Duke To Shut Down Usenet Server 273
DukeTech writes "This week marks the end of an era for one of the earliest pieces of Internet history, which got its start at Duke University more than 30 years ago. On May 20, Duke will shut down its Usenet server, which provides access to a worldwide electronic discussion network of newsgroups started in 1979 by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis." Rantastic and other readers wrote about the shutdown of the British Usenet indexer Newzbin today; the site sank under the weight of a lawsuit and outstanding debt. Combine these stories with the recent news of Microsoft shuttering its newsgroups, along with other recent stories, and the picture does not look bright for Usenet.
A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
combinations (Score:4, Insightful)
> Combine these stories with the recent news of Microsoft shuttering its newsgroups, along with other recent stories, and the picture does not look bright for Usenet.
What if you combine those stories with the fact that there are millions more people using Usenet groups today thanks to Google's web interface? Does it look brighter than 10 years ago?
Maybe, though, Usenet is an idea whose time has been and gone. There are other ways of sharing information now, which don't suffer the same intractable problems of spam etc.
Re:combinations (Score:2, Insightful)
hopefully, a typical slashdot exaggeration (Score:5, Insightful)
Enthusiasts will keep Usenet going (Score:2, Insightful)
Obsolete (Score:2, Insightful)
... And nothing of any importance was lost.
(fond memories remain intact)
Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google wrecked Usenet (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Still Open For Now (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone (feeling brave enough) can host their own Usenet server - open protocols and that malarky is still possible.
As a massively connected "network" of information and easily understood protocol writing software to parse it is straightforward.
Maybe political pressure is being exerted to shut the Usenet servers down. Media companies are aware of it's existence and will encourage it's extinction ("good luck with that").
Modern BBS-type systems are fine but are self-contained and do not encourage sharing of information (more accurately "replication") of nodes and data.
I don't think Usenet will ever go away - people are still using gopher today and some modern browsers still support it!
As long as the underpinnings of the Internet are open and free then anyone can create there own "protocol" and transmit data.
This is a fundemental right of the Internet.
Can you imagine if all this was created by a commercial entity - we just would not have the freedom we have now.
As long as some geeks run and admin their servers - there will always be an open and free way of transmitting data.
Believe me our "governments" and corporate "sponsors" are trying to remove those freedoms.
Re:Obsolete (Score:2, Insightful)
... And nothing of any importance was lost.
Really? Just have a look at some of these posts [google.com].
Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is my current pet-peeves : flat forum and phpBB are killing the art of internet discussion.
Oh, how painfully, painfully true.
I feel like I've departed the internet age of letters and found myself in the age of tweets.
Pros and cons (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, there's no moderation. Crazy people all over the place. You would have to start maintaining kill filters and all that.
Web forums can be accessed from anywhere. Newsgroups, well, you could using certain web interfaces. But they were usually sub-par.
Newsgroup readers are usually very complex. I personally ended up relatively comfortable using one, but it's much easier to just dive in and use a web forum.
I really like the threading and all that in newsreaders, but in the end, I found that web forums were much more convenient and useful for me, especially because there was someone around to kick out spammers and abusers.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. I love(d) the days of the newsgroup.
But in all fairness, back then the internet was totally free. And everyone pretty much put up servers for altruistic, informational, educational or other similar non profit purposes. Today with the current economic climate and focus on spending policies, everyone is cutting down. And there just really isn't a viable business model for usenet that I can think of (not that I'm a doctorate in economy, but still).
So I guess Usenet now just goes the way of Gopher and becomes once again a prduct of love and devotion, rather than business. I kinda like usenet that way, so I dont really mind.
Does that make me a geek now ? ;)
Yeah, and the Model T isn't hot anymore. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:combinations (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with Google groups is that it doesn't seem to understand where usenet ends and the web starts. Such as when I'm searching for a usenet post and it takes me to Wikipedia or some AOL forum crap.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:2, Insightful)
"back then" predates you even having an ISP. USENET was around a long time before the internet was made available to commercial interests (including ISPs selling access to the internet itself).
Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Not only has the communication become parodically terse, but it has also become imperative to answer as quickly as possible. If you actually re-read what you wrote, take time to correct errors, and perhaps add a new point or two, i.e. spend some time on improving your post, it won't be seen by many if any.
And I hate to say it, but I think slashdot has played its part in steering posting fora towardes this decline. Slashdot has also done some things to try to stem it, like the grading of both articles and posts, but it's an afterthought that doesn't solve the problem, but created karma whores instead.
