tallship

@jupiter_rowland @danie10 @thenexusofprivacy @mikedev

Okay first I should state that I've never actually said that masto isn't a solid and capable platform. It is, but at a severe cost - the design of masto, notwithstanding the insistence on maintaining a historically lackluster feature set when compared with almost any other Fediverse software, is such that it really isn't built for #DeSoc - it really strives to be some sort of unachievable ideal for the monolithic silo model.

No one but me seems to site this nowadays, but masto doesn't even really shine with respect to cost in terms of system resources and stability until you approach the 20,000 user account mark. What? Why would you do that? Back when these stats were being bandied about, Pleroma was showcasing its new #Gopher protocol (browsing) support, and reminding people that it felt perfectly at home on an #rPi. No such claim was ever made for masto, lolz. That doesn't mean that the other platforms aren't just as capable of scaling vertically... but... why? Who's going to foot the bill? Who's going to manage all of those un-vetted people creating accounts on your machines? Why would someone bother with that in the first place?

Community? Nope - there's no sense of community on masto servers, and I'll get to that later. Because you want to create your own private Idaho? Probably. mastodon.social is one of, if not the, largest deprecated monolithic silos existing in the Fediverse today. Why? What possible benefit could be derived by driving a million people into a single funnel under the auspices of telling them that they're escaping that very same model? It's ludicrous.

No matter what happens in the short term, Eugen is assured of his parachute and comfortable retirement fund, except for the part where he forgot to have his new significant other sign a pre-nup - that might dash his net worth later, but that's another consideration entirely. I hope his marriage is actually a long and fruitful one that lasts forever, he's not a bad guy, he's just been courted and corrupted by the "Ooh shiney" phenomenon of financial entrapments that come with relative success in the media and pop culture.

The reason masto needs to be hard forked (several times, IMO) is not to create a better masto that will lend itself to DeSoc, #smolweb, and self-hosting on people's home networks, but rather, to further dilute the trademark, and especially the brand, effectively killing it if possible, supplanting it with Fediverse instead. People like to bounce around that term inclusivity, well, this accomplishes that.

Forks of masto aren't going to create a better masto. No way. Sure, some improvements on this one, other features on that one, but dilution of the brand until it is only as significant as any other deserving Fediverse platform is and should be the ultimate goal. It's not well suited, architecturally for horizontal scaling anyway, unless you don't mind throwing all those system resources at it that could better serve you elsewhere with something like #GoToSocial or one of the #Misskey and #Pleroma family fork members.

True leaders in the Fediverse will initially be those platforms that have planned ahead and accommodate other DeSoc protocols, arguably Fediverse protocols, at this time, #Diaspora, #OStatus, #Nomad, #Zot, and even others that some #Fedizens turn their noses up at, like #nostr and #Bluesky's #ATP. #ActivityPub is NOT the end-all, be-all for the future. It is the golden calf of today, and just as others that have come before, it will morph and evolve or be obviated by others that will be plugged into the platforms currently running it - #Friendica, #Hubzilla, and Streams are prime examples of this, and Friendica especially, considering it's the only extant original member of the Fediverse for all intents and purposes. One could say that Friendica is the #Slackware of the Fediverse, lolz.

With respect to Friendica in particular, but also Hubzilla and others that have arrived at this obvious conclusion, ActivityPub is merely the major vehicle by which it communicates with other decentralized social communications systems on the Internet. I don't think it has ever lost sight of that, like another of its contemporaries, #GNU_Social did.

Hemming large masses of people onto a single (and at this time appearing to be) and open walled garden has the immediate effect of control over large swaths of population - you can say this, but not that. You can think this, but not that. You can be this, but not that. You can believe this, but not that - under penalty of excommunication.

In reality, we don't have strong friendships with our neighbors - that's why we have fences. We wave to them and say hi, call the cops when their on vacation and see someone suspicious lurking about their property. That's about the extent of being a neighbor. We invite our friends and coworkers over for BBQ's and to swim in our pools, not so much our neighbors.

The current masto social architecture is the antithesis of that, and so is it's physical architecture - put all the lobsters in the same pot of boiling water. Turn on and off their ability to speak all at once. Force them en masse to endure advertising blitzes (Oh, mark my word that's coming) decided upon by the server admin. It's like Baba O'Reilly by The Who - "Meet the new boss, Same as the old boss".

That's not the promise of Fediverse. it's the antonym.

masto also hinders innovation, attempting to define, dictate even, what should and should not be available - Nomadic identity is but one emerging facet of what is fracturing the masto monopolistic initiative - and that's a good thing, because with the help of FEPs, already, others are adopting various cooperative models for this as well, but discussing that now, and here, at this time, is more of a tangent so I'll get back to the point.

Jupiter:
> That's why people still fork Mastodon to add features that are available just about everywhere else.

Indeed it is, and why it has managed to enjoy a reasonable level of notoriety. There's also the wholly undeserved notion of community that actually, in direct opposition to, masto has continually sought to break and in a very big way, break.

There are certainly platforms (mostly forumware) that curate a sense of community, but those days are largely past. Whether it was #gplus, #Myspace, #Faceplant, #InstaSPAM, or #Twitter; because just as it is in real life, #COMMUNITY is that which you define for yourself through your connections - your follows and those who choose to follow your account. The biggest failures in the Fediverse that I've personally observed are those that seek to localize, geographically or by shared interest, a monolithic ivory tower of sameness and similarity amongst people.

I felt so awful for one guy who, so enthusiastically upon discovering the Fediverse, started registering domain names corresponding to several states, thinking that he would be successful in launching a geographically oriented family of masto based servers tending to the shared interests of people by offering them a place to congregate. He quickly discovered the fatal flaw in his model, but was stuck with hefty data center bills to maintain all these masto servers that were largely uninhabited.

Trying to get rid of your masto subscribers when you figure out that you need to egress from it is not an easy task without disenfranchising your user base. I know, because a few years back, not long after @Gled archived his #mastodo fork and urged everyone to adopt Pleroma instead, I face the daunting task of trying to convince my user base to migrate elsewhere - it took more than a year to accomplish!

Danie:
> thing is though there are also many existing alternatives to Mastodon already on the Fediverse, so why fork it?

In a nutshell, because it serves to, at the very least, dilute the masto brand, and more likely kill it. It has served its purpose and now that it has been exposed as a vehicle antithetical to #DeSoc, it's time to deprecate it.

My introduction to the #Fediverse occurred when I stumbled upon an earlier incarnation of #Friendica, started looking at #Red_Matrix, and discovered that the monolithic model, if not having been shown the door, had at least been handed its hat.

The problem at that time, was the effect of Prettiness, and of course, UX. Friendica wasn't too bad in that latter sense, when compared to that of Faceplant, but it sure didn't even come close to being as pretty as Faceplant - or even Myspace, which had only recently fallen into the abyss. That's changed A LOT, even in just the past year, with respect to Friendica and Hubzilla - they're much more intuitive for a layperson parachuting to the ground after jumping from the cesspit over at Faceplant.

I think that more than anything, not being pretty enough for the subjugated chattel coming from Twitter and Faceplant, was the most difficult thing for onboarders to embrace. Mike placed all of his focus on functionality and forward thinking vision with respect to what these and later efforts could provide the masses, but the "prettification" was left to others who didn't step up for the challenge for many years. I'm all for features six-ways to Sunday, but I also feel that many things need to be hidden from the landing page a new user sees upon account creation - the very basics they expect should be there, akin to those available in the deprecated monolithic space; users expect this, but they don't yet know they not only want, but really need all of these other feature sets too, yet some things should left, IMO, to be discovered later by the user.

And in my conversations years ago with Mike, I gleaned as much from him: "Here's this really bitchen gift for the masses, it does all this kewl stuff, now I leave it up to others to make it pretty" (and with a sense of coherency that these former subjugated chattel can initially get their heads around). Putting all that stuff right in their face was awe inspiring, but foreboding at the same time for many.

Well, finally, people are making it pretty :) And they're also moving much of the overwhelming busy-ness elsewhere in the UI. As a result, there's been an explosion of adoption - not even primarily from former masto folks either.

I'd like to touch on the notion of community one more time in closing. It might be convenient for n00bie onboarders to glean a bit about how a particular platform functions, but just like in your own neighborhood where you live, you make friends elsewhere mostly - at work, at functions of the hobbies you engage in, with friends you meet at the grocery store or libraries, and the beaches or on hiking or 4x4 weekend excursions. It's the same way in the Fediverse, you make your friends through connections here and there through people you discover along the way, and 99% of them ARE NOT on your particular server instance.

