On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:59:55 -0400, Maxwell Lol wrote:

Jack Stein writes:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.

Exactly... losing a few customers by dropping usenet, and effectively getting a
small increase in profit by volume, would seem to me better than raising the
monthly fees of ALL subscribers and watching many of them quit..


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Maxwell Lol wrote:
Jack Stein writes:


So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?


Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.

.... and the litigation expenses and fines brought on by the promised
prosecution by the New York State Attorney General.

--
Jack Novak
Buffalo, NY - USA

Nova wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote:
Jack Stein writes:


So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because
they
can't afford the storage?


Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.

... and the litigation expenses and fines brought on by the promised
prosecution by the New York State Attorney General.

That's really an empty threat--he'd have as much luck sueing the phone
company over an obscene phone call.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

mac davis wrote in
:

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 06:59:55 -0400, Maxwell Lol
wrote:

Jack Stein writes:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.

Exactly... losing a few customers by dropping usenet, and effectively
getting a small increase in profit by volume, would seem to me better
than raising the monthly fees of ALL subscribers and watching many of
them quit..


mac

Yes, the next shoe dropped. Verizon is eliminating the New York usenet
servers. Someone was wondering whether Andy Cuomo knew his actions were
going to cost NY jobs ...

All you Verizon usenet subscribers, change (if necessary) your usenet
newsserver to news.verizon.net by July 28, or you get an error message.


--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

mac davis wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

My take is that affording it is not the issue, but return on investment/labor..

When I'm in a group of folks talking about "news groups", they all think I'm
talking about browser based "forums"...
I doubt that a very large percentage of ISP customers even KNOW that Usenet even
exists..

I doubt many at comcast even know Usenet exists. The labor expense has
got to be nil per actual user of Usenet via Comcast because of that.

If I ran an ISP, I'd look at what it costs in equipment/labor/support/etc. and
probably drop it or, as Comcast did, farm it out..

Seems obvious someone looked at it and provided it free of cost. Now,
someone at Verizon may have changed their mind. So far, around here,
Comcast is still happily providing free access to all newsgroups, or at
least at no extra charge.

They also provide free web space to all their users. Care to guess what
huge percentage of their customer base uses that? They also provide up
to 6 separate Email accounts to each subscriber. Wonder what percentage
of users use 6 email accounts? Comcast could probably whittle a bunch
of stuff the majority of subscribers don't use and save some bucks, but
apparently the bean counters so far feel it's better to provide lots of
service at a fair expense to keep customers happy. Now, assuming
Verizon is dropping ALL binary newsgroups, Comcast has something Verizon
doesn't.

How important that is an unknown to me, but I'm hoping it is more
important than nothing and I'm 100% certain I am not the only customer
that feels this stuff is important.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.

Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know about
or care about? If Verizon drops enough services, Comcast will kick
their ass when time comes to sell their wares. While some here may
think it doesn't matter, I think it matters a great deal if Kate and
others unhappy with something their ISP is doing ****es them off. I can
assure you that by not complaining or caring, nothing good will happen.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote:

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.

Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know about
or care about? If Verizon drops enough services, Comcast will kick
their ass when time comes to sell their wares. While some here may
think it doesn't matter, I think it matters a great deal if Kate and
others unhappy with something their ISP is doing ****es them off. I can
assure you that by not complaining or caring, nothing good will happen.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579392.html

Hate to break it to you, but.... Comcast is on the list too. Whether they
just drop alt.binaries.* or the whole shebang is up in the air, but I bet
you will lose something.

--
Froz...

"Maxwell Lol" wrote in message
...
Jack Stein writes:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.
This is not the first time they have done this, I dropped them back in the
nineties for the same thing. Changed providers, went to earthlink then Bell
finally came back around. May have to change again...?

J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

No, because by dropping USENET they can reduce both their
administrative and hardware support costs with minimal loss of income.

Really? How much does Comcast spend as a percentage of the
administrative and hardware expenses by providing free Usenet access to
all their customers?

Can your PC with 500 GIGABYTES in hard drive storage deliver up
binaries fast enough to satisfy a large number of simultaneous
users?
No, but Comcast can, and that is what they sell, and the large
graphics transported is the reason high speed providers exist.
Storage of Usenet is a non-issue to companies like Verizon and
Comcast.

So what is the relevance of your PC? You seem to be laboring under
the misconception that serving up large volumes of stored binaries is
just a matter of sticking a consumer drive in a machine.

The relevance has been made clear, but you choose to ignore what you
don't like or doesn't fit in your views. Lets see if I can waste some
time explaining it to you again.

Vincent said:
"Usenet has changed considerably since the late 1980's... more
newsgroups, more content, larger files, etc..."

I said this stuff has gotten much cheaper, you insist on arguing about
that. I mentioned an IBMPCxt cost $4000 with a 10 meg hard drive in the
80's. I replaced that 10 meg hard rive in the 80's for $400, which is
$40 per MEG. My current computer, which cost under $1000 has over 500
GIGS of HD storage. 500 GIGS of storage in the 80's when I bought the
HD at $40 a MEG would have cost lets see ..... $22,000,000, or 22
MILLION dollars. Someone can check my math, but when you are done
laboring over this concept, then you might understand why storage of
huge amounts of information is no big deal to the likes of verizon and
comcast.

