Slashdot Mirror
Requiem for Usenet
xoip writes "Jack Kapica at The Globe and Mail reports that '[Canadian ISP] Rogers is removing [Usenet] service without changing its rates, suggesting subscribers turn to portal technology controlled by Rogers/Yahoo, or to subscribe to an outside Usenet service -- at extra cost.'" From the article: "Aside from being based on the written word, which many game-playing kids would rather not make the effort to compose, Usenet is deeply flawed. Its democratic dream offers no defence against viruses, spammers, criminals, hucksters or deranged individuals. Rummaging about in Usenet is like slumming through the tenderloin district during the plague years -- your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place."
your chances of catching a computer virus or a handful of invitations to unspeakable sexual acts is much greater than finding what you were looking for in the first place.
Most of the time when I'm using usenet, I'm not looking for something. I am looking to get hit with random content like what other people think is good or interesting. Its fun to explore the mp3 newsgroups and just download some random mp3s and learn about new music.
"Usenet is not as big as it was, but it's still a great resource for information."
Actually, its bigger than even given that average daily traffic has grown from 4.6GB in 1996, to 2TB today! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet)
I first used USENET in 1985 and I was frankly astounded. It was like having a club, but instead of being local it was world-wide. The topics were so numerous and the opinions so wide-ranging. I began to think it would be the start of some kind of global democracy, where everybody got to have a say.
But even then the signs were there. My first introduction to a flame-war was quite unintentional for a neophyte, but I quickly learned this was more like the Wild West than High Tech. You could have your fair share on intelligent discourse but there were many traps for the unwary and pretty soon you were being bombarded from all sides. It wasn't spam back then, but it was the idea. You learned to give out minimal information and never gave out your email address to anyone you didn't think you could trust.
The came the Web and suddenly everyone and his uncle who could afford an Internet connection could join in and USENET lost its quiet charm. Anyone who used it for a while got annoyed at the same questions being asked 1000's of times and the FAQs became a joke because no newbie would bother reading them. Sanity only seemed to be maintained in the moderated groups, but it was lawless fun in the alt.* groups. Pretty soon they were being overrun by the first generation of spammers and at that point I got out.
They say you can't go home again. True, but it seems the spirit of USENET lives on anyway, in places like Slashdot, and the Internet as a whole. When you think about, blogging is nothing more than having your own moderated newsgroup, and any website can become a focal point for discussion and dissemination of information to the like-minded. USENET is far from dead, but its legacy is well established, and a few of us hope that its spirit never truly dies.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I think think any viable alternative to usenet would have to require that all newsgroups be moderated. It would also have to have much better security. (E.g., a public key for each newsgroup with the private keys held only by moderators.) The encryption part could be made painless and transparent with the right software, but there's no getting around the labor involved in moderation. I see no other way to keep the trolls and spammers down to acceptable levels.
"People have been predicting this for years!"
And yet this is evidence that it's actually happening.
Just because predictions sometimes start becoming reality doesn't mean that the actual events aren't news, or of interest.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I use SBC's Usenet service. I get tons of ebooks from there, I get tons of babe pictures from there, I get tons of tech info from there (less so recently due to time pressures).
The only problem with Usenet is that unless the newsgroup is a niche group like alt.comp.freeware or a thoroughly technical group, or a moderated newsgroup, it will be inundated with porn and other spam shortly. But even some of the babe newsgroups are easily usable. If somebody bothered to put a spam filter on newsgroups, most of the spam could be eliminated, but that'll never happen.
Viruses? Never seen one in three years. I've seen a handful of posts from people who have said, "Don't download this, it's a virus." That's it.
Other problems? Same as in real life - morons are everywhere. Deal with it (we Transhumans are going to in due time.)
The ISP is simply lying and trying to save a couple bucks. I would expect SBC to follow suit, since their Usenet service is crappy to begin with - their retention sucks. I'm convinced they deliberately damage the binary newsgroups because their completion rate is hideous in almost all of them - virtually NO multipart binary - at least if it's an MP3 or other media - gets through. Fortunately a lot of ebooks do get through. I've been meaning to get a subscription to a real Usenet service for some time.
