Usenet Audio

Carel writes "Everybody who has done some streaming knows the downside: as soon as you're getting popular the costs are getting sky-high. While there have been some efforts in the P2P area these didn't have the impact they need. Enter Usenet Audio, a project that uses the existing, distributed and proven Usenet as its medium. Check the site for details and for the beta-versions of the software (which is available for Linux, OS X and MS platforms)."

Comments

Congratulations

[frenetic3]

Usenet Audio joins an esteemed coterie of previous spectacular endeavors including Usenet Porn, Usenet Warez, Usenet Fashion Magazines, and Usenet Moderated Nonviolent Underwater Images.

Re:Congratulations

[Mistlefoot]

it's April Fools day, but....... you never know.

If this is true it will be bad for one reason.

The Usenet has always been a place where those in the 'know' could go to grab or share stuff. Making this mainstream will make this a target as well. If this were to ever become the new 'napster' it would only be a matter of time before laws would start to pop up to deal with it.

Re:Congratulations

[debian4life]

Usenet should not even be used as an April Fool's joke. You can take my P2P and my WWW, but leave my Usenet alone. This is the last bastion of the original "Internet" yet to be totally whored out to commerce and regulation. Please keep it on the dl.

BS.

[grub]

whois usenet-audio.com
[snip]
created-date: 2004-03-31
updated-date: 2004-03-31
registration-expiration-date: 2005-03-31

Uh huh. A domain created yesterday for a minimum 1 year term.

Also, searching google for "El-Katabi Investment" or "Nim services BV" (mentioned in their press page) returns no results. Those plugins likely just say "April Fools" over your speakers (if the plugins really exist: one online mirror has none of the files and the other says the limit of 500 users has been reached.)

The goofy idea of streaming over usenet aside, this sounds like YAAFJ (Yet Another April Fools Joke) to me.

Re:BS.

[geekoid]

If you had any less of a life, you would be undead.

Godwin's Law

[ArmenTanzarian]

I assume this would apply to songs written by or mentioning Nazis?

No, no, no

[Anonymous Coward]

The less usenet's capabilities are publicized, the better. Do we want the RIAA/MPAA/etc pressuring ISP's for people that download from specific groups? Or pressuring to have those groups removed entirely? Keep it quiet!

Damnit

[Jonas the Bold]

Damnit Michael, just stop. They just aren't funn- oh wait, this isn't a April fool's article. Carry on :)

PS: The moderation you're looking for is "funny", and not "troll"

Future versions promise to add...

[Anonymous Coward]

...messaging functionality! Imagine that! USENET used for messaging! Who needs flying cars?

text to song based audio is brilliant

[planckscale]

It's just that all the songs seem to sound the same in that droning "Would you like to play a game?" voice that we heard in War Games.

"You light up my life, you give me hope, to carry on."

I'm pissed.

[syphax]

These stories are lame. Therefore, rather than spending time working productively, playing with the kids, or having meaningful dialogue with my spouse, I am going to spend my time closely monitoring /. today so that I can rapidly post whiny comments every time a new (lame) story is posted.

Did I mention the stories are lame?

Interesting..

[iswm]

But I think a neat idea for streaming audio would be a BitTorrent type protocol, where if you listen to the stream a client will help distrubute it to other listeners using your bandwidth. There could be some issues with it I suppose, but I think it could be a reasonable idea.

Would never happen

[pogle]

April Fools aside, there is no chance of this ever happening. Usenetters are obsessive about not wasting bandwidth, this protocol would never work because the creators would be flamed out of house and home in microseconds. Even worse, the website uses HTML, and thats just plain anathema in Usenet! For shame!

Re:Available on MS platforms?

[ackthpt]

But nobody using Windows reads usenet.

Not true! Some helpful groups:

comp.microsoft.bsod

microsoft.useless.posts.on.dotnet

alt.windows.0wn3d

alt.windows.no.you.stupid.piece.of.shit.just.do. it.damn.you

rec.windows.uninstall

This looks like a joke, but

[Hythlodaeus]

This looks like a joke, but I did this back in the day. I checked out a number of bands by getting .au files UU encoded in usenet over my 14.4 connection to AOL. It took about 12 hours to get a song. And yes, I did buy the album later.

Re:I hate April First... the jokes are lame.

[bonch]

The sad part is a lot of people submit incredibly clever stories, but they get rejected in favor of stupid things like "Usenet Audio." Look, it's not funny to slap two things together and call it a joke. Just like someone else posted here, it'd be like "HP Sells Toilet Paper," like it's automatically funny because it's HP, and they're selling toilet paper.

At least when Taco is at the helm on April Fool's, better stories get posted. I remember some of the really clever April Fool's days of Slashdot's past, where the fun part was guessing which was real and which was fake. It was always hard to tell.

heheheheheh

[zogger]

another good 4-1 submission!

But here's a *real* project, StreamerP2P, that could use some coders to help out porting to linux and making packages that work.

hint fedora hint