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Re: A new math usenet group
Posted:
Aug 18, 2009 5:33 PM
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In article <0bbeb8e5-e8b2-4697-98fc-82eb1248e9de@h30g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>, Transfer Principle <lwalke3@lausd.net> writes:
>On Aug 17, 3:24=A0pm, "Jesse F. Hughes" <je...@phiwumbda.org> wrote:
>> (I use eternalseptember.org, which is a good free news server).
>
>eternalseptember.org? How ironic that Hughes would
>mention the Eternal September -- since it's due to the
>Eternal September that many are proposing a moderated
>newsgroup in the first place.
No, "Eternal September" the phenomenon has come and gone. As I
understand it, the current proposal is because of a few nym-shifting
vandals who create thousands of posts of gibberish.
>Before (Eternal) September 1993, mainly professors and
>their students had Usenet access,
And a lot of people in the software industry, as well. And your
characterization of "their students" gives the impression that
students with Usenet access were grad students under the thumbs
of the evil standard theorists. I was long out of college by
then, but the impression that I had was that most schools just
plain provided access.
This is why there were newsgroups with names like
alt.sex.bondage.particle-physics
alt.sex.bestiality.hamster.duct-tape
alt.swedish-chef.bork.bork.bork
It wasn't a disciplined, centrally-controlled autarchy then, and it
isn't one now.
By the way, are you aware of the reason that it was called "Eternal
September"? Because, every year, for many years previously, all of
the new, immature freshmen would get their first internet access in
September, and trash the place for a month or two. Then, things would
settle down as the novelty wore off until the following September.
With AOL's major push, every month suddenly felt like September.
> which was mainly via
>the old NNTP newsreaders.
Well, the newsreaders that were used then weren't old. If anybody's
still using the same version sixteen years later, it's old now. But,
most newsreaders get new versions.
> After September 1993, more
>people had access to the Internet and Usenet,
Well, Usenet is one of the many things carried on the Internet, but yeah.
> and the
>Web-based news access became available -- first Deja,
Deja News didn't come around for another two years, and was (IIRC)
only an archive.
> Posters other than professors
>began to go to Usenet --
Of course, that had happened long before Eternal September, which is
why Eternal September got that particular name.
> posters who are less familiar
>with ZFC,
or, any mathematics whatsoever.
> hence likely to adhere to "crank" theories
>instead of the standard theory.
or any other theory at all.
These people don't have theories. They have positions. They've vaguely
heard some random snippet, such as the equipollence of N and Q, and
have decided that, since it doesn't make sense to them, all that they
need to do is spew some random bullshit and wait for adherents.
James Harris has a better grasp of what math is and how it works than
most of these folks do.
>And now Hughes mentions an Eternal September -- but as
>something he actually _recommends_?
He mentioned the free news feed: eternalseptember.org as something
that he recommends. This is anti-elitism. He is pointing out that
it is possible for people to get a vanilla newsfeed without having
to be one of the standard theorists, or even a professor, FOR FREE.
Newsfeeds are available that do not charge their users money. News
clients are available that do not have to be paid for. This is good.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
A preposition is something that you should never end a sentence with.
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