In short, there's nothing seriously wrong with Usenet that a spam filter wouldn't solve, but using your ISP to access it is not the best idea.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
(granparent poster here): As a former editor of the sci.physics.relativity FAQ and a frequent reader of talk.origins... believe me, the relativity deniers are AMAZING. The creationists are just pathetically stupid, and usually vanish in a more or less short time. The relativity deniers are... so... persistent. Some of the crackpot regulars today were around 10 years ago, and are still going at it. They will debate you forever with the same wrong arguments, without any loss of energy. I guess that vindicates the perpetual motion crackpots over on sci.physics.
Yes. As ISPs drop usenet services, programmers will stop using the Usenet to ask and answer questions. Deja will not have any new info and it will become less valuable as a coding resource over time if people stop posting to Usenet.
'Course, this is but one of many requiems for Usenet. Remember when AOL installed their Usenet gateway? That was the end of Usenet too. As long as good ISPs don't follow Rogers lead, Usenet will be fine. Short a few Canadians, perhaps, but fine.
.sig: file not found
I first accessed Usenet from a BBS in 1992, and got my own small UUCP of my favorite groups a year later. I'm still a regular on some Usenet forums, and paid my thirteen bucks to the German individual.net. Not the greatest retention, but carries all the groups I care about. Groups like talk.origins are as busy as ever, with damn little spam. The groups that seem to be dead or dying are mainly the vanity groups like alt.barney.die.die.die.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Both of whom are rather eclipsed by what I've come to call the "devolutionists", that is, the anti-learning, book-burning, everything-bashing clods, a few of whom infest /. Devolutionists (wait, it'll catch on) insist that there should be NO learning, that everything is TOO hard (no, you can't make it easier: those breath strips that dissolve on your toungue are too hard.), and that I'm a bad person just because I LEARNED and believe that OTHERS CAN LEARN, TOO. Devolutionists resent all advancement of the human race since the Dark Ages, and can't wait to get back so they can curl up in their safe little manure pile. No kidding!
right on, most of the comp.language.* news groups are of the highest quality, and I've learned very useful things in them over the last 10 years. Not to mention groups devoted to various fan fiction for fun. most of the good stuff is on free news servers that carry only the the text groups. Usenet exists because a huge number of people want it.
Shit! If it's already on digg for two weeks then it's probably all over the net. It really looked like a hot release and I was hoping to trade it. I could really use a boost in the rankings. I remember the days when slashdot had all the 0-day newz first, it's now just fakes and dupes. I think the scene is dying and slashdot is just the first to go down.
from TFA: Its democratic dream offers . . .
It's a democratic reality.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I'm an IT pro, and use the Slackware, Hylafax and a handful of other newgroups daily. For many niche topics this may be the only viable source of current information. This service cut is a pain for me, but I'll just have to pay a 3rd party for the service and pass the cost along to customers.
More importantly though, this action removes the default abilitiy of hundreds of thousands of subscribers to POST to the groups. It's those questions and comments that keep the groups alive. For example, if I've got a stupid Windows EventID I can't track down, I'll turn to the groups for clues. Or if I'm spec'ing out new hardware I'll check out relevant newsgroups for anecdotes. C'mon, everyone seems to be deriding the groups, but after your web search turns up squat don't you click on the Google Groups link to see what's there? Aren't you often helped tremendously? (I'll often post a follow-up answer to my own question just so I can find it in the future if need be.)
Google Groups, et al, are a great interface for mining pre-existing data in the groups, but if nobody is posting new content then they'll just become a window into a static history. And that would be a shame - even for the Rogers' help desk flunkie who wondered what my "Usernet" complaint was about - beacuse we all need _unfiltered_ access to information.
I've called the "Office of the President" of Rogers Communications to voice my complaint. I urge other subscribers to do so - frequently! If Sony can get their ass handed to them, then just maybe we can prompt Rogers to reconsider.