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Re: usenet access and the future of comp.sys.apple2
On Mon, 25 Oct 2010, Jerry wrote:
My ISP (Telus), one of the biggest in Canada, recently turned off
their USENET feed to the rest of the net. That is, I can still read
all the old articles on it, but they no longer take in new posts from
upstream servers. It is only a matter of time and they will turn off
their NNTP server.
So I may switch ISPs.
For now I'm using google groups to keep up with the comp.sys.apple2.*
groups.
I have a hunch, though, that Telus won't be the last ISP to drop
USENET.
So the reason I'm posting here is to wonder out loud what we ought to
do in terms of keeping the Apple II folks connected, should USENET
cease to be a possibility for more and more folks.
You're behind the curve, this has been going on for a decade, at least.
My previous ISP stopped the newsgroups about 2003 (they moved the servers,
claimed the newsgroups would be back "soon" and five months later admitted
they weren't coming back). That was a non-profit ISP, and we were
actually paying a premium compared to other local ISPs. AOL turned them
off some years back. Various Big ISPs, in Canada and the US, have
already turned them off. It's hard to have missed, since every time an
ISP turns them off, we get posts like yours.
Fifteen years ago, most people with internet access at least knew about
the newsgroups, now so many more people, ie the common population that
has come to the internet, have access that the percentage that know about
Usenet has become miniscule. The ISPs don't want to spend money on
resources that aren't being used by all, so they turn them off.
I've now decided that for at least some percentage of those who used to
use Usenet, they never really liked it but made do with it since there
was no other game in town. Once other outlets came along, they left,
which decreased the user base, and with nobody much coming in after a
certain point, the numbers didn't increase or even stay the same, they
decreased.
Most people don't know what Usenet is, they think whatever they use
is "fine", they talk of spam without realizing where it originated, they
talk of "cross-posting" without knowing where the term came from, they
think business invented "interactivity", they think everything has to come
from some business in order to be valid. I've seen small groups that
exist to complain about too much advertising around town (on billboards,
sponsorship of events, even trucks that drive around for the sole purpose
of carrying advertising) rush to myspace and facebook and all that,
without giving any thought to the fact that such things exist in order
to bring in revenue for the companies. They can't see those things as
anything but "useful" because they haven't experienced anything else.
CHange your ISP. Find a third party that gives away or sells for a small
amount UseNet access. I joined the Ottawa Freenet, even though I'm not in
Ottawa, to get access to the newsgroups after my previous ISP dropped
them. I send them a $20 donation each year.
There are no alternatives to Usenet. There are other places to have
discussions, but they are usually owned by commerce, and who knows whether
they will last. They sure aren't organized like Usenet so you can find
a topic easily, and there is a lot of duplication, since once everyone
could create a space, they did whether it was needed or not.
Michael