AT&T Dropping Usenet Netnews; Low-Cost Alternatives? 345
franknagy writes "This announcement message has appeared in all the news groups on
the AT&T/SBC News Server: 'Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be
offering access to the Usenet netnews service. If you wish to continue
reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party
vendors.' So what free or low-cost alternatives are available for Netnews and
the NNTP services for clients?"
Text-only, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Public_News_Servers/ [dmoz.org]
Re:Is it worth it anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
You should investigate talkorigins.org
Although that website is ancient, its a collection of a vast amount of material on the evolution/creationism debate that was held exclusively on usenet. It serves as an amazing reference so that if you see the same conversation starting for the nth time you can post the link and close the thread.
Now that may seem dismissive, but you would be amazed how many times you will see creationists copy and paste first posts from anti-evolution websites, which have detailed answers that would be a pain to type out each time.
Re:Is it worth it anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
R.I.P. (Score:5, Interesting)
Usenet was my first encounter with electronic forum - questions asked and answered, flame wars, trolls, kooks, some grass-roots projects, etc.
I remember the flame war about people's sig. Some dudes had this gigantic ASCII art sig files, and people were complaining about one-line posts with 20-line sigs, how the bandwidth were wasted, etc.
A trick to have one's question answered rather than ignored: Post the question, and from a second account, post a completely bogus answer with extra dose of condescension. People are so eager to pounce on the bogus answer with full-on indignation.
Oh well. Move on.
Re:Just start torrenting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it is better if you want to get caught easier...
No one is really actively tracing downloads from USENET, not like P2P solutions.
For the original poster, go google "open usenet servers", you'll find a couple of sites that index open usenet servers, and gives stats on them.
I know...I know...first rule of USENET is not to talk about USENET.
Re:Is it worth it anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've visited the talk.origins group before and concluded that the pro-evolution group is just as zealotic as the creation/ID group. Just because you are (generally) right does not necessarily mean you're not a zealot. I suspect the mellow people of both sides have been driven out.
I once challenged that some forms of intelligent design (ID) studies could *potentially* be classified as "science" (although weak science). The pro-evolutionists there went ape-sh8t. I was appalled. I wasn't supporting existing ID work, only saying if done right it could be classified as "science".
I asked for a clear-cut definition of "science" to verify their claim, and after reluctantly admitting that their working definition had subjective phrases, basically they implied that "if you are educated enough (like them), then you just know what is science and what isn't." (Paraphrased) Formal definitions be damned. It was the dumbest argument I've ever heard from people who should know better. Those people there are not open-minded; neither side.
And in general they exaggerate the link between pre-Cambrian and Cambrian bilaterans. Some mysteries are still mysteries and they should just admit those areas are still hazy. Their defensiveness is blinding them.
Newsguy.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Newsguy.com is an excellent service. Compared to many other USENET services, Newsguy actually has very little spam because of this really clever program they developed called SpamHippo. I also like them because you can buy bandwidth on demand if you want it and the bandwidth balance rolls over each month. The online readers are very focused on the USENET usage experience, with automatic binary downloaders for those binaries with hundreds of parts (and you download the binary version, not the encoded 7-bit version). Of course port 119 is there, too.
Re:Google Groups or Astraweb (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is not USENET. Google is a privately owned company. USENET belongs to no-one and to all. Do you see the difference? NNTP was very well thought out. It's distributed.
I'm quite aware that there's a generation out there that thinks Google can uncover any info you want (try something from 3 years ago and see how well you fare) and that think that PHP forums are the *best* way to store info. However, a simple examination will reveal how unfounded these opinions are. Google will own your info. PHP forums come and go. That's not reliable information.
OTOH, I would like USENET posting to allow for mark-up text, such as LaTeX or MathML. That would be very useful.
Second the CSS issue (Score:1, Interesting)
Here I am responding to a sig, bad form but CSS on /. does suck :(
Re:Is it worth it anymore? (Score:1, Interesting)
To someone with the disorder Pica [wikipedia.org], any object could potentially be classified as "food".
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine the disorder responsible for ID potentially being classified as "science".
Re:Is it worth it anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
ISP's often say that it is something like 5% of users who uses 90% of bandwidth. To be honest, I am not sure how this will advantage AT & T.
I also imagine that any dsl users under contract would be able to cancel their contract without an ETF (early termination fee). I do not know what percentage of users are under contract - but when the services offered are reduced and the customer is expected to pay a 3rd party provider to add them back that is clearly a break in the contract.
I do know that with T-Mobile a few years back a change was implemented that altered service and on each bill, - in the fine print at the bottom -, you were advised that you could cancel your services (with no ETF) or continue with services which would mean you agreed to any changes. Would be interesting to see an AT & T bill over the next bit.
Re:The web (Score:2, Interesting)