Obnoxious noises in Apple Mail - how to silence?

An usuaually decent user agent, written by a guy who A) actually knows
what he's doing, and B) puts a great deal of effort into getting it done.

Where are the thousands of approved free trials of non-game programs?

Billy Y..

 

No -- you don't get hold up what I've said as something completely
different. Not sliding into obscurity != success story.

Again, people are also using it for things tin *does* support.

Nor are they commonly offered by Usenet servers.

Duh.

The rational mind would A) not belittle a system and software that
have functioned very well for decades, B) not make wildly presumptive
and erroneous statments about the people implimenting them, and most of
all, C) not ignorantly assume that massive amounts of illegal traffic
mean the system will cheerfully support yet more of it.

As things are now, you are not going to transmit binary data via Usenet
without 'encoding' it into text. There are various size limits. It's
likely you'd have to use the alt.binaries hierarchy, the propagation
and retention of which are nowhere even close to your stated goals.

Further, it's now obvious you'd rather argue about it with me instead
of doing even a modest amount of research.

No, that's the discussion we're having now.

If the people have other, grossly imcompatible needs...

....let them find something that _can_ handle them.

If I'm a fisherman, and someone walks up and asks me for some beef,
they're going to get told, "Hey - you're looking in the wrong place."

Hopefully that's dumbed down enough that you can grasp the concept.

Oh, bullshit. Your 'logic' here is not only completely wrong, it's
thoroughly twisted.

Most everyone even remotely familiar with the history of Usenet places
the blame on _too many people gaining access to it._

So, invent something for them. Call it, say, Usenet 2. Oh, wait...
Better go with Usenet 3. 2's already been tried. It was an utter
failure.

Huh? I pay for email service. I don't use it for receiving any sort
of payments. That's what banks do. What part of that do you not grasp?

I'm not going to suggest you reread anything, but I will ask -- what the
hell is going on with you...?

New groups can be, and are, created. The only problem for you
is the kind of groups you'd like to use can not be created in the
hierarchies that would provide the kind of propagation you'd like.

Served by whom? And at who's expense?

Oh, really? How about Usenet's best practices?

[about tin...]

Huh? Where exactly do you get "brittle?" There must be thousands of
programs that not only do not, but never will run on an iPhone.

In other words, two. Or, actually, about 1.5.

So, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, AIX, and Windows are
fringe systems? Yea, right...

You're sounding quite intensely bigoted. It does not become you.
Nor will it inspire any cooperation from those whose help you need
to get your concept off the ground.

I write under contract. You, on the other hand, might want to research
your market. As a retailer, that'd be a prudent pursuit for you.

At this point I'd be shocked were any of them not profoundly grateful
for your absence.

You're blinded by your own light. It's ugly.

Well, then, stop posting all this nonsense, and get busy and make it
happen. I've already given you all the info you need to begin.

Oh, bullshit. Yet again. There's nothing mutually exclusive going on
here. And, all the kiddies in my neighborhood (West Los Angeles area)
are doing fine. They've done Snapchat and who knows what else, and I'm
sure there's plenty more to come.

[about photos and other binary data]

Clearly you'd prefer to make up shit I've never said, and then criticise
me for it, instead of actually making an effort towards fixing anything.
Including coming up with a viable scheme to cover the added costs.

Aren't you the guy who's so intent on avoiding Google-like central
control?

You can not have your cake, and eat it, too.

You are one very confused guy. Usenet *expires* everything.

First you'll need to get the protocol modified. Then you'll need to
generate enough interest and usage to perhaps pursuade the feeder sites
to handle your traffic. Then it'll either generate some profit, or go
meet the dinosaurs.

Yes, you did. I was quite clear in explaning Neither tin nor slrn are
commercial software.

The only shame here is your writing new code that'll be utterly useless
without an infrastructure upon which to run it.

If you're so damned smart, and such a wonderful, and quick, software
engineer, what exactly is wrong with giving them a patch?

