• Advantages of Usenet

    From Internetado@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jul 4 00:18:36 2020
    From: nat@land.invalid (nat)
    Newsgroups: news.groups,news.software.nntp,alt.config
    Subject: Advantages of Usenet:
    Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:33:37 GMT
    Message-ID: <ibkpt2$crn$2@solani.org> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    Advantages of Usenet:
    --------------------

    1. No single point of failure problems.
    Since Usenet articles are available on all the servers simultaneously,
    there are hundreds of copies of the same article exist.
    Even if your own server goes down, you can just use one of your
    alternative servers and you won't miss even a bit of anything.

    With board and things like that, the information is available on
    a single server. So, if that server goes down or goes out of
    business, you are screwed for good. Since no web servers contain
    the same information, where do you get the information you used
    to get from that server that went out of busines? Well, you'd have
    to spend days searching for some replacement board that may or
    may not have the information you want.

    2. Fully distributed system
    This means that even if half of Usenet servers get shut down
    for whatever reason, such as nuclear war :), you still have
    Usenet functioning.

    This means Usenet can not be destroyed in principle.
    Even if the biggest servers stop doing NNTP, Usenet still functions
    like nothing happened.

    3. Reliability.
    Usenet can not be "taken out" like some web server, board or blog.
    Basically, you can not even destroy any article nowadays. Thanks
    to Hippy, very few servers accept cancels or supersedes nowadays.

    This means, once the article is written, it is pretty much
    GUARANTEED to exist from then on. Not only that, but it is almost
    immediately archived by tons of web based usenet archive libraries,
    carrying the whole usenet and its history going back for YEARS.

    4. No censorship
    This is probably the most important aspect of Usenet.
    Put aside the "moderated" groups, any article is guaranteed to
    exist once it has been written. So, the information can not be
    destroyed.

    All the arguments about "spam" are just phony excuses, used by
    the most intolerant and blood boiling idiots, trying to dictate
    to everybody what "should" and what "should not" be there.

    This is profoundly undemocratic approach.
    It is basically a totalitarian domination trip, imposed by some
    Nazi, driven by the inferiority complex.

    Yes, I did see plenty of spam attacks, and I mean ATTACKS, and not
    just a few spam posts per day, and when I say the attack, I mean
    they post THOUSANDS of posts per day. Yes, that IS the problem.
    But there are quite a few ways of dealing with it.
    If it is THAT bad, the chances are that spammer won't survive for
    more than a few days.

    Secondly, you can use filters on your newsreader and forget about
    that spam even if your group consists of 99% spam.

    There is simply no excuse such as "spam".

    But... On the other hand, YOU get to decide which information you
    want to see and not some power hungry sicko aka dictator, or some
    "committee" like these bamby ding dongs, who do not even realize
    their place in the scheme of things. They think THEY "control"
    the big-8, so it makes them look and feel "important".
    But, if they even BEGAN to realize who stands behind it all,
    they'd just jump from the biggest bridge there is, realizing their
    UTTER insignificance in the scheme of things.

    They are nothing more than condoms.
    Once used, they are to be thrown into a garbage bin.
    And I mean ALL of them, including Russ Allbery and David Lawrence
    aka tale.

    So, with usenet, you can present ANY kind of ideas, project and
    carry out ANY kind of discussion, and you are guaranteed your
    work won't simply evaporate, just because of some nazi censor,
    "moderating" your point of vew out.

    5. Virtually unlimited number of groups to handle any kind of subject imaginable. Where else will you find such a diversity.

    6. Support for virtually any kind of data.
    Basically, nothing prevents Usenet to look like ANY web site.
    You can have binary data, images, sounds or anything, just on
    any web site out there.

    There is basically no limitations on what kind of information
    Usenet is capable of handling.

    --

    Eduardo
    Arte-Cultura-Lusofonia
    www.alt119.net

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Internetado@21:1/5 to After serious thinking Internetado on Sat Jul 4 01:17:29 2020
    After serious thinking Internetado wrote :


    Advantages of Usenet:
    --------------------

    1. No single point of failure problems.
    Since Usenet articles are available on all the servers simultaneously,
    there are hundreds of copies of the same article exist.
    Even if your own server goes down, you can just use one of your
    alternative servers and you won't miss even a bit of anything.

    Interesting text from 2010.

    --

    Eduardo
    Arte-Cultura-Lusofonia
    www.alt119.net

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Jason Evans@21:1/5 to Internetado on Sat Jul 4 11:38:38 2020
    On Sat, 04 Jul 2020 00:18:36 -0300, Internetado wrote:

    Advantages of Usenet:
    --------------------

    Excellent post and that's coming from one of the "bamby ding dongs". I
    can't speak for previous members but the folks currently working on the
    B8MB seriously just want to see more people using Usenet for all of the
    reasons that you stated and we want to see new groups being created and
    used by real people. Slowly but surely, we will reach that goal. If you
    want to talk to us sometime, send us an email. board@big-8.org.

    JE

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Grant Taylor@21:1/5 to Internetado on Sat Jul 4 10:00:46 2020
    On 7/3/20 10:17 PM, Internetado wrote:
    Interesting text from 2010.

    I found it to be idealistic and optimistic in nature and failing to take
    some nasty squishy center points into account.



    --
    Grant. . . .
    unix || die

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Adam H. Kerman@21:1/5 to Jason Evans on Sat Jul 4 18:54:31 2020
    Jason Evans <jsevans@mailfence.com> wrote:

    Excellent post and that's coming from one of the "bamby ding dongs". I
    can't speak for previous members but the folks currently working on the
    B8MB seriously just want to see more people using Usenet for all of the >reasons that you stated and we want to see new groups being created and
    used by real people. Slowly but surely, we will reach that goal. If you
    want to talk to us sometime, send us an email. board@big-8.org.

    New groups do not attract a new audience to Usenet. The real people
    discussing real topics must come first. You got it reversed.

    Please to ghod don't just start newgrouping more "It's obvious!"
    newsgroups. Skirv did that out of impatience and a feeble demonstration of power. There weren't motivated proponents with decent proposals. Either the "It's obvious!" groups failed or they were redundant of existsing alt.*
    groups. Skirv ignored everything he knew about Usenet despite being a
    long-time participant.

    Furthermore, lots of new groups were never an indicator of Usenet's
    health. Skirv got that wrong. Your predecessors' expectations of zero
    effort required of the proponent got that very wrong. There are 10s of thousands of newsgroups already because someone proposed a group with
    no interest in finding an audience and building topical discussion, you
    know, the actual hard work of being a proponent. Usenet has no shortage
    of spamtraps already.

    That the useless proponents have largely gone away is truly a good thing.

    Do Usenet a huge favor, will you? Do something symbolic to let us know
    that, unlike your predecessors, you have a more realistic picture of
    your role. Stop calling yourselves a "board"; the Big 8 hierarchies
    aren't a corporation. You're hierarchy ADMINISTRATORS, not MANAGERS. You
    don't run the hierarchies. You administer technical aspects of
    maintaining checkgroups and issuing newgroup and rmgroup commands.

    B8MB pretended they were Usenet central, ignoring the fact that Usenet
    is decentralized. It's the News administrators, not the hierarchy administrators, who provide the servers and the network and support the
    users. Your role is limited to listing recognized newsgroups. That says
    to a News administrator: If you create one of the newsgroups that we list,
    this is the syntactically correct group name.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)