Usenet has always been a loser for the ISPs.

Numbers please? I doubt even Comcast knows the exact value of Usenet
service to it's subscribers.

It's not
really enough of their business to warrant the expense.

How about free web space, is that enough to warrant the expense? How
about 6 free independent email accounts so a family of 6 can all have
their own separate email accounts? If you know all this about Usenet,
then I guess you know the answers to all these Questions...

Don't bet on it. USENET was around long before Verizon or Comcast.

Well, Verizon and Comcast was AT&T and they have been around longer
than Usenet, but so what?

Comcast was AT&T? Sorry, but Comcast is a cable television company
and they have never been a part of AT&T.

AT&T sold there internet service to Comcast. I was at an AT&T address,
next thing you know, I had a Comcast address. Just as Verizon, Bell
south, Southern Bell and some others came from AT&T, so did Comcast.

Why will the independents be dead?
Because not enough people will care enough to support them.

Note that there are free servers out there.

Fidonet was mostly free as well, but guess what... dead as a doornail.

My guess is Giganews gets a ton more money from Comcast than all the
individual subscriptions combined.

When you know for sure get back to us.

It was just a guess. Get back to "us" when you know the value of free
Usenet, free web space, and multiple email accounts to Comcast vs the
expense of providing all that free with your basic Comcast account.

They will likely be the first to fall if the
big ISP's drop Usenet, and most of the rest will be gone right
behind
them due to lack of interest. If only Verizon drops all binary
groups, their will be a huge dent to the alt binary groups to the
point that MOST if not all the binary groups will disappear, even
though Comcast still carries them.

This may come as a shock to you but neither Verizon nor Comcast is the
world.

Nothing shocks me, you must have me confused with someone else. More
over, I don't think I ever suggested Verizon or Comcast is the world.
I do think they are very big providers of internet service in the US.
If you know differently, please let "us" know who the bigger providers
are.

Regardless of how it goes, I feel confident storage of Usenet is a
non-issue as the price of storage has gone through the floor years
ago, and is still falling at an amazing rate.

Says the guy who has never seen a server farm.

I guess you are saying if I ever saw a server farm, I'd know that the
cost of storage since the 80's has NOT gone through the floor. You
would be wrong at any rate... The cost of storage has gone right through
the floor in just 25 years, to the point it is a non-issue to large
ISP's like Comcast and Verizon as far as Usenet is concerned. That's
why they can offer free web pages, multiple email accounts, and fee
Usenet to all their customers.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

mac davis wrote:
, Maxwell Lol wrote:

Jack Stein writes:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because they
can't afford the storage?

Don't forget the labor and maintenance.
Anything they can do yo save pennies.

Exactly... losing a few customers by dropping usenet, and effectively getting a
small increase in profit by volume, would seem to me better than raising the
monthly fees of ALL subscribers and watching many of them quit..

First, you must know what providing Usenet costs Comcast, then, you must
know how many customers will be ****ed off about it. I agree Usenet is
used by a small percentage of Comcast customers, I also think a small
percentage use 6 Email accounts or put up Web pages on the free web
space they provide. There are likely other things they provide free
that I don't know, or care about. The stuff starts to add up when you
start ****ing off groups of people that do use your services.

Considering Usenet has many, many 10's of thousands of newsgroups, if
just ONE person participated in each newsgroup, you would have many
thousands of Usenet users. What adverse affect dropping Usenet would
have is something I can only speculate about, just as I can only
speculate what percentage of expenses would go away if they drop usenet
altogether. Personally, I think Usenet and the independent providers
that charge a fee would suffer the most, not Comcast or Verizon. I
guess it's possible only the elite users would go to the trouble to hook
up and pay extra for Usenet, but I think it would be a net loss rather
than a gain. I've been wrong before though, so who knows.

Currently, my speculation is that Comcast feels all these services are
worth it to them, else they would have dropped all of them.

I recommend anyone that is using Verizon high speed internet services
for their ISP, switch to Comcast the minute Verizon drops any usenet
service provided by Comcast, and make sure they let Verizon and Comcast
know why you did it. If you don't have comcast available, talk to
J.Clark, as he knows Verizon and Comcast are not the world, perhaps he
can hook you up with a high speed provider other than these two giants.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Han wrote:

Yes, the next shoe dropped. Verizon is eliminating the New York usenet
servers. Someone was wondering whether Andy Cuomo knew his actions were
going to cost NY jobs ...

One? Two?

Jack Stein wrote:


Considering Usenet has many, many 10's of thousands of newsgroups, if
just ONE person participated in each newsgroup, you would have many
thousands of Usenet users. What adverse affect dropping Usenet would
have is something I can only speculate about, just as I can only
speculate what percentage of expenses would go away if they drop usenet
altogether. Personally, I think Usenet and the independent providers
that charge a fee would suffer the most, not Comcast or Verizon. I
guess it's possible only the elite users would go to the trouble to hook
up and pay extra for Usenet, but I think it would be a net loss rather
than a gain. I've been wrong before though, so who knows.