You obviously have no experience, of any kind, with the maintainers
of tin, or slrn. I think you'd do well to at least tone down your
bitterness and bigotry, if not entirely drop it, but based on your
behaviour over time, I don't expect that to happen.

Billy Y..

 

Are these people customers of level3? Do they have worldwide backbones?
Or are they just local ISPs providing connectivity to end-users?

 

Mark Taylor (L3 VP of Content and Media) is calling them peers, which
means they are not customers. Too bad he didn't name them, but I'd bet
he'd be buried in lawsuits if he did. My guess is they are the larger
CATV and Telecom companies (Netflix copetitors) in the USA. Don't have
a clue about the one in Europe, though.

L3's peering policy -

http://www.level3.com/en/legal/ip-traffic-exchange-policy/

Billy Y..

 

If they are limited to the USA, either they don't need global
connectivity, in which case why are they peering with level3, or they
do, in which case they would be customers. If they are customers it's
up to them to rent a pipe of sufficient bandwidth for their needs from
level3.

So what is going on?

 

Sorry, but your Fox News tactics leave me unfazed. You have to be
consistent on the principles you hold, not adopt a relative morality
based on whether or not it suits your needs at the moment. Spam and
other junk *cannot* be put forward as an argument for the popularity of
Usenet. If you can't see why that's the case, there is no point in
continuing this discussion with you.

In dwindling numbers. Unless you can give me some usage statistics that
show otherwise, your entire argument is without basis.

What's the "Duh" part of that? The purpose of Usenet is *not* to offer
users-centric accounts. That doesn't mean newsreaders can't step up to
the plate and fill out the features that users want. To do that, we
have to move beyond X-Face and beyond tin. Sad that it is upsetting for
you to hear, but that is the nature of technological progress.

A. Past performance is not a predictor of future results.
B. People are known by the company they keep.
C. Straw man; I have never called for an increase in illegal use.

Reality disagrees with your assessment, and *all* my "goals" were is a
statement of reality. My aim is *not* to offer anything to do with
binaries; my 1.0 version will barely be a functional text reader. Even
so, I'm not blind to the fact that a lot of people *do* (and *could* for
more legitimate purposes) use Usenet to move around binary files using
things like yEnc, NZB, PAR, RAR, etc. And, as a CDN, it makes sense for
it to be used that way *even if it wasn't initially designed to do
that*. The reasonable thing to do is move the standard towards what the
people want, not bitch and moan that the people are doing it wrong.

No, rather I've done the research and come to conclusion that you don't
like, so you get all Fox News on me. Don't blame me if reality is not
to your liking. It would benefit you, and everyone around you, to
change your position to something more reasonable.

That's all in your head. I'm not going to devolve this even further
into talk about P2P networks or various cloud service providers/stacks
or any other ways to build a CDN. My interest here is strictly in
client-server message passing protocols like NNTP, IMAP, POP, etc.

You might find yourself out of a job.

If you want to be unhelpful, yeah, you can treat people so briskly. For
those of us who aren't dicks, we tell them where we get our beef or to
look around meat market where we sell our fish. I'm guessing you'd
demand that they eat fish, because it "works, and works well".

When you dumb things down for people, you're moving in the wrong
direction. That applies both in the general and the specific in this
case.

It's borne out of many psychological studies. A great way to get all
your windows broken out is to not fix the first one that gets broken
out. Small problems compound as norms get shifted. It's not right or
fair, but it *is* what happens. Face the reality and you'll have a
better shot at fixing the problems.

I'd say it was the fairly of Usenet to evolve *when* people started
coming online. What got called the Eternal September here happened
*everywhere*. You only have to spend a few minutes looking around the
comments of YouTube or Twitter to see that there are simply a great
number of "Shitcock" people in the world. If that's not something
you're looking to encourage, you have to change your tools and your own
behaviors to create a better neighborhood.

