AOL Kills Usenet Access 576
Numair writes "BetaNews is reporting that AOL is about to terminate Usenet access for its users. Now, before everyone starts rejoicing ... where is the Usenet community going to find another large media company to protect it from frivolous copyright lawsuits?"
Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry folks, couldn't help it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't get it:
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/September-that- never-ended.html [catb.org]
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Me too!!!!!!!!
=tkk
Alicia Silverstone (Score:3, Funny)
>>If you want your pictures of Alicia
>>Silverstone naked,
>>just post "me too" on this thread and
>>I will e-mail them to you.
>Me too!!!!!!!!
me too.
Re: Me too (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Alicia Silverstone (Score:3, Funny)
A: One.... and
>>>>>>>>me too!!!
>>>>>>>me to!!!111!!
>>>>>>me too
>>>>>me t00!
>>>>me too!!!!!!
>>>me too!!!!!
>>mt!
>me to!
me too!!!!
The best description I ever heard of unleashing AOLers on the web was something like: "On a highway of most hobbyists and homebuilt cars AOL is the giant bus belching smoke and fumes as the crazed passengers that curse and throw garbage at others on the road."
=tkk
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Funny)
Other might have differing opinions
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
I do agree that it is ridiculous that Firefox 1.0 was let out the door with this bug. For people on slow or even medium-speed connections, this bug happens a lot, and many have no idea how to fix fix it. I have friends who tried Firefox and decided that they hated it because of this bug. I'm guessing the developers are all on fast connections and thus had no idea how often this bug manifests.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Funny)
You spelled it wrong. It's "MS AAAIIIEEEEEEEE!"
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
But without new blood Usenet ages and dies.
What happens if other ISPs decide that maintaining a news server for a handful of Geeks is no longer worth the trouble?
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it won't. If all the riftraft and other clueless morons leave Usenet then it will become a useful comunications tool for a small but well inteligent group of users again. Small I mean as in 10,000 or 20,000 users. In other words it will return to its roots where people, such as myself, will begin running small and large servers decited to the free exchange of ideals. I think this could be the beginning to a new golden age for Usenet myself.
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups. Syn. eternal September
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Funny)
(In Soviet Russia...)
Re:At the sound of the tone (Score:3)
Good for AOL (Score:4, Informative)
Giganews and other big name vendors will gladly sell you Usenet service and best yet you can change the port in which you connect with; say port 80 and AOL cant block as they cant figure out if your using HTTP or NTP; they could block the IP address but then again you could use an anonymous proxy and the battle continues. That being said, I hope people know that there are other ISPs that are willing to have you as a customer. If the law suites go after say Giganews then I bet there is some Swiss news account (ok ok when I say Swiss accounts I mean services that wont divulge any information to anyone no matter who's asking).
Re:Good for AOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good for AOL (Score:3, Informative)
Alternately, you could just RTFA... "The ISP's pop-up message advises subscribers that newsgroup services are available from third-party providers."
They don't care if AOL subscribers access USENet. They just don't want to provide it as a free service anymore. And, even as an old-timer (from waaaaay back inn'a win'ner of '91) that still reads and posts to USENet, I can appreciate (and in fact, applaud, if it will cut down on clueless AOL users on USENet) their stance. 95% of people haven't even heard of NNTP, 4.999% use it to suck down massive amounts of copyright-infringing material, and the remaining 0.001% probably has the ability to find an alternate source (such as GigaNews).
Personally, I have to wonder why people even still use AOL. Once upon a time, in the early days of the 'net, AOL actually had aquite a lot of content that you couldn't access without an account. But now? Nothing but a web-browser-with-training-wheels that charges you for the "service" of treating you like an intellectual toddler.
Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:5, Informative)
Hm, for the most part, they're still just exactly like that. Nothing's changed in 11 years. Unfortunately, this isn't going to kill AOL, as one other person suggested. Somehow, as badly as AOL sucks, they manage to continue to survive. Maybe it's all those CDs they keep distributing everywhere. Want an AOL CD? Go to Burger King! They make half-decent frisbees...
But I'll take anything that reduces AOL's Internet presence as a good thing for the Internet.
Oh, and the frivolous lawsuit was against AOL, not Usenet. You can't sue Usenet. It's too decentralized.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:5, Funny)
For a second there, I thought you were about to suggest that an AOL CD was an ingredient in a sandwich.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:5, Insightful)
So remember, AOL caters to the simple/stupid crowd.
Catering to spammers.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is also the crowd that generally has massive amounts of spyware/trojaned/infected PCs used for sending out Viri and Spam. And also the same who respond to spam, buy spam products and think "Gee, I'm really glad my bank is verifying my account information" when they get a phishing e-mail.
