From: mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere   
      
   eho  writes:   
      
   > Yes, I fear this group is dying.   
      
   But very gradually, eh? :-)   
      
   > I'm just a lurker, I am reading it since decades, learning a lot,   
   > can't contribute something because as a mere user,   
      
   I'm a "mere user" too.  Yes, I wrote some C code years ago and I tweak   
   my web experience and other stuff with mostly simple shell or Perl   
   scripts but fiddling with the kernel or, say, with inetd is way beyond   
   me.   
      
   > Last word about the "steep learning curve".  I'm 66 years old. When I   
   > started with Linux, that was SuSe 4.* .   
      
   I started Linux in '99, buying a great fat book with a CD of Caldera   
   Linux.  Came up with KDE by default and XEmacs.  Immediately   
   downloaded GNU emacs and switched to Slackware 8 as soon as I figured   
   out how to do it.  And I'm 79 years old, 50 of them as a blacksmith.   
      
   > These GUI things don't make things easier.  They are just eye-candy.   
      
   I'd be badly set back without X but I run twm and numerous xterms and   
   emacs windows, no "desktop".  I do like a GUI browser, albeit with   
   images, style and js disabled.  Use command-line MPlayer all the time   
   in preference to vlc. (Yes, late-blooming cineast.)   
      
   > At the age of 12 I learned the mechanical type-writer of my own free   
   > will.  People nowadays do not seem to realize what formatting levels   
   > you can do with a simple mechanical typewriter....   
      
   Just so. But if you do that with ASCII text, your interlocutor reads   
   it in a web browser and it all goes away.  On one mailing list, I got   
   in the habit of marking up my posts with minimal HTML tags and   
   surrounding my actual post in 
 tags.   
      
   New problems with using Slackware emerge every few months.  My local   
   ISP dropped dial-up and to continue using them for mail, I had to   
   figure out how to (1) make sendmail do authinfo and (2) use stunnel(8)   
   to do crypto for POP3.  Frustrating, then gratifying when I got it to   
   work and I don't have to join the Borg and sign up for gmail.   
      
   Helpful people on Usenet have bailed me out of numerous difficulties.   
   One pointer on modems came from a user in Romania!  It *is* sad that   
   Usenet is fading and that so many people who might reasonably be here   
   find web fora more reasonable or at least more agreeable.   
      
   Still, here we are, are we not?  Don't go away, eh?   
      
      
   --   
   Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)