Given the concerns that many people and countries have raised about control of the Internet namespace, the security concerns this raises for communications in Arab countries, and China's recent decision to have an alternate Chinese character namespace, do you see any indications of a movement towards an alternate Arabic Internet namespace emerging?
This is just another limp, useless piece of sensationalist journalism by someone who does not have a clue about the technology. It play on whatever Rogers fed them and they probably did not even bother checking out USENET before pumping out the piece before morning coffee break. A few things:
1. Death of USENET on lame ISPs only; Long Live USENET. Watch Sympatico follow suit. Which is all okay since Rogers, Sympatico, and other ISPs do a lousy job of serving USENET anyway. Their feeds are often incomplete and have low retention periods. This makes them virtually usuable for binary downloads anyway. Some don't even have complete USENET hierarchies. I haved used NewsGuy or Giganews for years and that is the right place to go for anyone who really wants to troll in the rich playground of USENET.
2. Reducing lamers on USENET is not necessarily a "bad" thing. Frankly, keep it to the people who care to know and use it rather than push it out to the masses. It is a nerdy environment anyway even with better client software (and I bow my head in thanks to Panic's Unison every day). It is unfortunate that tourists won't be able to have their ISP support quick dips into the ocean but hey, there are other options for the dedicated surfer...
3. Troublesome content: oh, my. Porn, viruses, nasty people. I spend more time each day clearing out these from my email than I have ever had to deal with on USENET. In over 15 years using USENET - sometimes excessively - I have never once downloaded a virus or any nasty bit of software. But then again, I have a Mac, so I have a teflon shell about these things... And if you don't like porn, don't go to alt.sex.* or read "Big XXX Mama" articles.
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Given the concerns that many people and countries have raised about control of the Internet namespace, the security concerns this raises for communications in Arab countries, and China's recent decision to have an alternate Chinese character namespace, do you see any indications of a movement towards an alternate Arabic Internet namespace emerging?
This is just another limp, useless piece of sensationalist journalism by someone who does not have a clue about the technology. It play on whatever Rogers fed them and they probably did not even bother checking out USENET before pumping out the piece before morning coffee break. A few things:
1. Death of USENET on lame ISPs only; Long Live USENET.
Watch Sympatico follow suit. Which is all okay since Rogers, Sympatico, and other ISPs do a lousy job of serving USENET anyway. Their feeds are often incomplete and have low retention periods. This makes them virtually usuable for binary downloads anyway. Some don't even have complete USENET hierarchies. I haved used NewsGuy or Giganews for years and that is the right place to go for anyone who really wants to troll in the rich playground of USENET.
2. Reducing lamers on USENET is not necessarily a "bad" thing. Frankly, keep it to the people who care to know and use it rather than push it out to the masses. It is a nerdy environment anyway even with better client software (and I bow my head in thanks to Panic's Unison every day). It is unfortunate that tourists won't be able to have their ISP support quick dips into the ocean but hey, there are other options for the dedicated surfer...
3. Troublesome content: oh, my. Porn, viruses, nasty people. I spend more time each day clearing out these from my email than I have ever had to deal with on USENET. In over 15 years using USENET - sometimes excessively - I have never once downloaded a virus or any nasty bit of software. But then again, I have a Mac, so I have a teflon shell about these things... And if you don't like porn, don't go to alt.sex.* or read "Big XXX Mama" articles.