Did you ever notice how many of the same folks you see from group to
group? And that's just the ones who don't use a different screen name
on different groups.

Jack Stein wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

So are you saying Comcast and Verizon will drop Usenet because
they
can't afford the storage?

No, because by dropping USENET they can reduce both their
administrative and hardware support costs with minimal loss of
income.

Really? How much does Comcast spend as a percentage of the
administrative and hardware expenses by providing free Usenet access
to all their customers?

If they save two cents a millennium it's still a saving. Geez.

Can your PC with 500 GIGABYTES in hard drive storage deliver up
binaries fast enough to satisfy a large number of simultaneous
users?
No, but Comcast can, and that is what they sell, and the large
graphics transported is the reason high speed providers exist.
Storage of Usenet is a non-issue to companies like Verizon and
Comcast.

So what is the relevance of your PC? You seem to be laboring under
the misconception that serving up large volumes of stored binaries
is
just a matter of sticking a consumer drive in a machine.

The relevance has been made clear, but you choose to ignore what you
don't like or doesn't fit in your views. Lets see if I can waste
some
time explaining it to you again.

No, it hasn't been made clear. The fact that a cheap drive can hold
a lot of data does not mean that that same cheap drive can deliver up
that data at a transfer rate high enough to satisfy the needs of a
large number of simultaneous users.
]
Vincent said:
"Usenet has changed considerably since the late 1980's... more
newsgroups, more content, larger files, etc..."

I said this stuff has gotten much cheaper, you insist on arguing
about
that.

"Stuff" has gotten cheaper but volume has also increased. How many
binaries were transferred in a week on USENET in 1980? How about now?

I mentioned an IBMPCxt cost $4000 with a 10 meg hard drive in
the 80's. I replaced that 10 meg hard rive in the 80's for $400,
which is $40 per MEG. My current computer, which cost under $1000
has over 500 GIGS of HD storage. 500 GIGS of storage in the 80's
when I bought the HD at $40 a MEG would have cost lets see .....
$22,000,000, or 22 MILLION dollars. Someone can check my math, but
when you are done laboring over this concept, then you might
understand why storage of huge amounts of information is no big deal
to the likes of verizon and comcast.

Storage isn't if all they have to do is store it. What you don't seem
to be able to grasp is that they also have to be able to deliver that
data to the user in a timely manner. And your cheap consumer disks
can't do that. It's not a matter of network bandwidth, it's a matter
of the bandwidth of the individual drive itself.

Usenet has always been a loser for the ISPs.

Numbers please? I doubt even Comcast knows the exact value of
Usenet
service to it's subscribers.

So how much profit do they make on something for which they don't
charge anything?

It's not
really enough of their business to warrant the expense.

How about free web space, is that enough to warrant the expense?
How
about 6 free independent email accounts so a family of 6 can all
have
their own separate email accounts? If you know all this about
Usenet,
then I guess you know the answers to all these Questions...

OK, genius, why _are_ they cutting USENET then?

Don't bet on it. USENET was around long before Verizon or
Comcast.

Well, Verizon and Comcast was AT&T and they have been around
longer
than Usenet, but so what?

Comcast was AT&T? Sorry, but Comcast is a cable television company
and they have never been a part of AT&T.

AT&T sold there internet service to Comcast.

In what universe was that?

I was at an AT&T
address, next thing you know, I had a Comcast address. Just as
Verizon, Bell south, Southern Bell and some others came from AT&T,
so
did Comcast.

No, no matter what delusion you might be under, Comcast did not come
from AT&T.

Why will the independents be dead?
Because not enough people will care enough to support them.

Note that there are free servers out there.

Fidonet was mostly free as well, but guess what... dead as a
doornail.

And so all the free servers that are currently in operation will cease
to exist? Why will that happen?

If running USENET is as cheap as you claim, then why can't you run it
out of your basement with your PC?

My guess is Giganews gets a ton more money from Comcast than all
the
individual subscriptions combined.

When you know for sure get back to us.

It was just a guess. Get back to "us" when you know the value of
free
Usenet, free web space, and multiple email accounts to Comcast vs
the
expense of providing all that free with your basic Comcast account.

So again what do you believe to be Comcast's reason for reducing
USENET service?

They will likely be the first to fall if the
big ISP's drop Usenet, and most of the rest will be gone right
behind
them due to lack of interest. If only Verizon drops all binary
groups, their will be a huge dent to the alt binary groups to the
point that MOST if not all the binary groups will disappear, even
though Comcast still carries them.

This may come as a shock to you but neither Verizon nor Comcast is
the world.

Nothing shocks me, you must have me confused with someone else.
More
over, I don't think I ever suggested Verizon or Comcast is the
world.
I do think they are very big providers of internet service in the
US.
If you know differently, please let "us" know who the bigger
providers
are.

You are the one going on about how if Comcast and Verizon drop USENET
then it will cease to exist. So tell me, exactly how many Comcast and
Verizon subscribers are there in Europe, Japan, India, and China?

