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2013, the year of Usenet

therandymon.com

1–10 of 75 posts

Re: 2013, the year of Usenet

#2
That bit about total anonymity is just not true. Usually you would use your organization's news server (because every ISP/university had one), so you could be easily located. Plus, it was part of the netiquette to post using your real name / well known identity.

Thinking of the 90s internet makes me all sentimental.

Re: 2013, the year of Usenet

#4
>brief resurgence distributing binaries - images, video, warez - but even that era faded

The author is clearly not sufficiently connected. Binaries are going stronger than ever.

Re: 2013, the year of Usenet

#7

That bit about total anonymity is just not true. Usually you would use your organization's news server (because every ISP/university had one), so you could be easily located. Plus, it was part of the netiquette to post using your real name / well known identity. Thinking of the 90s internet makes me all sentimental.

Things were better, then.

Yeah we had to contend with flash sites and low bandwidth, and didn't have slick css3 and backnode.js but the web was more fun in those days.

Re: 2013, the year of Usenet

#8

Don't get me going about FidoNet[0] either... there are still good usenet servers out there[1]. Update added a link for those who are unfamiliar with FidoNet [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet [1] http://www.eternal-september.org/

I've been on easynews on and off for quite some time. It's got some good web tools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easynews

Re: 2013, the year of Usenet

#9
Usenet, or something very much like it, with a markup language (to allow for rich content), a paired messaging protocol (to allow for directly contacting individuals in chat / private message mode), and associated content distribution (images, video) could, I've felt for years, displace virtually all of existing social media.

The primary missing elements are filtering (as noted) and a distributed search capability.

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