They don't need to be either, because this is the Fediverse :)

#tallship #FOSS

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Okay it's one of those, "What's peculiar here?" kinda things.

Consider the source itself. And I certainly don't mean code of any sort. 'Why' would 'They' cite Wikipedia, as good a resource as anyone might think it to be?

Why not cite yourself? Instead of citing someone else - who will merely turn right around and cite you as the ultimate source reference?

#FOSS #DOS, get it? I was rather amused. Anyway, Here it is.

#tallship #Microsoft h/t to: @csolisr@azkware.net You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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This is an example of a marketplace listing in Flohmarkt.

What "I" did here...

- Went to the "All" tab over at Flen's Market - Much like PeerTube, there's a Home, Local, and All tab, the latter of which includes items from other instances that you've manually federated with within the radius you've specified from your location.
- Next, there's a choice to make if you're interested in an item. You can register for a local account (I don't see any reason to do that unless you want to post a listing on that particular server), or you can remotely add yourself (like I did). Since the remote features don't quite seamlessly work with Mitra, I tried this from a masto server - no joy. I tried it from another masto server (a masto fork) - no problem this time, even on an older version of masto. That was humorous to me, as I've a bit of disdain for mastopub servers and found it amusing that even some of the instances running the very latest version of masto won't work, while older one's based on forks do; but I've got a twisted sense of humor.
- So next, you can engage with the seller directly from your local instance on most Fediverse platforms (support is added for various additional Fediverse platforms all the time). In this case, (visible because I chose the "All" tab), the particular item was from yet another #Fohmarkt server elsewhere - this is a very nice feature, like #DeSoc #eBay!!!
- From there, once you boost the item in the listing, others can see it in their streams, boost it further, make arrangements directly with the seller, etc. Kinda Kewl.

This is different from how most other attempts to deliver a marketplace into the #Fediverse. Usually, what I've seen is someone trying to integrate the functionality local to a platform, which networks (via ActivityPub federation) only with other like platforms. That's not a Fediverse solution - that's a platform solution and leaves everyone else on the fediverse not running that particular platform disenfranchised.

For example, using the Epicyon server platform as an example, it is first to be understood that this particular server platform is designed for very small numbers of user accounts per each instance. You also have to manually contact the admin of remote Epicyon servers yourself (or be contacted by them), then mutually agree to federate each other's marketplaces separately and distinct from any wider federation configurations your server has. Considering the inconveniences with locating other Epicyon instances that may or may not have enabled and made use of their marketplaces and establishing a mutual publishing agreement, coupled with the likelihood that each of your instances between 1 and 10 users, posting an item in the marketplace has a pretty high probability of being more effort than its worth - especially since it dosn't federate with any other Fediverse platforms.

Others follow a similar design, but also generally operate like normal #ActivityPub federation using a blacklist method, as well as being able to accommodate potentially hundreds, or even thousands of users per each instance (yeah, I know, semi-monolithic); so even if those marketplaces didn't already automatically federate across the Fediverse with all instances of other like server platforms, it's still a huge improvement over the previously discussed smolweb platform's model.

But they're still not Fediverse wide...

This is where Flohmarkt really starts to shine - it's fully Federating (Still a WIP wrt some platforms - see the wiki for particulars) across the entire #ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse.

You can check for the latest particulars on Flohmarkt's current Federation status if you're interested in your particular Fediverse platform and level of interoperation with Flohmarkt instances.

I do have some criticisms of the particular functionality in federating that the developers have chosen to incorporate, however. Basically, The server admin still needs to manually federate item listings between the local instance and other remote Flohmarkt servers. It doesn't need to be this way however, but one must concede that after going over the documentation and seeing that the concern's of the dev team are over unchecked spam, phishing, poor quality ads, etc., I find it to be a very reasonable concern, although I'm still not comfortable with how the Dev team has hard-coded this conditional into the server's capability, when a slightly different approach might afford self-hosters much greater flexibility and incintive for adoption; namely:

- Make the current model the default
- Enable other configurations for federating between other Flohmarkt servers (and eventually, other platform marketplaces) via either simple configuration files, runtime arguments, or via a GUI in an admin control panel, including that of an uninhibited fully blacklist model of sharing listings between Flohmarkt servers.

I generally tend to think that hard-wired, opinionated configuration choices are a less than ideal (usually bad idea) than acknowledging issues surrounding such decisions and then choosing a default while affording server admins (or users themselves) of being able to manage the options for themselves. This is one of those cases where I feel it could make a huge difference in the viabilty and adoption potential for this, "Strictly Federating Marketplace" Fediverse platform.

The other (very minor) criticism I have for Flohmarkt is the pin & string radius solution as it is currently implemented:

- It's determined by the server admin, instance wide
- It's determined by the server location, or some other arbitrarily decided locale

The radius is a great idea, but I think the following would go a long way towards improving the utility of this feature set:

- The server admin decides whether to enable user-level radius configs or server level, as is the case at this time.
- Local users determine, and have control over whether an established is applied to either their entire user profile's repertoire of items listed, or on a per item basis.
- If he user chooses a per item radius, each listing could have a different radius established.
- The local users have location radius specifications that can be based on different criteria, such as pinning a location on a map of their choice, by country (the free IP2Location databases can accommodate this behavior).
- The user's particular radius settings for each listing must be preserved and observed by all federating remote Flohmarkt server instances (but not by individual remote user shares/boosts, which should remain unrestricted).

This Radius feature is extremely powerful and I think that every effort of the development team to exploit the potential of this feature set should be a major consideration. Eventually, Flohmarkt servers will federate with other server platform types, exchanging listings between say, Flohmarkt servers and Friendica servers, etc.. but the awesome power unleashed through following and boosting capabilities that are already fully available to remote users to share with others holds the potential at this very time to make Flohmarkt item listings ubiquitous across the entire Fediverse, ... And that is really kewl :)

Well, I'd rather tease your interest and see you go checkout more for yourself rather than feed you everything you wanna know about a really kewl #social_commerce communications tool - you really should experience how kewl it is for yourself.

I couldn't locate a #Matrix support room for Flohmarkt like most contemporary software products maintain in the FOSS world, but the more traditional irc chan #flohmarkt at #LiberaChat is readily available, and of course, there's the issue tracker at the Codeberg repo I previously linked to above.

What are your thoughts and impressions on this novel approach to embedding the marketplace commerce structure into potentially everyone's social streams in the form of both a dedicated platform and as passive feeds via the intervention of other #Fedizens who share and boost individual items and listings in Flohmarkt?

I hope that helps! Enjoy!

#tallship #FOSS #Marketplace #eBay #I_can_haz_Cheezburgerz? 🍔
@grindhold @me @flohmarkt_support #flohmarkt_support

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RE: https://fedi.markets/users/Yonggan/items/f7f7f8d1-6279-4249-890a-bdd97340d218

@Yonggan

@coffeegeek

Hi Mark,

I've got a follow up here for you :)

A few items, but for the tl;dr please scroll down towards the end. The first few appear to be precisely what you asked for, the third is my rather enthusiastic recommendation.

I believe this first one is the plugin I mentioned, and was found to be quite lacking, further, frustrating to most - This showcases the glaring problem associated with conflating mastodon with that of the #Fediverse - most things break, early and often, over and over again.

- A simple share button that breaks about a fourth of share attempts:

Here's Terrence Eden's article on the Share on Mastodon plugin. I thought a link to this article best, as it leaves you lots of breadcrumbs to pick up along the way to the plugins page at WordPress. Including Jan's blog article. I believe this was the one with the least utility, that caused the most problems with people, which is quite a bit more than frustrating for a lot of people, angering many. masto isn't even the big man on campus anymore - those days have passed, and are in the past; it's just one of many increasingly popular platforms that people use in the ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse.

I believe Jan is incorrect on the number of images that masto can accommodate - yes it used to be four, but lately, when authoring articles in the Fediverse with platforms that accommodate inline media in the posts, I've noticed that masto actually will include 5 images, the rest it summarily discards, making for an even more confusing event for those on masto (NGI Zero funding has just been secured BTW, to at least bring masto into the 21st century with Quote Posts - like pretty much everyone else has had for a long time, some for a decade now).