Then there are the things the semi "anonymous" accounts are used for and a few other illegal things that people use AOL accounts for. Eliminating the AOL crowd would probably make the internet a safer/saner place to be for the rest of us. Especially when you consider it's also the AOL customers that want the governemnt to "protect tehir children" from online content.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
Look on the bright side. No USENET access means less of a chance of AOl users clicking on binary attatchments to numerous virii.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
xnxx.com does not fill my porn needs.
Spot on (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks for bringing this up. Remember, half of the population has an IQ under 100, by definition.
There are a bunch of self-righteous egotists who hang out here and contend that they just shouldn't have access to technology. That is, of course, bullshit. Including antivirus software with their service is the second best thing AOL has done in a decade (supporting Mozilla being #1).
There needs to be an onramp for the Internet and I don't see anyone else stepping up. Remember - you too were once an annoying helpless newbie!
But... (Score:5, Insightful)
They stay *right there* and never learn anything.
Re:Spot on (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:5, Funny)
Me too.
A++ post! Would mod up again.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, but who makes better frisbees? AOL or Burger King?
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Chris Mattern
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2, Insightful)
Another thing they have is a national presence. They're portable... meaning you can use it at home or when you travel. One friend of mine uses it for exactly that reason. He lives in one area, travels to another for extended periods of time, and likes the ability to just find a local dial-up number to get to his email. That's all part of his business.
Is this the best? No. Does it provide what he wants? Yes.
Overall, I'm not sure how to feel about this. Part of me is quite elated, because I remember early on when they first granted Usenet access, how flooded with nonsense some of the groups were. There's another part of me that is somewhat disappointed, because I do know a few people who use AOL for their internet access and post regularly and intelligently to some newsgroups. Those are the people I will kindasorta grieve for, but then again, they're generally internet-savvy enough to find other ways to post there.
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:2)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whatever gets AOL off the net is fine with me. (Score:3, Insightful)
The people I work with/for spend a fortune on hardware, bandwidth, software, and IT services. Basically, they keep geeks in rent and food. But they do that so that they can run their businesses, and a lot of them rely on B2C transactions over the internet. Take away the 20 million or so AOL users that do indeed shop online and spend money, and that's a nasty hit.
Those people aren't going to go away, and they're not going to get any smarter if they have to go and use MSN or Earthlink, etc. Why not let them spend their $20+/month, and let AOL's customer service people deal with their users' ignorance problems? Better them than the customer service people at my ISP, who I'd rather were dealing with real issues.
Better late than never (Score:2, Funny)
So did Comcast, what's the difference? (Score:5, Informative)
They gave a viable alternative by pointing people to Google Groups. At least they didn't shut off free access then start charging their users for it.
AOL has a large userbase of morons. How many of those morons read Usenet anyway? It's likely that it is a tiny group of their overall base. Why support something that no one uses and that you can get through other sources anyway?
Re:So did Comcast, what's the difference? (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, if you're downloading a lot of binaries, you're going to hit the wall pretty fast. But if you're just doing text, the Comcast/Giganews partnership gives MUCH faster access, MUCH longer article retention, and a MUCH wider array of groups than Comcast ever did.
Re:So did Comcast, what's the difference? (Score:2)
AOL killed it in the first place (Score:4, Funny)
And now they are leaving.
Irony.
Re:AOL killed it in the first place (Score:5, Funny)
> I was there when AOL enabled usenet access.
> The
> flood of users with no netiquette or, as it seemed
> to me at
> the time, common sense, drove me out of
>almost
> every newsgroup I followed.
Re:AOL killed it in the first place (Score:5, Funny)
>ME TOO!
>> I was there when AOL enabled usenet access. The
>> flood of users with no netiquette or, as it eemed
>> to me at the time, common sense, drove me out of
>> almost every newsgroup I followed.
Re:AOL killed it in the first place (Score:5, Funny)
blah blah lameness filter blah blah
Resident Nub Says: (Score:2)
Uh oh... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news... (Score:2)
Post submitted by: CmdrTaco0195004294012
Well, that will be... (Score:5, Interesting)
AOL will fwd (Score:2)
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:2)
Some people have suggested IP portability - but I think this is kinda lame since you can port your DNS. If you want an e-mail that follows you - register a domain and you can have an e-mail address that follows you to different ISP's.
-Avi
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:2, Insightful)
> portability. Your e-mail address should follow
> you, not have to stay tied to one isp. We already
> have it for phone numbers, so it shouldn't be too
> hard for e-mail right? I mean, why should you have
> to give up your "identity" just because your ISP
> has decided to charge more for less?
Anybody who had the vaguest clue how the Internet, and in particular DNS and SMTP work would not have written the above.
If you want portable email addresses, get Hotmail or GMail accounts, or buy yerself a domain.
