For the past few days I haven't had usenet access. Didn't think much of
it at first as there are occasional outages but after 2 or 3 days I
called the helpdesk at my ISP. The helpdesk lady had no idea what I was
talking about when I mentioned usenet news. She also wasn't a lot of
help. A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
the helpdesk weren't told!

So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.
I much prefer the ease of use and simplicity of a local client like
Thunderbird or Agent. I can only hope that eternal-september will
survive for a few more years.

--

Krypsis

On 2011-11-27, Krypsis > wrote:
> For the past few days I haven't had usenet access. Didn't think much of
> it at first as there are occasional outages but after 2 or 3 days I
> called the helpdesk at my ISP. The helpdesk lady had no idea what I was
> talking about when I mentioned usenet news.

Support ppl have NEVER known about newsgrous and usenet, even when the
big ISPs had their own groups. Hell, 1st tier support ppl don't know
anything about anything, so no surprise, there.

Not only is usenet and irc still alive and well, new websites --think
foodbanter-- pirating usenet content are popping up all over. I can
find what I posted in rfc in a common google search the same day I
posted it. I don't think usenet is going anywhere, soon. Plus, quit
being such a cheap ass and PAY for a GOOD acct. News.Idividual.Net
only costs a measley $1 per month, ferchrysakes!

http://www.individual.net/

BTW, desktop computers aren't going anywhere, also.

nb











She also wasn't a lot of
> help. A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
> page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
> shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
> usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
> the helpdesk weren't told!
>
> So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
> usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
> be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
> all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.
> I much prefer the ease of use and simplicity of a local client like
> Thunderbird or Agent. I can only hope that eternal-september will
> survive for a few more years.
>


--
vi ....the heart of evil!

On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 01:41:21 +1100, Krypsis >
wrote:

> A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
>page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
>shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
>usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
>the helpdesk weren't told!
>
>So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
>usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
>be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
>all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.


The big guys, ATT and Verizon dropped newsgroups a couple of years
ago. Sadly, we lost a lot of regular and good contributors that did
not sign up for other services. That increase the noise to signal
ratio too.

On 11/27/2011 10:36 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 01:41:21 +1100, >
> wrote:
>
>> A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
>> page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
>> shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
>> usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
>> the helpdesk weren't told!
>>
>> So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
>> usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
>> be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
>> all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.
>
>
> The big guys, ATT and Verizon dropped newsgroups a couple of years
> ago. Sadly, we lost a lot of regular and good contributors that did
> not sign up for other services. That increase the noise to signal
> ratio too.

Not to mention comcast. But they did it for the children...

On 27/11/11 09:10, George wrote:

>> The big guys, ATT and Verizon dropped newsgroups a couple of years
>> ago. Sadly, we lost a lot of regular and good contributors that did
>> not sign up for other services. That increase the noise to signal
>> ratio too.
>
> Not to mention comcast. But they did it for the children...


Cox Communictions, AOL, and Time Warner Cable too dropped Usenet
alltogether citing high maintainance cost and low consumers' interest
in newsgroups.
Although there are independent free and commercial Usenet providers,
tens of millions of people only in U.S. have lost access to
newsgroups from their ISPs. They have massivelly migrated to web forums.

(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

On 2011-11-27, Feranija > wrote:
> On 27/11/11 09:10, George wrote:

>> Not to mention comcast. But they did it for the children...

Bullcrap!

> Cox Communictions, AOL, and Time Warner Cable too dropped Usenet
> alltogether citing high maintainance cost and low consumers' interest
> in newsgroups.

Also bullcrap! They did it to avoid litigation by the multimedia
corps. Too much of usenet content was binary chains of entire albums and
movies than could be dwnld'd. You'll notice most of the free or low
cost usenet servers are strictly non-binary.

nb

In article >,
Krypsis > wrote:

> For the past few days I haven't had usenet access. Didn't think much of
> it at first as there are occasional outages but after 2 or 3 days I
> called the helpdesk at my ISP. The helpdesk lady had no idea what I was
> talking about when I mentioned usenet news. She also wasn't a lot of
> help. A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
> page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
> shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
> usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
> the helpdesk weren't told!
>
> So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
> usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
> be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
> all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.
> I much prefer the ease of use and simplicity of a local client like
> Thunderbird or Agent. I can only hope that eternal-september will
> survive for a few more years.

