There is a lot to be said for this point of view...
Just add to the mix the nut less keyboard warriors and you get a troll cocktail.
Good post.
Quality of debate on az
- Thread starter pro9dg
- Start date
Just add to the mix the nut less keyboard warriors and you get a troll cocktail.
Good post.
I tend to agree. Like Nostroke said, wind the clock back 10 or 15 years, and you had people who *knew* what they were doing -- more than likely work/professionals who used computers as a real tool. They tended to be above average intelligence and "settled" -- feet firmly on terra firma.
Now that computers are ubiquitous and as common as the pen, *anyone* can jump onto forums -- including the dolts that wouldn't know what to do with a computer 10 or 15 years ago -- and jump into the fray with the wildest abandon.
I've always said that forum input from folks from all walks of life is a good thing, but the stipulation is that there should be a level-headed brain behind the keyboard.
-Sean <-- on the 'net since the mid-1980s, and even had a UUCP email account at one time when I worked for one of the original companies behind the Internet: ...!uunet!ingr!jersey!sfleinen (yep, that was an email address before the SMTP "@" notation became the standard).
The quality of posts on the Forum really started to dip in 2011 and have plummeted ever since. Forum rules are blatantly ignored and one section, Wtd For Sale/Buy is diluted with thread violations. And the personal attacks that take place between forum members can become wicked and mean spirited. I've participated in the blood letting and regardless of my motives, it was wrong on my part.
Will I continue.....well, let me put it this way, the Forum is akin to Dodge City in the 1870's........and there doesn't seem to be any Marshall to deal with the lawlessness.......so if someone fires a shot at me, rest assured I'm returning fire. That doesn't excuse my actions but it doesn't make much sense to let anyone pound on you and let them get away with it......until Wyatt Earp shows up, that's how things gotta be.
Okay, I know we have Marshalls in the form of the Moderators but really, are they doing their jobs well? You can render your own rating of their performance but I think we also have to objectively consider the magnitude of this problem and the amount of resources it would take to rigidly enforce the Forum's rules. Frankly, I think the Mods would be trying to shovel a sidewalk in the middle of a huge blizzard........their best efforts would still be pretty futile. What's the solution? Well, I know one thing is fer sure.........just griping about the state of affairs isn't worth a tinkers damn........what's needed are workable solutions and proposed changes that would make the Forum operate the way everyone would enjoy.
I tired reporting every thread violation to the Mods but basically all I did was cause them more work when they're already buried.....it's like trying to ski in front of an avalanche........it's gonna catch up and bury you. Can you imagine if lots of people would do that....multiple reporting of the same thread or Forum member to the Mods....and very likely duplicate wasted effort on their part.......doing that doesn't work. So what should be or could be attempted or what can be done? Someone needs to take the ball and spearhead this issue to come up with suggested ideas for improving the Forum.
Until the Marshall shows up on the Forum and things start to improve, I'm going to keep my gun holstered but nonetheless, I definitely will shoot back if, and when, fired upon.
Will I continue.....well, let me put it this way, the Forum is akin to Dodge City in the 1870's........and there doesn't seem to be any Marshall to deal with the lawlessness.......so if someone fires a shot at me, rest assured I'm returning fire. That doesn't excuse my actions but it doesn't make much sense to let anyone pound on you and let them get away with it......until Wyatt Earp shows up, that's how things gotta be.
Okay, I know we have Marshalls in the form of the Moderators but really, are they doing their jobs well? You can render your own rating of their performance but I think we also have to objectively consider the magnitude of this problem and the amount of resources it would take to rigidly enforce the Forum's rules. Frankly, I think the Mods would be trying to shovel a sidewalk in the middle of a huge blizzard........their best efforts would still be pretty futile. What's the solution? Well, I know one thing is fer sure.........just griping about the state of affairs isn't worth a tinkers damn........what's needed are workable solutions and proposed changes that would make the Forum operate the way everyone would enjoy.
I tired reporting every thread violation to the Mods but basically all I did was cause them more work when they're already buried.....it's like trying to ski in front of an avalanche........it's gonna catch up and bury you. Can you imagine if lots of people would do that....multiple reporting of the same thread or Forum member to the Mods....and very likely duplicate wasted effort on their part.......doing that doesn't work. So what should be or could be attempted or what can be done? Someone needs to take the ball and spearhead this issue to come up with suggested ideas for improving the Forum.
Until the Marshall shows up on the Forum and things start to improve, I'm going to keep my gun holstered but nonetheless, I definitely will shoot back if, and when, fired upon.
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Wow, that takes me back...
