In article ,
Don Stauffer wrote:
steamer wrote:

[ ... ]

--It's funny but the more these alternatives like Yahoo groups
pop up, the more I love usenet. Shell is the "killer app" and the more
bells and whistles (and ads!!) folks tack onto it the worse it is to
use the web. IMNSHO, heh.

I thought Google groups replaced (bought out) the old DejaNews. If so,
they are the same groups as Usenet- or at least all Usenet groups are
google groups, but maybe Google creates groups that work through its
interface but are not available via Usenet.

DejaNews was not *part* of usenet, but the (for their own
reasons) archived it. Usenet has *no* commercial connections anywhere.
Normal usenet reading is with dedicated programs through either the NNRP
(Net News Reader Protocol), or by working on the machine which has a
news server spool directory on it. There are thousands (or probably by
now tens of thousands) of news servers. Some carry all newgroups,
others (such as mine) are rather picky -- because I don't have either
the bandwidth or the disk space to get a full feed.

When I ran a news server for an Army R&D lab's network, we were
only able to carry the main eight newsgroup heirarchies, and
*absolutely* not anything in alt. (Alt.* is not truly a part of
usenet, it just rides along with the distribution network which carries
usenet.

Usenet *used* to be distributed by unix systems talking to other
unix systems via the uucp (Unix to Unix Communications Protocol), via
dialup connections. Now, most (perhaps all?) are carried through the
internet, using NNTP (Net News Transport Protocol).

DejaNews (and later Google) provided a web-based access to usenet
news -- at least those articles which don't have an "X-No-Archive: "
header set. Unlike usenet spool directories, Google's archives go bac
to the beginning of usenet. Usenet spool directories have much shorter
expire times -- from as little as a half day (on very busy newsgroups
with very large articles -- typically in the alt.binaries.* heirarchies)
to whatever the news admin sees fit. I tend to run a 28 day expire on a
few newsgroups that I particularly like, and a week or less on most
others.

For that matter, I run a gateway between one specific usenet
newsgroup and a specific YahooGroups mailing list.

I had a lot of trouble with my ISPs new server, and used Google groups
interface for awhile, but did not like it. I prefer my Thunderbird news
reader. I also tried various free or very low cost alternate news
servers, never did find anything I like. However, if my ISP's server
goes bad again, I will return to Google.

I found all my Usenet groups on Google groups.

Yes -- as I said, they archive (almost) *everything*. They also
provide a posting interface, but it apparently takes a long time for a
posted article to make it into Google's own newsreader, let alone to the
rest of the world.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---