Usenet's been out of fashion for 10 or so years.

Miche

--
Electricians do it in three phases

On 27/11/11 12:22, Miche wrote:

> Usenet's been out of fashion for 10 or so years.
>
> Miche


Usenet has never been fashionable. On the beggining it was the only
way of mass communication on internet. A while later it was just one
of few choices of internet mass communication. In the past ten years
web forums dominate.
Twitting and blogging is fashionable.

WE ARE 1% !

On 11/27/2011 8:58 AM, phaeton wrote:
> 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.

My view of this is that the desktop was mostly an unfortunate accident.
A diversion of a couple of decades brought about by the needs of
backwards compatibility to the original 8088 microprocessor, the
availability of dirt cheap RAM, and the economics of planned
obsolescence. We're left with big monsters that have to be loaded up
with gigantic OSes when we turn them on, requiring careful maintenance
and replacement with faster and better hardware/software, robust power
supplies of at least 400W or so, huge amounts of RAM and hard drive
space and a good amount of floor/desktop space.

The new computers will be lightweight and portable and will be a useful,
easy-to-use, multipurpose tool. It will turn on and off quickly, we'll
use simple, cheap, quick loading, programs and it will connect us with
everybody on this planet. It's the dream of the personal computer realized.

In the future, the desktop will be viewed in the same way that the cars
of the 70s we a really bad time in it's history.

On 11/27/2011 5:42 PM, dsi1 wrote:
> On 11/27/2011 8:58 AM, phaeton wrote:
>> 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.
>
> My view of this is that the desktop was mostly an unfortunate accident.
> A diversion of a couple of decades brought about by the needs of
> backwards compatibility to the original 8088 microprocessor, the
> availability of dirt cheap RAM, and the economics of planned
> obsolescence. We're left with big monsters that have to be loaded up
> with gigantic OSes when we turn them on, requiring careful maintenance
> and replacement with faster and better hardware/software, robust power
> supplies of at least 400W or so, huge amounts of RAM and hard drive
> space and a good amount of floor/desktop space.
>
> The new computers will be lightweight and portable and will be a useful,
> easy-to-use, multipurpose tool. It will turn on and off quickly, we'll
> use simple, cheap, quick loading, programs and it will connect us with
> everybody on this planet. It's the dream of the personal computer realized.

Its also a dream for lots of organizations. If all of your data is held
by others what privacy do you have?

>
> In the future, the desktop will be viewed in the same way that the cars
> of the 70s we a really bad time in it's history.
>

On 11/27/2011 2:09 PM, George wrote:
> On 11/27/2011 5:42 PM, dsi1 wrote:
>> On 11/27/2011 8:58 AM, phaeton wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> My view of this is that the desktop was mostly an unfortunate accident.
>> A diversion of a couple of decades brought about by the needs of
>> backwards compatibility to the original 8088 microprocessor, the
>> availability of dirt cheap RAM, and the economics of planned
>> obsolescence. We're left with big monsters that have to be loaded up
>> with gigantic OSes when we turn them on, requiring careful maintenance
>> and replacement with faster and better hardware/software, robust power
>> supplies of at least 400W or so, huge amounts of RAM and hard drive
>> space and a good amount of floor/desktop space.
>>
>> The new computers will be lightweight and portable and will be a useful,
>> easy-to-use, multipurpose tool. It will turn on and off quickly, we'll
>> use simple, cheap, quick loading, programs and it will connect us with
>> everybody on this planet. It's the dream of the personal computer
>> realized.
>
> Its also a dream for lots of organizations. If all of your data is held
> by others what privacy do you have?

I think that our concept of privacy will change very soon. We won't have
that luxury of concealing ourselves - not like we do today, anyway. I
don't have much problem with remote storage and have backed up my iPad's
files and apps on Apple's massive iCloud server. It probably wouldn't be
of much interest to most folks, but I could be wrong.

