4 Jun
2011
4 Jun
'11
7:12 p.m.
vintagecoder at aol.com wrote:
But not everyone has access to a usenet server anymore. If there are any
free ones left they are limited or have other problems, like poor
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. 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. If every provider kills their Usenet servers then
the network dies. And Google sucks for Usenet, so don't even go there.
Mark
From madodel at ptdprolog.net Sat Jun 4 21:24:22
2011
I disagree. I see it as similar. See below.
> How many members of the student body even
knew in 2010 that Duke
> maintained an active news server?
Does that even matter? Maybe it wasn't accessible outside their network.
BTW New Mexico State University still maintains
the hobbes.nmsu.edu
server even though almost everyone there probably has no clue as to what
ftp (though most access is through http now) is and probably no idea what
DOS or OS/2 is. Every few years they ask for donations and people
actually always donate more then what is required so they assign a few
students to maintain it. The cost is negligible but the historic value
is unimaginable for those looking for old OS/2 and DOS freeware/shareware
programs.
The difference is Hobbes is an archive, it's not usenet. Unless they set up
mirrors if they go away everything they have goes with them. Not so with
usenet, it's a totally separate issue. I don't understand why Duke couldn't do
the same for it's Usenet server.
Why would they have to? Usenet is a peering network. Theoretically
everything they have is also on other servers. The point of usenet is no
individual server needs to exist. It's better if there are more just to
distribute the load but no usenet server that operates correctly is
indispensible since it should be passing all its articles to other servers.
Usenet servers are supposed to be able to come and go without impacting
anybody and without loss of data.