In 1983 I bought a Sperry Univac through my girl friend's brother via his 50% employee discount program. Only cost me $2,600 but I got a state of the art machine all maxed out with the latest and greatest:
10 meg hard drive, it was huge and had to be partitioned so MS DOS could handle it
Expanded RAM to the then maximum of 640K
1.7 MHz clock speed... Had to turn off auto calculate on VisiCalc or it would lock up the system
Hercules graphic card to give my monochrome monitor gray tones
5 1/4" floppy with 720KB capacity
1200 bps modem
It was the bomb, and, I had one friend I could email so no trolls.
Then Compuserve came along, then AOL and you know the rest.... Here we are
You and the OP make a lot of valid points. IMO, one big problem is that the forum is being overrun by certain drama queens who sometimes post up to 100 times a day.
Really, the furor caused by one particular drama queen over engorged nipples on a bikini-clad girl in a avatar was a classic. Another drama queen felt the need to air the dirty laundry going on between MD and JA, all the while proclaiming that he's protecting his girl at "ALL COSTS!!!" This silliness is turning AZB into a soap opera.
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You and the OP make a lot of valid points. IMO, one big problem is that the forum is being overrun by certain drama queens who sometimes post up to 100 times a day.
Really, the furor caused by one particular drama queen over engorged nipples on a bikini-clad girl in a avatar was a classic. Another drama queen felt the need to air the dirty laundry going on between MD and JA, all the while proclaiming that he's protecting his girl at "ALL COSTS!!!" This silliness is turning AZB into a soap opera.
God, i miss that avatar....
Not the SD's
I hear you Lou, but I think the sd's are less offensive than the kids that get on the internet and post.
And the octos that have an account and get on here and try to play traffic cop or moral superiors. Actually they're cool. I hope to have some computer ability in 30 years
And for those of you who don't think I'm funny::
The wind is N.N.E. at 15m.p.h. gusting to 18 !:grin:
Anyway to pro9dg...mama said there'd be days like this. Or in this case years. Hang in there.
I hear you Lou, but I think the sd's are less offensive than the kids that get on the internet and post.
And the octos that have an account and get on here and try to play traffic cop or moral superiors. Actually they're cool. I hope to have some computer ability in 30 years
And for those of you who don't think I'm funny::
The wind is N.N.E. at 15m.p.h. gusting to 18 !:grin:
Anyway to pro9dg...mama said there'd be days like this. Or in this case years. Hang in there.
http://ad.jamster.co.uk/landingpage...0efd5ab0d2cb685ae9c4f52fa4475a7b5cddf7f84b7d1
I still have the original vinyl 45rpm disc
I still have the original vinyl 45rpm disc
I hear you Lou, but I think the sd's are less offensive than the kids that get on the internet and post.
And the octos that have an account and get on here and try to play traffic cop or moral superiors. Actually they're cool. I hope to have some computer ability in 30 years
And for those of you who don't think I'm funny::
The wind is N.N.E. at 15m.p.h. gusting to 18 !:grin:
Anyway to pro9dg...mama said there'd be days like this. Or in this case years. Hang in there.
ah yes, the chillins and Sister Mary Superiors. They should form a band
Lou Figueroa
You and Sean are some old geeks. My first PC was used primarily as a word processor and was 41,943,040 bytes in size. My first Pentium Chip PC costs me $4500.00 (and that was the "low" Internet price). It was a Gateway and one of the first Pentium Chip machines that Gateway ever sold. I forget how many megs it had but it was FAST.
How are the last4ever TIP TOOL sales going? Unfortunately, I have become the broke pool player's favorite go-to-guy for tip shaping, since I sport the Last4Ever Tip tool. It really is one of the best if not the best tip tool on the market. You designed a GREAT tip tool.
JoeyA
You and Sean are some old geeks. My first PC was used primarily as a word processor and was 41,943,040 bytes in size. My first Pentium Chip PC costs me $4500.00 (and that was the "low" Internet price). It was a Gateway and one of the first Pentium Chip machines that Gateway ever sold. I forget how many megs it had but it was FAST.
How are the last4ever TIP TOOL sales going? Unfortunately, I have become the broke pool player's favorite go-to-guy for tip shaping, since I sport the Last4Ever Tip tool. It really is one of the best if not the best tip tool on the market. You designed a GREAT tip tool.
JoeyA
Yeah, Joey, sounds like Joel and I come from the "pioneer" days. I've been very fortunate in my career, in that I was always there for the bleeding edge stuff, before it became commodity, and yet have the background of the older stuff as a solid foundation.