Geez, a couple of ISPs in New York take an action and according to you
the sky is falling.

Regardless of how it goes, I feel confident storage of Usenet is a
non-issue as the price of storage has gone through the floor years
ago, and is still falling at an amazing rate.

Says the guy who has never seen a server farm.

I guess you are saying if I ever saw a server farm, I'd know that
the
cost of storage since the 80's has NOT gone through the floor.

No, you'd know that the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and operating
a server farm is not negligible.

You
would be wrong at any rate... The cost of storage has gone right
through the floor in just 25 years, to the point it is a non-issue
to
large ISP's like Comcast and Verizon as far as Usenet is concerned.
That's why they can offer free web pages, multiple email accounts,
and fee Usenet to all their customers.

If they could serve USENET from a 50 buck consumer drive you would be
right, but they cannot provide the kind of volume required by the
method of sticking a cheap drive in a PC. They still need arrays that
can provide the required bandwidth. Drives, no matter how great their
storage capacity, remain SLOW AS ****ING CHRISTMAS compared to
everything else involved with moving data. That's the point you
consistently fail to grasp.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Jack Stein wrote in
news
Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.

Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know
about or care about? If Verizon drops enough services, Comcast will
kick their ass when time comes to sell their wares. While some here
may think it doesn't matter, I think it matters a great deal if Kate
and others unhappy with something their ISP is doing ****es them off.
I can assure you that by not complaining or caring, nothing good will
happen.

Let's see. What Verizon internet services do I use. Their pipe to the
internet. I do still have email accounts with Verizon, but only ones I
don't care about. Oh, yeah, webspace. Shucks, after losing websites at
least twice, no Verizon personal webspace is used anymore. That leaves
usenet, now crippled to the extent I use astraweb for what isn't free on
Verizon, expecting to go totally off Verizon by 2010, because Verizon
won't offer it anymore.

Cablevision/Optimum would be the alternative here in 07410 I think, but
I really hated their costly TV service when I had it, and I don't like
their owners. So I'll stick with Verizon phone, TV and internet for
now. --
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Jack Stein writes:

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.

Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know
about or care about?

Multiple email accounts costs nearly nothing, once you support 1 or 2
per user. USENET is a significant investment.

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:24:43 GMT, Han wrote:


Let's see. What Verizon internet services do I use. Their pipe to the
internet. I do still have email accounts with Verizon, but only ones I
don't care about. Oh, yeah, webspace. Shucks, after losing websites at
least twice, no Verizon personal webspace is used anymore. That leaves
usenet, now crippled to the extent I use astraweb for what isn't free on
Verizon, expecting to go totally off Verizon by 2010, because Verizon
won't offer it anymore.

Cablevision/Optimum would be the alternative here in 07410 I think, but
I really hated their costly TV service when I had it, and I don't like
their owners. So I'll stick with Verizon phone, TV and internet for
now. --
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

I pay $60 a month for my ISP, and had to buy a $500 dish as part of the
package..
The ONLY thing I use it for is to get online... My web pages and email accounts
are at my 2 domains, and I pay for APN since Hughesnet doesn't have a news
server....


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

FrozenNorth wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.

Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know about
or care about? If Verizon drops enough services, Comcast will kick
their ass when time comes to sell their wares. While some here may
think it doesn't matter, I think it matters a great deal if Kate and
others unhappy with something their ISP is doing ****es them off. I can
assure you that by not complaining or caring, nothing good will happen.

http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6579392.html

Hate to break it to you, but.... Comcast is on the list too. Whether they
just drop alt.binaries.* or the whole shebang is up in the air, but I bet
you will lose something.

Hate to break it to you, but if you are right, and all the big providers
drop all binary groups, then binary groups will disappear completely
regardless of who you get them from. Not only because the big ISP's
don't carry them, but because as soon as some freak dumps porn on one of
them, they will likely ban using that carrier on their servers as well.

It's possible but not likely Comcast will drop Usenet, perhaps binary
groups simply because it's easy to eliminate porn by doing that. My
point however is that Comcast is not dropping anything because of the
expense of providing space or transmission of binary groups.

Thanks for the link however, it was a good read. Sounds to me like the
porn sources will be zapped,particularly web sites, not particularly
binary groups. For example, Alt binary photo's original has thousands
of great photographs or our own APBWoodworking. That really would be a
crime if it disappeared. But, like I said, anyone that likes binary
groups is likely to lose if the big carriers drop and plonk anything
that smells of porn. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me that ONLY porn
would be posted to these sites as the freaks would be doing it just to
show they can, and the normal people would be gone.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

B A R R Y wrote:

Did you ever notice how many of the same folks you see from group to
group? And that's just the ones who don't use a different screen name
on different groups.

Actually no. I notice the same folks in this group as ABPW but really
its the same line of interest. I don't see any of the same people in
the non-related groups in which I participate.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

Jack Stein wrote:

Really? How much does Comcast spend as a percentage of the
administrative and hardware expenses by providing free Usenet access
to all their customers?

If they save two cents a millennium it's still a saving. Geez.