The moderators too are unlikely to see good posts deep into a thread that isn't on the front page, no matter how good they are. So they never get moderated up to the point where others see them either.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
Usenet would be dirt-cheap to operate if, for example, Duke chose to stop carrying the binaries groups. (Like Google Groups today.) Then they'd just be handling the Text messages in groups like rec.arts.tv which requires very little bandwidth.
This is yet another example of throwing-out the whole Baby, when all you really need to do it remove the bathwater (binaries). There's no reason to completely stop carrying Usenet.
TLDR (Score:5, Insightful)
TLDR...
Agreed. Or the moderators only read (at best) the first couple of sentences of a post and rate based on that rather than the content of the whole comment. The attention span seems to have gotten so short that anything more than 140 characters is indigestible.
Given the current state of mods lately, this post will be tagged 'Troll' or 'Flamebait' based solely on the first line of this comment rather than reading the point I was trying to make.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right but usenet is serving a much smaller niche of people on the internet than it did a decade ago. Most major ISPs have either dropped or have plans to drop the binary groups as a free part of the connectivity deal (like email). The cost of maintaining the flow while providing useable retention times and performance is prohibitive as a free service.
The non binaries are cheap to keep but there is less and less interest in the non-binaries every month. It is now possible to drop those groups without much of a squeek from the user base. And as one marketing (ferengi) type told me, the customers who complain are not part of the subscriber domain which generates added revenue. ie: You can ignore them without punishing the bottom line.
People who want the pirated software and music/movies can go to paid services or use torrent. People who just want to chat with others about common interests can go to a variety of social media services that provide many more features (er... including loss of privacy). ....what am I saying? They ARE going to other services. 95% of our customers have no clue what usenet or "news" is. Even the academic types, who were big users in the past, don't know what usenet is. Hell, even the comp sci and comp eng types don't use it or don't know what it is anymore.
In 2000, about 20% of our customers were on our usenet servers regularly. In 2004 it was down to 11% and we dropped the binaries because we were spending over $1M per year on hardware and had 1.5 FTE (er... people) dedicated to it. Plus our legal department was worried about intellectual property issues.
Now less than 1% of our subs use our non-binary service.
Usenet as we knew it is dead and has been for a few years now. Nothing to see here; move along.
Re:...and there's still no comparable alternative. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then vote with your feet. That's the difference between the internet and real dictatorships.
Oh, I got ahead. I always get to hear "the internet is an anarchic place". It's not. It's a collection of minuscle dictatorships. Every server its own little dictatorship. Of course, usually governed by the laws of the country it is placed in, but also subject to the whims of its owner. If you want to create a board where the discussion of fuzzy purple things is banned because you have a pathological hate of fuzzy purple things, you can just do that. People who like fuzzy purple things will have only one choice: Not to go to your board.
But that's not really the big problem. There's other boards. And, unlike real life, if you don't like the dictatorships offered to you, roll your own! You cannot really stage a revolt (there's not really a neat way to overthrow an "internet dictator", even if you did manage to break through his defenses and crown yourself the new root, he can simply act like the average schoolyard crybaby, grab his ball, or rather, server, and go home), but you can simply grab a new server and go for it.
Of course, if you act like the average armchair dictator, you will be pretty lonely in your little dictatorship. Only if you offer people a reason to come to your fiefdom, they will opt to do that. People are generally lazy, and if you offer them what they want to have, they will come to you instead of founding their own little dictatorship.
So censor if you must. If I don't like it, well, bye.
The obvious drawback of such a system is that it will invariably lead to groupthink. You will eventually end up on a server that shares your views, which will be reinforced by the others that come to this server, while people with opposing views are probably being expelled or "gently nudged" to consider leaving the server the better idea.
And yes, that even applies here at /. Groupthink is a big problem, let's be honest here. And while I generally share the group opinion (duh, I'm still here), on some topics it's hard to not fall for the fallacy of "hey, everyone agrees, I'm modded 5+ insightful, so I gotta be right".
It's a shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
The concept of Usenet is awesome. Think about taking every single web forums out there and sticking them all into a client om your desk, and having a single sign in for everything, and you'll understand why Usenet is still superior to web based forums in many ways. You go to ONE PLACE to find the info you want on hobbies, politics, news, etc.
In the 90s, the Usenet FAQs were the best collection of knowledge on the Internet.
