Duke University Shutting Down Usenet Server
Monday Duke University announced that it will be shutting down a piece of Internet history by switching off the home of the first electronic newsgroups. Thursday, May 20 will mark the day Duke's Usenet server finally goes offline after more than thirty years, originally launched by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, as a means to exchange messages and files (via modem) between computers located at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
The Users Network, or Usenet as we know it today, quickly grew to become an international electronic discussion forum consisting of more than 120,000 newsgroups. Dietolf Ramm, professor emeritus of computer science, said that the Usenet played a large role in the growth and popularity of the Internet. However, not every parent, student, or general consumer could jump "online." Connections were expensive and required a research contract with the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
Ramm, who worked with the students responsible for developing and launching Usenet, said that the ARPA had funded a few schools to begin the early stages of the Internet. "But most schools didn't have that," he said in an interview. "Usenet was a pioneering effort because it allowed anybody to connect and participate communications."
Despite the legal sweep made by the RIAA and MPAA as of late, Duke didn't decide to terminate its Usenet server based on piracy. Instead, the relic will be laid to rest thanks to low usage and rising costs. Applications such as Twitter, blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook and more have made communication a bit more user-friendly since the days of Usenet, making it obsolete.
But ask the RIAA and MPAA their thoughts on Usenet, and you'll more than likely get a negative response thanks to the many gardens of pirated, copyrighted content found throughout the network.
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Probably just a preemptive measure to keep the RIAA and MPAA off their arses.
Not related to teh article but.. Why am I getting a storm of pop up video adds in here all of a sudden?
Not related to teh article but.. Why am I getting a storm of pop up video adds in here all of a sudden?
No kidding, I know Tom's need to make some $$, but this is silly now! They are going to chase away regular!
Not related to teh article but.. Why am I getting a storm of pop up video adds in here all of a sudden?
Because you aren't using firefox with adblick plus. I am shocked when I venture outside of my own comfy configured browser and look at this site the way an internet explorer user sees it.
Because you aren't using firefox with adblick plus. I am shocked when I venture outside of my own comfy configured browser and look at this site the way an internet explorer user sees it.
Hmmm guess I don't know what pop-ups are after using Firefox for so long!
So Sad, So Sad, make me feel OLD, going from 33.6kpbs to 10mbps at UCLA and Usenet was the only way to the full thing
I think it's more the ISPs than Twitter that's to blame. AT&T stopped supporting Usenet and I'm betting other ISPs did, as well. That, more than anything else, slashed Usenet usage.
Ahh, I remember those ascii-pic sigs. Awesome.
Usenet's original home finally being closed. Wow. Sad day.
Another relic from the golden age of the net...GONE....
Your average Internet user has no idea what Usenet is and has not need for it with most services being web based for quite a while now. Even Usenet had some web portals/clients.
I remember when I used to promote use of Netscape because it included an email and Usenet client feature. Even back then most people had no idea what Usenet was.
I can't even remember the last pop-up add I got, especially on this site. And I use Chrome with no ad blocking enabled at all.
I love the hover over ads that cover up half of the frickin article LOL haven't had that happen in a little bit though, been careful where I position the mouse on this site hehe.
You'd think that with all the money they are raking in from Apple Computer they wouldn't need ads ;-) ;-) ;-)
I'd still be using Usenet today, but TWC / Comcast dropped that service years ago. Some things are better in Usenet.
I go back form the days of BBSes with a 300baud modem.
Yeah, first used it on a edu shell account. It really got old having to explain it to people: "Is that a web site?"
This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]
30 years old? WOW!
Usenet was attacked by the bottom-feeders of the Copyright Industry (RIAA, MPAA, etc) with the help of a New York state attorney general said to be on a mission to eliminate child porn. So the equivalent of stopping crank calls by tearing down all telephone lines was done.
I believe the word and idea "spam" also had its origins in the Usenet. "Spammers" were attacked virulently in the newsgroups. And with the decline of the Usenet, we now see the effects. Those web-based discussion forums that were talked about above which people pretend are replacements for the Usenet are now full of spam. In fact, the spam/ads are everywhere, often in font sizes larger than the forum discussion text, and mixed in with it and around it. It is as if the forum operator is intentionally trying to be misleading, and the practices of web-based discussion site providers is as bad as the worst of pornographers who use every trick in the book to get the unwary and even wary to download their malware (or they break your browser with the latest script exploits).
The Usenet will come back again because there is a need for a refuge away from both the clueless and those trying to make a buck on a click. It may even be called "Usenet 2.0" or whatever with a "m*r*ns not welcome" sign on the door.