CompuServe Forums List

[John Francis]

Hi! Hope everybody's well.

If it's still intended to keep the CompuServe Forums List up to date--and I hope so, it's a very useful service, much better than CompuServe's own forum index--here's an update.

Delete:

Mozilla/Netscape Forum
Discuss and get user-to-user help with Mozilla, Firebird, Netscape 7 and older legacy Netscape browsers.

Change:

Netscape/Mozilla Forum
Discuss and get user-to-user help with Mozilla, Firebird, Netscape 7 and older legacy Netscape browsers.

To:

Netscape Browser Forum
Discuss and get user-to-user help with Netscape 8 and older legacy Netscape browsers.

Link this to: http://community.compuserve.com/n/pf...ws-nscpbrowser

Incidentally, CompuServe's forums are now "powered by Netscape." The CIS header has been replaced by a Netscape header, and if you click in the upper left corner you're taken to the Netscape home page. The CompuServe home page is still online and you can get there via www.compuserve.com, but it's pretty much been taken out of the loop. What this portends, I've no idea.

[Judy G. Russell]

We will have to think this through, John. As much as I understand the usefulness of the list, I did it personally as a labor of love for Compuserve, and Compuserve doesn't exist any more.

[davidh]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

We will have to think this through, John. As much as I understand the usefulness of the list, I did it personally as a labor of love for Compuserve, and Compuserve doesn't exist any more.

Even though the list is out of date, it's orders of magnitude better than what is now on the forum_center page on CS. There, there is just a list of links that you are supposed to cut and paste into your RSS reader. If you actually click on the links you just get a display of some XML code, which is basically useless.

I wonder if anybody will complain? and if they do, whether AOL will fix it within a month or a year?

David H.

[davidh]

The list of forums on Compuserve is broken but the one on Netscape works.

Go to www.netscape.com and click on "community" on the left hand side of the page.

David H.

[Judy G. Russell]

Bottom line: There is no such thing as Compuserve anymore. Netscape lives on, for what it's worth. Compuserve is dead.

[davidh]

"Dead" but they didn't put all the bones in the grave yet. Compuserve.de still has the old logo, and catholiconline still has old web interface (and maybe HMI, too?, but zilcho traffic).

:-( David H.

[Judy G. Russell]

Originally Posted by davidh

"Dead" but they didn't put all the bones in the grave yet.

Give them time. They'll bury it all as soon as the cash cow quits giving milk.

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Give them time. They'll bury it all as soon as the cash cow quits giving milk.

The present plan is to sell it to Bill Gates.

[Judy G. Russell]

Originally Posted by Dan in Saint Louis

The present plan is to sell it to Bill Gates.

Good heavens. You're joking, yes?

[davidh]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Good heavens. You're joking, yes?

Maybe not? I saw a msg in one of the CS forums yesterday in which the writer opined that AOL would eventually become part of MSN to fulfill the last step of a complete transformation to the "dark side".

BTW
The blog system that MS sold to Communist China requests posters not to use profane/obscene language when it detects such words as "democracy" and "human rights" in posts.

"The love of money..., etc."

:-(
David H.

We have met the "evil empire" and "they is us", Pogo

[Judy G. Russell]

Originally Posted by davidh

Maybe not? I saw a msg in one of the CS forums yesterday in which the writer opined that AOL would eventually become part of MSN to fulfill the last step of a complete transformation to the "dark side".

I thought it hit the darkest of all possible dark sides when CS sold out to AOL!

Originally Posted by davidh

BTW
The blog system that MS sold to Communist China requests posters not to use profane/obscene language when it detects such words as "democracy" and "human rights" in posts.

Oh my...

[davidh]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

I thought it hit the darkest of all possible dark sides when CS sold out to AOL!

I think Worldcomm bought CS, kept the network, and sold the service to AOL. Perhaps things would have been different if Worldcomm management had been less criminal?

I believe that Netscape released Netscape code *before* AOL bought them, so AOL probably didn't help Mozilla a whole lot, but at least they did not try hard to kill it as MS did to Netscape.