Perhaps in time this will improve, or you can get into it with the aid of some of the others below, or just move past all that and install the plugin at the end of it all which performs famously ;)

- Conflating mastopub with the Fediverse is a Bad thing:

I've heard a few good testimonies of how well the Fediverse share button performs. Note that no where in the description or documentation is the word mastodon used; no one is mislead to believe that there is such a thing as a mastodon network - because there isn't.

- People should be offered the opportunity to share interesting content into (and throughout) the Fediverse, not some small slice of the available platform choices existing there:

This next option was heavily inspired by the old AddToAny plugin back when a kazillion different silos were popular and extant. I remember using that plugin to support sharing across upwards of 30 or so various social networking, bookmarking, link aggregation, and other types of obscure sites in far flung places of the world. I've also heard some good things about this solution too - please take note of all the certified platforms that it supports, and yes, mastopub is one of those ;)

If you do choose this method, do please join us in the Fediverse-City Matrix room to offer a review / evaluation as to how well Fediverse Share works for you. Several project leads there are always interested in viable solutions that are inclusive and accommodate the wider community at large without any marginalization through misleading brand recognition.

I do like the colorful buttons too in the demo here. I also like the non-traditional "Lorem ipsum" example prose too. I find it refreshing :)

- Either through simple naivety or conscious exclusionary arrogance, here's some other masto branded share options, at least one, IIRC, was much less than satisfactory, but I typically don't traffic mastodon branded things anymore when the insinuation is that the product represents the Fediverse. You may find, however, that one of these is just what you need, and that with a little bit of tweaking will fit nicely into your website's business processes. A little branding can go a long way, but sometimes a solution depends on, for example, a "share API endpoint", not strictly compliant with the W3C's published specifications, that serves to marginalize all other platforms by excluding them (that's commonly regarded as EEE). I'll just post the links w/o commentary:
- mastodon share button
- Share on mastodon button
- MastodonShare
- Toot Proxy
- Yet another mastodon share button
*Share to mastodon

There's another utility by Nikita Karamov (creator of the Toot Proxy above) that doesn't embrace the predatory branding of a diluted trademark:

- Share₂Fedi - Share₂Fedi isn't a button, exactly, but the functionality is there and it is inclusive of the larger diaspora of the ActivityPub powered portions of the Fediverse, avoiding any sort of marginalization as a result of marketing through leveraging overt, and predatory branding campaigns.

Alright, I know you're interested in getting to the good part. Yes, I'm guilty of that same sort of mindset that makes you scroll down to the bottom of the ToS before you can click on the submit button. But before we get to the tl;dr:, we have one more which in spirit at the very least, is promising, I encourage you to read it:

- Honorable mention goes to shareOnFediverse, which works even with GNU Social, Diaspora, PixelFed, Hubzilla, Lemmy, Friendica, Kbin, Misskey, Pleroma, Etc.

# tl;dr:

That bit of markdown above (the H1) may not show up on your platform, depending. Regardless, you've arrived. Here's the solution that I personally recommend, a very fine solution that not only allows one to share their content into the Fediverse by providing links back to their website, but providing the gateway for people in the Fediverse, #Fedizens, if you will, to engage the authors of news and blog and lifestyle and cookbook style tutorial and HowTo sites, directly, with two way commenting and sharing of dialog in true open and participatory fashion:

First, (and it has indeed come a long way since the post of this article), a page on how exceedingly simple it is to install and configure this, the WordPress ActivityPub Plugin:

- Making the Social Web a Better Place: ActivityPub for WordPress Joins the Automattic Family

Bear in mind that the plugin was in beta at the time, so never mind the sourpusses in the comments who wanted it, and yet couldn't have it because they weren't self-hosting #WordPress. I must reiterate that development has come a long way, the plugin is in general production release and available for any WordPress site, managed, self-hosted, or otherwise, and it's got a powerful feature set.

Posting links back to clear-net websites on the open Internet is fine, it's not like clicking a share to Faceplant or InstaSPAM button when you share an article that you like into the Fediverse, After all, it's every blogger's mission to drive traffic to their own site (not Faceplant or InstaSPAM), but then your visitors are limited to offering comment replies in the manner of a form submission on the site that really only allows you to subscribe your email for subsequent comment notifications for the article or thread that your commenters spawned.

What the #ActivityPub plugin enables for those who engage with you, is to provide an instant audience of several million MAU (monthly active users) throughout the Fediverse who will be able to directly participate and engage in the conversation from their own native Fediverse platforms, receiving replies as well.

I've called this, A Game Changer, before. A few times, actually. @matthias@pfefferle.org @pfefferle and his small team of developers created and curated this plugin that enables this hitherto (mostly) inaccessible feature set for the masses. Literally anyone in the ActivityPub portion of the Fediverse can now comment and reply to the comments of others on WordPress sites, which is pretty much like 40% of the entire word wide web nowadays, and you can check this out for yourself right now by visiting his blog at https://notiz.blog/ in the comment section of any one of his articles.

There were some issues, which could be attributed to the predatory marketing practices by Mastodon gGmbH, whereby a lot of what is actually ActivityPub or Fediverse centric was being referred to, and worse, attributed to mastodon in one sense or another, further diluting their trademark which places it in jeopardy of losing its registration (the first item in mastodon's general guidelines states, "Only use the Mastodon marks to accurately identify those goods or services that are built using the Mastodon software." - but the defense of trademarks themselves is another matter entirely, although the discussion has come up many times with the responsible parties, often, in very heated, public, forums.

Anyway, Mattias and his team have become incrementally more mindful of placing emphasis upon #Fediverse, the brand, instead of masto, the brand, and that's a good thing because it goes a long way toward correcting the existing confusion that exists due to the abuse certain marketing personalities have, and continue to pursue. Indeed, the plugin itself is named ActivityPub, which is appropriate - and it certainly is not an exclusive tool for mastopub.

You can download the latest and greatest version of the WordPress ActivityPub Plugin HERE, which was released just 3 days ago, and I know because I was on the periphery of an issue that was resolved, making this an even more relevant and quickly becoming (IMO) essential tool for #DeSoC and Fediverse aware bloggers, journalists, chefs, and anyone else that knows they can benefit from deploying their own WordPress site for business or personal use in communicating with the world beyond the walls of the deprecated, proprietary, privacy mining monolithic silos.

In wrapping things up here, it goes without saying that one of the very most powerful aspects of the #WordPress_ActivityPub_Plugin isn't actually that people can respond to your published articles from the comfort of myriad clients such as #FediLab, #Husky, #Phanpy, or the native web or desktop interface for their Fediverse instance, but the reality that they can simply follow you, on your blog, and receive your blog or news or HowTo articles in their streams whenever you publish a new item. From there, they can boost (more exposure for your published works), reply (of course), and even offer a bit of narrative introducing your work with a #Quote_Post. It's like a butterfly affect, or concentric circles emanating from one little plop of a pebble into a pond.

Oh, one more thing, there's nothing preventing you from including one of the pretty little Fediverse Share buttons either, in conjunction with the ActivityPub plugin. After all, some folks like to comment and let you know their thoughts, while others prefer to simply share it with others who will also tell two friends or themselves offer comments to your articles - it's a win win for everyone on both sides of the line that divides the Fediverse from those so-called Big Tech institutions comprising the walled gardens of subjugation by the #Sunnyvale_Syndrome.

I hope you've found this helpful, I didn't want to send you on an errand of discovery without making sure that there's been some decent coverage of several different alternatives currently available for you.

All the best!

#tallship #FOSS, #Automattic @pfefferle

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Yes! Yes! Yes!

As the saying goes, "Real BOFH use tar and rsync!"

The blog article is an excellent treatment of using tar along with SSH to effect a reliable backup plan and schedule.

Another couple of great fav GoTo solutions of mine have always been Duplicity and Duply for those not comfortable rolling their own scripts w/SSH, tar, and/or rsync ​​

Thank you very much for sharing this @nixCraft !!!

#tallship #DR #backup #tar #rsync #SSH #Systems_Administration You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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RE: mastodon.social/users/nixCraft/statuses/112276456842443382

There is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe. Scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have triple-checked and confirmed that depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at bafflingly different rates. Live Science explains more, including how scientists are ruling out a measurement error as the cause of the “Hubble Tension.” https://flip.it/VDvM6g
#Science #Space #Hubble #HubbleTension #Universe #JWST

Okay I thought I'd share this recent post here on the #Fediverse. To give it some context, it's an answer to a common question, often a misunderstanding (even by many knowledgeable folks) as to just how we got here.

