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| Author |
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| 25 new of 100 responses total. |
kerouac
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response 50 of 100:
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Apr 5 20:06 UTC 1996 |
Brighn it isnt personal because your fw abilities have nothing to do
with you as a person, but with technique. If I say a person is a
bad driver, in my opinion, does that mean I'm saying I think he/she is a
bad person. People are too sensitive today (I'm including myself in
that obviously) You cant say anything to anyone without people assuming
the worst motivations.
Anyway, back to conferencing...Grex, in my opinion, is like an overweight
guy who doesnt think he needs to workout because he feels fine. Sometimes
its better to have foresight and look down the road. But since cyberspace
and the world is changing, and most users dont know how long they may
even use grex, they're happy with the status quo. As long as the economy
is healthy, most people dont care that we have a five trillion dollar defecit.
I suspect that this board, and others like it, will be like antiques
in a few years. There will be faster, better providers. Soon, anyone
with a phone number will have 'net access and email. At that point,
unless grex'x conferencing is strong it will die, because the free access
it offers wont be enough to attract users and members anymore. In
the end, only if what grex "is" is unique, will it survive. What would
make it unique is if grex treats its conferencing like a village, a town
where everything is linked. Sort of like the Blacksburg,VA site at
Virginia Tech. But you cant have a "town" unless all the citizens and
the businesses form a collective entity that gives it a framework. The
only way small towns could be formed years ago was if main street was
collectivly owned. The barber shop. The saloon. The hotel. Eventually
as towns got larger, you had more diversity and what linked the town
became smaller.
I see Grex as sort of a little electronic town that is in its early
stages. But it isnt a "town" if it is just a common piece of land
that people use. It is a town if it isnt just the land or the
buildings, but the community that people stay around to be part of.
I would suggest that grex was one thing when it was founded, and through
going on the 'net and attracting a diverse user base, it has become
different and because of that needs to be looked upon and operated
differently. Pure libertarianism doesnt work in society because we dont
grow as a people unless we share and have common heritages. We need
commmunities. Grex is nice but it can be so much more than what it is, if
only we get away from this libertarian ethic and think in bolder terms.
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robh
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response 51 of 100:
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Apr 5 20:38 UTC 1996 |
Being a libertarian, I feel no need to move away from that paradigm.
(Come to think of it, ker, didn't you describe yourself as a libertarian
a while ago?)
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kerouac
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response 52 of 100:
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Apr 5 20:55 UTC 1996 |
robh, I have some libertarian views but basically I'm a social liberal
and fiscal moderate who believes in government. In other words, I'm
a Democrat. But I believe people have the right to live their own
lives and make their own choices, as long as those choices dont infringe
on other people's rights. I would legalize drugs and tax the hell out of
them, for instance. People have the right to live their lives as they
see fit. But I am a firm believer in the idea that governments and
communities exsist to help people, and that the greatness of the human race
comes in what we accomplish collectively and we cant survive without
working together. I'm a universalist. I believe we are a part of the
land and it is part of us. So, in my opinion of course, as we belong to
the world, we belong to each other.
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arthurp
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response 53 of 100:
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Apr 5 22:21 UTC 1996 |
Interresting. I see the current Grex in exactly the light that Kerouac
says we should move to. *That* is why I basicaly ignore many of his
suggestions. Why take action to change our position to our current
position. The framework and linking are all there in my opinion.
Maybe this isn't so for some of he less experienced users, but I am
confident that this will change when we get the web interface to
conferencing up and running.
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scott
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response 54 of 100:
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Apr 5 22:50 UTC 1996 |
Well, there already are faster, better providers. Grex doesn't really make
anyting as a Internet provider; we even try to discourage people from thinking
it will be realistic to use it as such.
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robh
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response 55 of 100:
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Apr 5 23:13 UTC 1996 |
Yeah, if Grex has survived the last two years of explosive growth
among low-cost Internet providers, I don't see us dying off
any time soon.