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who had the vaguest clue how humor, and in particular sarcasm works, would not have written the above.
it's existed for years (Score:2)
hawk
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:2)
Re:Well, that will be... (Score:2)
a great disturbance (Score:5, Funny)
cried out in terror and silenced at once"
People still read USENET? (Score:5, Insightful)
*sigh* I remember the days where I could catch up on 50 newsgroups in under an hour, reading most of the threads too.
If I need information now, I hit google. If I want to ask a question, I find the appropriate mailing list and send it.
Re:People still read USENET? (Score:2)
a nearly full feed (including porn..er binaries) from uunet
overnite on a Trailblazer modem.
It was clearly unreasonable to expect it to stay a nice small
place with thousands of new inet users every day. But of
course the spam, incessant cross posting, and general blather
was more than most bargained for. Its somewhat symptomatic
of society as a whole. People don't give a fuck what they do
or who they piss off. In fact, God forbid you point out
what they have just done is bad etiquette or the like and
they just blast you as the messenger.
However, I do disagree that it is now useless. Not every
group is low signal, and with a good news reader even the
high crap volume groups can be made managable.
I want my USENET (Score:2)
A torrent for each newsgroup, and sub torrents for the articles.
Then I can pull down what I like and not what I dont.
And it will come blazingly through my asymetric broadband internet connection.
no. I dont do AOL.
I did once use the "free 9000 hours" when I was between jobs back in 96 but that was it. - and it took 6 months to get them to frigin close the account and stop billing me!!
Real uses for USENET anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember the old days of dialing into my shell account and using my little news reader ('tin' was it?) to read through my favorite groups. I even remember downloading multiple posts, linking them together, and using some archaic app (binhex, maybe) to turn them into little binary apps like hangman. I was a big fan of USENET back then - good discussions, helpful people, uncensored pr0n...
I tried to visit some groups recently and was sad to see more spam than a hotmail account, one-sentence off-topic posts, etc. Does anyone actually know of any more useful groups?
Re:Real uses for USENET anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
comp.lang.c is a great example of this. I owe them a LOT regarding my growth in understanding of C.
Re:Real uses for USENET anymore? (Score:2)
The "imminent death of the usenet" *did* happen. Most of it is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
The grops tha surived pretty much consist of those that were one or more of
1) moderated,
2) had many regulars complaining about every spam and troll,
3) stayed with the traditional method of flaming nonconforming newbies to a crisp, in wpite of the whines of "netcop."
hawk
Re:Real uses for USENET anymore? (Score:2)
Re:Real uses for USENET anymore? (Score:2)
Add your email address to this thread and we'll get back to you.
USENET = VIRII (Score:2)
I've been an avid usenet reader for many years. asides from mail lists this has been my primary means of finding technical info. however in the last year it has been inpossible for me to download groups and not get infected. now since I have to use MS at work and the only MS reader that i use is express. it's next to impossible to not get infected. any one know of a good reader example text only that does not get infected ?
Do people still read Usenet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like everyone else, though, I can't but view the removal of AOL from Usenet except with joy. I don't see how it could really hurt the old newsgroups.
Re:Do people still read Usenet? (Score:2)
Re:Do people still read Usenet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whats deserved about it? I still find it a useful discussion forum. Just because some groups are full of spam spouting imbeciles doesn't mean they're all useless and just because you obviously don't use it doesn't mean that there arn't hundreds of thousands if not millions of people out there who still do.
I'm tempted to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is not the case, because most consumers just don't think that way. So by extension the whole self-regulating market thing is immediately dead in the water.
Phew. Good job I'm not from the right wing, or else my entire worldview may have been shattered right there
RE: I'm happy about it (Score:3, Funny)
Me Too!
Just use this free usenet server: (Score:5, Informative)
Now.. (Score:2)
In other news:
SPAM and general stupidity on newsgroups declined by 99.5% after this announcement.
The green card spam, heh (Score:4, Informative)
Now within the last 6 months, I see the same 1 or two spam posts on every single usenet group I'm subbed to. Sad, really.
I would say spam has claimed a victory here. i do find some good usage out of local groups like mn.general(which is generally spam free, but not political cook free), and the grand-theft-auto newsgroup.
But with the playstation2 group, it's 99% cross-posted-to-other-groups flamewars between ps2 and xbox users. *sigh*. Never bothered with the binary groups since I just could not figure out the obfuscated mess that is FreeAgent.
Comcast supposedly moved everyone over to giganews, which is a paid service with either 1 or 2 gigs a month. Wow, 2 gigs of spam per month! Sign me up! Thankfuly their old server still works, but they keep it quiet.
But with the poor s/n ratios of newsgroups, I can see why ISPs are jumping ship.
News Clients (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow life will go on (Score:2)
Perhaps if AOL hadn't infected usenet... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Me too! Me too!"
Dateline 1995 (Score:3, Funny)
AOL usenet access (Score:2)
Anyone who uses it should just shoot themselves and be done with it.
