This is the item to talk about Usenet.

What interesting newsgroups have you found that you'd like to tell others
about?  Do you prefer tin, trn, or some other news software?  What
newsgroups would you like to see added to those available here? 

27 responses total.

For some intro to Usenet articles that everyone, especially people who
plan to post to Usenet might want to read, check out the directory
/usr/local/inet/Usenet

I've heard that tin is supposed to start up faster than trn or rn.  I
think that the problem with waiting for trn and rn to get going is that
the thousand-line-plus active file has to come across the link before
anything else happens.  Is this true?  Is tin any better? 

rn is the only news reader that I'm used to.  What's better about any of
the other ones in general?

I only like "rn".  I can't *stand* things that thread automatically.

And any newsreader I use, *must* be able to support a kill file

I hated trn at first, but when I realized that I only wanted to
read a few threads in most of the newsgroups I read, I decided
trn was worth sticking with.

All of trn, rn, and tin have to fetch the active file before they
can let you start reading news.  tin might seem to start up faster
because it prints a status message while it's fetching the active
file, but I think they're all pretty much the same.

trn has gotten my vote lately.  I just keep a finger on the "k" and
my thumb on the spacebar.  It's the quickest way I've found to skim
rec.humor.

Before lynx, I used to read several different newsgroups--about
science, aquaria, puzzles, humor, psychology, dogs, healing,
martial arts, want ads, and (of course) the internet.  Now I
just skim rec.humor.

Arizon Lawyers Form Company for Internet Advertising

(This appeared in the NY Times today 5/29 on p.29)

(By Peter H. Lewis)

In a move that is certain to increase the turmoil on global computer networks, 
two Arizona lawyers said yesterday that they had formed a company with the
goal of making commercial advertising pervasive on the Internet.

In doing so, they shunned a plan, announced earlier this week by two other
companies, to create specific advertising zones in Usenet News, a 
popular network that is connected to the internet, a global web of 
computer networks. The advertising zones, which would require users
to pay a fee to place their messages on the network, would theoretically 
allow the estimated 20 million Internet users to choose whether they 
viewed the advertising or not.

The new advertising company, called Cybersell, was started by 
Laurence A. Canter and Martha S. Siegel, husband-and-wife partners 
in the immigration law firm of Canter & Siegel in Phoenix.

[remainder of article was not typed in]
--

The article is much longer. Yes, these are the people who spammed the entire
Usenet last month. I personally think they'll fail in their goals.
These two are unimpeded by flaming. They are truly asbestos, but
they need to consider that everyone reading the ads will be offended.
Usenet has a way of avoiding the "imminent death" that is predicted
for it all the time. Perhaps the clients will be boycotted.
Perhaps there will be letter-writing campaigns. I'm not sure.

Anyone who would pay to advertise on Usenet is doubly foolish, because 
if they wanted to tick that many people off, they could have done it for free.

I tell you all right now, I will boycott any and all advertisers
who try using that service.  Anyone who wants advertising on
a computer network should go bother Prodigy.

        Is there a way to block out news from a specific site?  If there
is people will probably just decide not to receive anything posted from
whatever machine these people are using.

Before we get *too* self righteous, consider our classified conference.
Yes, that is a free public buy-or-sell service, and we don't push it
at users, but it is advertising.

The difference between the classified conference and plastering the whole
Usenet is that the classified conference is confined.  I have classified
in my .cflist because I want to see if anybody has anything I want, but I
would be quite annoyed if people started advertising in our other conferences.

I surely agree with those who are offended. I think there will be
(maybe already are) discussions on usenet about this. Huge amounts of
bandwidth is dedicated to propagating these messages with the idea that those
who read them want to see them. These lawters are trying to 
capitalize on the system that has been set in place by sponging off of it.
They'll do some spamming, but I don't think they'll get the effect they
want (good advertising), even though they seem to believe they will based
on their first experiment (last month).

I see very little similarity to classified. The system proposed by others
to put this kind of advertising in a special group (which Canter & Siegel
rejected) is closer to the concept of our classified conf. Canter & Siegel's
approach is closer to posting their ads in every conference on Grex.

Suppose someone did that and insisted that they had the right to do so,
and suppose they wouldn't stop. It could get nasty.

One point my dad brought up yesterday when we discussed this -
according to federal law, if you send your name and address
to an advertising company asking to be taken off their mailing
list, they have to stop, or face harassment charges.  Surely
we can do something like this on the Net?  Just have every
site (or as many as are willing) send these twerps mail demanding
that they stop sending mail to those sites.  Or maybe it could be
done withing each newsgroup, "Please stop posting your ads in
this group."

At the very least, I'd expect the bad publicity involved here
to discourage anyone from using the C&S ad services.

On Usenet, though, each system has the ability to determine which groups
it will and won't carry.  Many sites refuse to carry "alt" groups.  More
still refuse to carry the "alt.binaries.pictures..." groups because of the
size.  This may be the same with the commercial groups.

Yes, the problem is we're not talking about market.* groups,
which might or might not be carried by each site.  These twerps
want to post their ads to *every* group they can access.

And if it starts to become common, it will either kill news or bring
mandatory prescreening of every group, I expect.  Both very bad, but
the expense of having this become really widespread would be
astronomical.

I would predict almost anything except the imminent death of News.
That has been predicted (erroneously) so many times that it's a cliche now.
The net will find a way to deal with this, and it will survive.

How/where do I request a newsgroup feed?

Mail remmers who will in turn mail Ivars.  I know this because just
the other day I was flailing at getting a new group in my
.newsrc.  John was able to spot the problem right off.  He told
to mail remmers with my request.

John told you to mail remmers? Hmmm...that what happens in a computer
family, I guess. But, thanks - I'll do that!

What has happened to usenet? For that matter, what has happened to Google
Groups? I sometimes search GG for threads, but find most of interest to
me sputtered out in ca. 2001. Yahoogroups seems to be where the action
still is, perhaps because it runs in e-mail. I'd appreciate it if someone
could fill in the "picture" on these related resources.

This response has been erased.

I agree they have had a large (deleterious) impact, including on e-mail 
lists, but my impression is that enthusiasts don't let even that stop them.
Some lists, though, are run privately, and are filtering out spam. I'm
on some that are pretty clean. 

(trivia: a 10-year-old item with almost 10 years between responses - cool :-)

(I thought so too...and it is a metaphor for my question.)

I did discover that there is a usenet.com, which has a monthly fee for its
use. 

On further thought, I don't think the spam explanation is sufficient:
practically everyone useing e-mail here probably gets more spam than e-mail,
but that doesn't stop us.

This response has been erased.

Does arpanet still exist?

Arpanet grew into the Internet.

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