UseNet/Quotes

Gene Spafford's Usenet Axiom #1:
"The Usenet is not the real world. The Usenet usually does not even resemble the real world."
Corollary #1:
"Attempts to change the real world by altering the structure of the Usenet is an attempt to work sympathetic magic -- electronic voodoo."
Corollary #2:
"Arguing about the significance of newsgroup names and their relation to the way people really think is equivalent to arguing whether it is better to read tea leaves or chicken entrails to divine the future."

Gene Spafford's Usenet Axiom #2:
"Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of sanity, intelligence, or common sense."
Corollary #3:
"An infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards could produce something like Usenet."
Corollary #4:
"They could do a better job of it."

Gene Spafford's Usenet Axiom #3:
"Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) applies to Usenet."
Corollary #5:
"In an unmoderated newsgroup, no one can agree on what constitutes the 10%."
Corollary #6:
"Nothing guarantees that the 10% isn't crap, too."

> 4. Usenet is not a right.
Usenet is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail.

Rule #17: Go not to UseNet for counsel, for they will say both 'No' and 'Yes' and 'Try another newsgroup'.

Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.

RE: Usenet
> > I think of it as a party held in very very large house. In one room peopleare drinking espresso and discussing translations of Rilke, while in another they're sucking nitrous out of a garbage bag and setting fire to a couch.
> rec.arts.books: drinking espresso, and watching M. Zeleny burn translations of Rilke.
> misc.woodworking: should we burn the couch-maker, because he used electricity?
> soc.history: eat the garbage bag, inject nitrous into anyone who looks like Rilke, and, anyway, couches and espresso are glorious Turkish inventions.
> news.groups: no one should be permitted to say "garbage bag", "fire", or "couch", because newsgroups for those purposes already exist -- and even if they don't, it was a democratic decision.

Usenet is a way of being annoyed by people you otherwise never would have met.

Usenet is like a philosophical particle accelerator which creates opinions of such energy and instability that they could not exist in nature.

"If you pat Usenet, it will burp. If you tease Usenet, it will bite."

"Usenet is William Shatner and George Bush trading places after being hit by lightning."

"USENET IS NEVER CRYPTIC.""

"Usenet asks no questions, but gets many answers; Usenet is the biggest pencil in the world. Usenet is a sword whose blade is in Schenectady and whose handle is everywhere.""

"Usenet is Frosty the Snowman comitting suicide with a flamethrower.""

"Usenet is sans-serif but oblique.""

USENET would be a better laboratory if there were more labor and less oratory.