[H-GEN] software runs the world

[Anthony Towns]

Greg Black wrote:
> My take on the use of lists versus newsgroups versus blogs is a
> bit different.  I think Usenet has had its day (and I stopped
> using it in 1995).  I think lists still work and are excellent
> for discussions.  For me a blog is a place where I get to rant
> about anything that takes my fancy, [...]

I was going to reply to this, but then I realised I'd just be repeating 
what Greg already said.

So, some other comments instead. One of the nice things about blogs is 
you can be a lot more selective than lists often are; compare, for 
instance, trying to follow:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/03/thrd2.html#00652

and

http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blog/2005/03/16#2005-03-16-mmm-charcoal

But you can only do that because blog's are one person's perspective, 
not a conglomerate of lots of people's; providing a /balanced/ summary 
of that thread would probably be pretty tricky; no doubt this week's 
Debian Weekly News will be a demonstration of just how difficult... :)

But even so, having that thread anywhere but on a mailing list would 
probably be pretty awkward, to the point of being impossible. Another 
real downside to blogs is that they're not remotely permanent; even just 
changing your blog software can make old posts inaccessible to everyone, 
which is hella lame.

But then, on the other hand, blogs are much better at linking disparate 
things into a single argument -- if you're already just browsing some 
random site, having part of the supporting argument be some other random 
web site is much more convenient than if you're stuck mid way through 
some long discussion. There's also more flexibility in direct content 
delivery -- you can inline some pictures, or a movie, or an interactive 
flash animation, or just about anything else you think might be interesting.

But mostly, I'm with Greg -- blogs are great for presenting a single 
view, lists are great for discussions and combining viewpoints. I like 
IRC too, for getting semi-synchronous responses.

ObTech: irssi, blosxom, thunderbird/mutt. Yay!

Cheers,
aj