>
>>
>> In the future, the desktop will be viewed in the same way that the cars
>> of the 70s we a really bad time in it's history.
>>
>

Miche > wrote:
> In article >,
> Krypsis > wrote:
>
>> For the past few days I haven't had usenet access. Didn't think much of
>> it at first as there are occasional outages but after 2 or 3 days I
>> called the helpdesk at my ISP. The helpdesk lady had no idea what I was
>> talking about when I mentioned usenet news. She also wasn't a lot of
>> help. A couple of days later I thought I might just check the support
>> page and, sure enough, there was a statement there referring to the
>> shutdown of usenet at Optus due to declining interest and links to paid
>> usenet services from other ISPs. Well, that explained the outage, pity
>> the helpdesk weren't told!
>>
>> So I have had to move myself to eternal-september.org. At least we
>> usenet people still have a few options but I suspect those options will
>> be getting thinner on the ground as time rolls on. Web forums seem to be
>> all the rage these days but I simply don't like the needless overheads.
>> I much prefer the ease of use and simplicity of a local client like
>> Thunderbird or Agent. I can only hope that eternal-september will
>> survive for a few more years.
>
> Usenet's been out of fashion for 10 or so years.
>
> Miche

At Pitt university I saw a decline of students using the specific Pitt
groups about 10 years ago. It was a year ago they dropped usenet support.
Most of my usenet posts were through that port.

Greg

On 28/11/2011 2:00 AM, notbob wrote:
> On 2011-11-27, > wrote:
>> For the past few days I haven't had usenet access. Didn't think much of
>> it at first as there are occasional outages but after 2 or 3 days I
>> called the helpdesk at my ISP. The helpdesk lady had no idea what I was
>> talking about when I mentioned usenet news.
>
> Support ppl have NEVER known about newsgrous and usenet, even when the
> big ISPs had their own groups. Hell, 1st tier support ppl don't know
> anything about anything, so no surprise, there.
>
> Not only is usenet and irc still alive and well, new websites --think
> foodbanter-- pirating usenet content are popping up all over. I can
> find what I posted in rfc in a common google search the same day I
> posted it. I don't think usenet is going anywhere, soon. Plus, quit
> being such a cheap ass and PAY for a GOOD acct. News.Idividual.Net
> only costs a measley $1 per month, ferchrysakes!

For what I do on usenet, eternal september will satisfy my needs for the
time being. As you may have noted, it was some time before I managed to
get around to rectifying my lack of access. That would give a fair
indication of the priority I give to usenet. It's nice to have but
certainly not an essential in my life.

>
> http://www.individual.net/
>
> BTW, desktop computers aren't going anywhere, also.
>
> nb
>
Desktops may be around for a while yet but they aren't going to look
anything like the beige boxes of old. Apple started the trend of change
by building everything into the monitor housing. It became much easier,
not to mention more trendy looking, to do the integration when flat
screen technology arrived. I have a G3 iMac that statred the trend. I
didn't follow it up with a G4 or G5 iMac instead opting for the huge
silver tower of the Powermac. Now all my friends are buying desktops
where the entire computer is integrated into the display. Another trend
is the miniaturisation of the beige box. The Mac Mini is a good example
of that. You can squeeze an awful lot of computing power into a very
small space these days.

Krypsis

On 28/11/2011 4:49 AM, Feranija wrote:
> On 27/11/11 09:10, George wrote:
>
>>> The big guys, ATT and Verizon dropped newsgroups a couple of years
>>> ago. Sadly, we lost a lot of regular and good contributors that did
>>> not sign up for other services. That increase the noise to signal
>>> ratio too.
>>
>> Not to mention comcast. But they did it for the children...
>
>
> Cox Communictions, AOL, and Time Warner Cable too dropped Usenet
> alltogether citing high maintainance cost and low consumers' interest in
> newsgroups.
> Although there are independent free and commercial Usenet providers,
> tens of millions of people only in U.S. have lost access to newsgroups
> from their ISPs. They have massivelly migrated to web forums.

The migration to web forums has been the trend here for probably more
than ten years. I'd be interested to see the usage figures for usenet at
my ISP, Optus. No doubt it would have reflected a long slow downward
trend. I know that many of the hobby usenet forums in which I once
participated have become entirely devoid of relevant posts.

--

Krypsis

On 28/11/2011 6:22 AM, notbob wrote:
> On 2011-11-27, > wrote:
>> On 27/11/11 09:10, George wrote:
>
>>> Not to mention comcast. But they did it for the children...
>
> Bullcrap!
>
>> Cox Communictions, AOL, and Time Warner Cable too dropped Usenet
>> alltogether citing high maintainance cost and low consumers' interest
>> in newsgroups.
>
> Also bullcrap! They did it to avoid litigation by the multimedia
> corps. Too much of usenet content was binary chains of entire albums and
> movies than could be dwnld'd. You'll notice most of the free or low
> cost usenet servers are strictly non-binary.
>
> nb

I would think that, in the case of free and low cost usenet servers, the
no-binary issue would more be caused by bandwidth costs. There are still
plenty of alternatives for downloading movies and music and I never
found usenet reliable for spanned binaries anyway.

