something off-topic, as it was not part of ANSI C. In typical Usenet fashion, this triggered a huge thread, arguing over the appropriateness of the joke. Even Linus Torvalds got involved. Apparently Heathfield emailed Ritchie private…

That joke is truly, laugh-out-loud funny.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#156

Post by spockz »

andybak wrote: post #87
centimeter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this were true, it would be better if the archives were not available for some decades after the original posting. I’m OK with my content being analyzed by historians, but the definition of “historian” presumes some professional detachment that is not available short years after the post was made.

I think even leaving aside historians - the idea of making everything posting transient by default would have robbed us of a lot of stored knowledge. I'm feeling quite bitter about the rise of Slack and Discord over mailing lists and Usenet. The ease in which one can find clues and solutions to decades old technical questions relies on everything being stored. And more than just technical issues - I'm no historian bu…

And yet I used to regularly find answers on a Usenet or Google groups mirror with Google. Even sometimes in public irc logs. I have yet to find the answer in a public slack or discord log.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#157

Post by zimpenfish »

dmingod666 wrote: post #140
hvocode wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is deserving of being treated as historical artifacts worthy of retention. A friend has lamented that when he was in college in the late 80s, he used USENET as a way to connect with people and work through some pretty heavy emotional challenges. Retaining his personal struggles is hardly "history" - if anything, the historical value of retaining the struggles of one inconsequential person is far lower…

I think, judging what is going to be of value for people in the future is a much harder problem than you make it out to be.

Yep, see sociologists and archaeologists excitement over finding things like clay tablets with shopping lists or recipes on.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#159

Post by jasonkester »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #42
_kst_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google had the most complete archive of comp.lang.c (and the rest of Usenet). That archive is now inaccessible. Users posting to comp.lang.c through Google Groups were a problem -- especially with the recent bug that caused GG posts to comp.lang.c++ to have the "++" quietly dropped. If Google made its archive of all Usenet newsgroups available, I'd be fine with them dropping the posting interface. (And some users act…

> " ... complete archive of ... Usenet " sotto voce > Usenet postings were never meant to be permanent. I was there in its heyday and nobody expected their postings to live beyond the spool expiration lifetime.

When do you consider that heyday to be? I showed up in 1995 and my expectation was always that anything posted there would be permanently on the internet.

So I deployed Kester’s Rule of the Internet: Don’t put things on the internet that you don’t want to be on the internet. That way there won’t be anything you put on the internet that you didn’t want to be there.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#160

Post by gigatexal »

blt wrote: post #72
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #54

Some fun comp.lang.c history: Dennis Ritchie posted, sharing an extremely early version of a C compiler. Richard Heathfield (well known C book author) jokingly chided Ritchie for posting something off-topic, as it was not part of ANSI C. In typical Usenet fashion, this triggered a huge thread, arguing over the appropriateness of the joke. Even Linus Torvalds got involved. Apparently Heathfield emailed Ritchie private…

This is hilarious. I could see something similar happening on HN today.

Dang et al would never let it happen.
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