If they lose two cents a millennium it's still a loss. Geez.

So what is the relevance of your PC? You seem to be laboring under
the misconception that serving up large volumes of stored binaries
is just a matter of sticking a consumer drive in a machine.

The relevance has been made clear, but you choose to ignore what you
don't like or doesn't fit in your views. Lets see if I can waste
some time explaining it to you again.

No, it hasn't been made clear. The fact that a cheap drive can hold
a lot of data does not mean that that same cheap drive can deliver up
that data at a transfer rate high enough to satisfy the needs of a
large number of simultaneous users.

Well, besides the fact that just the HD storage on my personal machine
would have cost $22 MILLION in the 80's, something you choose to ignore,
"delivering up the data" is an even MORE amazing reduction in cost per
thousand bytes.

Vincent said:
"Usenet has changed considerably since the late 1980's... more
newsgroups, more content, larger files, etc..."

I said this stuff has gotten much cheaper, you insist on arguing
about
that.

"Stuff" has gotten cheaper but volume has also increased. How many
binaries were transferred in a week on USENET in 1980? How about now?

Advanced equipment today is like 2 BILLION times faster today than even
in the 90's, let alone the 80's.

Storage isn't if all they have to do is store it. What you don't seem
to be able to grasp is that they also have to be able to deliver that
data to the user in a timely manner. And your cheap consumer disks
can't do that. It's not a matter of network bandwidth, it's a matter
of the bandwidth of the individual drive itself.

It is a matter of the bandwidth, and it is billions of times faster than
it was in the 90's, let alone the 80's. Routers today can push upwards
of 92 TERABITS/sec. as opposed to the 56k of the 90's.

Usenet has always been a loser for the ISPs.
Numbers please? I doubt even Comcast knows the exact value of
Usenet service to it's subscribers.

So how much profit do they make on something for which they don't
charge anything?

Depends on how many customers it brings them. They do charge for their
services you know, just that the free web pages, the free multiple email
accounts and free Usenet are included in the base fee with no extra
charges.

It's not really enough of their business to warrant the expense.

How about free web space, is that enough to warrant the expense?
How about 6 free independent email accounts so a family of 6 can all
have their own separate email accounts? If you know all this about
Usenet, then I guess you know the answers to all these Questions...

OK, genius, why _are_ they cutting USENET then?

First, Comcast has not cut ANYTHING yet. I still get all the same
groups, including binaries I have always gotten. They have agreed to
look at all the web traffic, including newsgroups to try to limit PORN,
has nothing at all to do with storage expense or bandwidth.

Comcast was AT&T? Sorry, but Comcast is a cable television company
and they have never been a part of AT&T.

AT&T sold there internet service to Comcast.

In what universe was that?

Every one's universe but yours I guess?

No, no matter what delusion you might be under, Comcast did not come
from AT&T.

No matter what delusion you might be under, AT&T sold there internet
service to Comcast.

If running USENET is as cheap as you claim, then why can't you run it
out of your basement with your PC?

If it's as expensive as you claim, why does Comcast provide it with no
extra charge?

My guess is Giganews gets a ton more money from Comcast than all
the individual subscriptions combined.
When you know for sure get back to us.

It was just a guess. Get back to "us" when you know the value of
free Usenet, free web space, and multiple email accounts to Comcast vs
the expense of providing all that free with your basic Comcast account.

So again what do you believe to be Comcast's reason for reducing
USENET service?

First, Comcast has not reduced service at all. Second, they are looking
at blocking various sources of PORN, mainly web sites but possibly
binary groups and who knows maybe Usenet and email itself, is the US is
getting sick of looking at porn, and most of the major carriers have
agreed to attempt to do something about all the child porn flying across
the internet. It has NOTHING to do with storage or transmission
expenses. In fact, the next thing they will be moving and storing
(already do) is movies, far more bandwidth there than a few funky
pictures on ABPW.

This may come as a shock to you but neither Verizon nor Comcast is
the world.
Nothing shocks me, you must have me confused with someone else.
More over, I don't think I ever suggested Verizon or Comcast is the
world. I do think they are very big providers of internet service in the
US. If you know differently, please let "us" know who the bigger
providers are.

You are the one going on about how if Comcast and Verizon drop USENET
then it will cease to exist. So tell me, exactly how many Comcast and
Verizon subscribers are there in Europe, Japan, India, and China?

I don't know, what percentage of pictures posted in ABPW or ABPO or APBF
do you think come from other than North America?

Geez, a couple of ISPs in New York take an action and according to you
the sky is falling.

According to you, a few dollars to store and transfer a couple of
pictures is killing the big providers, despite the fact the cost of
storing and transferring has fallen through the floor, and the fact that
the high speed providers like Verizon and Comcast are sending tv and
movies over their lines with out blinking an eye.


I guess you are saying if I ever saw a server farm, I'd know that
the cost of storage since the 80's has NOT gone through the floor.

No, you'd know that the cost of purchasing, maintaining, and operating
a server farm is not negligible.

It is negligible as far as moving and storing a few binary pictures is
concerned.