--

Krypsis

i%? In favour of web forums??

Has no one noticed that whenever you post to a usenet forum, your
posting immediately appears on a large number of www forums?
Sometimes, in my case, before google groups shows them up??

People are just too lazy to figure out which newsgroup reader to use
and there are too many of them around, all of which sound identical to
someone who has used Outlook Exprss, NGs and/or google groups

BTW Thanks for the recommendation of News.Idividual.Net. I had never
heard of it and should czech it out.

On 11/28/2011 11:14 AM, Amanda Ripanykhazova wrote:
> i%? In favour of web forums??

In my awesome opinion, G00gle Gr0ups exists and people use it. Wait an
minute, that's not an opinion. Never mind. (-:

>
> Has no one noticed that whenever you post to a usenet forum, your
> posting immediately appears on a large number of www forums?
> Sometimes, in my case, before google groups shows them up??
>
> People are just too lazy to figure out which newsgroup reader to use
> and there are too many of them around, all of which sound identical to
> someone who has used Outlook Exprss, NGs and/or google groups
>
> BTW Thanks for the recommendation of News.Idividual.Net. I had never
> heard of it and should czech it out.

On 11/27/2011 7:34 PM, dsi1 wrote:
> On 11/27/2011 2:09 PM, George wrote:
>> On 11/27/2011 5:42 PM, dsi1 wrote:
>>> On 11/27/2011 8:58 AM, phaeton wrote:
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> My view of this is that the desktop was mostly an unfortunate accident.
>>> A diversion of a couple of decades brought about by the needs of
>>> backwards compatibility to the original 8088 microprocessor, the
>>> availability of dirt cheap RAM, and the economics of planned
>>> obsolescence. We're left with big monsters that have to be loaded up
>>> with gigantic OSes when we turn them on, requiring careful maintenance
>>> and replacement with faster and better hardware/software, robust power
>>> supplies of at least 400W or so, huge amounts of RAM and hard drive
>>> space and a good amount of floor/desktop space.
>>>
>>> The new computers will be lightweight and portable and will be a useful,
>>> easy-to-use, multipurpose tool. It will turn on and off quickly, we'll
>>> use simple, cheap, quick loading, programs and it will connect us with
>>> everybody on this planet. It's the dream of the personal computer
>>> realized.
>>
>> Its also a dream for lots of organizations. If all of your data is held
>> by others what privacy do you have?
>
> I think that our concept of privacy will change very soon. We won't have

Only because people are willing to give it up so easily.


> that luxury of concealing ourselves - not like we do today, anyway. I
> don't have much problem with remote storage and have backed up my iPad's
> files and apps on Apple's massive iCloud server. It probably wouldn't be
> of much interest to most folks, but I could be wrong.
>
>>
>>>
>>> In the future, the desktop will be viewed in the same way that the cars
>>> of the 70s we a really bad time in it's history.
>>>
>>
>

On 11/28/2011 2:17 PM, George wrote:
> On 11/27/2011 7:34 PM, dsi1 wrote:
>> On 11/27/2011 2:09 PM, George wrote:
>>> Its also a dream for lots of organizations. If all of your data is held
>>> by others what privacy do you have?
>>
>> I think that our concept of privacy will change very soon. We won't have
>
> Only because people are willing to give it up so easily.

It's pretty obvious that folks are willing to give up their privacy
fairly easily. That's the breaks. We don't have any control over how
others think.

Maybe we'll learn how to live like the rest of the world: with little
privacy. Most of the world doesn't have the resources to build thick
walls in every room in their house. My guess is that privacy is a pretty
rare commodity.

>
>
>> that luxury of concealing ourselves - not like we do today, anyway. I
>> don't have much problem with remote storage and have backed up my iPad's
>> files and apps on Apple's massive iCloud server. It probably wouldn't be
>> of much interest to most folks, but I could be wrong.
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> In the future, the desktop will be viewed in the same way that the cars
>>>> of the 70s we a really bad time in it's history.
>>>>
>>>
>>
>