{"id":13509,"date":"2008-11-26T11:46:31","date_gmt":"2008-11-26T18:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/11\/26\/usenet.html"},"modified":"2008-11-26T11:46:31","modified_gmt":"2008-11-26T18:46:31","slug":"usenet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/26\/usenet.html","title":{"rendered":"Usenet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sascha Segan mourns the passage of Usenet. R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In a way inconceivable in today’s Web-fragmented marketplace, Usenet was where you went to talk. Conceived back in the idealistic, non-profit days of the Internet, it was\u2014well, it is, but it mostly was\u2014a series of bulletin boards called “newsgroups” shared by thousands of computers, which traded new messages several times a day.<\/p>\n

On the text-only Usenet of my memory, nobody knew whether you were a dog, or a kid, or Finnish\u2014only what you wrote. There wasn’t the obsession with photos and video that overruns today’s social networking sites. Yeah, I know that sounds like “get off my lawn you darn kids” crotchetiness, but there’s something really nice about just talking to people and not caring what they look like.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I got on the Net — and Usenet — in ’93, and it was like a huge door opening for me, a way to hook up with people to talk about all sorts of goofy (and not-so-goofy) stuff.<\/p>\n

Alas, Usenet has been largely doomed by three things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In this day of fancy-graphical-Facebooks and Twitter and all that, Usenet’s glamor has faded.<\/li>\n
  2. Similar discussion opportunities can be had on various forums.<\/li>\n
  3. Said forums don’t require each ISP to carry a full copy of Usenet on their servers, including sketchy pr0n sites and binary exchanges.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Classic Usenet is still limping along, but the lights are slowly being turned off, save for the archives that Google keeps (for which my thanks).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

    <\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Sascha Segan mourns the passage of Usenet. R.I.P Usenet: 1980-2008: In a way inconceivable in today’s Web-fragmented marketplace, Usenet was where you went to talk. Conceived back in the idealistic,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4756,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/12\/usenet_thread_o.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":0},"title":"Usenet Thread of the Beast","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 12-Jan-04 9:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"Fascinating November Usenet (alt.internet.search-engines) discussion thread here on blog comment spam -- from the perspective of the spammers. What's more your sexy lingerie site would be a pr8 right now...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":583,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2001\/09\/14\/modern_risks.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":1},"title":"Modern RISKS","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 14-Sep-01 6:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"For a number of years now, I've subscribed to an e-mail version of comp.risks, RISKS-L. This list\/Usenet site details \"risks to the public in computers and related systems.\" While that...","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32937,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/27\/cyberspace-1995.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":2},"title":"Cyberspace: 1995!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 27-Mar-13 3:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Internet! Gopher! Archie! Usenet! FTP! Books online! Mosaic! Cybermoney! URLs!\u00a0HoTMetaL! Overwhelmingly complex \"links\"! \u00a0This show's got it all! It's boss! What the Internet Looked Like in 1995 In this episode of Computer Chronicles, the team goes in-depth on \"The Internet,\" a trendy topic in 1995. It starts with host\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3116,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/07\/tolkiengeeks.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":3},"title":"Tolkiengeeks","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 7-Aug-02 5:54pm","format":false,"excerpt":"For those who have too much time on their hands, here's a page produced by other people in the same quandary, the collection of Tolkien Crackpot Theories, culled from the...","rel":"","context":"In "Lord of the Rings \/ Hobbit"","block_context":{"text":"Lord of the Rings \/ Hobbit","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/lord-of-the-rings"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/28\/tragedy_of_the.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":4},"title":"Tragedy of the Commons","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Apr-03 7:08am","format":false,"excerpt":"Some fine historical retrospective, and current state-of-the-Net regarding the 25th Anniversary of Spam: Spam fascinates me because it sits at the intersection of three important rights -- free speech, private...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4743,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/01\/14\/for_godwins_sak.html","url_meta":{"origin":13509,"position":5},"title":"For Godwin’s sake …","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 14-Jan-04 9:34am","format":false,"excerpt":"Isn't it about time someone invoked Godwin's Law on this kind of crap? While it does seem, in Nuremberg terms, that Bush could be called a war criminal (invading other...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}