So first, the question, posed HERE.

And my answer follows below:

There's a lot of apples and oranges here. And everyone had a lot of good points made, but your question is simple, and has a very simple answer. I'll endeavor to address that directly, but do need to tend to some of what has already been said.

## Scroll down to the tl;dr for the succinct answer of your question

Ethernet, ARCNET, Token Ring, Thick net (RG-59), Thin net (RG-58 A/U), and UTP (Cat 3, Cat 5, and Cat 6 unshielded twisted pair, Etc.) really have zero bearing on your question insofar as IP is concerned. All of these specifications relate to the definition of technologies that, although are indeed addressed in the OSI model which is indeed very much in use to this day,but are outside the scope of Internet Protocol. I'll come back to this in a minute.

It's quite common to say TCP/IP, but really, it's just IP. For example, we have TCP ports and we have UDP ports in firewalling. i.e., TCP is Transmission Control Protocol and handles the delivery of data in the form of packets. IP handles the routing itself so those messages can arrive to and from the end points. Uniform Data Protocol is another delivery system that does not guarantee arrival but operates on a best effort basis, while TCP is much chattier as it guarantees delivery and retransmission of missed packets - UDP is pretty efficient but in the case of say, a phone call, a packet here and there won't be missed by the human ear.

That's a very simplistic high level-view that will only stand up to the most basic of scrutiny, but this isn't a class on internetworking ;) If you just want to be able to understand conceptually, my definition will suffice.

Networking (LAN) topologies like Token Ring, ARCNET, and Ethernet aren't anywhere in the IP stack, but figure prominently in the OSI stack. I'm not going to go into the details of how these work, or the physical connection methods used like Vampire Taps, Thin net, or twisted pair with RJ-45 terminators, but their relationship will become obvious in a moment.

The OSI model unfolds like so, remember this little mnemonic to keep it straight so you always know:

> People Don't Need To See Paula Abdul

Okay, touched on already, but not really treated, is the description of that little memory aid.

> Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application layers (From bottom to top).

The physical and Data Link layers cover things like the cabling methods described above,and you're probably familiar with MAC Addresses (medium access control) on NICs (network interface controller). These correlate to the first two layers of the OSI stack, namely, the Physical (obvious - you can touch it), and the Data Link layer - how each host's NIC and switches on each LAN segment talk to each other and decide which packets are designated for whom (People Don't).

In software engineering, we're concerned mostly with the Session, Presentation, and Application layers (See Paula Abdul). Detailed explanation of these top three layers is outside the scope of this discussion.

The Beauty of the OSI model is that each layer on one host (or program) talks to exclusively with the same layer of the program or hardware on the other host it is communicating with - or so it believes it is, because, as should be obvious, is has to pass its information down the stack to the next layer below itself, and then when it arrives at the other host, it passes that information back up the stack until it reaches the very top (Abdul) of the stack - the application.

Not all communication involves all of the stacks. At the LAN (Local Area Network) level, we're mostly concerned with the Physical and Data Link layers - we're just trying to get some packet that we aren't concerned about the contents of from one box to another. But that packet probably includes information that goes all the way up the stack.

For instance, NIC #1 has the MAC: 00:b0:d0:63:c2:26 and NIC #2 has a MAC of 00:00:5e:c0:53:af. There's communication between these two NICs over the Ethernet on this LAN segment. One says I have a packet for 00:00:5e:c0:53:af and then two answers and says, "Hey that's me!" Nobody else has that address on the LAN, so they don't answer and stop listening for the payload.

Now for Internet Protocol (IP) and TCP/UDP (Transmission Control Protocol and User Datagram Protocol):

IP corresponds to Layer 3 (Need) - the Network Layer of the **OSI Model.

TCP and UDP correspond to Layer 4 (To) - the Transport Layer of the OSI model.

That covers the entire OSI model and how TCP/IP correspond to it - almost. You're not getting off that easy today.

There's actually a bit of conflation and overlapping there. Just like in real life, it's never that cut and dried. For that, we have the following excellent explanation and drill down thanks to Julia Evans:

- Layer 2 (Don't) corresponds to Ethernet.
- Layer 3 (Need) corresponds to IP.
- Layer 4 (To) corresponds to TCP or UDP (or ICMP etc)
- Layer 7 (Abdul) corresponds to whatever is inside the TCP or UDP packet (for example a DNS query)

You may wish to give her page a gander for just a bit more of a deeper dive.

Now let's talk about what might be a bit of a misconception on the part of some, or at least, a bit of a foggy conflation between that of the specification of the OSI model and a Company called Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN) a government contractor tasked with developing the IP stack networking code.

The TCP/IP you know and depend upon today wasn't written by them, and to suggest that it was the OSI model that was scrapped instead of BBN's product is a bit of a misunderstanding. As you can see from above, the OSI model is very much alive and well, and factors into your everyday life, encompasses software development and communications, device manufacturing and engineering, as well as routing and delivery of information.

This next part is rather opinionated, and the way that many of us choose to remember our history of UNIX, the ARPANET, the NSFnet, and the Internet:

The IP stack you know and use everyday was fathered by Bill Joy, who arrived at UC Berkeley in (IIRC) 1974), created vi because ed just wasn't cutting it when he wanted a full screen editor to write Berkeley UNIX (BSD), including TCP/IP, and co-founded Sun Microsystems (SunOS / Solaris):

> Bill Joy just didn’t feel like this (the BBN code) was as efficient as he could do if he did it himself. And so Joy just rewrote it. Here the stuff was delivered to him, he said, “That’s a bunch of junk,” and he redid it. There was no debate at all. He just unilaterally redid it.

Because UNIX was hitherto an AT&T product, and because government contracting has always been rife with interminable vacillating and pontificating, BBN never actually managed to produce code for the the IP stack that could really be relied upon. In short, it kinda sucked. Bad.

I highly recommend that you take a look at this excellent resource explaining the OSI model.

# tl;dr:

So! You've decided to scroll down and skip all of the other stuff to get the straight dope on the answer to your question. Here it is:

> What were the major things that caused TCP/IP to become the internet standard protocol?

The ARPANET (and where I worked, what was to become specifically the MILNET portion of that) had a mandate to replace NCP (Network Control Protocol) with IP (Internet Protocol). We did a dry run and literally over two thirds of the Internet (ARPANET) at that time disappeared, because people are lazy, software has bugs, you name it. There were lots of reasons. But that only lasted the better part of a day for the most part.

At that time the ARPANET really only consisted of Universities, big Defense contractors and U.S. Military facilities. Now, if you'll do a bit of digging around, you'll discover that there was really no such thing as NCP - that is, for the most part, what the film industry refers to as a retcon, meaning that we, as an industry, retroactively went back and came up with a way to explain away replacing a protocol that didn't really exist - a backstory, if you will. Sure, there was NCP, it was mostly a kludge of heterogeneous management and communications programs that varied from system to system, site to site, with several commonalities and inconsistencies that were hobbled together with bailing twine, coat hangers, and duct tape (for lack of a better metaphor).

So we really, really, needed something as uniform and ubiquitous as the promise that Internet Protocol would deliver. Because Bill Joy and others had done so much work at UC Berkeley, we actually had 4.1BSD (4.1a) to work with on our DEC machinery. As a junior member of my division, in both age and experience, I was given the task of, let's say throwing the switch on some of our machines, so to speak, when we cut over from the NCP spaghetti and henceforth embraced TCP/IP no matter what, on Flag Day - 01 January 1983.

So you see,the adoption of Internet Protocol was not a de facto occurrence - it was de jure, a government mandate to occur at a specific time on a specific day.

It literally had nothing to do with popularity or some kind of organic adoption, the erroneously described, so-called demise of the OSI model, or any physical network topology.

### DARPA said 01 January 1983 and that's it, and that was it - Flag Day.

Sure, it took a few days for several facilities to come up (anyone not running IP was summarily and unceremoniously cut off from the ARPANET).

And one also needs to consider that it wasn't every machine - we only had some machines that were Internet hosts. We still had a lot of mainframes and mini computers, etc., that were interconnected within our facilities in a hodgepodge or some other fashion. Nowadays we have a tendency to be somewhat incredulous if every device doesn't directly connect over IP to the Internet in some way. That wasn't the case back then - you passed traffic internally, sometimes by unmounting tapes from one machine and mounting them on another.

