Miq,
As a reader and sometimes helper on this list, I have been extremely impressed
by
the quality of most of the folks who participate. I realize that this is because
of the way it is managed. I am slowly getting up to speed on the technical
aspects of the internet and I appreciate the history lesson. I guess the main
idea here is that we have something good going , let's not spoil it. One of the
most important aspects of this list, at least as I see it, is the lack of greed
among the members. If I can help any members with my experiences or odd leftover
parts, I'd like to do so. I am trying to keep a 58 GMC NAPCO Suburban/Carryall
on
the road and I have a 57 Chevy 1/2 ton that I am converting to NAPCO 4 wheel
drive. I've been messing around with the 57 for 15 years so I have some
experience as a back yard mechanic and maybe I can help someone over the rough
spots.
Larry Jones
miq@teleport.com wrote:
> fodder
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> The internet has been around about 20 years in various forms. I've been on
> it for about 19. At first it was mostly government and universitys, with
> some research groups. People who had email and access to the news groups
> were all very computer literate and understood that while it appeared to be
> "free", there was a cost of time associated with bandwidth. Back then
> really fast connections were 9600 baud, and the entire message base for
> newsgroups could be read during part of lunch time.
>
> About 1985 or so commercial computer companies started to hook into the
> original government and education based net, the newsgroups expanded by an
> order of magnitude about every quarter, connection speeds progressed to the
> point that disk storage was the issue rather than connection speed forr the
> limit of communication. To be realistic, you had to be selective about
> which news groups you wanted to read, and email lists began to crop up that
> were more specific in topic. Generally the email lists were much smaller
> audiences, with fewer lurkers per poster. This is still true today.
>
> 1990 ISP's started showing up and offering internet access to people who
> didn't work in government, education, or the computer industry. The
> population of the "internet" grew rapidly, but for the most part if someone
> had access to the internet they knew about computers and how the internet
> worked. Hoaxes and viruses were only in vogue on the dial-up bbses,
> usually oriented towards games or hacker groups, and were shared mostly as
> example or exercise, but occaisionally they would be placed on innocent
> systems as prank or maliciousness (usually by putting a floppy in the
> computer to be affected). It was no longer possible to stay caught up on
> more than a few of the popular news groups without spending a really large
> amount of time.
>
> 1994 the first web pages and browsers were created, at first it was pretty
> crude and not really seen as a viable means of communication, there was
> very little interaction in web pages. Even today how many times have you
> hit a link that was a couple years old? ISP's started to work on getting
> the customer that had never used a computer for daily communication. The
> numbers spread like wildfire. About 1996 I stopped reading news groups
> since it took me almost an hour just to mark the groups I was "interested
> in" as caught up (not even reading messages). Web pages replaced ftp sites
> and gopher as a means of sharing files. Viruses that once needed to be
> physically placed on computers, were now much more prevalent, as they could
> be renamed and placed out for public consumption.
>
> With the rapid growth of user bases, direct mailers and other get rich
> quick schemers saw the news groups as a quick source of hundreds and
> thousands of "potential customers". Here was a great demographic for them:
> affluent enough to afford a computer, literate, usually intelligent. How
> could they not cull addresses and store them in master lists to send out
> mass mailings or sell to others? The once "free" internet was now a
> commodity. Well truthfully it was always a commodity, but now the cost
> (time and effort) was added to in personal connection fees. So bandwidth
> really did cost money. They didn't see it that way (and still don't)
>
> As the internet progresses closer to ubiquity, bandwidth, and the precious
> time it takes to read the information you want to read will become harder
> and harder to come by. There are other facets that are seeing the limit of
> the current structure--witness domainnames. All this boils down to one
> thing: If you like the way things have been in the past, more effort and
> stringent rules will have to be enforced.
>
> But where do you draw the line?
>
> Certianly setting up a web page with hundreds of banner ads that pay that one
> person money for each page view they get and then getting hundreds of
> people to view that page by sending a message out to this list (and
> hundreds of others) is wrong, but it has been seen by some as a viable way
> of making money. How many of you have seen those companies that "pay you
> to surf"?
>
> What about if you have a single banner ad that your otherwise free web page
> provider requires in exchange for the space and bandwith? OK? Sure, but
> somewhere between these two examples the line was crossed.
>
> Ebay makes $100's of millions of dollars a year based on their bandwidth,
> the price of items being placed and sold. If an item gets pushed up due to
> a bidding war, ebay is the one who wins, not the group of collectors at
> large, not the bidders who fought with eachother, and certianly not me.
> Getting more people to look at an ad means more potential bidders, and more
> page views for the advertisers on ebay. Why should you give them this
> service? Why should they (the seller of the item) get the benefit of
> this "perfect demographic" for absolutely no effort or even with out their
> knowledge?
>
> How about if you have a box of bits in your shop that are gathering rust
> and dust but you know they can be used by a fellow trucker? Sure go and
> post it, even if you are selling it on ebay if its your ad, send a forward
> blurb. But somewhere between these two examples is the line that was
> crossed.
>
> Common sense has become a comodity it seems. There are entire industries
> based upon the fact that many out there are gulible (virus protection
> software?) or don't think about what they are doing and how it effects
> others (or even know what they are doing).
>
> I run this list the way I wish all lists I was a member of were run. I
> spend quite a bit of time on a daily basis keeping the ugly part of the
> internet out there out of my trucks email. I like things the way they used
> to be, and am willing to put in extra effort to make it that way. (I read
> mail in a telnet session directly to my isp running unix--the same way I
> have since 1983 but I've never downloaded a virus or had a MS word macro
> eat my file space on my pc)
>
> I don't know exactly where to draw the line, but I've been doing this a
> long time and I think I have the expertise to judge when the line has been
> crossed on a case by case basis. I hope that some of you have read this
> lengthy message and have gotten something from it. IF not, well the delete
> key works at any point in time, and I trust I didn't take too much of your
> precious bandwidth.
> that
>
> --
> __
> Miq Millman miq@teleport.com
> Tualatin, OR
> oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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