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What About USENET2? 13

Posted by Cliff from the did-it-ever-get-off-the-ground dept.
One Who Remembers asks: "In light of the recent death of one of the founders of USENET, here is perhaps a timely question: What ever happened to USENET2? It seems some old-timers wanted to re-create USENET with some sort of moderation built into it's core. I remember discussion about it back in my USENET days, and I know it came 'on-line'. However, if you look at the USENET2 web site it seems pretty tough to get access to USENET2. Is it worth it? Is USENET2 even alive? You may also want to read this, which is probably the best eulogy for USENET I've ever read." When I first came onto the net, I spent a lot of time on Usenet. It's a lot less than it once was, but I'm still glad to see that it's still going. Maybe that "eulogy" was a bit premature?
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What About USENET2? More

What About USENET2?

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  • Going over my old notes, I think I can figure the exact day in the fall of 1994 when a full feed could no longer be transmitted over a 28.8 modem.

    But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb. I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory, that cost about $500 in 1990 dollars. And was serialized! (And cost a lot more if you wanted networking!)

  • So, will this be traditional dialup UUCP, or UUCP-over-TCP/IP? If the latter, sign me up; I *still* use UUCP for my backup mail feed, and have been using it since about 1996. (Yeah, right as things like UUCP became unfashionable. Go figure.)

    So what is the definition of "classic machine" in this context? I'd love to play along, but I suspect I'll have a devil of a time finding a VAX these days :-)

  • I remember the first day that AOL turned on their news gateway. That to me was the death of the "old" Usenet. Instead of useful information, all I could find anyware was "Re: Alyssa Milano Nekkid" containing a single line: "MEE TWO".

    Since then, I've imagined a usenet based on the public key infrastructure. Basically you need a signed certificate traceable to a single well known root to post to Usenet. Posts that don't have a valid certificate would not be accepted anywhere along the line.

    Spammers would have their certificates revoked instantly. If they continue to get more certificates, then their certifying authority would be revoked.

    I can think of two problems with this: first, anonymity would be gone. Second, you'd have to know somebody to get a certificate.

    I don't think that a second usenet will every be accepted unless the first one was terminated.

  • What about creating a database similar to MAPS or ORBS, containing IPs of known generators of Usenet spam? This way, news admins (the relevant servers would have to be the ones that the spammers post to) could configure their routers to drop packets from IPs in the database, and they could also drop packets from "rogue" news servers, those servers that accepted and propagated posts from spammers.

    When I say spammers, I include any person or organization that generates a high volume of electronically generated posts, e.g. headhunters, e-mail marketers, etc.

    Feasible? Not feasible? I'm not sure. What do you think?

    Pope Felix the Scurrilous.

  • with none of the downside.

    Except the distributed and yet centralized nature of usenet. You can flip through groups, casually read them, post without registering and so on - something you can't do on a mailing list. At the same time, the hierarchy shows a remarkable organtic ability against fragmentation. Name a topic, and you can find the one and only one group that discusses and is focused just on that topic. Duplicate group *names* persist, but the traffic migrates to only one group... an interesting statement on human interaction.

    --
    Evan

  • A few classic computer collectors I know are working to bring back the UUCP network to enable easier file sharing between classic machines. One of the side projects will be to create "USENET-0" on this network. It has a very simple moderation system: you have to set up UUCP on a classic machine and get people who are already there to peer with you. If you're interested, go to Google and see what you can find.

    --
    SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
  • But the concept of connecting the older machines is insanely dumb.

    Not really; compared with the several different hacks out there such as PUTR ad VTserver, direct transfer between the machines is much more elegant and much less troublesome.

    I know you can probably get boxes for $50 at yard sales and whatnot. But if Linux doesn't apply, you're telling me I have to find an ancient copy of SCO that ran on a 486 with 8 megs of memory

    I think you've got the wrong idea... I said *classic*, not junk, for gods' sake. We're talking about doing this with our PDP-11s and VAXen, not a bunch of old 486s.

    --
    SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
  • While USENET2 may not have "made it big" like USENET, the content is worth it, even if you only read the bofh.* hierarchy. The signal:noise ratio is quite high, though definately lurk for a while before posting, or you will never make it out alive. IT is true however that finding a USENET2 peer is pretty hard, ask around , I'm sure you can find one, may take a bit though.

    -OctaneZ

    "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
  • Usenet is largely dead. Mailing lists have picked up the slack.

    Mailing lists have most of the advantages of Newsgroups while being easy to keep free of spam, address harvesting, and (undesired) automated posts. Add an archive and FTP and you have a total Newsgroup replacement, with none of the downside.

    -Peter

  • You quoted the wrong part.

    You should have quoted "Mailing lists have most of the advantages of Newsgroups" but then you wouldn't have had a nit to pick, since the things that you mention are clearly things that aren't coverd by that "most."

    Unless you consider the features of Newsgroups that you cited to be the downside . . .

    -Peter

  • I connected my University to Usenet II (on our new Debian GNU/Linux box!) and found that there is practically no traffic. There have only been 11 articles in the past week or so.

    However, this is only because people aren't joining up and talking. So I would recommend that you still make the effort to find a Usenet II peer as long as you can keep your site 'sound'.
  • USENET2 did happen. Its called slashdot. Moderation at the core!

    - Hyperbolix

  • You mean then [tuxedo.org]?

    Unfortunately when I got to Usenet (1996) it was already well into its decline. Now all that's left is spam. I wonder who they think they're advertising to. Each other?

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