I've thought about that, but it isn't necessary at this point. The main
problem with Usenet is not the protocols or propagation. It is with
client tools, like tin, that are so outdated that they are no longer
useful for what people want to do. The *reason* I abstract Usenet to a
generic CDN is because I want to focus on the needs/wants of the people,
not the particulars of the technology. People who use Twitter or
Instagram don't really *care* how they work, for better or worse.

Clearly, if I can't recognize tin as the perfect be-all, end-all of
Usenet, I must be going crazy.

My likes are not a factor. People are already using plenty of services
that don't share data. Using a CDN like Usenet simply opens up the
*possibility* of more efficient propagation. But because the existing
tools make it hard for the little guys to use it that way, the big guys
usually go with proprietary tools so that they can keep the little guys
from becoming big guys too.

Are you one of those double-dipping jerks? If not, it's an open
network. You pay for your access and I pay for mine. It is in the
interest of my access provider to have network content as "close" as
possible, so a semi-universal CDN operating behind the scenes makes
sense for everyone. Usenet is an open way to provide that.

How about it? If you have a point to make, make it.

Just because you keep company with thousands of other brittle projects
doesn't mean you're not brittle. Hell, even Apple's Mail is itself
brittle because it cannot easily be used as a Usenet client.

Again, my long-standing objection to newsreaders like slrn and tin are
that *no part* of them is written for reuse, despite the fact that it is
clear to anyone with even the most lackluster CS education that two big
components of what they do, transporting messages and displaying
messages, are completely independent operations.

Sure. Unlike you with tin, I have no need to color the reality of the
situation. I'm going Mac-first (because that's where the greatest need
is given the death of MT-NW) with a likely extension to iOS support.
Whether or not GNUstep makes it possible to run on other systems is
something I don't expect I'll deal with, but I'll look into it if you
write me a big enough check.

Again, you continue to be disingenuous. A reality-based approach would
be to dedicate resources to meet the needs of your actual user base
rather than acting as if you're supporting everything that makes for an
easy bullet point. Most of the systems on that page are for vastly
outdated versions of tin so, yes, I feel entirely comfortable calling
you out for acting like "plenty of them" isn't 90% fringe. Get back to
me when you have a 2.x version of tin running on NEXTSTEP, with more
regular users than the developer themselves.

What you see as bigotry is actually professionalism in this case. In
truth, when people come to *me* and say my code sucks, I am professional
enough to take a step back and see it from their perspective, and likely
agree with them. Then I'd ask them how we could work together to make
things better.

That's the exact opposite of bigotry. Bigotry would be if I built a
newsreader *without* creating a libnntp and then try to browbeat anyone
who would dare to suggest that my newsreader isn't the most perfect
newsreader that was ever made to read the news EVER!

So, you see, you're projecting. It is your ilk that has failed to
inspire my cooperation. If you look with open eyes, you'll see your
same flaws in OpenSSL, GNUstep, and so many more open source projects
that it saddens me.

I don't have a market. I don't expect a Usenet reader to make a profit
in this day and age. I'm mainly scratching my own itch here, and it is
the *market's* choice to decide if they have the same itch that needs
scratching. There are benefits to them doing it as soon as possible,
either via crowdfunding or just throwing money at me in advance, but I'm
not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, and as a result they
have to wait until I release something rather than use what I'm working
on today. Trade-offs all around.

And if you think that's a good thing, you're mistaken. I'm not an
asshole for telling them all their windows are going to be broken.

The blinding light of projection . . .

You've given me very little but some very sophisticated trolling. Even
though I have issues with the standards as written, my interest right
now is not in changing them. Instead, my interest is in getting Mac
users back on Usenet with a client that reaches back to MT-NW, but is
built to evolve into something much greater.

But they *are* mutually exclusive in that what you put on Snapchat is
*only* on Snapchat. Vendor lock-in is great for the vendor, but not so
great for the user. What is your vested interest in keeping an open CDN
out of the hands of everyone?

