OT: Tough Times For Usenet

--Crimmeney! With 50,000 newsgroups you'd think we're talking about a pretty good sized demographic worldwide. Some folks making decisions just spend too much time on the interwebs methinks!

Maybe you were just jokin', but the last time I was paying attention, the number of usenet newsgroups was over 100k, and by now might even exceed

(TLTLIU) toolazytolookitup)

Haven't seen any recent notices of this, but a number of big ISP's were dropping ng's, forcing people to go with separate paid access to ng's. Wonder what this dissing of ngs is all about....

Newsgroup feeds cost ISPs, so to reduce overhead, many have bailed on providing NG access as part of their service.

It may surprise a few that folks that actually use usenet newsgroups (or even know what it is) are a minority. When my old independent (local, not national) ISP dropped news access years ago, they said that only a few of their other customers wanted newsgroups.

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A lotta pressure from the usual anti-piracy sources because of the binaries groups, plus there's a lot of web forums taking traffic that used to be on the newgroups and keeping up with the expansion in the aggregate daily traffic size has to be a killer. Used to be only small 10s of kilobyte pictures would be posted in the binaries, now they're posting Blu-Rays. Doesn't take a whole lot of those to fill up a terror-byte. So the ISPs are dumping a non-profit center that costs them a bunch and gets them a lot of heat. The ISPs I've had never really covered all of what's out there on usenet, pay services seem to do better on both the number of groups covered and retention times.

Stan

Indeed. Whenever I reference RCM, in conversation, _nobody_ knows what I'm talking about. I get tired of explaining it.

Bob

Cosey conferencing went a long time ago, anyone remember that one?

Steve R.

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So don't carry the alt.binaries.* groups, and leave the rest of us alone. Gunner will just dry up and blow away if he doesn't get his fix.

Once upon a time (very early 90s), I carried an ENTIRE newsfeed (including binaries) on my system. received it over a 9600bps satellite link, with bandwidth to spare. I think it's grown a bit since then :-)

Sure it will. Sadly Cliff will still be around also.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller