Re: Dear Paul, July 12, 2006, updated, July 13, 2006, updated

Pappy, first of all good luck with your website. I wish it all the
best, and that it provides a useful service to many readers, and the
same to the Google Group Advanced Pyrotechnics.

Still, just a brief work about why the principal Internet service for
interactive posting is, and has been for many years, Usenet Newsgroups,
or has some call them the NGs.

First, it was one of the first services available on the Internet, and
continues to be heavily used, originating back with the ARPANET's
"Cheese Exchange", which pre-dated even the Internet itself, and were
originally propagated from computer to computer using UUTP run on idle
government and university systems for a few hours each day. The World
Wide Web came much later, and for a different purpose, which operate on
a totally different basis using TCP/IP protocols.

In my mind one of the most important distinctions between Usenet
Newsgroups and web sites is that web sites are under private control,
and come and go at the will of their owner/opeators, while newsgroups
are more or less eternal, once created. They are also not under control
of one party or group, and to disolve a newsgroup often requires a
procedure that many claim to be more difficult than the procedure used
to create it.

Most of the so called "Big 8" newsgroup hierarchies are propagated
around the world, except for certain countries that restrict open and
free exchange of ideas and discussion. The rec hierarchy is one of the
Big 8, of which rec.pyrotechnics is simply one member. Other Big 8
hierarchies are sci, biz, mil, gov, and others, although not all were
initiial members of the Big 8.

For the most part, the majority of Big 8 posts are archived, which
means that even posts made years ago can be recalled from one or more
of the archive sites (mostly at university computing centers). IIRC,
something called DejaNew (operated by DEC?) became first commercial
archive site back around 10 years ago, and ultimately acquired by and
is still operated by Google (which began life like Web Crawler as a
search engine).

IMHO, the main advantage of Usenet NGs is twofold. Their nearly
worldwide propagation allows the near real-time participation by
individuals throughout the world. There second most valuable attribute
is that Big 8 newsgroups are so extensively archived, allowing topic
posts made many years ago to be quickly retrieved. The body of
information available is therefore very comprehensive and features
contributions made by many people over many years. Consequently, it
provides a very rich collection of information for researchers,
students, and writers, and others.

Other dial-up bulletin boards, time-sharing services, and other types
of posting and discussion systems (such as BIX, Compuserve, and even
AOL) predated public access avilability to the Internet, the cost of
long term data storage on these systems pretty well precluded them
archiving posts made to discussion groups that functioned very similar
to Newsgroups. Consequently, many posts of great value were ultimately
lost forever when to posts to these systems either timed-out or the
systems thenselves were shut down.

I thought this worth posting, since several rec.pyro readers are
evidently newcomers to the on-line world, and sometimes don't
understand the terminology used in reference to the various Internet
services, the differences between them, and why each exists.

In closing, while I was for many years a participant in the PML, FTP,
BIX, Compuserve, and various other sources of fireworks information, by
far the most valuable source of pyro information throughout the
years...where the good information obtained compares favorable to that
in my collection of fireworks texts. Sadly, many of the great posters
like Bill Nelson, Tom Peregrin, and so many others are now gone, but
thankfully been replaced by many other helpful and competent posters.

Hope this helps just a little.

Harry C.














pappy177 wrote:
that is correct Don , may wish to talk to you too mate as i would like
to know who runs this site.
I own a site and may like to set you top peeps up with a forum that you
run.
it would not be part of the main site other than links to each other ,
you pick moderators,peeps you want , you can ban bull*** posts and
peeps that do them.
you can have a front page and forums broken up in sections
new posts go to the top so no one has to look for them.
look at my site and forums
http://4peeps.com/ivb/index.php?act=home
http://4peeps.com/ivb/index.php?s=d8e8eb30d962f32c4edf07b0fdb7d7d3&; as
i said , you will run it ,you guys pick your staff , myself and my
partners will set it up and maintain it , but you run it , you can even
allow only who you want to join.

I have the space , i have lots of bandwidth , and i like fireworks.
jeff

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