Sadly, due to it's open nature, Usenet was also the first to get SPAM. I would love to see someone develop a newer version of Usenet with better security.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially sad because Usenet is the first and last place you can go on the internet for truly uncensored discussion--with no moderators, with no company or organization in charge. Of course, this led to a lot of flamewars, spam, and people calling each other "fag." But it also meant that everyone always had at least one place to go where they didn't have to walk on eggshells and worry about offending the honchos in charge.
Call me silly, but I think that Usenet is something we NEED. It's the one true free speech zone on an increasingly corporatized/moderated/censored internet.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
But what exactly was the main point of Usenet? Well, that it was distributed and clients only go over the local link, because long distance bandwidth was precious. Today you spend the bandwidth of 100 usenet messages going half way around the world loading the front page of one online news site, so who really cares if your local ISP cuts it as long as "there are many nntp servers out there that offer text-only for free" according to you?
The whole concept of usenet is out of date, you can argue back and forth about the nntp protocol versus the http protocol but today it is far more practical to have one group on one server and have everybody access that. It guarantees that everybody sees all messages (not everything would propagate well), you can have captchas to prevent spam, moderators (without premoderation like usenet), search (without downloading everything) and so on. If people don't like a server, move the community to a different one.
Sure, it would be neat if you could standardize on a discussion protocol and use the tool of your choice but I think it'd be almost easier with a screen scraper than doing it by committee. There's honestly not that many different discussion board servers in common use.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame the pirates. Pirates were doing ISPs a favor by using USENET. Something pirated over USENET only travels over the public internet once. Then every user of the ISP can download it on the ISPs network at no cost to the ISP. Kill USENET and those pirates go back to P2P where every download goes across the public internet at least once per user.
No, it wasn't pirates. It was spam. Binaries and discussion coexisted very well on USENET for many years. It was the spam that killed the discussion, and drove most people away. If people could still use USENET instead of web forums, no ISP would be killing USENET.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:4, Insightful)
Effect...
(ObGetOffMyLawn moment: trn / Usenet a hell of a lot more efficient and consistent than reading fifty different websites with fifty different ideas on what makes a good interface.)
Re:Yeah, and the Model T isn't hot anymore. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that forums are way better than usenet, then you misunderstand usenet.
1) Usenet is software-agnostic--there are dozens of news readers encompassing every OS available. Web forums require a web browser.
2) Usenet is centralized. ALL groups come through one interface (of your choosing). Forums have different interfaces with different rules, and you have to register for each one individually.
3) Usenet is DE-centralized. Data is distributed worldwide, with no central authority or repository. Forums are owned and operated by a person or group who can block people, drive their own agenda, or shut down the service with no backup. A forum can also crash and burn.
4) Usenet _can_ be moderated. Moderated groups have been around since 1984 (!).
Forums are newer. Usenet is better. Sadly, newer almost always wins over better--especially when people don't understand the options.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't just the spam, Usenet survived the spam onslaught of the 1990s. What put the final dagger in Usenet was the unstoppable kooks and trolls which infest the place. Seriously, the quality of discussion there just sucks, its flaming and stalking 24x7. Usenet killed Usenet.
Both spam and trolling are symptomatic of central problem of Usenet -- most people just do not want to participate in unmoderated forums. If someone had come up with a moderation option for Usenet that actually worked maybe it had a chance at survival.
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's my NNTP interface to web forums, people?
Re:A twinge of sadness at this passing (Score:2, Insightful)
Kjella (173770) wrote:
> The whole concept of usenet is out of date, you can argue ...
> back and forth about the nntp protocol versus the http
> protocol but today it is far more practical to have one
> group on one server and
Where to start...
If you think HTTP can replace NNTP you may as well also
think that HTTP can replace SMTP. I guess some people may
think that, if we can believe Facebook messages will have
any kind of longevity. Gawd.
Newsgroups provide an IETF standard format for providing
time-stamp, author, subject, and referenced predecessor associated
with a posted message body and, nicely, the ability to CC or BCC the
work to email addresses. In addition, NNTP provides the ability
to *remove* a posted article, something that even email has failed
to provide. Finally, owing to how it is implemented, USENET provides
archiving in a way that no single (HTTP) Web site could ever hope
to provide. The day Facebook dies will be the day all messages
in the history of Facebook die with it.
No, NNTP is not "out of date". It is, in fact, the least understood
sleeper protocol on the Internet and it is a shame that it has been
co-opted by "Forums", blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Not that Twitter
and Facebook do not have virtues, they do. Just community forums
is not one of them, compared with the venerable USENET.