Comcast Discontinues Customers' USENET Service

An anonymous reader writes "Comcast has discontinued its provided usenet service, once provided to all its high speed customers. First with the cap put on its customers several years ago on amount of traffic provided as part of the customer high-speed package, as of September 16, the service is no longer provided. Without fanfare, this bastion of the internet is being removed from the mainstream."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Looks like

[nbert]

To anyone who doesn't get op's statement: Eternal September [wikipedia.org]

And yes, it's funny.

Much ado about nothing

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Big deal. I'd say that 99% of Usenet users use it for the binary groups and they pay to get those through a provider that carries them. The non-binary groups have mostly been worthless for a long time now and that's all Comcast and similar providers carried. Those who can't live without comp.lang.perl or whatever can pay to get it, if they wish, through one of many providers so it's not like it's impossible to get Usenet now.

Re:Much ado about nothing

[nstrom]

Actually Comcast's usenet service was provided by Giganews [giganews.com], albeit with a 2GB/mo cap. So it wasn't just text groups, they had all the binary groups with excellent retention.

Does any serious IT geek *not* use usenet?

[Viol8]

I mean come on , who wants to waste time searching out some website to post a question or find a discussion when you just need access to a news server and the lot is available immediately.

Anyone who doesn't use it just because they think its old fashioned and uncool because it doesn't have the "ooh shiny" factor is a blinkered idiot.

Re:Working here

[plover]

RTFA. They're disconnecting it on October 25th.

Re:So?

[elrous0]

I post via Google Groups, you insensitive clod!

Seriously, it's just convenient, I can do it from anywhere, and Google Groups makes following a thread's history a LOT easier than any usenet reader (particularly when you're coming into the middle of a conversation).

Re:Just cut off binaries

[Fumus]

One thing I never can comprehend is why ISPs stop carrying binaries and if they do, they hide it away from users.
When a user downloads from the ISPs own server, he generates a lot less traffic that if he's using P2P and connecting to thousands of random users.

Then again. It's probably because they'd get sued for directly hosting illegal content or something similarly ridiculous.

Re:So?

[Gilmoure]

Maelstrom X works great. And I was able to find the old Simpson sounds I had on the original version, back in 7.1 days.

Re:Does any serious IT geek *not* use usenet?

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

Agreed. I'll say the "ooh shiny" probably works in FAVOUR of Usenet, too. Modern NNTP clients are flat-out sweet. The way they group threads, group binaries, give previews, actually use native widgets. Much better than some shitty web interface someone has thrown together.

So what. Use another (better) Usenet provider.

[decavolt]

Comast has restricted groups for some time, and we all knew that this total shutoff of Usenet for Comcast was coming sooner or later.
So what? Comcast's stripped down Usenet was practically useless anyway.

Use a service like Easynews.com for Usenet instead. I've been with them for years and they're great.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's september again. From what I can tell, you know nothing about Usenet but sucking binaries from it. There is no "text side of Usenet".

Usenet IS text.

The binaries you're leeching were converted into text, chopped into chunks of data each encoded into a bazillion TEXT articles on a TEXT system.

Usenet was never build to distribute binaries, but as a discussion platform. You can see that still... it has no error detection so people have to use .sfv files or whatever checksum mechanism to see if what they've got was what was posted in the first place. If something got corrupted the data chunk needs to be reposted and another bazillion TEXT messages are pushed forward on the usenet chains.

And now they're yanking Usenet all over the place, this wonderful source of information. If you have a question about your linux stuff, it's been asked and answered on Usenet 9 out of 10 times... If you want to build something and want to see if there's people interested in joining, Usenet was the place.

Thanks a lot, leech!

Hope you choke in your binary shit and die soon.

it ends October 25th

[not_anne]

The article summary says...

"...as of September 16, the service is no longer provided."

The page linked in the article says...

"...please be aware that this service will be discontinued on 10/25/2008."