R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008 625
CorinneI writes "In a way inconceivable in today's marketplace, Usenet was where people once went to talk — in days before the profit-centric Internet we have today. The series of bulletin boards called 'newsgroups' shared by thousands of computers, which traded new messages several times a day, is now a thing of the past."
WHAT? (Score:5, Informative)
That's Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
Premature (Score:5, Informative)
And that is by no means a complete list. If anything, usenet may actually return to a more usable medium again, now that it won't be free for all the spammers and trolls anymore. Then again, it may well not -- it's not like all the illegal traders will just give up and go away, so I guess it depends on how much money the **IA, the BSA, and the morality police want to spend on "eradicating the problem".
Re:Bullcrap (Score:5, Informative)
USENET always had a lot of porn (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Premature (Score:4, Informative)
You forgot Astranews [astraweb.com], which probably belongs in the middle there somewhere. (I like it anyway).
Re:Pffft, been dying for years. (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say dumbed down interfaces. A good newsreader is much friendlier than a webforum. The problem is that you have to install it first.
Re:Pffft, been dying for years. (Score:3, Informative)
I worked in ISP support for years and USENET was dying well before child porn was a nail in it's coffin. Probably has something to do with message boards with much friendlier interfaces,
IMHO a decent newsreader has a far superior interface. Threading, clearly marked unread posts, fast searching, ability to read and reply to messages off-line, consistent interface for all groups, choice of newsreader.
Having said that, I use Gmane, but I don't use Usenet any more -- mostly because everyone else seems to have moved to a forum.
Re:Premature (Score:4, Informative)
> now that it won't be free for all the spammers and trolls anymore.
Indeed, there are at least two Usenet providers that drop all posts originating from Google Groups, so that we can enjoy spam-free feeds today.
I previously paid for a feed from Giganews, but they did not support the NNTP commands required to drop GG at the server so I was paying for their downloads as part of my monthly quota.
I have subsequently found a free Swedish provider with an agreeable degree of snobbery...
Re:Premature (Score:5, Informative)
Just a bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Informative)
Actually Google Groups *is* the same thing as Usenet, because that is exactly what it is, a easy to use web front end to Usenet.
That is why Google Groups is infinitely better than Yahoo groups and the others you mention.
USENET is doing just fine (Score:5, Informative)
Usenet is doing quite well. The programming-related newsgroups are in fine shape. "comp.lang.python", "comp.lang.javascript", and "comp.databases.mysql" have heavy traffic from knowledgeable people, including developers of the underlying systems. It's much faster to see the day's updates on Usenet than to page through the inflated dreck on a half dozen PHP-based forum systems.
I was a bit disappointed when the C++ standards committee moved their discussions off USENET, but that committee isn't getting anywhere anyway.
Re:Usenet is dead... (Score:2, Informative)
There's still hope! SaveOurUsenet.com!
Re:How is Usenet dead? (Score:4, Informative)
"Child-porn investigations have doomed one of the last remnants of a smaller, kinder Net."
Can some one please tell me what investigations have doomed Usenet and how?
The Attorney General of NY started pushing on ISP's like Time Warner and AT&T to filter/moderate alt.* groups and/or hand over the names of the posters. Time Warner dropped alt.* altogether and the pressure is building for the rest to do the same.
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:1, Informative)
They still have pretty good fetish porn. Chicks in rubber and PVC.
I dread the day Usenet is no longer in a Comcast package.
Netcraft is wrong; we need hard data (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google Groups (Score:1, Informative)
Wasn't Google Groups the old Deja usenet frontend originally?
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Informative)
I do hope not.
For one thing, Google Groups is currently acting as the equivalent of an open relay to all of Usenet, resulting in a vast increase in the amount of junk messages. They should be treated by other Usenet servers in the same way that we treat any other open relay: ignore anything coming from it until it gets its house in order. I fail to understand why Google being Google exempts them from this treatment. :-(
For another thing, Google Groups sucks as a Usenet interface, and numerous clients do a much better job of it.
Re:2 points (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, most servers DO restrict by size -- that's why we have multipart encoded messages.
And there's no good way to distinguish text from binary, since binaries are encoded as text for NNTP propagation.
The various binaries hierarchies were supposed to separate encoded binaries from conversational text, but in practice way too many people were lazy twits and posted wherever the hell they happened to be, rather than in the appropriate newsgroup.
I started with Usenet back in 1993, but for the past few years have rarely visited even my regular old haunts, let alone cruised at random, because most of the good conversation has long since moved elsewhere (including to slashdot!), and yEnc encoding mucked up binaries (I have yet to get an uncorrupted yEnc file from any newsgroup, and have quit trying).
I miss dialup BBSs too, but time marches on, or more accurately, tromps over us.
Re:Google Groups (Score:3, Informative)
Oh it has the Usenet feeds but no it isn't the same thing as the Usenet of which I speak.
