Stopping the Internet of noise

[RS Wood]

https://www.franzoni.eu/stopping-the-internet-of-noise/


Stopping The Internet Of Noise - A Useful Internet Back Again
04 July 2017 on Ollivander, rants, thoughts

The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

There were some key factors that made the old internet so productive,
by the way, and many of those factors are just gone.

This is not just a rant. I have some proposals as well.

//--clip

Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and RSS
feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for screenshots of
40tude and mIRC.

[Ant]

I still use IRC, newsgroups, etc.! I could never go faster than 26400 dial-up
speeds where I lived due to crappy GTE/Verizon's copper systems. Not even DSL
(20K ft. to CO). :(

Post by RS Wood
https://www.franzoni.eu/stopping-the-internet-of-noise/
Stopping The Internet Of Noise - A Useful Internet Back Again
04 July 2017 on Ollivander, rants, thoughts
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.
There were some key factors that made the old internet so productive,
by the way, and many of those factors are just gone.
This is not just a rant. I have some proposals as well.
//--clip
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and RSS
feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for screenshots of
40tude and mIRC.

[Anne & Lynn Wheeler]

Post by RS Wood
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

claim is that porn provided most of the funding for the video tape
industry as well as early internet. early 90s, claims that almost all
usenet bandwidth was becoming porn.

around the turn of the century, a large e-commerce hosting company
observed that they were hosting five porn websites that all had more
hits/month than the top websites in the monthly traffic reports
(i.e. porn didn't feel necessary to particpate in the traffic
sweepstakes for most monthly web hits).

1993 I did pagesat modem drivers for a couple different platforms and
co-authored article in boardwatch magazine ... in return for getting
free pagesat full usenet feed. picture with dish in backyard
Loading Image...

not long later, they doubled link speed (from 9600 to 19.2k), in large
part because of the enormous increases from porn traffic.

trivia: Late 70s & early 80s, I was blamed for online computer
conferencing (precursor to modern social media) on the internal network
(larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until
sometime mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive
committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal
network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. Turns out the sixth, then provided
funding out of his office to do stuff. I was then working with NSF
director and was suppose to get $20M for interconnecting the NSF
supercomputer centers. Then congress cuts the budget, some other things
happened, and finally NSF releases an RFP (in part based on what we
already had running). Then as the regional networks connect into the
centers it grows into the NSFNET backbone (precursor to the modern
internet).
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

old NSF related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
past posts mentioning NSF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
old internal network related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmsg
past posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

from IBMJARGON:

Tandem Memos - n. Something constructive but hard to control; a fresh of
breath air (sic). That's another Tandem Memos. A phrase to worry middle
management. It refers to the computer-based conference (widely
distributed in 1981) in which many technical personnel expressed
dissatisfaction with the tools available to them at that time, and also
constructively criticised the way products were are developed. The memos
are required reading for anyone with a serious interest in quality
products. If you have not seen the memos, try reading the November 1981
Datamation summary.

... snip ...

past posts mentioning online computer conferencing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

Possible saving grace was one of my hobbies was design, develop, test,
package, distribute and support enhanced operating systems for internal
datacenters. Lots of places ran my enhanced operating systems, including
the world-wide online sales&marketing support HONE systems.

... other NSF trivia: NSF gave UC $60M for UC Berkeley supercomputer
center. However, US Regents "master plan" called for UC San Diego to get
the next bldg ... so the supercomputer center was done in San Diego
instead (and General Atomics was contracted to run the center). Also
going on at UCB there was work on "Berkeley 10M" ... which was going to
include transition from film to digital and remote viewing. Was doing
some pilot stuff at Lick Observatory with 200x200 CCDs (40kpel, there
was rumor that Spielburg was funding work on 4kx4k, 4megapel CCD). They
didn't want to take NSF money because NSF would then have control of
viewing schedule. They eventually got grant from the Keck Foundation and
it became Keck 10M and the Keck Observatory. We figured they would need
(initially) around 800kbit/sec connection for remote viewing from the
mainland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._M._Keck_Observatory

past posts mentioning pagesat and/or boardwatch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#38 Vanishing Posts...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#39 I'll Be! Al Gore DID Invent the Internet After All ! NOT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#20 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#77 Memory Mapped Vs I/O Mapped Vs others
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#17 What if phone company had developed Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#16 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#19 Another one bites the dust
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#21 Disksize history question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#74 bulletin board
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#75 Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#70 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#82 [OT] What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header time-stamp?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#92 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#26 Anyone here run UUCP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#57 email security re: hotmail.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#109 25 Years: How the Web began
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#59 The Forgotten World of BBS Door Games - Slideshow from PCMag.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#21 Pre-internet email and usenet (was Re: How to choose the best news server for this newsgroup in 40tude Dialog?)