How am I supposed to characterize you when you point to tin as the
pinnacle of Usenet software? And I'm not sure what added costs you're
referring to, because it seems you can never be bothered to actually
list them. As I have already stated, a CDN benefits everyone and thus
results in a cost *savings* rather than any added expense. If you can
legitimately show otherwise, break out the math.

Where did I ever state that? My issue has been with *proprietary*
solutions, not merely centralized ones. I mean, everyone usually has
*a* Usenet provider (the common newsrc format for subscriptions even
assumes it), but the strength of the network is that they communicate
with each other openly. Again, I'm reality-based in my thinking, and I
suggest trying it yourself.

You are one very confused guy. Usenet *does* nothing as a whole. As
long as one node in the network has an article, it has not "expired" in
reality. I can find "expired" articles of mine from the early 90s. Mor
reasonably , I can *easily* find Usenet providers that offer 5 year
retention at a good price (<$.08/GB). That's something that no other
"cloud" provider seems to be offering.

No. I see no pressing reason to do that at this time. Sure, it'd be
*nice*, but there are still Usenet providers out there that don't run a
Version 2 server. Nothing I have in mind requires anything other than
minor tweaking of what exists today.

Or, if the business model warrants it, get ISPs to install my black box
into their network just like Google or Netflix or others offer to do.
There are many paths that can lead to the same destination.

Yep. That's why it'd be so much nicer if people ponied up the dough in
advance, because the initial struggle for profit means a lot of
compromises get made that often lead to things failing before they can
ever shine. It's also why a lot of darling companies keep losing money
despite being wildly popular. It's a strange game.

That is *your* choice, not something *I* want, which is what you said up
there. Reality is all around you; pay attention to it.

There is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants. I wish I
could do more of it.

As I said, my interest is in working with people who actually want to
make their software more useful for people, not people who want to pat
each other on the back for their "brogrammer" series of commits. I am
not going to write a single line of code for someone if they're not
going to buy in to the simple *idea* that factoring out a libnntp is a
useful direction for the project to take. It's not my project, so if
they don't want that, I'd be a moron to do that. If they *did* want
that, their code would be in a state where it is less burdensome a task
that it obviously is.

No, I don't. But if they gave a damn about Mac users, they'd be more
visible and helpful in these newsgroups. It's the same "bigotry" I'll
level at *any* newsreader developer. I'm fairly certain a big part of
why Unison doesn't work very well is that I never see anyone from Panic
here eating their own dog food. I'm *here*, damn it, and that means
something when it comes to developing a newsreader.

 

[Article about triple-dipping snipped]

You're just not getting it. We're in the state we're in because Usenet
was abandoned and the greedy bastards were allowed to move into the
neighborhood. It wasn't enough for them that *I* paid for my connection
and *you* paid for your connection, now they wanted to be paid *again*
to connect our connections, which was *supposed* to be a given for the
Internet. And even *that* isn't enough, because a CDN, which improves
the network for everyone involved, is also something the middle man
benefits from but refuses to pay for, and may outright refuse to host if
in means they can charge more for transit.

So what I would "rather have" is an Internet that doesn't screw people
coming and going and standing still. Your false dichotomy is rejected
completely; to even propose it makes you sound like a shill.

 

The "problem" is that I don't have/want a Google account, and I'm fairly
certain they don't allow "Anyone" to have one (e.g., age restrictions
and the like). I say my privacy has already been raped enough. Can I
still post on YouTube?

There's no need to take it up with anyone. As it exists today, Usenet
is operating as a CDN. It could be nicer and more efficient at that if
the standards were changed, but my point is that you weren't complaining
about the standards, but the use of Usenet for anything other than text
discussions.

And that would be foolish, because if the content is "desired" then it
is in the best interest of the people running the server to let it do
its job and distribute it. Sounds to me like your real argument is that
peering is done poorly for NNTP networks, which wouldn't surprise me at
this point.

