Who are the 'guest' users?

At first I assumed they were staff, later I’ve been led to believe they might be people connecting through NNTP or something (not that I truly understand what that’s about anyway… knee high to a grasshopper when 'tintertubes were nowt but Usenet :)), but I also seem to have seen them apparently replying to themselves…

So, not angling for personal information or anything, obviously, but I’m nonetheless curious: Who are ‘Primary’, ‘Secondary’, ‘Tertiary’, ‘Assistant’ and so forth? Shared accounts or actual people? Here professionally, or just for fun / altruism / learning? How many of you are there out there…?

pull up a chair Confusleing,

a long time ago folks only had a black screen…which is why they
called’em the dark ages…before Bill Gates stole the idea of a
‘graphical user interface’ from Apple (who saw it first at Xerox) the
screen was black and white (well, the FANCY ones were black with
orange or green text)…

there wasn’t yet a WWW and you got email on that little screen with a
program named Pine (and others)…and you could join discussion groups
(forums) all over the world on a USer NETtwork called Usnet
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet> using the Network News Transfer
Protocol (NNTP) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nntp> via your
Newsreader <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_client> to send/receive
information to others interested in the same thing (say SUSE Linux)…

so now you can read up on it…

i use here because i don’t have to SIGN IN…

and, then i don’t have to SIGN IN AGAIN because someone thinks that
one sign in and a cookie to let you in over and over and over is not a
good thing (like i can at my bank, or stock market broker
account–where REAL money is at risk)…

and, i don’t have to wade through the winking blinking cute icons…it
is just pure, raw information–WORDS…

much much faster for my machine to download, and for me to read…

it feels like email (NOT HTML email, raw plain TEXT…)

i like it, you might not…

yes, we can reply to both other NNTP users and to those who visit via
HHTP (to the web forum)…

i use Thunderbird as both my email and newsreader only because it is
there, it is easy, it works and it is ok…

but along the way i’ve used a lot of different ones…my favorite was
something called NeologicNews which ran on OS/2 Warp…it was a great
shareware program…i bought a lifetime key for about $30 in about '96
or so…worth ever cent, though i’ve not booted to Warp in a long
time…(i wish i knew exactly when i figured out i could do all i
wanted on Linux…by the way, i got unhooked from Redmond in '95)

here are a few newsreaders that are still around
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Usenet_newsreaders (no, i’ve not
used’em all…not nearly)…

it could be that primary, secondary, tertiary, assistant and many
others are all the same person…or, maybe not…

since one does not have to register up OR sign in to read/reply/post
via NNTP tt is just a matter of changing a name to have a new one…

questions?

by the way, i’ll give you a hint: most of the folks who use NNTP have
been around the block a time or two…

–
The Real Elvis

Confuseling wrote:

>
> At first I assumed they were staff, later I’ve been led to believe they
> might be people connecting through NNTP or something (not that I truly
> understand what that’s about anyway… knee high to a grasshopper when
> 'tintertubes were nowt but Usenet :)), but I also seem to have seen them
> apparently replying to themselves…
>
> So, not angling for personal information or anything, obviously, but
> I’m nonetheless curious: Who are ‘Primary’, ‘Secondary’, ‘Tertiary’,
> ‘Assistant’ and so forth? Shared accounts or actual people? Here
> professionally, or just for fun / altruism / learning? How many of you
> are there out there…?
>
>

I only use NNTP (or Usenet) so I don’t know who or what I am - Guest,
Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix . . . ?

–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy

I really miss my old Hercules card with green screen, and the continuous chatter of the golfball printer :(.

Those were the days lol!.

Just to add to the discussion, not all NNTP users show up as “guest”. Only those that haven’t bothered to synchronize their NNTP and web accounts as explained in the FAQ which states:

Q:Is my NNTP user ID recognized in the web interface?
A: If your email address in your newsreader matches the email address you set up in vBulletin you will be recognized on both sides as the same user. If you prefer not to have your real email address in your newsreader, you can use the following syntax for an email address in your newsreader: userid@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org and your user will still be recognized.

