(pardon the fact that I'm posting via GG at the moment)

When I worked for an ISP from 2001-2006, I knew full well what USENET
was all about. And sadly, the ISP I worked with also repurposed their
USENET servers (two pizza-box macs, which became a backup DNS and a
backup EIMS). At the time, they said that there were two people who
used it: myself and a longtime customer who had recently died (he was
almost 90).

I got a SUPERNEWS account for awhile, but later switched ISPs and got
(albeit crappy) nntp access included, till it too went away. No their
tech support wasn't any help either (they were the card-flipping
types, not real tech support). The Google Groups thing was great at
the time, (being able to search groups for info is a great technical
resource) but as we all know it exposed newsgroups to its potential
demise.

I still like to think that USENET will persist, as well as IRC (which
is very alive, thankfully). Like notbob (or not like bob?) I'm also
in the "desktop computers are not going away" camp. The people who
are getting that excited over tablets to say this apparently don't use
their computer for much.

also: vi may be the heart of evil, but emacs is like removing a
splinter with a cruise ship. :P

-J