Good. If it's not "content" that anyone is interested it, it
*shouldn't* be widely distributed.

As you can see, it does exactly the opposite. Adjust your expectations.

As noted at the top of my response, there's definitely a lot of "not
cool" happening on the Internet these days. Usenet could be revamped to
help fix that, but *some* people are hung up on it being viewed through
tools like tin.

Because, as I've stated a number of times, a CDN *reduces* resources
usage. That's why big companies will pay to install their proprietary
versions. If anyone is confused and ignoring facts, it is you.

What is illuminating about taking part of a discussion from over a
decade ago completely out of context? Never mind the crappy web
interface used to display it! Apparently what I was disagreeing with
was the desire to solve problems of project mismanagement by adding
bloat to the technology. I'd argue the same thing today, and
essentially have when discussing open source projects like tin; I say
the mindset of the project needs to be addressed, and you say I should
just shut up and submit some code that is to your liking.

Let's hope you're at least 13 years younger than him, then.

Stop seeing only what Usenet is today (or, really, 1994 or whenever it
was that tin was a popular newsreader). The solution to what you call
abuse is exactly the same as it was for P2P networks: start using what
you have for *legitimate* purposes! I have already given one,
podcasting, that seems like it is ideally suited to be on a CDN like
Usenet. There are countless others, but they're all likely to be
smothered in the crib so long as people like you maintain a "tin vs.
abuse" dichotomy.

Nope. The protocol seems quite able to do what people want. A bit more
overhead than might be necessary to do it, but all backwards-compatible
systems suffer from similar cruft.

If their users are requesting that content, they're *already* devoting
their operation to doing that. The only question is whether or not
having it cached locally is more or less efficient than going upstream
for every request. All evidence, including what you have presented,
indicate that it is more efficient. All that's really at stake here is
whether or not the battle is won by a mishmash of incompatible,
proprietary servers, or something open like Usenet. Call me a dreamer,
but I'm still voting for open.

 

That's great, but it doesn't address my issue. It just doesn't seem to
be in the (ideal) spirt of crowdfunding to simply use it as a pre-order
mechanism. Or perhaps times have changed already and that's all
crowdfunding has become. Somebody let me know, because I'd be much
happier if I could get people to fund my work ahead of time while I
could bank all the dough and in the end only give them the product they
would have gotten if they'd just waited a bit.

Don't know. It's hard to find useful non-game software in the App
Store. Here's one:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ican-print/id448566661?mt=8

"There are free trial points. After trial points are exhausted, print is
NOT FREE."

Now stop moving the goal posts, simply admit you were mistaken, and
change your position. If you can't, I'm done with you.

 

I don't know if they're global vendors, but if they have enough
customers that other vendors want to reach, sometimes settlement
settlement free peering can be negotiated.

"Settlement free" does not (that I know of, anyway) allow transit
traffic. A couple examples -

http://www.comcast.com/peering
| traffic to/from the Comcast network must be on-net only

http://www.level3.com/en/legal/ip-traffic-exchange-policy/
| must announce only routes for paid traffic exchanged with its
| customers (and Level 3 and Global Crossing will announce only
| routes for paid traffic exchanged with their customers)

Usually net vendors are extremely quiet about all this. I'm
surprised L3 disclosed as much as they did. It was probably
from frustration. I suspect some of L3's customers are not
happy.

Billy Y..

 

Whether or not the developer makes a demo available outside the Mac App
Store is another matter. We were talking about demos *in* the Mac App
Store, not out of it. So far there aren't any. If an app isn't free on
the MAS, it's pay first and try later. I'm surprised the MAS has been so
successful, because I thought that model was long obsolete.

I guess people who have money to throw around and/or impulse buyers are
more numerous than I had thought.

