On Thu, 2005-11-24 at 10:34 -0700, Ben Browning wrote:
> FoulDragon@aol.com wrote:
> > Standalone Usenet's better cos the CLIENT does all this.  I know, you're all 
> > on 30Mbps DSL and can afford to be inefficient, but I'm on a lousy 44k 
> > connection.
> 
> I used Lynx to read news over a SLIP connection to the local university
> when I was in high school in 93. That was actually my introduction to
> the internet- i stumbled across when dialed into the UofA's 'sabio'
> (spanish for "I know") system, which had an HTML card catalog for its books.
> 
> Since then I have used many web-based clients and a great many
> clientside ones. Of those, my favorites are Pan on Linux and XNews on
> Windows.
> 
> > I think you have to make people drool over Usenet, and part of that is making 
> > it pretty and appealing, to win over new users until the substance convinces 
> > the users.
> 
> I have two ways to this. If they *aren't* a web board person in general,
> I ask them for a hobby they like and find them a good group or two
> relating to that. If they are already a forum junkie, I show them
> killfiles and other advanced filtering. I've converted a few people, but
> many seem to miss their animated emoticons (bah).
----
this discussion reminds me of the early/mid 90's when I was doing
consulting for some patent attorneys. Obviously patent attorneys are
technologically inclined but they were busy and I could only work on
this attorney's computer when he was out of the office.

One day, he asked me to set up newsreader/newsgroups on his computer and
he'd figure out what he was looking for - so I did that while he was out
and to show him the point of subscriptions, I subscribed him to
something like alt.sex.binaries.pictures.beastiality. (Know your
audience)

Nothing was ever said about it. Then one day - literally months later,
one of his associates asked me to install newsgroups on his computer too
so I immediately knew then that the first attorney saw what I had
subscribed him to and and had showed it to this other guy. I broke out
laughing and he started laughing too...that clinched it.

Craig


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