Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:59:16 +0000 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: OT: The future of USENET? Message-ID: <20130328055916.d80acbbc06db0c4f2761bcfd@sohara.org> In-Reply-To: <CAD2Ti2-5GDjpOoue1gCb5ZJryT9b%2B1kEGkaehMkTk0CECxrr3w@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAD2Ti2-5GDjpOoue1gCb5ZJryT9b%2B1kEGkaehMkTk0CECxrr3w@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:12:06 -0400 grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote: > Usenet was great. 'Was' because it really isn't there anymore. > Servers used to be widespread, you could use your ISP, your school, > your work, and failing that plenty of free ones even if for the > asking, even some public/open ones. Now there are very few, if any, > free servers and likely none are public/open for obvious reason There are several free public USENET text servers (no binary groups), granted it's nothing like the days when every ISP ran one but there are still several about (eternal-september.com is one of the biggest). There are also a few low cost paid servers (individual.net stands out here). There is also a thriving business in paid for USENET binary service. > Post 2000 Web 2.0 and those eyeballs destroyed usenet. They are the > idiot mass and they demanded to only see the world through their > browser window. And when usenet died off, so did the long running > text only archive servers, taking decades of human knowledge with > them. Vanished. Just the same as web forums do when they vanish. > Google's 'group' archive doesn't count, they're a corporation, they > wrapped it in web 2.0, they don't care, it will die. USENET is not dead, and the Google archive is all that remains of the only large archive that ever existed deja-news. Granted it is a sad and almost useless remnant. > The bandwidth cost, piracy and porn was just as damning as web 2.0. > The former caused the formal ISP/school/work support to die. > The latter stole the eyeballs. Bandwidth piracy and porn problems are all in the binary groups which is why the remaining free USENET services are text only. What has stolen eyeballs from a lot of groups is the trolls and troll bots where some idiot has decided to make a group unusable. > Back then you had to have brains to be on the net, now everyone is > web 2.0, and they're satisfied with ridiculous web forums. Any > brains today are all but forced to use them because the population > is so slim anywhere else. Usenet has suffered its generational > penalty. Actually the web forums are no help in that respect because they've caused what was once a concentrated audience to fragment over a hundred web forums. -- Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org>
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