And even if we do, I'd rather see Grex die with dignity than
live on in some bastardized form.
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srw
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response 56 of 100:
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Apr 6 01:23 UTC 1996 |
I think conferencing on Grex could use a shot in the arm, though.
I agre with kerouac in at least one sense, and that is that we shouldn't just
sit back and enjoy what we have. I'm not predicting the death of Grex if we
don't but I am a bit driven to make Grex a better place to come to.
By that, I mean that more interesting discussions would be taking place here
than currently do. I am not too concerned about out current ruleset, and I
am not too concerned about our current participants. I think our ruleset is
quite workable and our participants are mostly people I enjoy discussing
things with.
I am concerned that there are many people who find Grex inaccessible because
it is too difficult to get in here and learn what you need to learn to be able
to do it. I think that there are a lot of wonderful potential participants
out there on the net, who are not finding Grex. I think Grex can be made
better by making it more approachable. The result would be more points of view
in our discussions on all topics.
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kerouac
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response 57 of 100:
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Apr 6 01:51 UTC 1996 |
#56....agreed...like what has becom of the Intro conf debate? Robh
had some good ideas there...why not go ahead with this? Half the battle
is simply publicizing the confs. I really think that when a user like
me can be can be in less than a third of the items in coop and
"dominate" the conf (as scg said) simply because my items are always
active because I'm always posting in them, it simply speaks to the
lack of general activity in this conf. Too many view coop as a technical
conf when "running grex" goes far beyond simple technical debates. My
own feeling is that if the idea is for more users to become involved,
and read coop, this conf has to become more interactive. So I think the
tech issues really need to go someplace else (there is a garage conf right?)
The average user you might see using agora would only be interested in
coming to coop if subjects like grex newsletters and how to promote grex
in one way or another are the general context of this conf. Its fine to
talk about where money should be spent and things like that. But the
number of users who have a direct interest in the tech specifics of the
SUN04 is relatively small. Coop is only going to get a really
representative number of users to come here, and participate in these
important decisions is general, when the discussion is as much about
promoting grex as anything else.
And as I've been saying, a conf like coop is more likely to work if what
users see in all the confs is a common vision. An identity that binds
all the confs together. Right now, its too easy for users to see no
relationship between agora and coop, or coop and sexuality. You are not
asking people to contribute to individual confs, but to grex itself, so
the mission, the vision have to be collective. You have to be able to
show how all these confs are linked and how "grex" collectively comes
together.
It is this strong central message and theme that will draw users to grex!
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arthurp
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response 58 of 100:
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Apr 6 02:01 UTC 1996 |
I suppose that for the non-techies there is always the 'forget' command.
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kerouac
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response 59 of 100:
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Apr 6 02:12 UTC 1996 |
yes, people can forget tech items but thats really only part of the
problem. There's not a lot of imagination here. Very little in the
way of new ideas are discussed. Coop isnt dead. It's just stale.
Like a lot of confs, it needs new spark. New blood.
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robh
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response 60 of 100:
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Apr 6 02:26 UTC 1996 |
I think I have enough missions to worry about right now as it is...
I'm waiting on the cfadm to create a prototype Intro conference
for me to set up. I'd much rather have a working model to show
people before I make any proposals about dumping new users into
the conference.
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dang
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response 61 of 100:
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Apr 6 02:35 UTC 1996 |
I've been putting together a set of stats as to what people are doing here
on grex, once each time I log in. I've only been doing it for a week, or so,
so it's not very copmplete yet, but it seems to show that about half of the
use is party, and 1/4 each is mail and bbs. (This is things people are
running, not what is using the CPU) I don't know how many of those people who
are using party also bbs, because I'm not looking at users, just use, but I
know that there used to be a large faction that used grex only for party.
Now, this seems to me as a perfectly legitimate use for grex, but the tty's
are often maxed out, and raising the bbs usage would then mean getting some
of these partiers to also bbs. The big question is, how many of them
actually now about bbs? I know that in the past I've talked to some who
didn't know that it existed, and they liked it when they tried it. Is there
some way to let people on party know about bbs without getting obnoxious?
