Since the advent of Google Groups, I’ve got back into the habit of posting to newsgroups, at least in a small way. Funny, I never really used to do this with Deja (I think because I forgot the password to my account). It’s a bit of a hassle having to go back to the site to check for replies to my posts, and having to wait half a day for the posts to show up, but I got fed up with subscribing to newsgroups through Agent several years ago, when the noise to signal ratio just got too much for me.

I now use them pretty exclusively for solving computing problems, but I do relish the opportunity to have a bit of a duel once in a while, so it was nice (in a nasty way) when somebody took my post on alt.ecommerce as an opportunity to start lecturing me and ignoring my original request. Flame bait! I humbled him in ever such a gentle way, felt slightly bad at having done so (after all, he had taught me a few useful things), but then was very happy when I got posts off-list basically saying well done for the put-down, he was due for it: “He fancies himself quite knowledgeable in the world of business. If I could buy him for what he’s worth and sell him for what he thinks he’s worth I could retire a very wealthy man.”