You
would be wrong at any rate... The cost of storage has gone right
through the floor in just 25 years, to the point it is a non-issue
to
large ISP's like Comcast and Verizon as far as Usenet is concerned.
That's why they can offer free web pages, multiple email accounts,
and fee Usenet to all their customers.

If they could serve USENET from a 50 buck consumer drive you would be
right, but they cannot provide the kind of volume required by the
method of sticking a cheap drive in a PC. They still need arrays that
can provide the required bandwidth. Drives, no matter how great their
storage capacity, remain SLOW AS ****ING CHRISTMAS compared to
everything else involved with moving data. That's the point you
consistently fail to grasp.

I don't think so. Comcast and verizon send all TV over the same lines,
including a ton of Movies and so on. They have no problem with a few
freaking photo's, or web pages, or email accounts.

It's about the child porn, nothing else.
--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Maxwell Lol wrote:
Jack Stein writes:

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.
Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web space,
free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people don't know
about or care about?

Multiple email accounts costs nearly nothing, once you support 1 or 2
per user. USENET is a significant investment.

Depends on your definition of significant. Consider that both Verizon
and Comcast broadcast 24 hours a day all TV and sound over the same
lines you get the internet, and significant begins to change.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote:
Jack Stein writes:

Han wrote:

Still, I do not expect Verizon to keep usenet all that much
longer,
especially not if I have underestimated the manpower required.
Do you expect Comcast to drop multiple email accounts, free web
space, free Usenet, and a bunch of other crap that many people
don't know about or care about?

Multiple email accounts costs nearly nothing, once you support 1 or
2
per user. USENET is a significant investment.

Depends on your definition of significant. Consider that both
Verizon
and Comcast broadcast 24 hours a day all TV and sound over the same
lines you get the internet, and significant begins to change.

No, it doesn't. You're confusing the cost of forwarding packets with
the cost of storing and serving up data.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Jack Stein writes:

Hate to break it to you, but if you are right, and all the big
providers drop all binary groups, then binary groups will disappear
completely regardless of who you get them from. Not only because the
big ISP's don't carry them, but because as soon as some freak dumps
porn on one of them, they will likely ban using that carrier on their
servers as well.

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there are).

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:09:05 -0400, Jack Stein wrote:

B A R R Y wrote:

Did you ever notice how many of the same folks you see from group to
group? And that's just the ones who don't use a different screen name
on different groups.

Actually no. I notice the same folks in this group as ABPW but really
its the same line of interest. I don't see any of the same people in
the non-related groups in which I participate.

I do..
Actually, it was a couple of folks from
alt.autos.dodge.trucks
that turned me on to the 3 woodworking/turning groups that I subscribe to..


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

mac davis wrote:
On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:09:05 -0400, Jack Stein wrote:

B A R R Y wrote:

Did you ever notice how many of the same folks you see from group to
group? And that's just the ones who don't use a different screen name
on different groups.

Actually no. I notice the same folks in this group as ABPW but really
its the same line of interest. I don't see any of the same people in
the non-related groups in which I participate.

I do..
Actually, it was a couple of folks from
alt.autos.dodge.trucks
that turned me on to the 3 woodworking/turning groups that I subscribe to..

OK, change "any" to "many"

I don't see {many} of the same people in the non related groups in which
I participate. I have, on rare occasion, bumped into someone I guess.

What ever the number, it is insignificant in the scheme of Usenet
participation.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

USENET is a significant investment.

Depends on your definition of significant. Consider that both
Verizon and Comcast broadcast 24 hours a day all TV and sound over the same
lines you get the internet, and significant begins to change.

No, it doesn't. You're confusing the cost of forwarding packets with
the cost of storing and serving up data.

Serving up data is the same, and the speed, as I explained, has
increased incredibly since the 90's, let alone the 80's. Storage I've
already explained to you is about $22 MILLION dollars cheaper per 500
gigs than it was in the 80's based on what a 10 meg drive cost me for an
IBM PCxt.

I don't know the exact figures, but one hell of a lot of email,
including huge graphics files and video files is sent around the
internet every day. I do know 70% of it is spam and none of the ISP's
blink an eye. This stuff just ain't no big deal when you are talking
terabytes of cheap storage and data transmission.

I'm sorry you can't see that the reason problems may arise with some or
all binary groups is not the cost of providing this stuff or storing it
for a brief time, it is simply child porn that has put a bur under
everyone's saddle.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:
Jack Stein wrote:

USENET is a significant investment.

Depends on your definition of significant. Consider that both
Verizon and Comcast broadcast 24 hours a day all TV and sound over
the same lines you get the internet, and significant begins to
change.

No, it doesn't. You're confusing the cost of forwarding packets
with
the cost of storing and serving up data.

Serving up data is the same,

If you think that you don't know enough for your opinion to be worth
considering. The sustained data transfer rate for a 100 buck disk is
about 100 MB/sec for sequential transfers under ideal conditions. In
the real world it's more like 10 MB/sec for random access, which is
what it has to do to serve up USENET binaries to different
simultaneous users. A hundred buck network bridge can transfer more
than 3000 MB/sec.

