I Give Up!

[rickman]

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

Rather than to add spam filters as most newsgroup access providers do,
Google has invented an entirely new interface with an entirely new
look, with the ability to flag a post as spam (or otherwise
inappropriate) and it is hidden from your view.

That would be great, except that the new interface sucks compared to
the old one. Maybe it is just that I'm used to the old one, but I
have tried the new one in one of the groups I access and I don't seem
to be liking it any more than when I first saw it.

For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

 

[cfelton]

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

[snip]

I use a usenet (thunderbird) but also use dsprelated / fpgarelated for th
comp.fpga and comp.dsp. I don't notice much spam through these we
interfaces.

.chris

---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

 

[Petter Gustad]

rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> writes:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real

I'm using news.eternal-september.org as my nntp server and hardly see
any spam. I also prefer gnus/emacs over any web interface.

//Petter


--
..sig removed by request.

 

[Jonathan Bromley]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:02:02 +0100, Petter Gustad wrote:

rickman writes:
The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately
and there seems to be no end in sight.

I'm using news.eternal-september.org as my nntp server
and hardly see any spam.

Me too; I don't know how eternal-september does its
filtering but it works pretty well. And it only
very rarely hides valid messages.

In the last month or two, though, even that filtering
has been swamped by the volume of trash and I'm seeing
occasional junk messages - maybe three per week.

The rot is deeper than that, though. The three
IC-related technology groups that I used to follow
regularly are no longer of much interest to me,
and I strongly suspect I'm not alone in that:

c.l.verilog has essentially NO meaningful traffic now.
It used to be one of my primary learning and discussion
resources for Verilog, but now I have abandoned it.
I think the same has happened to most of the regulars.

c.l.vhdl still has homework-ish questions (probably
fed from fpgarelated or somesuch?) but very little
professional-level traffic. I still monitor it
occasionally, but haven't contributed for weeks.

By contrast, c.a.fpga still gets a decent (but, I
think, decreasing) density of useful content. It's
not very focused on my own core activity, but it
seems still to be working reasonably well apart
from the spam cesspool.

So, what's going on? Do Verilog and VHDL
practitioners no longer wish to share their
experiences in a Net forum? That sounds unlikely;
so where have they gone? Possibly to forum sites
that have a stronger focus on application rather
than language - Verification Guild or OVM World
for verification people, for example. That might
also explain why c.a.fpga continues to thrive while
the language groups are moribund. The forums
are spam-free, and although the web interface
seems astonishingly clunky to me by comparison
with the simplicity of a decent newsreader,
it seems to be the way people want to go.

The implied shift away from interest in the
languages themselves is fascinating too. Does
everyone think that the languages are a done deal,
and no-one needs to talk about them any more? Are
the published books and resources so good nowadays
that no-one needs to check with a live human?
Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness. I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight. But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be. Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons? Someone else
must judge...
--
Jonathan Bromley

 

[Brian Drummond]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:53:15 +0000, Jonathan Bromley
<spam@oxfordbromley.plus.com> wrote:

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:02:02 +0100, Petter Gustad wrote:

rickman writes:
The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately
and there seems to be no end in sight.

I'm using news.eternal-september.org as my nntp server
and hardly see any spam.

Me too; I don't know how eternal-september does its
filtering but it works pretty well.

The rot is deeper than that, though. The three
IC-related technology groups that I used to follow
regularly are no longer of much interest to me,
and I strongly suspect I'm not alone in that:

Definitely agree with that...

So, what's going on? Do Verilog and VHDL
practitioners no longer wish to share their
experiences in a Net forum? That sounds unlikely;
so where have they gone? Possibly to forum sites
that have a stronger focus on application rather
than language - Verification Guild or OVM World
for verification people, for example.

I think the vendor-specific forums (fora, dammit!)
and other fragmented, closed solutions have won. Nobody has time to track
everything - if you spend an hour a day on the Xilinx fora, and another on
StackRelated or FPGAOverflow and another on Facebook, (I presume there
are FPGA areas or groups or something on Facebook) there's not much time left
for Usenet, let alone actual work...

There may be some good stuff on some of these, but in a fragmented fashion that
is much less useful than we used to find here. And much harder to find...

I'm on comp.arch.fpga, comp.lang.vhdl, and comp.lang.ada - the latter is
unfashionable enough to have been overlooked by most of the spammers and
destructive interests, so still a really useful group.

