Advantages of Usenet

[Internetado]

From: ***@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$crn$***@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.

[Internetado]

Post by Internetado
--------------------
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.

[Grant Taylor]

Post by Internetado
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.

[Jason Evans]

Post by Internetado
--------------------

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. ***@big-8.org.

JE

[Adam H. Kerman]

Post by Jason Evans
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

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.