Re: [math-fun] 3-dimensional rhombus
Minor comment: It's not really the "Drexel" anything; rather, Drexel has in recent years provided a web-based newsreader for the much older Usenet newsgroup sci.math.research . There are a number of choices for how you can read the newsgroups, but Drexel's operation of """its""" Math Forum has been riddled with incompetence. I recommend using Google Groups for Usenet and sci.math.research in particular. For one thing, you can read *all*, not just some, of the posts there. For another, if someone cancels their erroneous post for any reason, the cancellation is reflected in Google Groups -- but not in """Drexel's""" math forum (which once had about a one-month outage when they screwed up a new software/hardware rollout). << This thing turns up in 3-D analogues of the Penrose tiling, see e.g. the Drexel Math Forum discussion by Joshua Socolar at . . . . . .
--Dan
On 9 Jul 2006 at 0:00, dasimov@earthlink.net wrote:
I recommend using Google Groups for Usenet and sci.math.research in particular.
Off topic, but *why*? -- I've tried using Google groups and find it mostly awful. I've never had any luck with its properly keeping track o what I've already seen, no kill files, you can't tag/highlight threads/posts/authors you're especially interested in, you can't [easily] save interesting posts or sort them into folders for later reference, you have essentially no control over how [and what] is displayed. It seems so inferior to using even a mediocre news client, much less a good one, that I'm surprised at the recommendation...
.. For one thing, you can read *all*, not just some, of the posts there.
I guess I don't understand -- I suppose if you're limited to comparing two lousy web-interfaces-to-usenet you might have these sorts of problems, but I've never know of a news client that had any trouble reading "all" of the posts in any newsgroup. As for cancels, that's a function of the specific news server, and some do and some don't honor cancels. The reason why cancels are often ignored by servers is that since there's no authentication and cancels are so easy to forge [I have to do that all the time for the newsgroup I moderate..:o)] that a malicious cretan can cause a lot of trouble. But, for instance, Airnews and Supernews both do a sort-of-sanity-check and then honor reasonable cancels. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--
Bernie Cosell wrote: [Dan:]
I recommend using Google Groups for Usenet and sci.math.research in particular.
[Bernie:]
Off topic, but *why*? -- I've tried using Google groups and find it mostly awful. I've never had any luck with its properly keeping track o what I've already seen, no kill files, you can't tag/highlight threads/posts/authors you're especially interested in, you can't [easily] save interesting posts or sort them into folders for later reference, you have essentially no control over how [and what] is displayed. It seems so inferior to using even a mediocre news client, much less a good one, that I'm surprised at the recommendation...
Ah, but that requires you to find a decently working news server. I don't know how it may be in other countries, but here in the UK many ISPs provide a lamentably poor Usenet feed, losing articles frequently and screwing up the status of moderated groups and so on. There are other servers available to the public, but they generally have to be paid for if you want posting privileges; there have been free ones, but they generally stop being free once they have many users.
The reason why cancels are often ignored by servers is that since there's no authentication and cancels are so easy to forge [I have to do that all the time for the newsgroup I moderate..:o)] that a malicious cretan can cause a lot of trouble.
"This posting is forged"? :-) -- g
participants (3)
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Bernie Cosell -
dasimov＠earthlink.net -
Gareth McCaughan