There was a lot of hand wringing, stress, boatloads of frustration, and concern by people over keeping their jobs all over the world. But that's why and when it happened. Six months later in the UNIX portions of networks we had much greater stability with the release of 4.2BSD, but it wouldn't really be until a few years later Net2 was released that things settled down with the virtually flawless networking stability that we enjoy today.

Enjoy!

#tallship #DARPA #IP #Internet_Protocol #Computer_History #internetworking #Internet #ARPANET #MILNET #NSFnet #Bill_Joy #BBN #UNIX #BSD

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Here we go folks!

This just in, hot of the press, on the tail end of the NLnet grant and the release of Garage version 1.0 - w00t. 🤘💀🤘

https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage/releases/tag/v1.0.0

#tallship #Garage #S3 #Self_Hosting #FOSS

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@baronvonj @aud @jon @cygnathreadbare @writeblankspace
k. I've got less than 1337 chars to do this...

First let me say that Vivaldi rocks on Linux.

Okay the horror story you wished you didn't have to live through:

A friend comes over after not following my advice with a brand new hundred dollar Dell laptop to replace her tech challenged (spelled, luddite) husband's old one. It's got no Ethernet port.

Some idiot (me) says I'll migrate everything over. Bad choice. It was "Windows 11 Home edition S Mode".

I started teaching the MCSE program for Microsoft in 1995. I don't allow Microsoft accounts for logins - only Local accounts.

Aside from the OOBE issues, the problem requires one to rip out the "S Mode" part AND go through the other items without ever using a temp microsoft account to do so - much more non--trivial than you think). It's very bad if you create that shell-game temp MS account and will bite your customer later if you do that.

He has a google account as an anchor for Chrome, and 99% of everything he does is either Google Earth or YouTube music VoDs.

I should have shelled out the $17 for an OEM Pro ed., but I'm stubborn. Mission accomplished - eventually.

He uses zero Microsoft apps, yet his wife bought a box that would only run them.

See happy ending in alt-txt for image

#tallship

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ALT

An excellent expose on one of the most prolific and creative minds in the #Fediverse, and as the following article by @sean eludes to, far far beyond.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/activitypub-nomadic-identity/

@mike 's contributions to #FOSS and #DeSoc go back much further than just the #ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse, well over a decade in fact, as the creator of #Mistpark, now #Friendica, and also #Zot6 and #Nomad, which promises to be a show changer for identity in the world of Social communications.

#tallship

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Happy RFC 2334 day!

You're a fricken' Teapot!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol

#tallship #RFC_2334 #HTTP_418

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ALT

OpenAI’s voice cloning AI model only needs a 15-second sample to work https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/29/24115701/openai-voice-generation-ai-model

@bruhbeans

I'm looking forward optimistically toward a future where either:

1. ) mastopub isn't mentioned with respect to networking at all
2. ) people stop conflating masto with #Fediverse - They are not the same.

technically, #Lemmy might be a percentage of some sort in terms of traffic by MAUs with respect to mastotron - but not really; because it's a percentage of some sort in terms of traffic by MAUs with respect to Fediverse, and more specifically, ActivityPub traffic - NOT masto! Unless of course, one wishes to compare a single platform against another, but then it would usually be framed differently, instead of "as if" masto was the network itself, which it is not - it's just an aging Fediverse platform slowly, yet incrementally being marginalized as a goto buzzword, due to it's predatory nature with respect to other, better, older, and more feature complete Fediverse platforms, Including those operating over diaspora*, Zot6, ActivityPub, OStatus, Etc.

Oh, why is it, that Lemmy feels more vibrant, active, lighthearted, and even more powerful than mastotron?

Nevermind.... it doesn't matter. Coz if you think that's kewl, you should really check this out.

Oh, geez! Is that you? lolz....

Seriously though @rimu , Don't you think it's about time for #PyFedi to have it's own #Fediverse account that we can subscribe to via RSS or folllow? People really like it. People are really impressed. People ARE NOT saying things like this about it:

> I don’t like that the easy install instructions are longer than this blog post. I don’t like that the build failed after ten minutes due to a missing dependency because they couldn’t check for it before starting. I don’t like that restarting the build literally restarted from crate zero and rebuilt everything. I don’t like that the build failed fifteen minutes later trying to compile lemmy-schema because it ran out of memory, so I had to add swap. I don’t like that the build failed again another twenty minutes later trying to link lemmy_server because I didn’t add enough swap. Come on, man.

Attribution: https://flak.tedunangst.com/post/azorius-01

So yah, we were discussing PyFedi in the Fediverse-City Matrix room, and clumping together notions such as how your following assertion here has found a relevance that other 'similar' so-called link aggregators have eschew:

> PieFed - a federated forum, similar to Lemmy but written in Python

And indeed, even at merely the first glance, it looks a heckuvalot (sic) more friendly than just link aggregation, the lines begin to blur even further when you take a look at the fast and friendly NodeBB, not too dissimilar, but not as lightweight as PyFedi - Wait! Are we supposed be calling it something else? #PieFed, perhaps? Are you undergoing a rebranding and just haven't renamed the git repo over at Codeberg yet?

Do please let us know :) Piefed has a lot of other FUN connotations, as both a play on words and also just falling off the tongue a little easier.

Yes back to the question of whether you feel it's the right time for your PyFedi project to launch its own Fediverse account - preferably, if I might be so bold as to suggest, NOT on a masto instance. After all, and like you said:

> Mastodon feels like a fucking funeral.

Indeed it does. I could recommend a couple of Good Mitra instances, put in a word for you on one of the dev's reference flagship intances, or Friendica is awesome too - very awesome, and unlike mastopub, it doesn't, "feel like a fucking funeral", lolz (as you sooo eloquently stated). It also interoperates seamlessly with and between Diaspora, Bluesky, Hubzilla/Zot, and the entire ActivityPub portions of the Fediverse. The Pleroma and Misskey family of forks have some nice offerings as well. I think a lot of people would find it refreshing if a new and refreshing federated forum/aggregator project with an enjoyable, clean and friendly feel had it's Fediverse presence somewhere other than a cemetery ;)

I predict a rapid rise in the deployment of #PyFedi instances. just look at the number of #Mbin deployments as/of late, and #Kbin before that - both are still enjoying accelerating adoption rates.

Yup! There's a lot of excitement and people are talking - thought you might like to know ;) And thank you for creating PieFed!

#tallship #FOSS #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Forumware #Link_Aggregation #meme_posting #Shitposting #discussion_sharing You can haz #Cheezburgerz! 🍔

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@jimray
So you're about ready to come on over to my place so we can BBQ up some Humboldt grass fed beef 🐄🥩 on my propane fueled grill?

I can drive on over and pick you up from the airport at ✈️ LAX ✈️ in my big, fire engine red V8 powered 4x4 pickup truck with absolutely no apologies too, because I truly don't give a good goddamn about any of that nonsensically manufacturered emotional blackmail that you're so effectively and quite eloquently exposing as hipocracy. 🖖

#tallship @smallcircles

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@jon @Vivaldi

You're doing great things Jon, and the longer Mozilla takes to embrace the #Fediverse the better it is for #Vivaldi.

But there's some glaring misgivings here that are often raised by people. Half the #Fediverse isn't mastopub - you should really consider replacing that icon in the panel with the Fediverse Logo, or even the ActivityPub Logo instead of the one you've currently got in that sidebar - It's quite misleading, and people who prefer using the more full featured and capable Fediverse platforms such as Friendica, Mitra, Socialhome, GoToSocial, Takahe, The Pleroma and Misskey families of forks, smolweb Fediverse platforms like Bovine, SNAC, Tapir, and many more, ... These stalwart #Fedizens and #Privacy_conscious people shouldn't have to look at some exclusionary elephant logo that completely misrepresents and dismisses the fact that the masses of these people don't even use that platform.

These Fedizens most certainly should not feel forced into being pigeonholed into an association, in front of others, which implies that they use masto.

Here's an example of what our diverse world of #DeSoc's #Fediverse_Logo looks like - that elephant thingy really only offers an homage to one single platform, losing user market share more rapidly each day, in favor of a better and more complete user experience with superior networking facilities.

