Neal Becker Software Package..?

[Timothy Murphy]

Alan Cox wrote:

> The forums on the other hand seem to be booming - which is good, and
> perhaps as much a demographic and technological shift as anything else ?

Dear Alan,

I usually follow your advice, and when I read your earlier praise
of the fedoraforum, I took a look there.
(I take it you were referring to www.fedoraforum.org .)

I am actually a long-time member of this forum,
though I hadn't looked at it for some time.
I did today, going through some 30-40 pages of postings.
I was surprised how little I found of any interest;
in fact the only item I noted was a suggestion how to use dolphin
to unpack a multipart rar file.
(I haven't tried it yet.)

Generally speaking, I find forums far less attractive
than mailing lists or newsgroups,
where it is much easier (in my experience)
to skim through 100 postings, and pick out the 3 or 4 of interest.

I do agree that forums (fora?) seem to be booming,
while mailing lists appear to be regarded as pass\'e.
I recently asked my ISP (eircom.net) why they no longer served newsgroups,
but I could not find anyone there who even knew what a newsgroup was.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin