On: USENET rises again?

[rout39574]

I disagree. I've never yet seen a forum environment which was more usable than GNUS was for me 20-mumble years ago.

[tptacek → rout39574]

I think you're taking for granted things like forum archive search that are table stakes now, but were space alien technology during Peak Usenet.

[h2odragon → tptacek]

we just ran `grep` on the news spool directories

Usenet with full access to a big server was fun. With just NNTP access, it was diminished. 3 to 6 hops out in UUCP/WWIV/FIDOnet land it was a different animal. Still of use but high friction.

[tptacek → h2odragon]

I assume you were taking something less than full feeds, because on a full feed reader server, just keeping up with the inode demands for all the messages was a challenge; grepping would have taken for-fucking-ever.

[h2odragon → tptacek]

remember to use `nice` :)

it wouldn't be polite to scan the whole spool, just the groups that might bear results.

kibo was an anomaly

i had a shell on a big server for a while; i fed the hinterlands with selective feeds.

[queuebert → rout39574]

Agree, except with Pine (now Alpine) as the aggregator. Very high signal-to-noise ratio.