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kerouac
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response 62 of 100:
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Apr 6 03:19 UTC 1996 |
#61...this would be a purpose of the intro conf. There are lots of
users who only come here for party, and many who dont now grex is anything
but a party prog provider. But the situaton of party dedicated users is
much more pronounced on m-net than it is here from what I can tell. So
its debateable how much of a problem this is.
But then again, the
majority of those you find on party are kids under age 18. Most of them
wouldnt have the patience for serous confing...party offers them
immediate responses to their words and actions.
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robh
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response 63 of 100:
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Apr 6 03:19 UTC 1996 |
From my conversations in party, most partiers know about the
conferences, and the ones who don't use bbs don't use it because
they think it sucks. At least a few of them had bad experiences
with Agora.
(There was nothing quite as sobering as hearing a party regular
at GNO say he never read the conferences because the discussion
in the conferences wasn't as intellectually stimulating.)
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carson
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response 64 of 100:
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Apr 6 04:14 UTC 1996 |
chances are the party regular wasn't "intellectually stimulating."
oops. there I go again. silly me.
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srw
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response 65 of 100:
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Apr 6 07:09 UTC 1996 |
Yup. Silly you. Let's not restart the religious war. We can agree that both
vi and emacs are useful editors, and both party and bbs are useful programs.
That would have been sobering to hear, Rob. I think that is the kind of
misunderstanding of BBS that is all too common. I am anxiously looking forward
to see if we can't nip that in the bud with a better intro.
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scott
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response 66 of 100:
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Apr 6 12:43 UTC 1996 |
Oops, I didn't realize robh was waiting on a conference creation!
I'll do it this morning.
(maybe it's time to call for another cfadm to be created?)
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kerouac
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response 67 of 100:
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Apr 6 23:27 UTC 1996 |
how bout naming robh cfadmin #2...if he's going to be installing
this info conf, it'd be easier if he had the tools..
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kerouac
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response 68 of 100:
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Apr 6 23:31 UTC 1996 |
whoops..I meant intro conf, not info of course...rob, is it your intent
to get a prototype up and see fi everyone likes it first?
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robh
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response 69 of 100:
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Apr 6 23:59 UTC 1996 |
That was my plan, yes. I certainly don't need cfadm abilities
to do so, now that the conference has been created.
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scott
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response 70 of 100:
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Apr 7 00:02 UTC 1996 |
Robh is already webmaster, so he's got plenty of time-wasting Grex duties
already. This would be a good area to introduce a new person to Grex staff;
I started as cfadm before becoming a full staffer.
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popcorn
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response 71 of 100:
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Apr 7 15:56 UTC 1996 |
Hm. Last I checked, the board was thinking all cfadms would also be root
staffers. We've got a lot of root staffers running around on Grex now,
especially since we're now on the Sun 4 and don't have so many staff tasks
that need to be done. So, much as I like the idea of adding new people to
do new jobs, I'm not sure about using cfadm as a training ground.
I'm currently one of the backup cfadms (remmers is the other one), and I'm
willing to be a more active cfadm again, now that I've divested a lot of
other time consuming staff tasks. Another option would be to add a non-root
cfadm....
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davel
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response 72 of 100:
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Apr 7 21:18 UTC 1996 |
But then who will reboot Grex when the next incomprehensible system bug shows
up, Valerie?
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carson
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response 73 of 100:
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Apr 9 01:10 UTC 1996 |
I dunno. I could pribly learn the cfadm tasks, but I wouldn't feel
comfortable with root. I'm not a Unix person, really; I just have
enough knowledge to be dangerous. =^)
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kerouac
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response 74 of 100:
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Apr 9 01:15 UTC 1996 |
Is it absolutely necessary to have root to be cfadmin? I thought
cfadmin was a designated function of picospan, not unix? I wouldnt
think you'd need root to be cfadmin, just as you dont to be an fw...
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