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R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008
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."
I use it all the time!
My 1+ year subscription to EasyNews would indicate otherwise...
The obit is premature. Usually when a service "dies" it would mean it's no longer available, but anyone can still buy usenet access here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.
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".
Caveat Utilitor
Certainly misleading. Between the headline and the summary, I assumed this was a story about some official cancellation of Usenet. Instead, it's someone pining for the good ol' days (of free pron, if I understood right after skimming TFA).
Back in the early 90s, there was this one classmate who was a brilliant programmer. He wrote a pascal program that somehow continuously downloaded porn from newsgroups, ie. alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*. This was in the days of the 9600 baud modems, and before the Internet was even a household word. I didn't understand at the time what he was doing, or how he was doing it, but enjoyed the fruits of his labor. This was even before video on computers was prevalent, so it was all just images. Actually I remember downloading one "video" that was really just an ascii-fied version of a pr0no. sigh.. the good ol' days.
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.
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.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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 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.
There's still hope! SaveOurUsenet.com!
"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.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
They still have pretty good fetish porn. Chicks in rubber and PVC.
I dread the day Usenet is no longer in a Comcast package.
As all followers of the *BSD troll understand, the only way to truly know if something is dead is to look at the numbers. So we must measure the number of posts to usenet that mention usenet and see if that number has gone up or down over the past few years.
Wasn't Google Groups the old Deja usenet frontend originally?
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.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In the interest of the first rule of USENET, my post shall be quick and somewhat vague. As a former user and lover of Xnews I must ask you, have you not heard of GrabIt? Though you'll have to get used to NZBs instead of crawling the group, the ability to shutdown and startup long queues anytime without having to wait for the software to wake up from what seems like a catatonic coma is quite valuable. Of course, I had less than a gig of ram back then.
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.
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.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Heh, I was actually referring to Usenet II.
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...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
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.
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.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
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!' 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]
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], and SSL, you'd be nuts to ever use a torrent again.
Speed + security + real files.
There are bunch of services:
Combined:
BitNabber.com [Combines NZB + SSL Usenet access]
Usenet only:
Giganews.com [240 days retention, SSL]
Supernews.com [Cleanest / most spam free usenet server]
UsenetServer.com [Solid service, SSL]
NZB Services:
http://www.newzleech.com/ [Free, but automatic, so results will vary]
http://www.binsearch.info/ [Free, also automatic, but with SSL]
NewzBin.com - [Premium + Invite only, but the goliath of NZB sites]
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.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I clicked on it cause it sounded like a good deal, but it looks more like...
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