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| Author |
Message |
richard
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can grex offer usenet again?
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May 13 21:45 UTC 1999 |
Once upon a time, a long time ago now, grex offered usenet. Today, for no
particular reason, I ran !tin again, and got "usenet is down-- may be back
in several months" That message is obviously several "years" old now.
Why not consider bringing back usenet? a usenet interface on the web page
(like dejanews has) would be a feature very attractive to potential
users/members. I remember when grex had usenet (tin or trn) it was
unbearably slow, but grex itself is so much faster now that a good usenet
interface would probably work well. grex could even have its own usenet
conf, alt.grex or something.
Is it feasible for grex to offer usenet again?
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| 70 responses total. |
scg
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response 1 of 70:
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May 13 22:03 UTC 1999 |
Usenet used to be relatively tiny -- Grex got its news feed over a 2400 bps
modem that wasn't connected most of the time. That's changed drastically.
At work (at one of SE Michigan's larger ISPs), we shut down our news server
a few months ago and outsourced it, since it didn't make economic sense to
run our own news server anymore. When we shut the news server down, our full
news feed was taking the equivalent of something approaching two full T1s,
24 hours per day.
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pfv
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response 2 of 70:
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May 13 22:11 UTC 1999 |
Richard is apparently unaware of the number of times this topic
and that question have been asked, let alone answered.
Bad enough mailing-lists exist, Uselessnet went to hell about the
time everyone and his cousin could afford a comp.
Personally, I'd like to see that message replaced with something
less misleading.
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dang
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response 3 of 70:
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May 14 01:20 UTC 1999 |
Asside from that, a full usenet feed would take about as much disk as we
are currently useing for our whole system.
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rcurl
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response 4 of 70:
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May 14 04:54 UTC 1999 |
Usenet is accessible on the web through any search site.
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ryan
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response 5 of 70:
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May 14 13:08 UTC 1999 |
This response has been erased.
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rcurl
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response 6 of 70:
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May 14 15:09 UTC 1999 |
Reading it on the web is via a search, so only responses containing your
keywords are listed. It is still mostly crap, though...predominantly
FS items. I used to participate but most items eventually become more
chaff than wheat, with newcomers asking the old questions again and
again. Hmmm...sort of like some items here...
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pfv
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response 7 of 70:
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May 14 15:32 UTC 1999 |
You know... hmm...
Hey, JAN? I wonder if, especially with BackTalk, a FW could cobble
up a special "item" that becomes the FAQ for the conference?
Take all the Original, pertinent queries: make an itemized list;
the items hyperlink right to the item.
It sounds almost like 'browse', but.. Perhaps it could vary
somehow?
Also be nice if we could regex search this stuff. From the shell,
_sometimes_ 'find' works wonders.. I don't believe I saw a webside
equivalent today..
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remmers
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response 8 of 70:
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May 14 16:00 UTC 1999 |
If Grex were to offer anything approaching a full news feed, the storage
and internet link overhead would be enormous. (The burden on the link
would come not from users *reading* news, but rather from the thousands
of messages per day flowing *in* over the link.)
Re Pete's resp:7 - Conferences are searchable on the "webside". Go to a
conference homepage and click on the "Search the conference" button.
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pfv
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response 9 of 70:
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May 14 17:07 UTC 1999 |
This response has been erased.
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richard
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response 10 of 70:
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May 14 21:44 UTC 1999 |
couldnt grex offer a partial news feed? perhaps decide on a select
number of groups to carry, possibly polling users as to which would be
the most used? there are still some good groups on usenet and contrary
to an earlier message, not everyone likes mailing lists because not
everyone likes their mailboxes flooded constantly.
what would be ideal is if grex carried a group of the larger usenet confs,
so that there could be crossover conf'ing. someone posting in grex's sex
conf could be prompted if they want to copy their post to "usenet" alt.sex
or something. people would then read that message on usenet, see that it
was originally posted on a grex conference, as opposed to just on usenet,
and that might prompt them to pay a visit here.