[invis]

Post by RS Wood
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and RSS
feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for screenshots of
40tude and mIRC.

He makes some good points.

With very few exceptions, if a site doesn't provide a good RSS feed I
don't read it regularly.

I think most of the problems can be traced back to the idea of "search"
- apparently you don't need to worry about categories or topics if you
expect people to find it by searching.

Or maybe it's just selfishness - write it, publish it, who cares if it
wastes the reader's time to fine out if it's something they want to read?

[jmfbahciv]

Post by RS Wood
https://www.franzoni.eu/stopping-the-internet-of-noise/
Stopping The Internet Of Noise - A Useful Internet Back Again
04 July 2017 on Ollivander, rants, thoughts
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

I'm currently using a modem via a phone line which autobauds 24K-433777.
Since I only deal with ASCII, that's enough for me. Alas and alack,
it's not enough for AOL, which is my service provider. I have not
been able to send email since the beginning of May; I can receive email.
I switched the SMTP address to newsguy but AOL shut me down because
of their DMARC policies and declared the two outgoing emails I send/day
as spam.

When asking them about the problem, I was told to reinstall the browser.
I cannot use a browser because of the low baud rate. That declaration
fell on deaf ears. Apparently, they've forgotten that some of their
customers use AOLConnect which is a piece of software designed to only
deal with calling and logging into their system.

Post by RS Wood
There were some key factors that made the old internet so productive,
by the way, and many of those factors are just gone.

It was productive because the eyes didn't have to waste minutes of time
searching for the collection of pixels to click on. The screens are
too "busy" to be useful.

Post by RS Wood
This is not just a rant. I have some proposals as well.
//--clip
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and RSS
feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for screenshots of
40tude and mIRC.

Since you started out with 56K, you're just a youngster and was
spoiled :-))

/BAH

[Michael Black]

Post by jmfbahciv

Post by RS Wood
https://www.franzoni.eu/stopping-the-internet-of-noise/
Stopping The Internet Of Noise - A Useful Internet Back Again
04 July 2017 on Ollivander, rants, thoughts
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

I'm currently using a modem via a phone line which autobauds 24K-433777.
Since I only deal with ASCII, that's enough for me. Alas and alack,
it's not enough for AOL, which is my service provider. I have not
been able to send email since the beginning of May; I can receive email.
I switched the SMTP address to newsguy but AOL shut me down because
of their DMARC policies and declared the two outgoing emails I send/day
as spam.

I've gotten sloppy since October of 2012, when suddenly I had DSL here. I
use the tablet a lot, and it's amazing how slow it can get. It's a decent
tablet, but despite the transfer speed, I do a lot of waiting when going
to a new webpage. Maybe not all pages, but a lot of them. The browser
seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed ads with a text
browser, and now there are video ads that startup without me letting them,
an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm paying for it. Or would if I
reached the limit.

I think I said it before, when everyone worried about bandwidth, in
retrosepct I think it was less about worry of using bandwidth (at least
circa 1996) but of the time it took. If you had a slow modem, and even a
56K modem was slow for long downloads, and I could never do more than one
thing once I started a download, everything else would crawl, bandwidth
took up your time, and that did affect the end user. Now people can be
wasteful, since speed is generally so fast.

I don't think the browser on the tablet caches anything, even if I go to
the previous page, it seems to take time.

Michael

[Rich]

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.

Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

[Rob Morley]

On Wed, 5 Jul 2017 17:56:17 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never
noticed ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that
startup without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth,
and I'm paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

[RS Wood]

Post by Rob Morley

Post by Rich
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Which is a nice, self-selecting way of websites informing you you'll be
happier no longer visiting that site.

When I made my first webpage in 2001, my tutor reminded me it was bad
practice to build pages that require more than 30KB to display, as it
became too slow to load.

... seems like a long ago, in an age where the scripts alone could be
ten times that size.