The Usenet of which I speak had a much higher signal to noise ratio than GoogleGroups/Usenet has today.
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, google groups does contain groups that are not part of Usenet. And Usenet contains groups that are not in google groups.
So while related, they're not the same.
Re:So what was your favorite newsgroup name? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about the alien.vampire thing, but the three-times repetition has its origins in the Muppet Show, with the Swedish Chef, who would end sentences with "bork bork bork". After alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork was created, many groups quickly emulated it.
Also, being alt.* groups, nobody proposed them, they just sent a create message, which could be carried or ignored by everybody else at will.
At least that was how I remember it, but I didn't get onto usenet until 1985, well after its creation.
Re:Mourning the end of September... (Score:3, Informative)
Heh, I was actually referring to Usenet II [taronga.com].
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google Groups (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't Google Groups the old Deja usenet frontend originally?
Well, that started off as "Deja News", during which time it was quite good, although IIRC it still had annoying banner ads. By the time it was renamed to "Deja.com" though, it had begun to suck, with fruit-machine-like ads down both sides of the page and branching out into other stuff.
The news archives side got sold to Google later on, which was actually a major improvement over deja.com's annoying Las Vegas style pages...
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:5, Informative)
www.usenet-access.com. They are 6 bucks a month and you get 2 GB per day. An unholy shitload of groups with the retention from hell. I've been able to snag stuff going back almost 2 years. I know they are a reseller for someone, I just don't know who. I've been using them for almost 6 years and never had issues with them at all.
Possible issues are, well 2 Gb per day but hell that an average of 60 GB per month. And you can only have 3 simultaneous connections but hell they are only 6 bucks a month.
Re:USENET will be around for a long time to come (Score:2, Informative)
So what's the big deal that some alt sections are being removed by some providers?
I don't think there are any issues at all. What issue are you referring to? ISPs and Universities along with as far as I know any "free" NNTP service block alt.binaries, but there are cheap services you can pay yearly or monthly for in order to get alt.binaries access.
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:4, Informative)
Google groups is a pain in the ass to use. They are great when I'm researching something or just wanting to take trip down memory lane. Take a trip through comp.sys.amiga.* and remember what the big deal was about.
But compared to a full function news reader with thread control and kill files, it's a poor imitation.
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:2, Informative)
If I had modpoints, I'd mod the parent up. Seriously though, he's right. The story concludes with the author reminescing about 'the old days' of usenet... To quote:
"It's hard to completely kill off something as totally decentralized as Usenet; as long as two servers agree to share the NNTP protocol, it'll continue on in some fashion. But the Usenet I mourn is long gone"
May I add another: No it's not? (Score:4, Informative)
May I add another 'No, it's not!' to the comments?
ISP-based usenet has always sucked. The retention was lowsy, the propogation was poor (if they even let you post) - or they simply outsourced to one of the Big 3 [giganews,usenetserver,eweka.nl] [http://top1000.org/#stats [top1000.org]]
For those of us who know about it, Usenet is thriving - there's more data passing through it than ever. GN is adding 240days of binary retention (which is insane)
With the combination of NZB files [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NZB [wikipedia.org]], and SSL, you'd be nuts to ever use a torrent again.
Speed + security + real files.
There are bunch of services:
Combined:
BitNabber.com [bitnabber.com] [Combines NZB + SSL Usenet access]
Usenet only:
Giganews.com [giganews.com] [240 days retention, SSL]
Supernews.com [supernews.com] [Cleanest / most spam free usenet server]
UsenetServer.com [usenetserver.com] [Solid service, SSL]
NZB Services:
http://www.newzleech.com/ [newzleech.com] [Free, but automatic, so results will vary]
http://www.binsearch.info/ [binsearch.info] [Free, also automatic, but with SSL]
NewzBin.com [newzbin.com] - [Premium + Invite only, but the goliath of NZB sites]
Re:UseNet is obsolete (Score:3, Informative)
The only nuisance is that you have to create accounts on all these systems.
Bullshit. Clearly, you never had to search for hard answers.
The real nuisance is having to surf through various PHP forums and tidbits of information here, there and everywhere Google offers you, making you waste precious time. And where exactly, in the 30-plus options you have to post your question, should you post? And have you ever tried to find an answer in a PHP forum? Try Ubuntu's forum. The same answer will be posted, incompletely in, like, three different posts. It's all very stupid. Web forums suck. I accept nothing less than a new decentrelized protocol to replace NNTP. Anything that's not a protocol and decentralized is sub-standard.
The Usenet alternative is much faster. Got a question about Perl/dsp/symbolic mathematical systems/lisp/food? Post to a Usenet group. There's an expert there and he/she'll be glad to be of help.
Re:Hmm...Giganews and other services are still the (Score:3, Informative)
Daily-limited newsgroup accounts per month
500MB/day $2.95 USD
1 GB/day $5.95 USD
2 GB/day (recommended level) $11.95 USD
4 GB/day $23.95 USD