Keeping even that cheap bridge loaded to capacity is going to require
even under ideal conditions 30 of those cheap disks.

Do you see the difference _now_?


and the speed, as I explained, has
increased incredibly since the 90's, let alone the 80's.A Storage
I've
already explained to you is about $22 MILLION dollars cheaper per
500
gigs than it was in the 80's based on what a 10 meg drive cost me
for
an IBM PCxt.

Again you're on about _size_, you're ignoring transfer rate, and the
relationship between that size and the volume of data involved.

I don't know the exact figures, but one hell of a lot of email,
including huge graphics files and video files is sent around the
internet every day. I do know 70% of it is spam and none of the
ISP's
blink an eye. This stuff just ain't no big deal when you are
talking
terabytes of cheap storage and data transmission.

Cheap storage isn't fast storage. A mail server doesn't have to
deliver the same file to several simultaneous users. Video files and
"huge graphics files" are not in general stored by the ISP.

I'm sorry you can't see that the reason problems may arise with some
or all binary groups is not the cost of providing this stuff or
storing it for a brief time, it is simply child porn that has put a
bur under everyone's saddle.

I'm sorry that you can't see that New York has about 0.3 percent of
the population of the world and the only place that "kiddie porn" is
being used as an excuse to drop binaries is New York.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

"J. Clarke" & Jack Stein both wrote:
snip

Sounds like:
My daddy can whip your daddy.

Nah, na nah, na.

Lew

Lew Hodgett wrote:
"J. Clarke" & Jack Stein both wrote:
snip

Sounds like:
My daddy can whip your daddy.

Nah, na nah, na.

To put this in woodworking terms, his proposed use of cheap consumer
drives to serve up USENET binaries to thousands of users is like
someone proposing to set up a production line to rip 8/4 lumber by
chucking a 1/8 inch Rotozip bit in a Dremel.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:01:38 -0400, Maxwell Lol
wrote:

Jack Stein writes:

Hate to break it to you, but if you are right, and all the big
providers drop all binary groups, then binary groups will disappear
completely regardless of who you get them from. Not only because the
big ISP's don't carry them, but because as soon as some freak dumps
porn on one of them, they will likely ban using that carrier on their
servers as well.

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there are).




But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet is
part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for it.
Next, they will start charging for email.

J. Clarke wrote:

To put this in woodworking terms, his proposed use of cheap consumer
drives to serve up USENET binaries to thousands of users is like
someone proposing to set up a production line to rip 8/4 lumber by
chucking a 1/8 inch Rotozip bit in a Dremel.

To put this in human terms any fool can understand, your dancing around
the issue, making stuff up like me proposing to use cheap consumer
drives to serve up USENET binaries is too lame for words.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

For a computer thread follower, and if you've done any IT work in a
government/corporate environment, ya gotta love the following from the Gay
Bay:

http://www.balancednewsblog.com/2008...puter-network/

There is talk amongst techies that there is much more to the story than what
is being reported.

Apparently this guy was concerned that idjit, ill trained, IT management
types, coming into the workforce, including the new "chief of network
security", were more than capable of screwing up a perfectly tuned,
_working_, system, so he indeed locked them out to keep them from wreaking
havoc.

To me, the last line indeed tells of a much bigger story ... "The system
continues to operate even though administrators have limited or no access,"

LOL!

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 5/14/08
KarlC@ (the obvious)

Jack Stein wrote:
J. Clarke wrote:

To put this in woodworking terms, his proposed use of cheap
consumer
drives to serve up USENET binaries to thousands of users is like
someone proposing to set up a production line to rip 8/4 lumber by
chucking a 1/8 inch Rotozip bit in a Dremel.

To put this in human terms any fool can understand, your dancing
around the issue, making stuff up like me proposing to use cheap
consumer drives to serve up USENET binaries is too lame for words.

It is now clear that you are arguing for the sake of argument and
can't even keep track of your own assertions. You may have the last
word if you wish.

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Phisherman wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote:

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there are).

But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet is
part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for it.
Next, they will start charging for email.

I don't think you have to worry much about the big providers cutting
services because of expenses. This stuff is all cheap as all get out to
these guys. They are looking at providing all TV, all music and movies
over the internet. The costs of doing this has decreased by amounts so
large few humans can comprehend it. While it is true usage has also
increased dramatically (25 million web pages when Google opened, to
billions of web pages today) technology has kept pace quite well.

In the 80's it took forever just to look at any graphics file on your
hard drive while today I can look at huge pictures on ABPO as fast as I
can hit the "next" button.

Around 70% of Americans use the internet, probably more, and as long as
there is competition for their dollar, and the nanny government doesn't
force too much censorship on them, services will continue, and at
cheaper and cheaper rates. That's how this all works.

Kiddie porn is bad however, you know it's always "all about the kids"

My personal feeling is let the porn fly, and use the internet to bust
the mutants that infest the rest of us with it. I've noted a massive
drop in all the crap that was infecting many of the binary groups I was
watching. Someone somewhere did something about it I guess. Now seems
a lame time to drop the binary groups. So far, Comcast has not changed
anything around here.