Wishing you and the team all the very best, and looking forward to seeing the #logo in that sidebar that more accurately represents the community at large, and is also much nicer looking :)

I hope you continue to shepherd the trailblazing innovation that Vivaldi has shared and introduced, and join now with the trending wave of sites replacing that tired old elephant graphic for either of the logos that more closely and accurately represents the unifying inclusivity and diversity indicative of the residents in our Fediverse.

#tallship #FOSS #Privacy #ActivityPub #Diaspora #Nomad #OStatus #ZOT

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This is really messed up stuffs...

I call it despotic overreach via subjugation through state sponsored industrial surveillance systems.... It has nothing to do with capitalism but rather, that thing that Thomas Jefferson gave us... you know, the thing.

Been to a grocery store lately? You've been complaining for decades now, that they artificially inflate the prices of items so that they can offer you steep discounts on a rotating list of them - If, and only if, you consent to being a "club member". Personally, I've consented many a times; Rite-Aid, Albertson's, Wallgreens, CVS,Von's, and many others, as Brittney Spears, Charles Manson, Joseph Stalin, and even John Rambo, another obvious #nom_de_guerre to combat what would follow as spam but worse, industrial surveillance and privacy mining (of course, you also need to use a fake phone number and a /dev/null email addy).

Have you tried to buy things at Jack in the Box or 7/11 or Mcdonald's lately? ... They have an app for that. Why do you suppose that is? They could just as easily and more efficiently deliver their content via PWS/webapps through your regular browser experience (they don't want to be counter-measured with uBlock Origin or integrated anti-tracking measures on the more sensible web browsers).

They're working really hard to deliver you to evil. I walked into a Smart & Final the other day and saw an unbelievable price for a 30 pack of Natural Light Beer - you had to use a "digital coupon" (just like you do at 7/11 to pay the regular, competitive price for an item). I asked the cashier where in their weekly rag the "digital coupon" was located, and she informed me that one needs to install an app to be eligible for the discount. Fuck that noise. Homey don't play dat.

China has WeChat ... Resistance is Futile.

When you install an app, it's a whole different ballpark of invasiveness, intrusions, data farming, and privacy mining, it's like it's your first day in #Pelican_Bay and you announce that you're going to drop the soap as you shower.

So the next time someone says, "Thank you for shopping at Walmart!", or synonymously, "Go Fuck Yourself", just smile, and offer, "Yes, there's an app for that".

What follows below in the #boost I've shared, that so inspired me to address this issue, is not a simple inconvenience - it's a new beginning :p In #Communist_Red_China, you do everything on your #WeChat app - you submit your elementary school homework, you buy stuffs at the local market, you inform on yourself and your friends to their state equivalent of the #Stazi, and you tell them exactly where to come and arrest, perhaps even disappear you. #Falun_Gong? Healthy? awesome! Now your a live organ donor too - you can thank #Meg_Whitman for that one.

You have been assimilated 🖖

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

#tallship #Sunnyvale_Syndrome #Industrial_Surveillance #Privacy_Mining #Data_Farming #Tracking #Despotism #AYBABTU h/t to @gabriel for bringing this to us via his #LibreSolutions_Network

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RE: https://mk.gabe.rocks/notes/9qreb3vsod

@lsn

Ever seen one of these?

I had a classmate that used to bring his to class every night. Just slung his satchel w/the keyboard over his shoulder and carried this in his arms up the elevator and down the hall to class.

It's a Pronto Series 16, running at a blazing fast 8Mhz, and that's a 5.6 MByte removable hard disk there too. Pronto Computers was located in Torrance (my hometown) just down the street from Epson and Ashton Tate (dBase II, III)

Heck I can't even remember the guy's name, but he worked in some local aerospace company and fancied himself an ubergeek; if this box is any indication he sure was, lolz.

So what's so special about this machine? Well, if you ask any 50 people about an IBM compatible computer that ran on an intel 80186 CPU they'll prolly all tell you there was never any such beast - but there was, and this was it (I recall it was fast as fuck, so they prolly pioneered manufacturing production machines that were ahead of their time, while IBM and the clone manufacturers decided to skip a generation and take their time working on a platform that leveraged the 80286.).

The hard disk was light years ahead of its time too - portable Zip Drives (100MBytes) didn't appear on the scene for another ten years, but this was an actual miniature hot swappable Syquest HDD spinning at I believe, the standard of 3600 RPMs.... I can't be sure though, but it was nice listening to that quiet buzz saw sound just singing along.

We were in a Pascal class together, so he would show up, insert a disk, boot to UCSD P-System and off he would go. The rest of us would too, but we had those noisy 5&1/4" floppy disks that made all those cute noises in our IBM 5150 PCs (4.77MHz 8080 CPUs), lolz.... Well, we did have a few XT's w/HDDs, some VT-52 like terminals for the PDP-11, and some 3270 terminals too connected to a mainframe at the main campus in Sandy Eggo.

His #Pronto was a screamer for sure, and I'd only ever seen an amberchrome monitor for mini computers at work, which were much larger. The graphics (Yah, we actually called them graphics at the time) were superior to what we could do w/o an expensive #Princeton_Graphics #CGA card and matching .51mm dot pitch color monitor too.

I had lots of minis, super-minis, and a few mainframes at work, but in the personal computer world there was literally nothing that could perform like this 8MHz 186... nothing. It was a screamer!

But alas, after him spending close to five grand, the IBM 3270 PC/AT was soon to be released, relegating that guys 186 hot rod to the annals of forgotten songs and unsung heroes. The new #AT_Class machines kinda trickled in though, so if you wanted one of those you got to the computer lab early. They also supported HD Floppies w/1.2MB storage - a vast improvement over that of the earlier, so-called Double Density 360KB floppies, although there were some issues moving data between those two formats that required a few tricks - like loading an earlier command.com (kinda like sourcing another shell once you ssh into a box)... Okay I'm rambling.

I kinda liked that guy, and kinda didn't. Most of the other students didn't care for him too much. He was arrogant and one of those, "Mine's better than yours" sort of person, but he was competent, friendly with me, generally speaking, for a guy who was wound real tight, and I could tell he didn't get any pussy, so I kinda felt sorry for him too.

I should mention that there technically were a couple of other manufacturers out there during that era shipping 80186 computers, but I've never seen any of them and don't know anything about them.

Well, that's about it for that era, I just thought that I'd share that little bit of computer history with everyone. I hope you enjoyed reading about this truly innovative machine and it's brief time on the market.

#tallship #IBM #Pronto_Computer #retrocomputing @SDF :)

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ALT

ALT

I mean.... lolz...

https://bsky.app/profile/tallship.bsky.social/post/3kmwfrves5f2v

Hey! It's public! As are your posts public too, lolz.

#tallship @psychology

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IOW - the reader doesn't have to leave their comfy Fediverse client, experience or venture into unsafe outside networks or sites with trackers and other data mining engines.

A mission statement? As a decades long FOSS and Privacy advocate, it's really not much of a question to me. My immediate answer is, "But, of course." We should strive for a UX that users will adore. Fact: I love Faceplant - I do! I don't use it, and stay in a galaxy far, far away, but I'm not gonna lie and say it's not one of the niftiest UIs in existence. Everything is smooth and just the right amount of opaque and glossy and smooth scrolling through the stream, wall, timeline, *whatev.

If we make it pretty, then that's going to win adopters from the general public. And if we gain people from the general population.... pretty kewl.

Make it functional
Make it featureful
Make it pritty (sic)

The Fediverse isn't a single, particular protocol powered network - OStatus, ActivityPub, Diaspora, Zot6, Nomad, Etc. #DeSoc is a horizontally scaling, logical network topography. It's the foundational concept that disrupts a monolithic architecture. Both are great, but when you're talking about human social intercommunications it sure sounds a heck of a lot more safe when there's one, three, or twenty seven accounts on a single Fediverse instance than twenty seven hundred or thousand user accounts. I'd argue that with that many active user accounts, you're really accommodating the deprecated, monolithic silo model.

I was successful, very recently, in encouraging a popular sharing service to completely drop the mastodon logo and stop using it. The project lead related to me that of note was the fact that all of the folks who had galleries had different #Fediverse addresses, not half of them actually mastodon addresses. All of the mastodon logos have now been replaced with the Fediverse logo. AND - THAT - IS - AWESOME

#tallship #FOSS #publishing #Socialhome

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@griff@libranet.de ,

Over the next few days, I may have to edit for clarification and erratas, but here you go. "I do not concur with you, and here's why!"

California Decriminalized marijuana when Gerald Ford was still President*. I was in high school when it went into effect and the penalty for less than 28.34g (1 Oz) was $136.00 (first offense, penalty went up steep from there, but even then, still just a fine for the misdemeanor that stays on your record forever*, and the arrest consisted of being merely cited with a regular old traffic ticket, where you promise to appear in court by signing the ticket. State and local law enforcement would of course, remove the dope from your possession as.... ahem... ahem.... evidence, lolz.

Maybe I need to stop here, and relate that even most traffic tickets in California are, arrests. Here's how it works :)

You get pulled over for something stupid, usually legit - you fucked up. The motorcycle cop (in those days, a Harley (yoz... w00t), and in the 80's mostly Kawi's (Kawasaki's). He's all jackbooted out like a pro, it's awesome, but in your Brezhnev indoctrinated mind (iow, in all of my contemporary's, minds), a very scary encounter, even though, as I can swear, Motorcycle cops were the least likely to incareratge anyone, generally going so far as to coach you on staying the fuck out of trouble.

Anway, if it's not just a warning (you're scared shitless regardless, coz in your mind, cops can (and in truth actually did) act upon you just like Eric Honeker's Stazi routinely did, and take you to the hineyhole hotel, or worse, leaving you grovelling, barfing blood curbside, assuring themselves that you had been sufficiently edjumacated.

I know that all of the GenZ pussies out there trigger on this, but you know what? having been on the receiving end of corporal police punishment several times, I can say without reservation that on the morrow, it was much better being beaten and battered than having to call mom and dad from jail coz you were doing stupid teenager shit.... As no teenager throughout history, since our ancestors were baboons.

You learn real fricken' quick. Bottom line - you don't go to jail (minors and adults - your potential for a career, or your current career, are not jeopardized). Beside the point though, right? Let's continue withe what the penalties are for your eggregious transgressions against humanity, shall we?

So... you got pulled over, your busted bitch! what does having weed look like in the late 70's?

For anything greater than an ounce in quantity, or if you were a minor - it was still a felony.

The date you mention in your post allowed for medical marijuana, and possessing the Schedule 1 drug required the proverbial "card and letter" (Doctors recommendations, not litterally a prescription) to get a pass from state and municipal law enforcement. Again... Minor? Felony. Adult w/o the recommendation? Misdemeanor for less than an Oz, and a felony if greater than that with a trip to the hineyhole hotel with a set of matching bracelets. You were also expected to talk the talk - "It's your Medicine", etc., and although everyone knew it was utter nonsense, speaking dope speak satisfied the cops and you could be on your way if you weren't driving while impaired (which is ALWAYS a DUI).

Depending upon the municipality (generally county by county), you were expected to keep your dope... er... medicine, inside the labelled container that the medical marijuana dispensary issued it in when you purchased it.

Although it's completely decriminalized, or legal, as you prefer to say, marijuana is still a felony to posess in California, depending on the quantity, i.e., an obscene amount (more than a reasonable person would consider personal use) - but you can litterally drive around with a trunkload nowadays in places like Humboldt County and law enforcement doesn't even care - a box, (100lbs) or more though? Well, that's a different story and comes under provisions designed for people with compliant and permitted grows.

And there's the fricken' rub. Marijauna is NOT legal in California - it is REGULATED!* Consider that you don't pay tax on water, brocolli, candy bars, or yummy dead cow; because it's food. The same thing goes for Cinnamon, Rosemary, Thyme, and Oregano too. Why would you pay a sales tax on Marijuana then? It's a food, just the same as everything I've just mentioned - especially the herbs. You can cook with it, sprinkle on your Rice Crispys, etc. Unless you are purchasing pre-rolled joints, there's no expectation necessarily that it isn't going to be used instead of poppy seeds when you bake your bread. But taxed it is. It's regulated, taxed, and most insidiously, it's a revenue stream for a State Government that can't even remain solvent or balance own budget (but I digress).

If you test dirty for weed in a urinalysis, different things can happen - Are you a union employee? ILWU? Teamsters, an electrician? You are subject to sanctions, which can include being suspended or losing your job - These are federal entities, and you may know someone who almost lost their livelyhood (like my ex-girlfriend, who is a union electrician that installs HVAC systems on roofs). If you work for a municipality, like, city hall, say... as a trash truck driver - in my hometown? You'll lose your job. Still, to this day.

If you somehow find yourself in a position where you cross dicks with federal law enforcement while you have a couple of joints in your top pocket... Dude! That's a fricken' felony - even though they prolly won't put you in a federal detention facility and charge you with posession of a schedule 1 drug.

Don't want to believe that? Well, I was actually there when it happened to me - it's called ZT Seizure The Coast Guard Stole my home. No food, shelter, or clothes for myself, girlfriend, or little baby - not even diapers!

I'm going to mention that, for my entire life, I only ever voted one time in favor of an initiative to legalize marijauna (because it was never legalization). And it's most certainly not the proposition that everyone nowadyas turns to in claiming that dope is legal in California now - coz it ain't. It's actually the one before that, when Obama was President, and it was going to pass, that did more for what common sense folks were after, and in all the years since NORML and other California initiatives have been battling to legalize weed the one during the mid-terms back then was the only one that promised to actually make marijuana legal.

Let's say that again - Make marijuana legal. Make WEED legal. Because it's a fricken' weed, it grows on the side of the freeway, like other weeds, it's an herb, it grows wild as a weed species just like Rosemary and Oregano - or in your garage under lights.

So why did the Obama era California proposition (Prop 19) fail, notwithstanding the fact that the Obama administration's US Atty General stated that if we did pass it, the federal government would come down on us like a hammer and crush every aspect of regulation and legalization "with the full force and effect of the federal government" (paraphrased).

Here's the timeline....

1973 - Oregon, and not California, was the very first to so-call legalize marijuana. Even Colorado followed suit long before California got around to it.

1973 - March. Berkeley Marijuana Initiative I defunds and prohibits cops from prosecuting stoners w/o the express permission of the City Council. Oakland followed suit about two years ago by defunding their police department from investigative actions with respect to psychedelic mushrooms. I heard the've basically done the same thing in Arcata a few months back, maybe including Eureka too, but moving along....

1976 - The Moscone Act, which I spoke of at the beginning of this article. If you were a kid like me, and the cops caught you with a two fingers dime bag of weed, it was almost like the flip of a coin; sometimes they would take you to jail on a felony, and sometimes they would make you pour your own bag out onto the asphalt and grind it into dust with your feet, making fun of you as you cried.

Oh, not really part of the point of my story but we most certainly cannot neglect to include CAMP:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2018/01/22/black-helicopters-the-national-guard-and-ride-of-the-valkyries-when-reagans-war-on-pot-came-to-california/

1996 - Proposition 215 creates the medical marijuana industry. When my brother started complaining one day that he needed his medicine, I snapped at him, admonishing him for being a fucking hypocrit - "Don't call it medicine bro, it's dope! You know it, and I know it. I got you stoned your very first time back in 7th grade and you got a medical marijuana card so you can get high! You're not sick, and it isn't medicine for you. If you need to speak in those terms when a cop stops you, kewl, but don't bullshit me. You're a stoner. Fess up and be truthful around me coz you calling it medicine is a lie - you don't have glaucoma, your're not on chemo, etc."

2005 - Oakland follows suit in municipal defunding/deprioritization, taking a belated queue from their neighbor, Berkely.

2009 - In a grand act of Federalism (as it should be) the US DoJ wants to defer to the states to determine their own destiny with respect to prosecuting marijuana stuffs. Obama himself shoots that down (some friend, huh?) and directs the Attorney General to take a hardline on the evil weed.

2010 - The Governator signs SB 1449 - honestly? I don't think this did squat beyond what the Moscone Act did in 1973, but okay, two decrims are better than one, right?

Also in this year, Prop 19 goes down in flames, partly coz Arnold signed SB 1449, and scary language coming from Obama's Atty General pushed the initiative into the trash can. But Prop 19 only provided for the regulation and taxation of recreational weed.... moving forward...