Big frappni deal.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Usenet's Death and AOL (Score:3, Insightful)
Has been predicted before. It's still going. Loosing AOL will hurt... a little. I'm willing to bet any Usenet users on AOL will change ISPs to maintain access to their groups. It will take a long time for usenet to die - especially groups getting 10's of thousands of text posts per day.
Are they port blocking? (Score:2)
I could understand AOL wanting to cut support (so it's not so easy for amatures to visit and say "hey, why is there pornography here?").
Though I wonder if AOL will block ports for it's dialup users.
Either way, google groups will be around.
So I don't think it will be such a big deal.
As for a "large media organization to protect it". Don't think that's necessary. The groups stand for what they contain. As long as users use them legitimately, no question. Many linux groups, mozilla, even microsoft have run them with no problem.
It's the ones infested with kiddy porn and copyrighted material that end up in trouble... and they just need to figure things out.
IMHO it would be great if someone would weed out the garbage and restore them *all* to a useful state.
USENET in decline; a Bad Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
It is one more sign that the Wild West days of the Internet are coming to an end and the Internet is coming more and more thoroughly under the control of business interests.
The Truth of the Matter, actually..... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now this quote is from 2002, and it is still relevant and applicable.
With the RIAA spoofing files,and sueing anything that moves, http://tinyurl.com/4af7y/ [tinyurl.com] The Daily Texan I wonder how long before they start trying to propogate corrupt files into Usenet, as well. With AOL making it harder to access Usenet (by removing native support) this is removing alot of trash from Usenet and possibly a boon to the Network. All AOL has done is remove the clueless N00b (uninformed user) from the equation, and the more informed AOL user will still have access, yet from a pay Server. http://tinyurl.com/39dtp/a [tinyurl.com] Slycks Guide to Usenet Newsgroups
Lawsuits against usenet providers? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that the largest member of both the RIAA and MPAA no longer has a stake in usenet, AOL can participate in a campaign to break it up, or at least to more heavily police it.
A great feature of usenet for copyright violating is that you can leech all you want and noone will ever know except you and your usenet server.
But that won't matter if they convince Congress to place burdensome requirements on companies that maintain usenet servers.
Of course, there are plenty of good Constitutional and practical arguments against doing that. But who is going to make them. More importantly, who is going to have the kind of clout that's necessary to fight a lobbying effort by these people?
Comcast just changed its Usenet policies as well (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest policy change was that they only allow 2GB of data transfer per month. That sounds like a lot, but to a data addict like me, I can go through that amount of data in a day. Actually, I did, and now have to wait a month before my quota is reset.
Right now I have a couple options if I want to continue to support my usenet addiction. I can subscribe to a monthly service like giganews for $25 a month (in addition to my $40/month Comcast bill), or I can switch to Verizon DSL for cheaper. I'm most likely going to jump on Verizon, but part of me wants to sign up with giganews and use Comcast's network to download ungodly amounts of data, just to say fuck you to them for shutting me off.
Re:Comcast just changed its Usenet policies as wel (Score:3, Informative)
No more "Unlimited Internet Access" (Score:5, Insightful)
OT Re:No more "Unlimited Internet Access" (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to comment on the same thing. Not only is it only a port 80 connection, but it's DOWNSTREAM ONLY.
I curse you Adelphia, and your stupid rules. If the phone lines in my small town wern't so terrible as to even make 56k not an option, there is no way I'd shell out $57 a month for a nice fast line which is idle 20 hours out of the day.
It sucks out loud that they could be held responsible if I ran some kind of illegal service. If I was selling illegal arms over the telephone could Verizon get in trouble? If I was dealing drugs out of my car, would Chevy get in trouble? If I was running form the cops, did Nike tell me to "Just Do It"?
OK, end of rant. I think someone with money for a good lawyer needs to sue an internet provider for advertising "Unlimited Internet" with all these limitations, take the money and start their own actual "Unlimited Internet" company which will let end users run whatever they want provided they don't A) go over a reasonable bandwidth limit (a message board for a bunch of your buddies to chat on is not unreasonable at ALL) and B) take full responsibility for any services they provide.
Is that too much to ask? Put it in the EULA.
Re:No more "Unlimited Internet Access" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Internet" access, by its very name, is access to the Internet. You get an IP address (however fleetingly) and can send and receive IP packets to other computers. Email, Usenet, free hosting, and so on are just extra perks. Offering a dedicated Usenet host is not a core part of Internet access.
YEAH! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I can remember the day they left as well.
W00t!
Stop sterotyping AOL users. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Stop sterotyping AOL users. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:no more me too posts (Score:2)
<AOL>ME TOO!</AOL>
one of the worst hit by AOHell (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd put in an ObTasteless here, but I've been out of the loop for so long on account of the spam that I just don't have the heart for it any more. [wipes a wistful tear from his eye]
-paul