Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> writes: > On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:56:34 -0500, Jim Byrnes wrote: > >> I thought his point was they are big enough to have the resources to >> offer newsgroups but don't. If I want fast internet I must use Comcast >> and Comcast doesn't offer newsgroups either. Sadly is seems getting >> access to newsgroups is getting harder and harder. > > I'm sorry for all you people who don't live in a place with a genuinely > free market,
If such a thing exists it still doesn't mean that each and every place where one can live has plenty of choice. Even in the Netherlands, where I am originally from, which is quite crowded there are plenty of places where the number of provider options are limited. But I don't think you should feel sorry for those people, because the majority is not interested in Usenet (well, the "text" part) and the few who do will find a way. On top of that, not every provider has the expertise to handle Usenet resulting in a very crappy service nobody cares about. > and instead have to suffer with the lack of competition and > poor service of a monopoly or duopoly masquerading as a free market. But > *my* point was that your woes are not universal, and Usenet is alive and > well. It might be declining, but it's a long, slow decline and, like > Cobol, it will probably still be around a decade after the cool kids > declared it dead. Well, I've noticed quite some groups I used to follow have become "dead" in less than a year, so while I have no doubt you're correct with the decade, I don't think there is much fun in being subscribed to 20 groups only to find one message a month :-D. I use email to stay in contact with some regulars of groups that indeed do have just one message / month. I doubt it has anything to do with being a cool kid or not. Some groups also dry up because the topic has been discussed to dead and/or it's easier to nowadays find the information on line somewhere else. And yet others, in my opinion, dry up because the people who are holding the fort are IMO sitting in ivory towers and have extremely little patience with newbies but are also somewhat tired with each other because they don't want to end up in the same discussion again. So, yeah, Usenet will be around for decades, I don't doubt it. I am convinced that in a decade from now the total number of users will still be higher than 20 years ago so it's far from dead then. But I guess that will make it only more so that one has to pay for access. -- John Bokma j3b Hacking & Hiking in Mexico - http://johnbokma.com/ http://castleamber.com/ - Perl & Python Development -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