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:36:18 -0400, Jack Stein wrote:

mac davis wrote:
On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:09:05 -0400, Jack Stein wrote:

B A R R Y wrote:

Did you ever notice how many of the same folks you see from group to
group? And that's just the ones who don't use a different screen name
on different groups.

Actually no. I notice the same folks in this group as ABPW but really
its the same line of interest. I don't see any of the same people in
the non-related groups in which I participate.

I do..
Actually, it was a couple of folks from
alt.autos.dodge.trucks
that turned me on to the 3 woodworking/turning groups that I subscribe to..

OK, change "any" to "many"

I don't see {many} of the same people in the non related groups in which
I participate. I have, on rare occasion, bumped into someone I guess.

What ever the number, it is insignificant in the scheme of Usenet
participation.

I think that could be the definition of newsgroups though, Jack..
Sort of "special interest groups"?

I guess I'm unusual in my subscriptions, as I'm in a few woodworking groups, a
turning group, 2 truck groups, a karaoke group and a country mp3 group..

Most folks that I talk to, if they do UseNet at all belong, to 1 or 2 groups..


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:15:18 GMT, "Lew Hodgett" wrote:


"J. Clarke" & Jack Stein both wrote:
snip

Sounds like:
My daddy can whip your daddy.

Nah, na nah, na.

Lew

Adult version, from my attorney:
"****in' on each other in the shower"


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:00:44 -0400, Phisherman wrote:


But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet is
part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for it.
Next, they will start charging for email.

Depends on your priorities, I think..
To me, good a UseNet server is very much a priority, both for work and play..

IMHO, I get much more out of it than the $2.95 a month I pay for a good news
server...

Hell, in the first week of reading the wRECk, I learned as much as I would in a
couple of paid woodworking classes..

Oh.. and with a good newsgroup, even an ol' fart like me can find out how to
trouble shoot and maybe fix my truck, or at least have a better chance of not
getting ripped off..
Priceless?
Nah... lol


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Phisherman writes:

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there are).

But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet is
part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for it.
Next, they will start charging for email.

People pay for what they want. USENET is cheap if all you want is text.

Some people, however, are willing to pay extra for porn and illegal downloads.

Maxwell Lol wrote in
:

Phisherman writes:

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there
are).

But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet
is part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for
it. Next, they will start charging for email.

People pay for what they want. USENET is cheap if all you want is
text.

Some people, however, are willing to pay extra for porn and illegal
downloads.

And some people want to see pictures about woodworking, airplanes, and
newsgroups such as bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts,
alt.comp.software.financial.quicken, and what have you, and arte willing
to pay a little extra for those.


--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

Han wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote in
:

Phisherman writes:

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few USENET
providors who are willing to charge extra for this service (which
there are) and people who are willing to pay for them (which there
are).

But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet
is part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for
it. Next, they will start charging for email.
People pay for what they want. USENET is cheap if all you want is
text.

Some people, however, are willing to pay extra for porn and illegal
downloads.

And some people want to see pictures about woodworking, airplanes, and
newsgroups such as bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts,
alt.comp.software.financial.quicken, and what have you, and arte willing
to pay a little extra for those.

And some people like it included in their regular $50/mo fees. When you
have 11-12 million people pitching in a few pennies or what ever each
month, the small cost is worth it if you can keep enough customers happy
and not switching to your competition.

A note on the illegal downloads, I was reading somewhere that Comcast
has individual customers that are downloading terabytes of data and one
guy they said was downloading enough stuff in one month it would be
equivalent to 12 years worth of movies...

--
Jack
http://jbstein.com

Jack Stein wrote in
:

Han wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote in
:

Phisherman writes:

The binaries will always be available. All it takes is a few
USENET providors who are willing to charge extra for this service
(which there are) and people who are willing to pay for them
(which there are).

But not everyone. Most people are cutting back services due to
housing and energy costs. Plus, many are on fixed income. Usenet
is part of the Internet and I'm not about to start paying extra for
it. Next, they will start charging for email.
People pay for what they want. USENET is cheap if all you want is
text.

Some people, however, are willing to pay extra for porn and illegal
downloads.

And some people want to see pictures about woodworking, airplanes,
and newsgroups such as bionet.molbio.methds-reagnts,
alt.comp.software.financial.quicken, and what have you, and arte
willing to pay a little extra for those.

And some people like it included in their regular $50/mo fees. When
you have 11-12 million people pitching in a few pennies or what ever
each month, the small cost is worth it if you can keep enough
customers happy and not switching to your competition.

A note on the illegal downloads, I was reading somewhere that Comcast
has individual customers that are downloading terabytes of data and
one guy they said was downloading enough stuff in one month it would
be equivalent to 12 years worth of movies...

I fully agree, but now you are talking really about a download cap.
That's fine, but IMNSHO it should be based on monthly usage, not daily.
There may be days I am intensively downloading things, and then there are
weeks that I download little.

I think I am achieving this with my astraweb subscription. $10 for 25GB.
use until the quota is finished. With the first month at 50 MB, 25 GB
will last a while.
--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid