🚀 go-pugleaf

Nathanael J Henderson (nahender@plains.NoDak.edu) wrote:
: B E Verins (beverins@aol.com) wrote:
: : who put this INANE THREAD in comp.sys.AMIGA.ADVOCACY. I posted here,
: : 'cause I see a LOT OF BIGOTS who want the USENET to remain the domain of
: : hackers and techno-nerds, posting here. 

:   Is this an admission that AOL is for the computer illiterate?

: : Tell me, oh, great, knowing ones, why are AOL users singled out for this
: : abuse, eh? What of CIS users, or Prodigy users? CIS is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE,
: : and Prodigy is UGLY and just as expensive as AOL.! 

:    AOL is the target because AOL drips incompetent childish morons from 
: every pore.  I don't know why--that's just the way it is.  Perhaps their 
: marketing attracts them.

  AOL is the target because AOL provides incredibly easy access and markets
the Hell out of it.  That puts a *lot* of people on the net who otherwise
wouldn't know the first thing about getting around.  The end result is a
net drop in average internet-user-IQ, a drop significant enough that people
notice most of the 'mee too's originating from Aol.com.

  I admit that this is one of the unavoidable side effects of giving access
to The People(tm), and trashing AOL because of this alone is elitism.  But
just take a peek at the inordinate amounts of 'yes put me on the list's from
AOLers in the alt.sex hierarchy - we're talking newbies in BULK.  And AOL 
could prevent this to some degree by requiring some kind of mandatory 
tutorial (nothing really impossible, just a set of rules followed by a quizzle)
before people be allowed to interact using USENET.

: : Amigas Rule. Anime rules. AOL rules. Elitism SUCKS. 

:    Amiga is dead.  Amiga has no forseeable future.  Cower before the 
: world's fastest personal computer--the MACINTOSH.  (Or the most populist, 
: the PC, or the most technically solid, UNIX.)  Heck, just cower in general.

  There was a time when people said the Mac was dead.  

:    AOL is a piece of trash.  Using it is almost like being castrated--if 
: you don't know any better you may think nothing's missing, but the rest 
: of us know better.  Hell, look at the moronic way text from previous 
: posts gets quoted in AOL posts.  What thumb-up-his-ass idiot thought of 
: that?

  Agreed.  AOL text quoting is incredibly annoying.  And if their newsreader
  hasn't undergone any significant changes since I last saw it, it's pretty
  bad too -- a neutered version of tin.  Can any current AOL user verify this?

  Does the newsreader still not allow you to see the authors and sizes of 
  articles in a single thread before you go into it?
 
  Does the newsreader still download the WHOLE DAMN ARTICLE before you can go
  on to the next one?

  Does the newsreader still not let you use a non-proportional font so you can
  see ASCII pictures?

  Does the newsreader still not let you killfile?

  The first two of these allowed us to totally fuck with AOL users - just 
follow-up to a random article in a random thread with a ~64K .signature.
Everyone with a decent reader will see the first screen of text, press 'n' 
and continue, while the AOL types would have to wait, if not reboot.

  The third one allowed people to totally exclude AOL people from USENET 
groups -- just have everyone write their articles in Figlet, using a small font
like contessa.  

  						-Contessa Caj
  
: ----
: "There is a road, no simple highway,
: Between the dawn and the dark of night,
: and if you go no one may follow,
: that path is for your steps alone."  - "Ripple", Jerry Garcia