Re: (ET) digest mode/spam/classified

["David Roden" <etpost drmm net>]

On 9 Apr 2007 at 8:51, Oasis654 aol com wrote:

> when i  try to
> direct older timers to the et list, especially to put in an ad, or read  
> them,
> they find it difficult to navigate the intricacies of this medium, and  
> give up
> on posting. 

I don't know how we could make it any easier.  It seems pretty 
straightforward to me.  To me the ET mailing list is markedly easier than 
figuring out how to find anything on elec-trak.org, for some reason.  (I 
liked the old menu-oriented elec-trak.org.)

This isn't uncommon though.  An acquaintance of mine in her 70s recently 
asked me for help loading a website into her browser.  She had the URL but 
she said it wouldn't come up.  I kept trying to help over the phone, but 
it 
wasn't working.  

Finally I drove over and was astonished to discover that she was trying to 
load the page by typing its URL into Yahoo Search and clicking on the 
search 
results.  Her ISP had given her a "here, load this" disk that always 
launced 
a browser upon boot, sending it to Yahoo as a homepage.  As far as she 
knew, 
Yahoo was the gateway to the internet, and the only way to load other 
pages. 
 She had no idea that browsers could be pointed directly at a URL.  

I guess some things that come naturally to your or me (or which are easily 
discovered) are hopelessly opaque to those with different backgrounds.  

As for other ET resources - here are the few items I have bookmarked :

Darryl McMahon's "Care and Feeding" page :

     http://www.econogics.com/ev/carevets.htm

Walt's ET page :

     http://www.geocities.com/electraktractors/

ET Wiki :

     http://java.cs.vt.edu/public/users/mlorch/Elec-Trak/index.html

Dwight Hazen used to have an ET page, but I can't find it now.  It used to 
be at :

     http://php.ucs.indiana.edu/~hazen/electrak.html

You know, somebody should visit these old-timers with a tape recorder, and 
walk around with them while they talk about their ETs.  There's a book in 
there somewhere.

David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA

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