FidoNet was something different.

I'm not saying it's irrelevant to the conversation. Not by any means. It holds a very important place in history. But it was it's own, separate thing. It wasn't the Internet, and it wasn't the commercial online services.

In a way, it was the first "common man's" global network. Sure, the Internet existed, and ARPAnet before that, but for many years they were only available to the privileged few.

Fido Net was a way for a regular guy to use his computer to communicate with people outside of his home town.

Seems like nothing today. Back then it was a HUGE deal.

VERY late in the game.

And when it finally happened, that's the day that the Internet transformed from something great into the ghetto of spam, scams, and ads that it is today.

And, yes... GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!

As someone who moved away from BBS's to the Internet before there was such a thing as a "web site", I feel qualified to say that, No, AOL was not the first.

Back then there was no Firefox. We used gopher.
There was no Google. We used archie.
Even Mosaic wasn't around yet.
There was no "click here to download". We used ftp from the command line. And there goddamn sure as fuck weren't any Viagra ads.

You could freely post your email address online for the whole world to see, with no worries of getting on a spam list. It was a beautiful time.

Not only was AOL not the first, I feel comfortable and confident in saying that, by far, the darkest day the Internet has ever seen was the day that AOL unleashed its hordes.

Old school brakes, like you'd find in a mid-70's muscle car? Nope.

Modern anti-lock brakes, that depend on computer control? You bet your ass they can be fucked with through the onboard computer.

I'm an old-school geek. I've been fascinated and excited by technology for over 40 years now. But in the last half decade, I've been noticing that we're growing way, WAY too fast. We're implementing things and putting them out in the real world as soon as we "can do it". We're not waiting until "we can do it safely".

It's consumer culture gone wild.

You must be very insecure and unhappy in your real life.

It's the only reason I can think of that you'd try to put down a very factually correct post based on a few irrelevant typos.....

Also, the people who write the software for this type of platform are, at least traditionally, much more concerned about available RAM than they are about security. In this arena, the old-school folks have always worked in an environment where isolation from the outside world was pretty much a given.

As such, even the fairly ineffective security measures that are in place on the Internet haven't even been considered for use in these types of systems. Attaching wireless capabilities to them was very foolish.

All thing's considered, this all just goes to reinforce my dream of owning a mint condition 1965 Plymouth Barracuda.

To be fair to O'Reilly, it's convoluted because it's about Sendmail.

No admin in their right mind would choose Sendmail these days. For a small installation with no budget, Postfix can do the job and is much simpler to admin. For a large installation, you either get the higher-ups to fork over the dough for CGP, or start firing off resumes.

In this day and age, being a sendmail admin == being a masochist.

Exactly. The OP gives himself away when he describes his computer use as a "home hobby".

As a pro, I much prefer the nice, succinct, "straight-to-the-point" man pages that you find with open source stuff than the tediously long novels that come along with commercial software.

I'm sure hobbyists would prefer a "for dummies" version, but I just don't have the time to read 30 pages of rambling bullshit just to figure out what the "-x" command line option does.

Personally, I think OSS documentation is, for the most part, exactly what it should be.

Alternate answer:

Docs for commercial software are written by professional "technical writers". Many of them paid by the hour. ALL of them incapable of understanding the details of what they're writing about. Their job is to describe the software to the least common denominator. Many times, the person writing the documentation IS the least common denominator, and couldn't make good use of it to save their life. What they do understand, is that the more words they put in the doc, the bigger their paycheck. So you end up with 750 pages of bullshit that doesn't actually explain how the program works.

OP should fire up a Linux system and type "man rsync" and "man bash", read them top to bottom, and then ask himself why his own inability to comprehend that excellent documentation leaves him thinking that OSS docs aren't up to par.

The fact that so many people sincerely believe this is a major underlying cause of most of our problems.

Making things worse is most definitely NOT better than leaving things alone.

I agree that things need to change, but care should be taken to ensure that they actually change for the better. It's foolish to advocate change for change's sake.

That's far too simplistic a way to look at it.

The problem isn't anyone wanting to know where people drive. The problem is what happens when you combine this database with a few others, and the analytics that are possible.

Do some research. The level of detail of a persons life that they can identify from these "harmlessly tiny bits of information" is staggering.

Of course it should. VOIP is time sensitive, your iso download is not. There is a debate to be had over whether that QOS should come with an extra charge, but it should absolutely be an option. And VOIP is pretty low bandwidth, giving it priority over your download is probably going to make the difference between getting your iso in 10 minutes 53 seconds VS. 10 minutes 57 seconds.... Not really enough for anyone to throw a fit over....

The real problem is last-mile providers being monopoly providers, therefore so stingy in making prudent upgrades to the infrastructure that everything is constantly pushed so close to the limits that stuff like this start to make a noticeable difference. On an intelligently designed and provisioned network, time-sensitive traffic could be given all the QOS priority it needs without you every noticing a difference.

Ahhh.... So you're one of those.... People who think it's more important to create a record of life than to actually live it.

You're missing out on a lot. I feel bad for you.

All of your points are invalid.

If you have kids and live in a neighborhood where crime level is a factor in whether you can let them go outside during daylight hours, perhaps you need to re-examine your priorities. If you by into the "stranger danger" hysteria, perhaps you need to wake up. Yes, shit happens, but if you live in a generally safe location, the risk is low. If you don't live in a generally safe location, then you're just stupid.

No. Get a tablet. Install the various e-book apps. Kindle, Nook, etc... Pretty much every book ever published is available. 5 minutes logged in to the free WiFi at a McDonalds would let you download enough books to satisfy your reading needs for a month. Also, why walking distance? Most people have to drive to get around, and those who don't tend to live in places with very good public transportation.

Of course they are. Duh...

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.