Learn Me About Usenet

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Don't get sucked into the old school mentality of digging around through thousands of messages for bits and pieces of different files. Save yourself the grief and stick with nzbs.

Edit: The single greatest usenet client in the history of the universe: http://sabnzbd.org

Ah, that brings back so many fond (or not so fond memories) of when I used newsgroups back in the early 2000's to get my anime fixes. I've only ever used Shaw's usenet, and you basically had to get the file in 3-5 days after it's posted, or it's gone. And for awhile, they had so many broken files that I just gave up using it and went back the MIRC. I used to hate MIRC, because it always felt like you had to be in some kind of nerd inner circle to get some of the stuff that was posted. Thank god for the bots now.

But as with MIRC, you have to be careful on which newsgroups you join. Just scrolling through trying to find the group I wanted, I noticed there's some really fata'd up stuff people post (or at least claim to post since I've never gone into any of them to see)

[Tinordi]

Stay away from usenet. Don't ruin it for people like me.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Stay away from usenet. Don't ruin it for people like me.

The first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet.

[Tinordi]

Exactly. It's already incredibly easy to use, if it gets any easier it will be ruined.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Is there actual news posted on usenet or is it all about downloading pirated media? I'm sure it's a great way to get the latest test release of slackware or something, but that's not what usenet is about for most people. Let's be honest: we're all talking about how to get away with downloading pirated material under the watchful eye of Shaw and Telus.

Nope, we're talking about Linux Distros... see the first post.

[FanIn80]

I use it to read public domain books, like the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by fredr123

Is there actual news posted on usenet or is it all about downloading pirated media? I'm sure it's a great way to get the latest test release of slackware or something, but that's not what usenet is about for most people. Let's be honest: we're all talking about how to get away with downloading pirated material under the watchful eye of Shaw and Telus.

You're the only one that's even mentioned pirated media here.

The rest of us are discussing the distributed internet discussion system.

[Hack&Lube]

So uhh, who's up for creating alt.fan.sports.nhl.hockey.calgarypuck ?

[JonDuke]

Originally Posted by Bob

The first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet.

I don't know much about the finer aspects of this stuff, but know that today I am sad. Could anyone please PM me if they know of a reliable alternative to what closed its doors today?

[DownInFlames]

Yeah, I'm pretty bummed too. I'm old school usenet so I can deal with this, but I'll definitely miss the community that was valuable for letting you know what was good and bad out there.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Tinordi

Stay away from usenet. Don't ruin it for people like me.

It's already been ruined. It was not, and is not, intended to be a binary file distribution mechanism, and I refuse to use it for this reason or purpose. Converting files to 8 or 7 bit ASCII, chopping it into tiny pieces to handle post length limitations, and then layering on flimsy parity schemes like PAR in an effort to address the fundamental weakness of the design is just horrible.

The replication mechanism is inefficient and non-transactional, there's no deduplication or inbuilt integrity checking beyond TCP, and the whole ASCII thing means everything is at least 20% larger than it would be in a native format.

Bleh. Just awful. A total waste of bandwidth and disk space.

There are better protocols for engaging in intellectual property theft.

[Azure]

Yeah, I don't see how it is easier to use than torrents. Especially if you have access to a private torrent group.

Click to download. Start immediately, or schedule it to start later on. Extremely simple.

[DownInFlames]

It was never a good protocol, but that was what made it great. It used to require a lot of effort (and extra bandwidth) to get what you wanted out of usenet, so it wasn't popular. When I said this earlier in the thread I couldn't have been more wrong:

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

And NZBs are the greatest thing to happen to usenet in 10 years, along with PAR recovery. It's so easy to go to a site and search for what you want, and have a client download, repair and decode your files automatically.

The new clients made usenet easier, and therefor more popular. We lost the security through obscurity, and that'll be the end of it.

[csnarpy]

I use Giganews. Great provider!

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

The new clients made usenet easier, and therefor more popular. We lost the security through obscurity, and that'll be the end of it.

I think the commercialization of the clients and for-pay usenet hosts is likely what popped it up on the radar. The cheapest usenet/nzb client on the Mac app store (just as an easily referenced data point) is $19.99. Then there's the usenet provider monthly/yearly fees on top of that - the whole thing is a bit of a racket really.

[JonDuke]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

It's already been ruined. It was not, and is not, intended to be a binary file distribution mechanism, and I refuse to use it for this reason or purpose. Converting files to 8 or 7 bit ASCII, chopping it into tiny pieces to handle post length limitations, and then layering on flimsy parity schemes like PAR in an effort to address the fundamental weakness of the design is just horrible.

The replication mechanism is inefficient and non-transactional, there's no deduplication or inbuilt integrity checking beyond TCP, and the whole ASCII thing means everything is at least 20% larger than it would be in a native format.

Bleh. Just awful. A total waste of bandwidth and disk space.

There are better protocols for engaging in intellectual property theft.

I know this is the "tech talk" category but does anyone else feel as dumb as I do after reading that? Wow. I'm sure this is a fantastic post, but I don't understand 80% of it. Well done!

All I know is I use Supernews, and then used nxbmatrix to find whatever I was looking for. I'm still using supernews, because I know not any other way, but is there an alternative to the other?

Or, (the only part I actually did comprehend) what is a better protocol for this?

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I think the commercialization of the clients and for-pay usenet hosts is likely what popped it up on the radar. The cheapest usenet/nzb client on the Mac app store (just as an easily referenced data point) is $19.99. Then there's the usenet provider monthly/yearly fees on top of that - the whole thing is a bit of a racket really.

$19.99?? Why not use free open source stuff like Sabnzbd? Everything gets automated and it's more convenient than torrents with something like that.

ISPs still have usenet service, just not the retention the pay hosts were giving out. 30 days vs 1200?

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by JonDuke

I know this is the "tech talk" category but does anyone else feel as dumb as I do after reading that? Wow. I'm sure this is a fantastic post, but I don't understand 80% of it. Well done!

All I know is I use Supernews, and then used nxbmatrix to find whatever I was looking for. I'm still using supernews, because I know not any other way, but is there an alternative to the other?

Or, (the only part I actually did comprehend) what is a better protocol for this?

In order to share files you had three issues to deal with:

1. Usenet was created for text conversations. You need to convert the file to text and back again.

2. There is a limit to how big a file can be and still be transferred successfully. Because of this they have to be split into several parts.

3. When files are uploaded to usenet they "spread out" to all of the various servers that host them. Parts of the files can be lost in the process. Repair files (or PARs) are required to fix them.

All three issues require extra bandwidth and CPU cycles compared to a direct download.

There are other issues, such as file retention. They aren't really a problem if you subscribe to a decent service, but that costs money.

[Flacker]

Originally Posted by csnarpy

I use Giganews. Great provider!

Agreed, amazing provider I use them as well. That being said they are pretty expensive compared to some of the competition. I like the ability to do everything encapsulated in SSL, the crazy long retention, and near perfect completion.

Use sabnzbd for my client, and really can't think of any way to improve on a near perfect client.

[Raekwon]

nzbmatrix shutdown thats who I used, luckily I signed up for a couple other a few weeks ago that just went private