Usenet

[Emanuel Berg]

Hello party people! Since the last time you heard from
me I lost some friends. Well, hell. Now I'm even more
disillusioned about the whole state of the pitch dark
computer industry. It is unbelievable that the kids
today use more advanced stuff and with more skill than
the supposedly professional people who make their
living out of it. Can you imagine the NHL stars still
playing with wood, while the kids outside your
residence play with composite sticks (say 50% graphite
with 50% fiberglass) when they shoot the puck and
crash your car window? On the third hand, I always
said the pro athletes were a bunch of spoilt kids, so
I suppose they have it together there as well as with
computers. Anyway this was a parenthesis. In another
group, I just read and posted the following. It would
be interesting to hear if it is a correct assessment
of the situation. If it is, it is yet another example
of how supreme technology don't mean nada, unless
picked up and carried by dedicated people. Or even by
a bunch of spoilt kids.

    Usenet died, not RSB. It's a shame about Usenet.

Usenet is about as alive as RSB and at points
more alive.

I get RSB from nntp.aioe.org which is a real Usenet,
NNTP server. As we all see, it is very operational. (I
also get rec.bicycles.tech from them and that group is
very active at that, with 272 messages since last
I checked.)

For all the other stuff that would once have been
Usenet, and now are mailing lists, I use Emacs Gnus
and Gmane which turn it all into Usenet in all
essence, at least in terms of the interface. Here are
a couple of examples:

    gmane.comp.graphics.gnuplot.user
    gmane.comp.shells.zsh.user
    gmane.emacs.erc.general
    gmane.emacs.gnus.general
    gmane.emacs.gnus.user

While this seems to work very well for technology and
in particular computer technology, I never found
people really doing it with my other interests. (The
bicycle group is perhaps the exception that proves the
rule, however obviously that is technology too.)

With boxing there is RSB but the problem is if there
are ~ten people writing, at best traffic will be very
low, and at worse cabin fever will set in...

I always thought of Usenet as virtually what I have
today in terms of technology (with Emacs Gnus and
Gmane), *but* including many other aspects of life as
well. And that, I never did find and I doubt
it exists.

-- 
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