[Andrew Swallow]

Post by RS Wood

Post by Rob Morley

Post by Rich
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Which is a nice, self-selecting way of websites informing you you'll be
happier no longer visiting that site.
When I made my first webpage in 2001, my tutor reminded me it was bad
practice to build pages that require more than 30KB to display, as it
became too slow to load.
... seems like a long ago, in an age where the scripts alone could be
ten times that size.

The internet baud rate has increased but the time to find a new URL is
still long. Any page with more than 5 URL will be horrible to load. The
count includes the adverts.

[Peter Flass]

Post by RS Wood

Post by Rob Morley

Post by Rich
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Which is a nice, self-selecting way of websites informing you you'll be
happier no longer visiting that site.
When I made my first webpage in 2001, my tutor reminded me it was bad
practice to build pages that require more than 30KB to display, as it
became too slow to load.
... seems like a long ago, in an age where the scripts alone could be
ten times that size.

Do they even bother to mention this to aspiring web developers these days?
I don't ever recall reading anything on "reducing page size" or "reducing
page load time".

[Ant]

Post by Peter Flass

Post by RS Wood

Post by Rob Morley

Post by Rich
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Which is a nice, self-selecting way of websites informing you you'll be
happier no longer visiting that site.
When I made my first webpage in 2001, my tutor reminded me it was bad
practice to build pages that require more than 30KB to display, as it
became too slow to load.
... seems like a long ago, in an age where the scripts alone could be
ten times that size.

Do they even bother to mention this to aspiring web developers these days?
I don't ever recall reading anything on "reducing page size" or "reducing
page load time".

Rarely these days. Back in the old days, yes.
--
Quote of the Week: Captain Marvel: Shazam. Billy Batson: Now put her
down. Black Adam: See? Like an ant. --Superman/Shazam!: The Return of
Black Adam
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.

[Andy Burns]

Post by Rob Morley
the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

You can often add a custom element hiding filter to block those pop-ups :-)

[Ian McCall]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Rob Morley
the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

You can often add a custom element hiding filter to block those pop-ups :-)

If you're using macOS Safari, switching to the Reader view often works
wonders as well.


Cheers,
Ian

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Andy Burns

Post by Rob Morley
the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

You can often add a custom element hiding filter to block those pop-ups :-)

Any suggestions?

But then all you get is a blank web page and you have no clue why.

[Rich]

Post by Rob Morley
On Wed, 5 Jul 2017 17:56:17 -0000 (UTC)

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never
noticed ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that
startup without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth,
and I'm paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Actually, with JS off, one does not get many of those (since many of
those also seem to be JS based).

[Andy Burns]

Post by Rich

Post by Rob Morley
And the occasional "We noticed you're running an ad-blocker" pop-up
that stops you reading the page.

Actually, with JS off, one does not get many of those (since many of
those also seem to be JS based).

Another way to bypass some of them (in firefox at least) is view/style/none

[GreyMaus]

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

[The Real Bev]

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

The solution is small print so you can scan down to what you want a lot
faster!

[Michael Black]

Post by The Real Bev

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

The solution is small print so you can scan down to what you want a lot
faster!

Until 2001, I only used lynx, the text only browser. And I ran it at my
isp, on their shell. So lynx could load a page really fast, since their
server was connected to the "pipe", and I could do things like use the
search function of lynx to find what I wanted, so the page never had to
transfer fully to my computer (over dialup). It made things really fast,
no long waits to transfer all the page to my computer, only to find it was
a dud page for whatever I was looking for.

Michael

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by Michael Black
Until 2001, I only used lynx, the text only browser.

Why did you stop? Switched to w3m? ;-) I started to appreciate lynx
around that time, still use it today unless I need to see images.

Post by Michael Black
And I ran it at my isp, on their shell. So lynx could load a page
really fast, since their server was connected to the "pipe", and I
could do things like use the search function of lynx to find what I
wanted, so the page never had to transfer fully to my computer (over
dialup). It made things really fast, no long waits to transfer all the
page to my computer, only to find it was a dud page for whatever I was
looking for.

If it displays a blank page, hit "\" to get the source code. May be it
uses Javascript to render pages, AKA Web 2.0.

[Michael Black]

Post by Andreas Kohlbach

Post by Michael Black
Until 2001, I only used lynx, the text only browser.