I think that would be a nice thing for NNTP users to do, but there is no requirement to do so as useful participation here is far more important than the synchronization of user accounts.

Who are ‘Primary’, ‘Secondary’, ‘Tertiary’, ‘Assistant’ and so forth?

I’m either being thick today (not unusual) or I’m overlooking the obvious. I don’t understand this question.

Thanks for the insight everybody

Fire up the ol’ web browser (go on… give it a try… all the cool kids are doing it). Point it at this here thread;

Keyboard won’t type upper-case characters? - openSUSE Forums

You will see an extensive discussion between Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. Who may or may not be different people using the same names, or the same person using different names, or figments of my poor befuddled imagination…

Hi
If you stretch your imagination and fire up a newsreader like knode and
add the forums.opensuse.org as a news server, then have a look at the
headers (just like email headers) you will be able to work out very
quickly if they are different or one in the same

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.15-2-default
up 10:40, 1 user, load average: 0.41, 0.20, 0.13
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 185.13

But that would take the fun out of guessing.

And, Mr Davis, to answer your (implied) question, you are a guest.

Personally, I think they should be labelled ‘Puffins’, in varying degrees of confusion. But that’s just me.

Hi
btw, I use nntp (and am not a guest)…

LOL@puffins maybe skinks might be better?

@Kim, can we change the name Guest to something else?

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.15-2-default
up 11:37, 1 user, load average: 0.23, 0.24, 0.25
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 185.13

> you will be able to work out very quickly if they are different or
> one in the same

ah…you make it too easy…

–
The Real Elvis

> @Kim, can we change the name Guest to something else?

either Interloper or Gramps, please…

–
The Real Elvis

Or if you have admin rights, you can just see right here the IP address they post from and can tell they are the same.

@Kim, can we change the name Guest to something else?

We could but we don’t want to.

Here’s a little question to you regarding the ‘bliss’ that is NNTP and not having to sign in;

What would happen if I were to say write a little script that posts constant trash via the NNTP interface to the forums - say somewhere in the lines of hundreds of thousands of posts all with randomly generated names - perhaps via TOR?

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:26:02 +0000, Chrysantine wrote:

> The Real Elvis;1959014 Wrote:
>>
>> since one does not have to register up OR sign in to read/reply/post
>> via NNTP tt is just a matter of changing a name to have a new one…
> Here’s a little question to you regarding the ‘bliss’ that is NNTP and
> not having to sign in;
>
> What would happen if I were to say write a little script that posts
> constant trash via the NNTP interface to the forums - say somewhere in
> the lines of hundreds of thousands of posts all with randomly generated
> names - perhaps via TOR?

We would kindly request that you grow up.

Sheesh.

Jim

I doubt asking people to “grow up” would make much difference in the eyes of a malicious person who would want to misuse the open posting system to cause havoc.

Fix the issue before it becomes a problem.

> Fix the issue before it becomes a problem.

write a script to register to the web forum [sure, the script would
have to pause for someone to read the squigles and type them into the
validation box…but, that could speeded by using voice to
‘type’…and, eventually someone is gonna make a reader that can read
and type them faster than i could]…and then use a script to constant
flood trash to the forums–perhaps via TOR…

boy we need to solve that issue before it becomes a problem–also!!

ah, i know lets exclude all posting by nntp AND hhtp.

–
nom de plume

I’m sure Groneman and Henderson are proud - you’re a prime example of the nntp users, a real posterboy.

• Chrysantine wrote, On 03/17/2009 11:56 AM:

> I’m sure Groneman and Henderson are proud - you’re a prime example of
> the nntp users, a real posterboy.

I thought you were filtering all NNTP postings

Uwe

> I thought you were filtering all NNTP postings
>
> Uwe

!!

–
nom de plume

What we would do actually is block the IP address, but there is a message
throttle on the NNTP server which would prevent us from being overrun by
messages. Hopefully we never have to run into such a person. In the
years I’ve been dealing with NNTP forums I’ve not run into that problem.

–
Kim (3/17/2009 9:29:11 AM Mountain)