5 Jun
2011
5 Jun
'11
12:01 a.m.
From madodel at ptdprolog.net Sun Jun 5 06:48:00 2011
But not everyone has access to a usenet server
anymore.
If they ever did they also do now. Nothing has changed. Servers come and
go. Some ISPs have them, some don't. There are several good free ones, and
even a usenet newsgroup just for talking about free news servers called
alt.free.newsservers.
If there are any free ones left they are limited or
have other problems,
like poor retention.
I don't what poor retention means, I guess everybody would define that in
his own way. If you use a news client and want articles held for a long
time, you are probably going to have to pay for a good server. There are
plenty of those still running. You pay for your ISP so why should paying
for usenet be objectionable. Ideally it would be free, but...
I run my own news server, and judging from the replies to this thread so do
several other people. You can do that and control your own retention.
My ISP still provides Usenet, but I know a lot of
people who's ISP killed
their usenet service completely. So Usenet is becoming less available.
It isn't becoming less available so much as it's used less and is becoming
a premium service like anything else that has costs associated with it that
has people willing to pay for it. Lucky for us who only care about text
newsgroups there are several very nice free servers available, some with
signup required but still free. There are other very cheap, good servers.
You can use these to peer with and retain as long as you want.
Yes hobbes is an archive, but there are mirrors so it
wouldn't be lost
entirely, except for the history of it being one of the first and largest
of it's kind.
I hope Hobbes stays around forever and I'm glad to hear there are mirrors.
I would be sad to see it go but the data is what matters, and that it's
available, not who hosts it.
If every provider kills their Usenet servers then the
network dies.
As I said before, that's not true. Usenet is a peering protocol. As long as
individuals run usenet servers and peer, usenet stays alive. That is the
great thing about Usenet. As far as providers killing it, I think more ISPs
will get away from usenet simply because it's a cost to them (administration
and DASD) and doesn't have much benefit to most of their customers who don't
even know what usenet is. Still there are plenty of pay usenet servers
thanks to the people who want binaries so big backbone servers are probably
going to be around as long as there's pr0n in the world.
And Google sucks for Usenet, so don't even go
there.
True, so true to the extent that I killfile all google groups posts and so
do most of the people I know who run their own newsservers.