Why did you stop? Switched to w3m? ;-) I started to appreciate lynx
around that time, still use it today unless I need to see images.

I didn't so much switch, as suddenly I could run a graphic browser.
Mid-June of 2001, I started running Linux, and that was the first time I
could run a graphic browser at home.

Exvcept I'm using the tablet now quite a bit, I'd still be using lynx
mostly.

Michael

[Ant]

Post by Andreas Kohlbach

Post by Michael Black
Until 2001, I only used lynx, the text only browser.

Why did you stop? Switched to w3m? ;-) I started to appreciate lynx
around that time, still use it today unless I need to see images.

I prefer eLinks. ;)
--
Quote of the Week: Captain Marvel: Shazam. Billy Batson: Now put her
down. Black Adam: See? Like an ant. --Superman/Shazam!: The Return of
Black Adam
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.

[Michael Black]

Post by Ant

Post by Andreas Kohlbach

Post by Michael Black
Until 2001, I only used lynx, the text only browser.

Why did you stop? Switched to w3m? ;-) I started to appreciate lynx
around that time, still use it today unless I need to see images.

I prefer eLinks. ;)

I've sampled links, but something about it made me stay with lynx.

I'm willing to admit that it might just be that I used lynx for five years
before I started running Linux and thus could run anything at home, but
I'm not certain. Once you get used to something, it's easier to stick
with it than adjust to something new.

Michael

[jmfbahciv]

Post by The Real Bev

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

The solution is small print so you can scan down to what you want a lot
faster!

Small print is a sin, especially with certain fonts.

/BAH

[The Real Bev]

Post by jmfbahciv

Post by The Real Bev

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

The solution is small print so you can scan down to what you want a lot
faster!

Small print is a sin, especially with certain fonts.

OK, I should have said "smaller", although I do sometimes use
"unreadable" if I want to copy a big chunk of text from an xterm to
somewhere else.

[Charlie Gibbs]

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

The cruft that turned me off was that when you clicked on a link,
it was routed back through Google so they could collect statistics
on you. Thanks to DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com/), my machines
are now a Google-free zone.

[JimP.]

Post by GreyMaus

Post by Rich

The browser seems to be churning to handle the page. I never noticed
ads with a text browser, and now there are video ads that startup
without me letting them, an incredible waste of bandwidth, and I'm
paying for it. Or would if I reached the limit.

This is usually the result of too much Javascript on the page.
Running NoScript in default deny JS mode makes a whole lot of pages
much faster, with the added benefit of zero auto-play video ads.

Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

There isn't any cruft on https://start.duckduckgo.com/

[Mike Spencer]

Post by JimP.

Post by GreyMaus
Looking at the amount of kruft of a google search page
is frightening, compared to when it started.

There isn't any cruft on https://start.duckduckgo.com/

For overly crufty pages that I'm pretty sure I'd like to read, I use
wget to fetch the page to a file. That doesn't automagically suck in
all the <LINKed javascript and extraneous cruft. Then run an emacs
macro on it to remove all script, style, svg, meta and link
tags/blocks. Also in some cases prune the <BODY [KBs of style crap]>
tag to <BODY>.

The I can read it in Netscape 4.76. Most recent targets of this
somewhat tedious approach are Gizmodo and WaPo. WaPo serves ca. 450K
*not counting assorted linked-/sucked-in external files* and reduces
to ca. 45K after above treatment.

[Dirk T. Verbeek]

Post by jmfbahciv
I switched the SMTP address to newsguy but AOL shut me down because
of their DMARC policies and declared the two outgoing emails I send/day
as spam.

AOL has never been much of an internet provider but hey, if it's the
only connection available...

Get a VPN to bypass the AOL interference.

[Andreas Kohlbach]

Post by RS Wood
https://www.franzoni.eu/stopping-the-internet-of-noise/
Stopping The Internet Of Noise - A Useful Internet Back Again
04 July 2017 on Ollivander, rants, thoughts
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the
nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how
little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

I'm going back there. Firing up an Apple ][, Commodore 64 and others (via
Emulator), and do a fake BBS connections (actually it is tunneled through
the internet and using telnet to connect to the "modern" BBS, creating a fake
dial-up modem the Apple or other computers I emulate think it's real) on
COMMSTAR or other terminal programs of the day. Not forget to set the
port no higher than 1200 Baud. *g*

[m***@franzoni.eu]

Post by RS Wood
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and RSS
feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for screenshots of
40tude and mIRC.

LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!

By the way, beyond being called "a youngster" for speaking about 56k dialup (my first modem was actually a 28.8k around 1995 I think), I think that some points were missed. I was quite satisfied with The Internet up to circa 2007/2008 - I just had one instant messenger connected to multiple networks, RSS worked, and most of my interactions, especially technical ones, were via mailing lists and nntp. Maybe I forgot a screenshot from Trillian.

I think that the internet got worse since 2007/2008, not before that date; what I don't miss from these days is putting random words into altavista and hoping to find something, or crawling yahoo's directory...

Thanks for your attention.

Alan

[Ian McCall]

Post by m***@franzoni.eu
LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!

Remember the old nn warning?

"This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what
you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [y /
n]"


Cheers,
Ian

[Scott Alfter]

Post by Ian McCall

Post by m***@franzoni.eu
LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!

Remember the old nn warning?
"This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what
you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [y /
n]"

Remember? I got that warning from trn just a few seconds ago, before I
started typing this reply. :)

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

[Michael Black]

Post by Scott Alfter

Post by Ian McCall

Post by m***@franzoni.eu
LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!

Remember the old nn warning?
"This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what
you are doing. Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [y /
n]"

Remember? I got that warning from trn just a few seconds ago, before I
started typing this reply. :)

And since the newsreader was often at the ISP (up to a certain time), they
could set things the way they wanted. I remmber people putting junk at
the bottom of their messages to usenet "because it won't let me post
unless I have more added than quoted". So they never thought to edit the
quoting, they just posted junk after whatever they had to say.

That's still there, but once people ran the software at home, so much of
that could be turned off locally.

Michael

[The Real Bev]

Il giorno mercoledì 5 luglio 2017 01:15:05 UTC+2, RS Wood ha

Post by RS Wood
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and
RSS feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for
screenshots of 40tude and mIRC.

LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!
By the way, beyond being called "a youngster" for speaking about 56k
dialup (my first modem was actually a 28.8k

You had 28.8K? LOOOOOXURY! We had a 14.4K and we LIKED it! We also
have a couple of pristine Xerox acoustic modems somewhere just in case
the world blows up...

around 1995 I think), I
think that some points were missed. I was quite satisfied with The
Internet up to circa 2007/2008 - I just had one instant messenger
connected to multiple networks, RSS worked, and most of my
interactions, especially technical ones, were via mailing lists and
nntp. Maybe I forgot a screenshot from Trillian.
I think that the internet got worse since 2007/2008, not before that
date; what I don't miss from these days is putting random words into
altavista and hoping to find something, or crawling yahoo's
directory...

I think we're learned to ignore a lot of the kruft. I haven't put
Adblock on a new Firefox profile yet, but I just don't actually see the
ads. I know they're there, but my mind just ignores them.

What I do hate is that even though our cablemodem speeds have increased,
the throughput isn't really any better (except for massive downloads)
than it was several years ago at 1/4 the speed.

[Bob Eager]

Post by The Real Bev
You had 28.8K? LOOOOOXURY! We had a 14.4K and we LIKED it! We also
have a couple of pristine Xerox acoustic modems somewhere just in case
the world blows up...

The first modem I used was 300/300 baud.

That was in the days when baud actually equalled bits per second.

I moved on to 1200/75 and then 2000/2000.

[Rich]

Post by The Real Bev

Il giorno mercoledì 5 luglio 2017 01:15:05 UTC+2, RS Wood ha

Post by RS Wood
Read on for a fun review of the good ole days - Usenet, IRC, and
RSS feeds. I can relate to most of this. Bonus points for
screenshots of 40tude and mIRC.

LOL, I wouldn't expect my post to reach.. the USENET!
By the way, beyond being called "a youngster" for speaking about 56k
dialup (my first modem was actually a 28.8k

You had 28.8K? LOOOOOXURY! We had a 14.4K and we LIKED it! We also
have a couple of pristine Xerox acoustic modems somewhere just in case
the world blows up...

Try 1200bps circa 1984. That, though, was 'pre-internet' (just dialup
BBS'es).

By the time I got an internet account about 1991 (Unix login to a Sun
workstation) I think the modem speeds I had were up to either 2400 or
9600 bps.