These are my own personal views and not those of my company Phaedrus Systems see www.phaedsys.com which is where the full version of this column, with links etc, resides under the Documents tab.

 

One thing that is a problem these days is getting information. I know we have the internet but as I have commented before that where as 20 odd years ago when I started there was an exam to get onto to the internet , well there was in a way…. To get the internet you had to be at a technical student or lecturer at a  University, working in Government Research Establishment or a few other places but the vast majority of the users were technical and at graduate level.  Now well…. everyone is on the interweb…. twittering away.

 

There is a lot more junk on the internet and the interesting stuff far more widely dispersed. Many Usenet groups are drowning in bulk spam mainly selling cloths, watches and similar goods. It seems to have got a lot worse over the last six months.   Whilst at the same time these groups are loosing members as the long standing members and potential new members who can’t see the signal for the noise go elsewhere. On the other hand in some groups a small self appointed group “police” the group frighten off new members and the numbers dwindle.  That said more than once I have seen new posts saying I need ZYX please send answer to this email address… so you can understand some of the old guard’s attitude. However as there are many new forums for people to go to the traditional groups are dying out.  Also due to, usually “anti-terror”, laws ISP’s have to keep a store for longer. So many are simply not carrying the news groups at all.

 

Actually as most people now have megabytes of on line web space and on-line picture and video storage there seems no real reason to carry the binary newsgroups at all. Especially as a lot of them are carrying pirated images of DVD’s… I had a quick look and discovered it is as much mainstream films as the porn!  So closing the binary newsgroups would kill several birds with one stone.

 

However a cynic I know claims that some of this spam and flooding binary groups is intentional make Usenet unusable to drive people to web based forums that usually need registration so people can be tracked more.  I was not sure about this until I saw a report

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Careers/Facebook-Activities-Haunting-Job-Seekers-832015/?kc=EWWHNEMNL09172009STR2

 that said at least 60% of employers will search on Facebook for their staff and potential employees.  In-deed our local newspaper has carried stories of people who’s Facebook has got them into trouble at work. Mainly for “inappropriate racial and sexual content”.   What is appropriate in your “private” life if your boss can read your [Facebook] diary?

 

It is difficult to ascertain how many candidates have not got a job because of posts to a web or news group they made in the last 5 years... The survey suggested the number was quite high. Yes, there are archives that are still carrying 5 years worth of news posts!  Especially the web based systems where it is a text only forum.

 

Connect that with Facebook, Plaxo, Linkedin, etc and an awful lot of your life is on line and whilst you can “delete” it most of the time it is still there. There have been several stories of people who can not delete their entries on some systems once they have set them up.  The technical reason being they are now part of a web of links and the system would fall over if they were erased….

 

One of the other problems with news groups and the web… the speed of debate and lack of human face to face presence has lowered the intelligent content of debate to almost a school yard verbal fight. So think about it, then think about it again before you post. It is not just a tattoo that may scar your life for decades after you thought “it was a good idea at the time”.  There may soon be adverts like “don’t drink and post”, “don’t post when tired” Tablets will carry the warning “don’t drive, operate machinery or post on the internet!”

 

In many cases the answer is moderation…. A lot of groups are moderated. In many cases this works well. However others may call it censorship but web based systems have a problem to some extent with who is legally responsible for what when things are posted. These systems span the world and legal jurisdictions so moderators tend to be cautious.

 

There are some groups that claim to be un moderated but are in fact silently moderated I fell foul of one of those quite recently. It came as a great shock as it was a message list I had help setup a few decades ago. It belongs to the accu.  What made it much worse was the moderator wanted me to change the wording of a post to make it clear it was “my unsupported opinion” as I seem to be suggesting my view was factual.  He wanted me to change the meaning of the post.  It was over a decision taken by the accu committee just over a decade ago which changed the direction of the whole organisation. When I pointed out I actually had the documentary evidence (having been the organisations secretary at the time and taken the minutes at the meeting) I found all my posts on the matter were blocked and I was placed on permanent moderation!  However no one else knows this as I can’t tell them… the moderator sees to that!

 

Also of course anyone with an opinion can have a web page and edit Wikipedia.  In fact a Wikipedia is suffering from companies, political groups, religious groups, in fact any pressure group “correcting” pages to fit their spin/propaganda. Come to that any individual can do or even set up pages for anyone else. There was even the case that some one set up a MISRA page on Wikipedia, which came as a complete surprise to the MISRA team and resisted all attempts to correct it. In the end the moderators removed the page.

 

So, open groups are swamped, closed ones censored, Wiki is open to abuse. Worse still your employer, any anyone else come to that, can track almost anything you have said on the internet over the last 5 years…. There is as much propaganda and pure fiction as reality (look for Spinal Tap or the Freemasons).  The golden age of the internet, has gone.

 

Face to face meetings still work as a way of gathering information you get so much more information that way. This is the Trade Show Season.  If the UK Engineers responded the way the German ones do there would be over eight thousand at the Embedded Systems Conference in Farnbough. Remember Germany has already come out of recession so they must have some idea what they are doing.  We will of course be at the show, at the back so you will see everyone else on the way to us for the traditional Phaedsys Coffee and Doughnuts!

 

Next month I should have some exciting news on some big changes in the standards world. It has been brewing for a long while and all depends on a meeting in mid October.

 

Author Details and contact

 

Eur Ing Chris Hills BSc CEng MIET MBCS MIEEE  FRGS   FRSA is a Technical Specialist and can be reached at This Contact

 

Copyright Chris A Hills  2003 -2008
The right of Chris A Hills to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

 

 

 

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