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Oh my...

Pardon my language. I'll try not to use such off-color language again. Perhaps such offensive material should be restricted to the dungeon?

[Judy G. Russell]

Originally Posted by davidh

I think Worldcomm bought CS, kept the network, and sold the service to AOL. Perhaps things would have been different if Worldcomm management had been less criminal?

It was, as I recall, like one of those three-way trades among sports teams: had AOL not been standing by, checkbook in hand, Worldcom would not have been a player in the deal. All Worldcom ever wanted was the network.

[earler]

By the time hrb sold CompuServe, the only part of it with any real value was the network services division. Hrb's greed for high dividends prevented CompuServe from making the necessary investments to revamp its systems. This was worsened by the new management's refusal to adopt a fixed monthly fee system immediately after aol had done so. I well recall all this because I was in columbus shortly after aol's announcement. We were told that CompuServe would never abandon the per minute charges since this would be unprofitable.

Of course, it was also quite true (and evident to those who read its 10q's and 10k's) that aol never really earned much money. It was all smoke and mirrors, as the time-warner shareholders finally learned after the takeover by aol.

-er

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Originally Posted by Judy G. Russell

Good heavens. You're joking, yes?

http://news.com.com/NY+Post+Time+Warner,+Microsoft+in+talks+over+AOL/2100-1038_3-5866559.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwar...9212223,00.htm

[Judy G. Russell]

Oh my... now isn't that interesting...

[davidh]

Originally Posted by davidh

There, there is just a list of links that you are supposed to cut and paste into your RSS reader.
David H.

BTW http://blogsearch.google.com let's you do some interesting stuff.

FWIW
Here's my post in the CS Netscape forum (not CS Mozilla, anymore) about what I found out about how to use RSS, Firefox, eRSS reader, and blogsearch to make one's own customized news feeds.

http://community.netscape.com/n/pfx/...ws-nscpbrowser

David H.

[davidh]

Today, Oct 3, I just went to www.compuserve.com to try out the new communities (forums) page that is accessible by clicking on a list on the left side of www.compuserve.com

The new communities (forums) page has a link to a new list of forums and tells how to access them by RSS. Unfortunately it appears partly broken at the moment. However, I was able to go to the "news" forum by following the link in the list of forums on this tapcis web site, and then subscribe by RSS to the "news" forum.

I'm using firefox, so I just clicked on the red icon in the lower right corner of firefox window while viewing the main page of the CS (new NS , i guess) news forum.

FF put the RSS feed for CS news forum into my FF bookmarks and it seemed to work ok.

This looks like a "good thing". It might even bring back some OLR type functionality to the process of following forums. I assume that this would require a RSS reader that has such (off line) functions.

The only other forum I tried was Classic CS support and it did not work. "Pretended" to work but "... failed ..." came up in FF bookmark entry for Class support. Hopefully most of the forums will have RSS working from the RSS list in the list accessible from the main page(s) soon. As of right this minute there appears to be an HTML / XML bug that it making it so that one has to go to the forum home page to subscribe to RSS, instead of via the list of RSS forums.

BTW I noticed that Compuserve AP, Reuters, CNN, etc. news is now "Netscape News (for Compusersve)" too.

I tried clicking on "married and flirting" chat on home page www.compuserve.com to see what logo would appear, but it brought up a page asking me to subscribe to CS 2000. That chat link has been there for years and years so I assume that infidelity must be alive and well at least as far as AOL ad revenue goes.

David H.

[MollyM/CA]

I tried clicking on "married and flirting" chat . . . I assume that infidelity must be alive and well at least as far as AOL ad revenue goes.

The things you can learn on TapCis! As Fernando pointed out in his welcome message to me many years ago.

[Judy G. Russell]

Originally Posted by davidh

This looks like a "good thing". It might even bring back some OLR type functionality to the process of following forums. I assume that this would require a RSS reader that has such (off line) functions.

There's no way to reply a forum message you're alerted to via the RSS feed.