It is a way to publicize grex. I have seen usenet posts many times
forwarded from other places.
of course maybe grex staff is more interested in conserving disk space
than attracting new users?
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tpryan
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response 11 of 70:
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May 14 21:53 UTC 1999 |
alt.fan.weird.al
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pfv
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response 12 of 70:
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May 14 23:02 UTC 1999 |
Dejanews.com
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scott
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response 13 of 70:
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May 14 23:19 UTC 1999 |
...which is accessible thru lynx from Grex.
Staff has enough work to do already. Usenet would be nice, but is in no way
something as crucial as email. And how to decide what our limit is? Members
only get to choose? Or what? I'd hate to have us even attempt to carry the
bandwidth sucking .sex area.
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scg
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response 14 of 70:
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May 15 00:46 UTC 1999 |
From staring at a news server's logs, I know which groups are the most used.
Generally, they had names like alt.binaries.erotica.pre-teen. In addition
to being illegal and extremely high bandwidth, there not the sort of thing
I want to spend my time maintaining.
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albaugh
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response 15 of 70:
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May 17 06:04 UTC 1999 |
richard, listen carefully, I'm going to speak very slowly: GIVE IT UP!!!
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davel
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response 16 of 70:
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May 17 21:23 UTC 1999 |
Hmm. I do think it's past time that we stop promising to offer it someday;
I've said so for years. Other than that, what albaugh just said.
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richard
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response 17 of 70:
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May 17 21:31 UTC 1999 |
#16 exactly...why does the message at !tin say usenet "may be back in a
few months"? it appears the move wasnt temporary, so I'd say replace
that with an explanation and a pointer to dejanews or something.
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jep
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response 18 of 70:
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May 18 14:30 UTC 1999 |
The phrase "may be back in a few months" does sound misleading, since
Grex doesn't seem to have the capability or the inclination to offer
Usenet News here at any point in the foreseeable future.
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albaugh
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response 19 of 70:
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May 18 18:30 UTC 1999 |
Ja, probably better to just say something vague such as "Grex does not offer
usenet at this time" which would be true yet non-binding.
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aruba
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response 20 of 70:
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May 19 02:00 UTC 1999 |
The message that "tin" gives does indeed refer the user to dejanews. So does
the message from "rn", though the two are different; rn is more pessimistic.
I suspect that the rn message was updated more recently, but whoever did the
updating forgot to do tin as well. I'd suggest chenging tin's message to
match rn's.
While I do not have an opinion on whether Grex should offer usenet news, I
do think we should be considering how we'd like Grex to grow in the future,
and what new services we'd like to offer. I'd hate for us to become a stale
system which catered only to the desires of old fogies whose tastes were
formed ten years ago.
So I welcome Richard's suggestion, even if we don't adopt it, and I am a bit
disturbed by people telling him to shut up. I don't think his attitude is
unreasonable in this case.
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keesan
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response 21 of 70:
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May 19 13:32 UTC 1999 |
I often type rn by accident instead of r n, maybe new users would appreciate
the message also mentioning that they should type r n (with a space) to read
new items.
And I agree with Mark that Richard should not be picked on for making
suggestions for improvement to grex. (People are of course entitled to get
mad at him for wanting to improve their personal lives, just as he is entitled
to continue attempting to do so in our 'open' system.)
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toking
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response 22 of 70:
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May 19 16:26 UTC 1999 |
(if you just type r it will read the new messages)
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keesan
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response 23 of 70:
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May 21 16:28 UTC 1999 |
I just got the news has been down for several years when I tried to rename
a file with rn (the command should be mv for move).
And that it may never be back.
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drew
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response 24 of 70:
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May 21 21:11 UTC 1999 |
Hmmm. How about globally aliasing 'rn' to 'lynx dejanews.com'?
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