Usenet, HTML (was Re: Jargons of Info Tech industry)

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

John Bokma wrote:
> Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann at web.de> wrote:
> 
>> On the information side (in contrast to the discussion side) RSS is 
>> replacing Usenet,
> 
> LOL, how? I can't post to RSS feeds. Or do you mean for lurkers?

I said "information side", meaning stuff like RSS is used for.

>> There is no real reason why NNTP couldn't be used like RSS (i.e.
>> contain a small description and a web link as message text),
> 
> It has been used like that for ages (or as long as I can remember).

Yes, but for some reason people jumped onto the RSS hype.  I wonder why. 
  Heck, even I am subscribed to a bunch of RSSes, because those 
institutions don't offer NNTP ;)

>> or why a
>> newsgroup shouldn't we written in HTML and contain a (default, or
>> user-provided) CSS sheet.
> 
> It's called www. It's already here (or there)

Well, but forums only emulate the posting/reply structure.  It would 
make more sense to use NNTP for that, and use $WHATEVER, e.g. HTML, for 
markup inside the posts.  WWW is something else; a bunch of pages with 
hyperlinks to each other.  Maybe we shouldn't call web forums and other 
dynamic websites www, as they don't really follow that purpose.  They 
are just abuses of HTTP/HTML/JS for thin clienting. ;)

>> If things were that way, suddenly people
>> *would* use Outlook and Thunderbird for news-reading,
> 
> But why do you want that? (Oh, and you can't read news with Outlook). Why 
> do you want more people on Usenet? 

No, I'm not talking about usenet.  I'm glad if the SNR keeps as high 
(haha) as it is, and messages in plain text.

I'm talking about using the technology for communication, instead of 
reinventing the wheel with crappy web forums.

Oh, and I've heard there are people reading our in-house newsgroup with 
Outlook.

>> while today
>> everything is just Browser+HTTP.
> 
> And what's wrong with that?

It's slow and pointless.  All interaction that's more than clicking a 
link has to be emulated with Javascript (heard of Ajax already?) to make 
it more smooth.

NNTP has advantages like giving you only the headlines first, so you can 
choose what to check out.  Then you can get the article if you like (in 
the communication case) or the news description (in the RSSoid case) and 
maybe click on a link inside.  Saves bandwidth and is quite faster than 
waiting for some overloaded PHP server to send you a bunch of HTML 
tables.  Responding doesn't involve *any* HTTP requests, just a keypress 
and you're typing.

Web forums are stone-age, as are most web-pages.

-- 
I believe in Karma.  That means I can do bad things to people
all day long and I assume they deserve it.
	Dogbert