You've claimed several times in your columns that you are skilled at understanding trends in the computer industry.
So paint a picture of roughly where you think the computer/Internet industries will have moved in 5 years and how that will change the end user experience.
Who will be the dominant companies? Microsoft? Amazon? Ebay? (I know you already think Cisco will be one of them.)
Will network computers have succeeded? Will voice recognition be big? Will interactive TV turn us all into corporate drones? Give us your 5-year forecast.
The major distinction Usenet enjoys over the Web is that there is all kind of technical, casual, serious, and strange conversation that happens in discussion that not many would bother to write down in a formal web page.
The biggest advantage Dejanews has in dealing with all this Usenet data is its ability to sort by subject, newsgroup, date, author, and so on. One can't do this with web pages, either. With Deja, you can be really imaginative, trying to recreate in your mind how someone might have phrased a particular question or who might have been interested in a certain topic which you want information about. This is why Dogpile (which another poster mentioned), which does not offer such options, is inferior.
Deja hosts chats about obscure technical questions, breakfasts in Pittsburgh, debates about graduate schools--thousands of real communities, and opinions, categorized to the tiniest niches, so nicely sorted and searchable, and which can be captured through time. What a sociological resource, if nothing else!
Usenet is a database, and Deja provides a proper search feature for it. That's value. Great value. What Deja refuses to realize is that it could charge for the resource. I would pay $20 a month for it, easily. Especially if Deja promised to maintain it well (and of course put the old archives back online).
Deja could add even more value to it. If it had been a little more ambitious, it would have added to its Usenet database discussion forums akin to ForumOne's. These are Web discussion forums: Salon, the Utne Reader, etc. Searching each one alone for a topic of interest is arduous, since each forum's population can be comparatively small and topics broad. Usenet archives are useful because they provide enough of a range for niche subjects to be covered.
ForumOne, though in concept magnificent, is practically useless because you cannot use boolean and you cannot sort by author, date, etc. But can you imagine being able to search the entire range of discussion on the web PLUS Usenet with one search engine, and being able to sort via useful database fields? It would be a treasure trove easily equal to the Web in value.
Current intellectual property laws as they stand, especially with the recent enactment of the DMCA and the creeping acceptance of UCITA, are obviously financed by Big Money interests. And while protests, boycotts, negative publicity, and the like might make an eventual dent on policy, people have to realize that fighting against wealthy and entrenched special interests is going to be an uphill, and more importantly, lengthy and expensive war.
Happily, there is an alternative solution on the Internet: we need to focus more firepower on better distribution technology--technology that makes users virtually impossible to track down, let alone crack down upon. It's the only thing that can protect consumer interests in the long-term.
Gnutella is a start. I look forward to greater sophistication and variety in programs of its genre.
For anyone interested in wireless Internet access that is unlimited for, say $60/month, and comes in the form of a PCMIA modem, then have a look at goamerica.com. I'm not affiliated with them, by the way.
Slashdot Mirror
So paint a picture of roughly where you think the computer/Internet industries will have moved in 5 years and how that will change the end user experience.
Who will be the dominant companies? Microsoft? Amazon? Ebay? (I know you already think Cisco will be one of them.)
Will network computers have succeeded? Will voice recognition be big? Will interactive TV turn us all into corporate drones? Give us your 5-year forecast.
The biggest advantage Dejanews has in dealing with all this Usenet data is its ability to sort by subject, newsgroup, date, author, and so on. One can't do this with web pages, either. With Deja, you can be really imaginative, trying to recreate in your mind how someone might have phrased a particular question or who might have been interested in a certain topic which you want information about. This is why Dogpile (which another poster mentioned), which does not offer such options, is inferior.
Deja hosts chats about obscure technical questions, breakfasts in Pittsburgh, debates about graduate schools--thousands of real communities, and opinions, categorized to the tiniest niches, so nicely sorted and searchable, and which can be captured through time. What a sociological resource, if nothing else!
Usenet is a database, and Deja provides a proper search feature for it. That's value. Great value. What Deja refuses to realize is that it could charge for the resource. I would pay $20 a month for it, easily. Especially if Deja promised to maintain it well (and of course put the old archives back online).
Deja could add even more value to it. If it had been a little more ambitious, it would have added to its Usenet database discussion forums akin to ForumOne's. These are Web discussion forums: Salon, the Utne Reader, etc. Searching each one alone for a topic of interest is arduous, since each forum's population can be comparatively small and topics broad. Usenet archives are useful because they provide enough of a range for niche subjects to be covered.
ForumOne, though in concept magnificent, is practically useless because you cannot use boolean and you cannot sort by author, date, etc. But can you imagine being able to search the entire range of discussion on the web PLUS Usenet with one search engine, and being able to sort via useful database fields? It would be a treasure trove easily equal to the Web in value.
Deja could charge even more for that.
Happily, there is an alternative solution on the Internet: we need to focus more firepower on better distribution technology--technology that makes users virtually impossible to track down, let alone crack down upon. It's the only thing that can protect consumer interests in the long-term.
Gnutella is a start. I look forward to greater sophistication and variety in programs of its genre.
For anyone interested in wireless Internet access that is unlimited for, say $60/month, and comes in the form of a PCMIA modem, then have a look at goamerica.com. I'm not affiliated with them, by the way.