Okay, I gotta take a second here to convey that IANAL, and previous laws plus another milestone initiative to come conflict, or at least to me, leave things in a somewhat ambiguous state. I'll get to that when we get there, but in the meantime, I just need to say that, as a layperson who's read through most all of this at one time or another over the years, I'm not really sure how SB 1449 changes anything much, if at all, beyond what the liberties of The Moscone Act in 1976 bestowed upon us. :/

Train kept a rollin'.... (Tyler, Perry)

2011 - Dunno what happened but at the federal level, Obama must have seen the light. The DoJ decides to defer to states and not prosecute when holders and sellers are in compliance with state medical marijuana laws (Farms, distrubutors, dispensaries, and consumers,). California state still only has medical marijuana. Right after this however, California comes down with their own banhammer, jailing landlords who unknowingly rent to anyone growing buds in their home, farmers, and other growers. It's not quite as ridiculous, nor quite as horrifically terrifying, as it was pre-ford w/Reagan's xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Soon thereafter, Mendocino breaks out and comes down with its own banhammer. High Times posterchild Eddie Lepp is busted not once, not twice, but three times during this sand-shifting era, for growing fields that are 60,000 plants strong right alongside a California state highway ( inf full view of All* passersby. Woody Harrelson foots the bill, in part or in whole, for the first couple of rounds, but ultimately, Eddie receives life in Federal prison, later commuted to 10 years, which he serves (I'm a little off on the timeline, but wtf?). My Brother (who I got stoned for his first time while ditching school together in 7th grade) worked on Eddie's farms as a confidant and manager of field hands and trimmigrants for many years, BTW.

2016 - Two time California Governor Jerry Brown annoints a "Pot Czar" to set tarrifs for an upcoming explosion of industry... created by Prop 64, which creates the regulatory environment for marijuana growers; farmers are certified, inspected, and grow in compliance. You don't even realize that the marijauna culture that draws field hands and trimmigrants from all parts of the globe are employed, living in tents in the mountains and lovingly raising the buds you used to smoke But these salt of the earth families that survived the Reagan, Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama years are now also being raped by counties and state government with incredible tariffs for the first few years.

Nursery's close, properties are foreclosed upon, caravans of humvees towing wood chippers wind throught the mountains of Humboldt in processions including Cal Fire, Fish & Game, Feds, and Guardsmen representatives of the U.S. Army's 40th Infantry Division, mow through, slashing and burning and turning product into pulp. County code enforcement offices in all local municipalities weaponize the use of Abatements ($10,000 per violation, per day- no one can freaking afford that) and uses their authority to bring local law enforcement to arrest growers. An abatement could mean growing tomatoes too close to a blue line, or an empty greenhouse that is covered (but unused) - you have to prove yourself innocent. That's right, it's illegal, but you have to challenge the counties in court, and then ulitmately be heard by some appelate or state or US Circuit Supreme Court.

Innocent homesteader families, that had never ever ever grown buds lost their entire lives as a result of those abatements. I'm sure that you can appreciate that off-grid families that had settled in the wilderness of Humboldt and Trinity Counties, as subsistance farmers, raising goats, sheep, and a small amount of cattle for a living that they would sell to their neighboring homesteaders, who would consume and then sell back to those good people, cords or wood that they had bucked up over the previous year. A lot of people like to pontificate about right and wrong, and how economies can be better in their little marxist fantasies, but they're so totally kewl with crushing mom & pop agrarian, subsistance homesteaders that they pretend to champion. Fucking hipocryts? or apathetic consumers in large, air conditioned, metropolitan areas wielding their votes against that which they claim to champion?

Look! If you're a homesteader, with a spouse and a couple of kids, living in the mountains, raising lambs to make a living, depending on the vegetables you grow and the cow you bought last year for your meat, income, and sustinance (and this is waaaaay more prevalant that some city slicker bitch can comprehend), just one day, of one cited violation, in an abatement letter.... literally ends your fucking existence.

And that's what has actually happened... while you jot on over to your local dispensary with the large-breasted honey showing only a little more than her breasts to you while you select from her wares at your friendly neighborhood dispensary.

Next? What happens? Well, what happened was that the weed industry dies, which it in fact did, but you had no idea whatsover - you now buy the majority of your dope from Walmart, Coca Cola, and Cox Cable companies (do you even realize this?), the distribution channel of which runs from Salinas and the lower San Joachin Valley areas like Buttonwillow to the dispensaries originating from industrial, computer controlled mega parks built inside concrete tilt-up concrete walls for the warehouses and shipping terminals that put your fucking dope on the shelves of your friendly neighborhood dispensary.

Before I finish, I want to state again that weed is a weed. It grows along the side of the freeway, in your backyards, and it's free to pick, smoke, and cook with. If you voted for Proposition 64, or worse... you didn't fucking vote at all, then this state you are living in is by virtue of your own doing.

I promised to circle back around to adress he future (now past) of what originally Nixon's drug war evolved into (CAMP, under Reagan, for example). I you actually take time to read the legislation that I've cited so far, you'll come to the unequvical conclusion that it's still a mess, not just an economic or criminal nightmare (try making Whiskey in large quantities - you'll go to federal prison coz the Jim Beam and Jack Daniels companies don't want you to compete with them. Proposition 64 legalizes the possesions for citizens over the age of 21... HUH?. That's right. And once again, IANAL, but... it may be, that if your a 19 year old, well, is it a felony to possess a couple of joints? I dunno, but Prop 64 offers no protections on its own from prosecution of having weed in your pocket, as a felony, on its own... I'm all ears, if you're fresh out of high school and of the age of consent, are you protected under the Moscone Act or SB 1449? I dunno. I thoght I'd just throw that out there, no matter that in reality, you're not gonna be prosecuted for smoking dope with your eighteen year old girlfriend in her car, but she's nevertheless going to jail for a DUI.

I truly wonder, when many folks soundboarding like you just were, if they truly understand from a ground zero PoV, what Campaign Against Marijuana Production was all about, with its jackbooted Nazi's jumping from helicopters and yes, litterally disappearing hippies to turn them into informants, while incarcerating families of homesteaders who may have been growing a mere twenty or thirty plants back in the day, litterally hoisted up into huge douglass fir trees with ropes and pullies, lowered each day to be watered, with that sustinance carried on the backs of the husbands, wives, and children living in those mountains of Humboldt? When those helicopters suddenly descended from nowhere upon these families of hill people the fear of God sent them tumbling down canyon cliffs in attempts to dissapear rather than be aprehended by virtual paratroopers rapelling from those choppers.

Around that same time, the Virginia Slims brand of cigarettes had a successful multi-million dollar marketing campaign targetted at metropolitan women entitled, "Hang in there - You've come a long way Baby".

Fast foward back to NOW - today: My brother, in all of his simplistic, singleminded selfishness, thinks that "Iss awl gud". He can go down to the local veteran owned dispensary in Murietta California and buy a bag of weed for a not too bad price anytime he wants, pay the sales tax, and be stoned again within the hour at the helm of his fricken' gamboy/plarystation/wii/nintendo/xbox (whatev it is, I'm not a gamer so I dunno). And that's fucking liberty to him, with his WWF wrestling cable TV shows, and Supermarket purchased homecooked meals that his wife is so famous for. I cringe.

To this day, when you drive up & down say, highway 299 or 36 in Humboldt, there are Dept of Fish & Game CheckPoints searching for the spoils of poachers (i.e., deer)... I and everybody else in Humboldt County calls Bullshit. It's all a clever facade to search any closed are of vehicles on the road for marijuana. "And that's the truth. Pfffph!" (in the words of Lily Tomlin, whilst rocking in a gigantic rocking chair in a onesie; and sucking on her thumb, with her legs dangling about, several feet above the ground).

In closing, and as the Universal Studios gate guard so famously said in the film, "Joe Dirt"...

"Don't church it up son! It's Dirt! Not Deertay."

Nah mon.... @griff@libranet.de , no offense, but I don't think I see things in the same way that you do at all.

#tallship #cannabis #despotism #taxation #tarrifs #you_fucking_fools_what_have_you_done?

⛵

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And now for something completely different.

> "I don’t post directly because I am in prison for killing my wife Nina in 2006."

https://ftp.mfek.org/Reiser/Letters/%E2%84%962%20Hans%E2%86%92Fred/reiser_response.html

> "It has been an honor to be of even passing value to the users of Linux. I wish all of you well."

What was hitherto, your awareness, or understanding of these events? I'd love to here any comments on the matter and boosts are most welcome to widen the pool of available input. There's an awful lot that can be said on many facets of this.

NOTE: Mikhail Gilula is now the owner of https://keyark.com/ (KeySQL).

ALT