In fact, the first US Navy shipboard NTDS (naval tactical data system) I worked on, was Sperry-Univac (before they merged to form UniSys) UYK-7 based:
.jpg)
Even though "mass storage" for these was either paper tape, mag tape, (or later) the earliest of hard drives -- you had to bootstrap these beasts through the maintenance panel you see pictured, in pure binary/octal/hexadecimal, punching your fingers onto the maintenance panel in groups of threes and fours respectively. I can tell you this -- I can STILL read binary, octal, and hexadecimal -- and do the conversions to decimal in my head. I took to IPv4 like it was nothing, and IPv6 to me is old hat. Those poor folks today who have to learn hexadecimal to be able to read an IPv6 address -- <tisk, tisk>
Anyway, like I said, having a solid foundation in technology as it unfolded tended to keep folks well-grounded, and able to use technology as *tools* -- not as a "way of life" as it is today. (Remember my offer to everyone to go out onto your nearest busy city street, and observe people -- watch how "unsocial" they've become, with their arms brought up to their chest holding some device, and their heads bowed-down to view/twiddle this device with their thumbs. Completely absorbed and oblivious to their surroundings, bumping into other people, lamp posts, tripping and falling over, etc. Today's society have LOST their human ability to be social, and instead are umbilicated to their electronic devices -- this is "their way" of interacting with their fellow human beings. And, you've got people getting into auto accidents, killing people, etc. while yapping on their cell phone, or worse -- while TXTing.)
While technology always advances and is a boon to our society, for some (most?), it's coming too fast for them to adapt. They don't have the proper social grounding, and have never learned to be social animals. Either that, or they've tossed those abilities away and let them atrophy / die on the vine, because they "think" this is the "in" way to be social now.
It's definitely a problem the human species are going to have to deal with going forward. It's going to come to a head.
-Sean
wow - talk about nostalgia. i haven't heard UniSys, since Burroughs's buyout (demise) @ Detroit @ 1984 & all top-management got screwed. yes, these times, they are a-changin'. my 12yr old son w/ his ipad has no clue, where we came from.
lovely. i feel OLD today! thanks again, Sean!
Yeah, Joey, sounds like Joel and I come from the "pioneer" days. I've been very fortunate in my career, in that I was always there for the bleeding edge stuff, before it became commodity, and yet have the background of the older stuff as a solid foundation.
In fact, the first US Navy shipboard NTDS (naval tactical data system) I worked on, was Sperry-Univac (before they merged to form UniSys) UYK-7 based:
Even though "mass storage" for these was either paper tape, mag tape, (or later) the earliest of hard drives -- you had to bootstrap these beasts through the maintenance panel you see pictured, in pure binary/octal/hexadecimal, punching your fingers onto the maintenance panel in groups of threes and fours respectively. I can tell you this -- I can STILL read binary, octal, and hexadecimal -- and do the conversions to decimal in my head. I took to IPv4 like it was nothing, and IPv6 to me is old hat. Those poor folks today who have to learn hexadecimal to be able to read an IPv6 address -- <tisk, tisk>
Anyway, like I said, having a solid foundation in technology as it unfolded tended to keep folks well-grounded, and able to use technology as *tools* -- not as a "way of life" as it is today. (Remember my offer to everyone to go out onto your nearest busy city street, and observe people -- watch how "unsocial" they've become, with their arms brought up to their chest holding some device, and their heads bowed-down to view/twiddle this device with their thumbs. Completely absorbed and oblivious to their surroundings, bumping into other people, lamp posts, tripping and falling over, etc. Today's society have LOST their human ability to be social, and instead are umbilicated to their electronic devices -- this is "their way" of interacting with their fellow human beings. And, you've got people getting into auto accidents, killing people, etc. while yapping on their cell phone, or worse -- while TXTing.)
While technology always advances and is a boon to our society, for some (most?), it's coming too fast for them to adapt. They don't have the proper social grounding, and have never learned to be social animals. Either that, or they've tossed those abilities away and let them atrophy / die on the vine, because they "think" this is the "in" way to be social now.
It's definitely a problem the human species are going to have to deal with going forward. It's going to come to a head.
-Sean
Cannot remember where I first saw this, but your post reminded me of it.
Lou Figueroa
Attachments
Well, OK, but did you ever maintain a UUCP routing database -- the kind that paid attention to the baud rate of each of the dial-ups in the path above? Or a full Usenet feed, including alt.*?
Here's the computer I started with:
![CropperCapture[61].jpg](https://forums.azbilliards.com/data/attachments/218/218219-27241df54ef32c9d5cce61d3dd86015d.jpg?hash=JyQd9U7zLJ "CropperCapture[61].jpg")
... the one on the left which could do */+- and x^2. There was also a Friden (on the right) which could do square roots, but I wasn't allowed to play with it.
Youngsters, they don't know what they missed.
(Image credit: Wikipedia)
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