[Info-vax] Real Usenet clients, was: Re: backups and compaction or nocompaction might be better

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <keem2a$l5b$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
<seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes: 

> Hopefully you can keep your chosen hardware and software going for as 
> long as you need it to work, too.
> 
> I used VMS as my desktop for ~25 years, starting on terminals and all 
> the way through some then-very-nice Alpha workstations.   Great boxes 
> for many of those years, too.  I started to look at how much time and 
> effort I was expending to stay with that choice, and at what the trend 
> for that looked like, at what the comparable tools were capable of, and 
> (eventually) asked myself if the hardware and software I was using 
> still served me, or if I was spending more time serving the gear as 
> compared with what else was available.
> 
> Can you continue to run VMS as a desktop?  Sure.  Can you use an 
> ASCII-only news reader?  Sure.
> 
> Everybody has different requirements, and makes different choices.

That's not the point.  I welcome IMPROVEMENT.  I don't welcome change 
for the sake of change.  In the past it was Microsoft and now it is 
Google who deliberately break existing customs and standards so that 
stuff looks wrong if not displayed with their tools.  That's not a game 
I want to play.

> Just don't expect the rest fo the world to maintain compatibility with 
> the older gear.

In the past, it didn't matter what gear one had.  There were standards 
for information exchange.  As Tim Berners-Lee said, anyone who slaps the 
"best viewed with browser XXX" misses the whole POINT of the internet.

> There are folks that are fond of vinyl and even 78s around, and working 
> Victrolas, too.

Sure, but these folks are interested in the old technology as a hobby.  
Fine.  But that is something different than the MUSIC.  Hardware and 
software, if you like.  Why not good music with new technology?  All I 
object to is new FOR THE SAKE OF NEW.

In some places, children aren't taught to write cursive anymore.  That's
fine; it's probably really not needed.  But throwing out good old stuff,
be it hardware or software or customs in favour of new stuff just 
because it is new, even if it isn't good---I don't see the point.