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Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

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11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#11
$20-35 US Dollars a month for Giganews usenet

Can be found cheaper though, like 1/4th of that price, if you're happy with less retention (1600 days instead of 4000 or so) and a download speed limit (never found this a problem, background downloading during the night or day still means you can watch shows same day or day after if you're into that).

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#12
post #8

> You get one thing – [release day availability] I'd bet it's not zero days, but one stop shopping. So the consumer saves the overhead of wondering, "wait, is this on Hulu? Netflix? Amazon? iPlayer?" The entire catalog is in one place. I think Netflix and Amazon are getting to the point where their catalogs are deeper than usenet. Of course, most film junkie's "essential 100" lists will still probably hit somewhere l…

Netflix (and probably Amazon too -- I have Prime but the UI for the video service is so bad I normally don't bother with it) is falling into the cable model of hundreds of channels but nothing to watch. More often than not I will spend 15-20 minutes browsing Netflix to find something interesting that I haven't already watched, and end up just switching it off because there's not much there.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#13
post #3

In the past 3 years on usenet, something has changed though. Perhaps in response to this article and/or the others talking about it. Some studios are getting drastically faster at getting their content pulled within minutes of nzb's appearing on the index sites. It's not as if its difficult to scan the groups and topics and issue take-down's on posts to the NSP's.

I think what changed was it achieved enough popularity for rights owners to notice it. Due to being (relative to say bittorrent) complex to set up, it skated by on obscurity.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#14
post #10
post #3

In the past 3 years on usenet, something has changed though. Perhaps in response to this article and/or the others talking about it. Some studios are getting drastically faster at getting their content pulled within minutes of nzb's appearing on the index sites. It's not as if its difficult to scan the groups and topics and issue take-down's on posts to the NSP's.

This. Some shows seem impossible to get via usenet and I end up looking for torrents anyway. (Also some shows seem not popular enough, so again torrents to the rescue). Which still is a major PITA as I never looked into something like SickBeard but for torrents. Any recommendations?

Yeah, some networks (HBO) are extremely vigilant. If you don't have some kind of always-on device scanning for releases you'll be too late.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#15
So, today's desktops and high-speed internet connections are more than enough to just have personal Usenet servers instead of subscribing to somebody else's (or having your ISP shut down there's), anybody know what it would take to do this for real?

(after all I remember having access to full Usenet servers being served off ancient computers hooked into a T-1)

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#16
post #3

In the past 3 years on usenet, something has changed though. Perhaps in response to this article and/or the others talking about it. Some studios are getting drastically faster at getting their content pulled within minutes of nzb's appearing on the index sites. It's not as if its difficult to scan the groups and topics and issue take-down's on posts to the NSP's.

Just as with torrents, the public trackers will always have this issue. Private ones tend to have less of a problem.

What is the usenet equivalent of a private tracker? The problem with "private" indexers is the content they are indexing (the actual encoded articles) are still public.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#17
The fact is, it is now confusing for most end users. I tried explaining usenet the other day, and people just can't wrap their head around something other than "a web page" or "an app."

Not only is it a different protocol, but it is a different interface as well.

But I realize this post was meant more towards Usenet's intended audience. I know for me, I really started migrating away from Usenet around 2005-06 when the SPAM got so bad I could barely sift through my daily posts.

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#18
post #4

That's very interesting. I wonder if, three years later, there would be a script to set this all up on a Raspberry Pi to run automatically. (If not, I wonder if I should? Sounds at least like a fun weekend project.) In any case I think Popcorn Time still works well, and if not, there's always regular torrenting.

A script like that would be completely feasible, but wouldn't that make it more popular? Isn't it's difficulty to set up what's keeping it under the radar?

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#19

The fact is, it is now confusing for most end users. I tried explaining usenet the other day, and people just can't wrap their head around something other than "a web page" or "an app." Not only is it a different protocol, but it is a different interface as well. But I realize this post was meant more towards Usenet's intended audience. I know for me, I really started migrating away from Usenet around 2005-06 when th…

could you explain here?

Re: Usenet, what have you become? (2012)

#20
post #15

So, today's desktops and high-speed internet connections are more than enough to just have personal Usenet servers instead of subscribing to somebody else's (or having your ISP shut down there's), anybody know what it would take to do this for real? (after all I remember having access to full Usenet servers being served off ancient computers hooked into a T-1)

Sure, if you have the bandwidth and hard drive space to mirror 25+ TB of new content a day...
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