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness. I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight. But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be. Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons? Someone else
must judge...

Change is probably inevitable, and maybe it's getting time for Usenet to go the
way of the morse amateur bands, and the telegraph.

Sadly.

- Brian

 

[saar drimer]

On Dec 31, 9:53 am, Jonathan Bromley <s...@oxfordbromley.plus.com>
wrote:

By contrast, c.a.fpga still gets a decent (but, I
think, decreasing) density of useful content.  It's
not very focused on my own core activity, but it
seems still to be working reasonably well apart
from the spam cesspool.

<snip>

Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

People still need support.

CAF is a great resource (no other place like it online) if you are
already an expert, but it can be intimidating and unwelcoming (and
occasionally hostile) to new users. So, newcomers don't tend to stick
around and the community here shrinks rather than grows. But I don't
think that that is the main reason for the demise of the HDL/FPGA
usenet forums. The younger crowed is more comfortable with newer types
of community-based support, ones that prioritize finding answers
quickly first, then reputation building, and then discussion. The
Xilinx and Altera forums that were revamped a few years ago have these
elements, and that's where many go for answers. Others go to sites
like stackexchange.com, but there are few FPGA experts there. There
are other community support sites out there, but there isn't a single
obvious place to go to for support, particularly for anything that
isn't very vendor specific, like "MAP failed with error 7563, what
does that mean?"

The "FPGA/HDL design" community is fragmented, and it's a shame -- we
could have it so much better. I've tried to do something about it by
proposing this:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/20632/programmable-logic-and-fpga-design

see my previous CAF post here:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.arch.fpga/browse_thread/thread/e4526299628848b7

Similarly, others have started this:

http://www.overmapped.com

One forum needs to reach critical mass so we could have a decent,
effective, modern, online community. Usenet, vendor-specific, and
platform-specific sites aren't good candidates for this in my
opinion.

cheers,
saar.

 

[Chris Abele]

On 12/31/2010 4:53 AM, Jonathan Bromley wrote:

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:02:02 +0100, Petter Gustad wrote:

rickman writes:
The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately
and there seems to be no end in sight.

I'm using news.eternal-september.org as my nntp server
and hardly see any spam.

Me too; I don't know how eternal-september does its
filtering but it works pretty well. And it only
very rarely hides valid messages.

I've also found eternal-september's filtering to be very good. But it
can be slow - I've been using "news.individual.net" too, which seems to
have similarly effective filtering but with better speed. It does have
a small fee though (10 euro/year, currently ~13USD).

<snip>

The implied shift away from interest in the
languages themselves is fascinating too. Does
everyone think that the languages are a done deal,
and no-one needs to talk about them any more? Are
the published books and resources so good nowadays
that no-one needs to check with a live human?
Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

If anyone does discover the Lost World of HDL expert discussions please
do post here. As a newby in HDL I haven't been able to make useful
contributions, but I've been reading this newsgroup for some time now
and have learned a great deal. I really hope that this sort of resource
doesn't get completely disappear from the net.

And I would like to state that I really appreciate the fact that people
with deep knowledge and experience will spend their time providing
guidance to those of us who really need it. Jonathan - I've found your
contributions to be especially valuable, as they are always informative
and often provide a broader perspective that goes beyond the issue
raised by the OP. Besides that they're invariably well written and
often entertaining.

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness. I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight. But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be. Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons? Someone else
must judge...

I hate to think that newsgroups are dying, but just in case we're
nearing the end let me thank the many experienced contributors to this
group who have illuminated some of the subtleties of VHDL for me.

Chris Abele

 

[Mike Treseler]

On 12/31/2010 1:53 AM, Jonathan Bromley wrote:

So, what's going on? Do Verilog and VHDL
practitioners no longer wish to share their
experiences in a Net forum? That sounds unlikely;
so where have they gone?

Some are busy looking for work.
Logic synthesis may be going the way of the mechanical cash register.
Interesting in theory. http://192.220.96.166/

The implied shift away from interest in the
languages themselves is fascinating too. Does
everyone think that the languages are a done deal,
and no-one needs to talk about them any more? Are
the published books and resources so good nowadays
that no-one needs to check with a live human?
Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

Given the plunging cost of virtual servers,
other languages are waxing.

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness. I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight. But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be. Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons? Someone else
must judge...

HDLs may be on the wane, but the internet is not the cause.

-- Mike Treseler

 

[Pete Fraser]

"Mike Treseler" <mtreseler@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:8o7cufF6ttU1@mid.individual.net...

Logic synthesis may be going the way of the mechanical cash register.
Interesting in theory.

Why do you say that?

 

[rickman]

On Dec 31, 8:05 pm, Mike Treseler <mtrese...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/31/2010 1:53 AM, Jonathan Bromley wrote:

So, what's going on?  Do Verilog and VHDL
practitioners no longer wish to share their
experiences in a Net forum?  That sounds unlikely;
so where have they gone?

Some are busy looking for work.
Logic synthesis may be going the way of the mechanical cash register.
Interesting in theory.http://192.220.96.166/

The implied shift away from interest in the
languages themselves is fascinating too.  Does
everyone think that the languages are a done deal,
and no-one needs to talk about them any more?  Are
the published books and resources so good nowadays
that no-one needs to check with a live human?
Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

Given the plunging cost of virtual servers,
other languages are waxing.

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness.  I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight.  But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be.  Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons?  Someone else
must judge...

HDLs may be on the wane, but the internet is not the cause.

                    -- Mike Treseler

Odd post. Do you have a basis for saying logic synthesis is on the
wane? What is replacing it?

Rick

 

[Jan Decaluwe]

Jonathan Bromley wrote:

The implied shift away from interest in the
languages themselves is fascinating too. Does
everyone think that the languages are a done deal,
and no-one needs to talk about them any more? Are
the published books and resources so good nowadays
that no-one needs to check with a live human?
Or has everyone gone to some place else that
I'm insufficiently Net-savvy to know about?

I shall look back on the end of 2010 with some
sadness. I've been using various newsgroups for
about fifteen years now, and they've given me
much pleasure, information and insight. But that
era is over; the Internet is now a very different
place, and I'm much less at home there than
I used to be. Relentless march of progress, or
merely the tragedy of the commons? Someone else
must judge...

We were merely immigrants, and now the digital natives
have taken over the place, Jonathan

http://www.tekphile.com/2010/12/where-is-vhdls-jquery/

I look forward to your blogs and tweets ;-)

Jan

--
Jan Decaluwe - Resources bvba - http://www.jandecaluwe.com
Python as a HDL: http://www.myhdl.org
VHDL development, the modern way: http://www.sigasi.com
World-class digital design: http://www.easics.com

 

[Andy Botterill]

On 12/30/2010 08:57 PM, rickman wrote:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

I complained about a recent spam article in comp.lang.vhdl. I actually
got an e-mail reply from google. Google never used to reply. So it could
be as simple as complaining to google.

I will try complaining about spam and off topic posts as much as I can.
If you can do the same the newsgroup may get a bit cleaner.

I have learned a lot about FPGA's and design from this newsgroup so
please please carry on. Andy

Rather than to add spam filters as most newsgroup access providers do,
Google has invented an entirely new interface with an entirely new
look, with the ability to flag a post as spam (or otherwise
inappropriate) and it is hidden from your view.

That would be great, except that the new interface sucks compared to
the old one. Maybe it is just that I'm used to the old one, but I
have tried the new one in one of the groups I access and I don't seem
to be liking it any more than when I first saw it.

For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

 

[Andy Botterill]

On 01/02/2011 05:34 PM, rickman wrote:

On Jan 2, 5:16 am, Andy Botterill<a...@plymouth2.demon.co.uk> wrote:
On 12/30/2010 08:57 PM, rickman wrote:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

I complained about a recent spam article in comp.lang.vhdl. I actually
got an e-mail reply from google. Google never used to reply. So it could
be as simple as complaining to google.

I will try complaining about spam and off topic posts as much as I can.
If you can do the same the newsgroup may get a bit cleaner.

I have learned a lot about FPGA's and design from this newsgroup so
please please carry on. Andy





Rick

Can you explain about your email to Google? To what address did you
send an email? I've never found one. I've never found any way to

Path:
gradwell.net!newsh.newsreader.com!newsh.newsreader.com!news-out.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!postnews.google.com!o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: SAHITHI <k.sahithi2862@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.vhdl
Subject: BETS HOT PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 07:55:44 -0800 (PST)
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 20
Message-ID:
<f80fecda-4deb-4082-a9f4-36108c01f31d@o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 117.199.248.142
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1293983744 1063 127.0.0.1 (2 Jan 2011
15:55:44 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is the place to complain to.

NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 15:55:44 +0000 (UTC)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com;
posting-host=117.199.248.142;
posting-account=IYIO_woAAACZLdlNOANhRD1tMvrUegMl
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This give the injection point.

User-Agent: G2/1.0
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.9.2.13)
Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13,gzip(gfe)
Xref: gradwell.net comp.lang.vhdl:63583

actually contact anyone at Google. They seem to be the ultimate non-

human entity in my book. In fact, I receieved a book for Christmas
called "The Singularity is Near". Scanning the topics seems to
indicate it is suggesting that machines are not only capable of
becoming self aware, but that it is inevitable. Google has likely
been taken over by the machines and will continue to evolve and
eventually enslave all humans. I think it started with Google Groups
and has spread to the Android phone (the name being a bit of cyborg
humor no doubt). Next I expect they will start to entwine themselves
into our essential services and product distribution so that they can
cut us off from our ability to survive.

What exactly did the reply from Google say? Did it include the words
"assimilate", "resistance" and "futile" anywhere?

I have historically complained and got no response. Today I actually got
a reply. It was more an automated e-mail.

There was an earlier article which implied that if google got more than
a certain number of complaints from different IP addresses they would
take action.

If a few more people from this newsgroup took action we may be able to
get google to do something.

Rick

 

[rickman]

On Jan 2, 5:16 am, Andy Botterill <a...@plymouth2.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 12/30/2010 08:57 PM, rickman wrote:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight.  This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

I complained about a recent spam article in comp.lang.vhdl. I actually
got an e-mail reply from google. Google never used to reply. So it could
be as simple as complaining to google.

I will try complaining about spam and off topic posts as much as I can.
If you can do the same the newsgroup may get a bit cleaner.

I have learned a lot about FPGA's and design from this newsgroup so
please please carry on. Andy



Rather than to add spam filters as most newsgroup access providers do,
Google has invented an entirely new interface with an entirely new
look, with the ability to flag a post as spam (or otherwise
inappropriate) and it is hidden from your view.

That would be great, except that the new interface sucks compared to
the old one.  Maybe it is just that I'm used to the old one, but I
have tried the new one in one of the groups I access and I don't seem
to be liking it any more than when I first saw it.

For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

Can you explain about your email to Google? To what address did you
send an email? I've never found one. I've never found any way to
actually contact anyone at Google. They seem to be the ultimate non-
human entity in my book. In fact, I receieved a book for Christmas
called "The Singularity is Near". Scanning the topics seems to
indicate it is suggesting that machines are not only capable of
becoming self aware, but that it is inevitable. Google has likely
been taken over by the machines and will continue to evolve and
eventually enslave all humans. I think it started with Google Groups
and has spread to the Android phone (the name being a bit of cyborg
humor no doubt). Next I expect they will start to entwine themselves
into our essential services and product distribution so that they can
cut us off from our ability to survive.

What exactly did the reply from Google say? Did it include the words
"assimilate", "resistance" and "futile" anywhere?

Rick

 

[Mike Treseler]

On 12/31/2010 6:27 PM, Pete Fraser wrote:

"Mike Treseler"<mtreseler@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:8o7cufF6ttU1@mid.individual.net...

Logic synthesis may be going the way of the mechanical cash register.
Interesting in theory.

Why do you say that?

Because many tasks that were once performed by
FPGAs, Asics and custom hardware are now covered
by servers in the closet or in the cloud.

-- Mike Treseler

 

[rickman]

On Jan 2, 1:33 pm, Andy Botterill <a...@plymouth2.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On 01/02/2011 05:34 PM, rickman wrote:



On Jan 2, 5:16 am, Andy Botterill<a...@plymouth2.demon.co.uk>  wrote:
On 12/30/2010 08:57 PM, rickman wrote:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight.  This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with
five or ten spam messages to every real message.

I complained about a recent spam article in comp.lang.vhdl. I actually
got an e-mail reply from google. Google never used to reply. So it could
be as simple as complaining to google.

I will try complaining about spam and off topic posts as much as I can..
If you can do the same the newsgroup may get a bit cleaner.

I have learned a lot about FPGA's and design from this newsgroup so
please please carry on. Andy

Rick

Can you explain about your email to Google?  To what address did you
send an email?  I've never found one.  I've never found any way to

Path:
gradwell.net!newsh.newsreader.com!newsh.newsreader.com!news-out.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!postnews.google.com!o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: SAHITHI <k.sahithi2...@gmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.vhdl
Subject: BETS HOT PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 07:55:44 -0800 (PST)
Organization:http://groups.google.com
Lines: 20
Message-ID:
f80fecda-4deb-4082-a9f4-36108c01f...@o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 117.199.248.142
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1293983744 1063 127.0.0.1 (2 Jan 2011
15:55:44 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is the place to complain to.

NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2011 15:55:44 +0000 (UTC)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: o23g2000prh.googlegroups.com;
posting-host=117.199.248.142;
posting-account=IYIO_woAAACZLdlNOANhRD1tMvrUegMl
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This give the injection point.

User-Agent: G2/1.0
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
rv:1.9.2.13)
  Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13,gzip(gfe)
Xref: gradwell.net comp.lang.vhdl:63583

actually contact anyone at Google.  They seem to be the ultimate non-
human entity in my book.  In fact, I receieved a book for Christmas
called "The Singularity is Near".  Scanning the topics seems to
indicate it is suggesting that machines are not only capable of
becoming self aware, but that it is inevitable.  Google has likely
been taken over by the machines and will continue to evolve and
eventually enslave all humans.  I think it started with Google Groups
and has spread to the Android phone (the name being a bit of cyborg
humor no doubt).  Next I expect they will start to entwine themselves
into our essential services and product distribution so that they can
cut us off from our ability to survive.

What exactly did the reply from Google say?  Did it include the words
"assimilate", "resistance" and "futile" anywhere?

I have historically complained and got no response. Today I actually got
a reply. It was more an automated e-mail.

There was an earlier article which implied that if google got more than
a certain number of complaints from different IP addresses they would
take action.

If a few more people from this newsgroup took action we may be able to
get google to do something.

I think what you may have seen about Google responding to complaints
is when someone mentioned that using the "Report Spam" control would
delete the offending post once some minimum number of reports were
made from some minimum number of IP addresses. I have been using the
Report Spam control and on occasion I manage to make the Nth report
that causes the post to go away. But the spammers are overwhelming in
some groups where I have given up. This group is getting more spam
every week and I am getting tired of all the stupid clicking required
to report it.

Google does a great job of filtering spam from email in Gmail. I
can't think of a reason why they can't use the same techniques to
filter spam from here. In fact, it has been reported that most of the
spam showing up in newsgroups *comes* from Google Group posters.
Certainly Google could put some controls in place to prevent that.

As I originally said, I give up. I don't see how reporting spam here
is worth the effort.

Rick

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:57:06 -0800, rickman wrote:

The spam in Google groups has only gotten worse lately and there seems
to be no end in sight. This group is getting hard to find the real
posts in and some of the other groups are just plain unusable with five
or ten spam messages to every real message.

Rather than to add spam filters as most newsgroup access providers do,
Google has invented an entirely new interface with an entirely new look,
with the ability to flag a post as spam (or otherwise inappropriate) and
it is hidden from your view.

That would be great, except that the new interface sucks compared to the
old one. Maybe it is just that I'm used to the old one, but I have
tried the new one in one of the groups I access and I don't seem to be
liking it any more than when I first saw it.

For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

I use news.individual.net, it costs 10 Euros/year. I don't see any spam in
this newsgroup or in any of the Linux newsgroups that I frequent. I use
PAN as a newsreader. Google groups is an awful way to access news groups,
not only is it SPAM ridden but the UI is unusable. You should be using a
real newsreader with a properly filtered news server.

 

[d_s_klein]

On Dec 30 2010, 12:57 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

Because they can't tell their donkey from their elbow?

One of my favorites: Google recommends using a throw-away address for
usenet posting, but forces you to use your primary gmail address for
posting.

Sigh. Heavy sigh.

RK

 

[d_s_klein]

On Jan 2, 10:33 am, Andy Botterill <a...@plymouth2.demon.co.uk> wrote:

If a few more people from this newsgroup took action we may be able to
get google to do something.

I suggest starting with something easier, like ending world hunger or
creating lasting peace in the middle-east.

RK

 

[Gabor]

On Jan 5, 11:20 am, d_s_klein <d_s_kl...@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Dec 30 2010, 12:57 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:



For a company that is so good at search engines, why can't they
understand anything about how newsgroups should work?

Rick

Because they can't tell their donkey from their elbow?

One of my favorites:  Google recommends using a throw-away address for
usenet posting, but forces you to use your primary gmail address for
posting.

Sigh.  Heavy sigh.

RK

You mean your primary gmail address isn't a throw-away?