 

Well, Kickstarter is usually the mechanism that's used in this instance.
Except you don't get the money unless you reach the fundraising goal.
I've pledged $25 or $50 to non-profits or comicbook projects and they've
made their targets within the allotted time-frame. Then my card got
charged. A couple web-movies didn't make it.

Indiegogo is another site that does crowd funding.

Both these sites have some safeguards for fraud, but it's not perfect.
There's nothing to prevent a crowdfunder from just going off to Belize
with the money collected. One state AG is going after a Kickstart
scammer currently.

Paying ahead of time for development is a dicey thing. I pledged $100
to the guy that did LavaBit because he want to make the former service
that the Feds wanted to pen/trap into DarkMail, an OpenSource version of
the service. But the project was funded.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ladar/lavabits-dark-mail-initiative

If he can do it, maybe you can to. I don't know what safeguards against
fraud there are, but you may not see the money until the project is
"delivered". So it's more like a loan than a prepayment.

 

I consider that the entire point of Kickstarter. There are things which
can't be created unless they are funded up front. For example, most of
my uses are for web comic artists who can not print up books unless
they have the cash on hand to pay for a 2000 copy print run. I pledge
my money, and later get the book. The site specifically says it's not
for charitable donations.

 

Whether or not the developer makes a demo available outside the Mac App
Store is another matter. We were talking about demos *in* the Mac App
Store, not out of it. So far there aren't any. If an app isn't free on
the MAS, it's pay first and try later. I'm surprised the MAS has been so
successful, because I thought that model was long obsolete.

I guess people who have money to throw around and/or impulse buyers are
more numerous than I had thought.[/QUOTE]

I have always used demos instead of buying things. No need to ever pay
for a game when you can just download demos, play them for an hour,
then go to the next demo. I'm sure companies know exactly how often a
demo is converted into a sale, and if they're not worried about the
lack of them neither should you. If I'm ever going to buy a particular
$50 game, I just pay the money up front.

The two Apple App stores use in-app purchases as a way to basically
mirror shareware, which is probably more effective than a demo.

 

Hmmm. I can imagine two smaller players doing that, but what's in it
for level3?

If you have a national or regional network, which ultimately is
providing connectivity to end users, they have to provide global
connectivity to those end users. IME, that's done by buying pipes from
the likes of Telia, Global Crossing, level3, and others. You typically
have several such pipes to more than one provider.

It's 8 years now since I stopped being involved in that game, but I
don't recall any major innovations being on the horizon that were going
to alter that general approach.

Of course, if you are a regional network providing connectivity within
that region for a community of interest, you'd be likely to have
settlement-free peering to similar communities in other regions, as
that's likely to be the majority of your traffic. But for commodity IP,
just buy it off the shelf.

 

If you could read, you'd know the wait would been considerably longer.

That's not great, nor does it address my issue. Where's the free trial
of something even remotely close to the newsreader you're writing? You
know - any sort of real program, that runs on something besides a phone.

Bye.

Billy Y..

 

Yea, that's what my upstream ISP does, along with most others.

So, I'm guessing a few, like the CATV companies with millions of end
users, have managed to peer settlement-free with some of the backbones.

It's been longer for me, but I doubt anyone has gotten less secretive
about it. I looked a bit, but couldn't find any publicly available
info. One thing I do recall was going from a customer to a peer was
essentially impossible. That might have changed. Heh.

Yea, Equinix et al. have become quite big...

Billy Y..

 

Ditto. I need free (play/us)able samplers first.

--
"An ant can do more than an ox that is lying down." --unknown
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / If crediting, then use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.
( ) If e-mailing, then axe ANT from its address if needed.
Ant is currently not listening to any songs on this computer.

 

Speaking of Fox (for those outside the USA, it's a rather perverted
and heavily biased TV news channel here), your putting your words in
my mouth and then ranting about it is no less disgusting.

"Never wrestle with a pig -- you get dirty and the pig likes it"

Billy Y..