Oh, Look, It's One of the Horsemen of the Infocalypse
Sean O'Hara
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in which they will help block online
child pornography. A good idea, right?
Except they aren't limiting their efforts to the web, but going
after good ol' Usenet.
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced landmark
agreements with Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and Sprint to
shut down major sources of online child pornography. For
the first time, three of the world’s largest Internet
Service Providers (“ISPs”) have agreed to block access to
child porn from two significant sources. The companies
will eliminate access to child porn Newsgroups, a major
supplier of these illegal images, and will also purge
their servers of child porn websites.
<http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2008/june/june10a_08.html>
Okay, so the ISPs will dump a bunch of alt.binaries group. Some
people might be annoyed, but binary groups are primarily for porn
and piracy, so it's not a too great a loss.
Or at least that's what you might think until you read Declan
McCullagh's report on the matter:
Time Warner Cable said it will cease to offer customers access
to any Usenet newsgroups, a decision that will affect customers
nationwide. Sprint said it would no longer offer any of the
tens of thousands of alt.* Usenet newsgroups. Verizon's plan
is to eliminate some "fairly broad newsgroup areas."
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9964895-38.html>
Wired confirms this:
"We are committed to ensuring our users are not exposed to
the horror that is child pornography," Verizon Deputy
General Counsel Tom Dailey said.
Under the Cuomo plan, the ISPs would filter child porn on Usenet
newsgroups via hash-marking technology, in which the same
photos can be traced and blocked. But the three ISPs
are voluntarily going much farther than that, largely curbing
or derailing access to Usenet, a three-decade-old system
designed to swap information electronically.
<http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/analysis-commun.html>
So commiserations to all the Time-Warner users who are going to have
to switch to a third-party provider.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Dewey Finn: Would you tell Picasso to sell his guitars?
-The School of Rock
Keith F. Lynch
> So commiserations to all the Time-Warner users who are going to have
> to switch to a third-party provider.
How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
their customers. And to its stockholders. Since Usenet is a major
part of why people want access to the net, an ISP that doesn't provide
it isn't much of an ISP. What next, block access to email? To the
web? Both of those can be used to transmit child pornography. Or to
transmit terrorist plans. How about just allowing "ping"? That can't
transmit child pornography -- as far as I know.
I trust they will give their canceling customers prompt refunds?
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So commiserations to all the Time-Warner users who are going to have
>> to switch to a third-party provider.
>
> How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
> their customers. And to its stockholders. Since Usenet is a major
> part of why people want access to the net, an ISP that doesn't provide
> it isn't much of an ISP.
Sorry Keith, but that hasn't been true for years, especially since
AOL dumped their news servers. Usenet is an esoteric corner of the
'net, and if the average user knows about, it's through Google
Groups. Look at how many newbies have stumbled into RASW thinking
it's some sort of forum that Google hosts. Most people nowadays use
websites if they want a discussion group.
I half suspect that TW is using this as an excuse to dump a legacy
service that only a small fraction of users bother with.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers
-- small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and
cafes. I'm happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and
Starbucks and PizzaExpress, where no one gives a shit, and no one
knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how
soulless those places are, and I'm like, Der. That's the point.
--Nick Hornby
/A Long Way Down/
Kip W
> I half suspect that TW is using this as an excuse to dump a legacy
> service that only a small fraction of users bother with.
Well, fuck a duck. So how much extra is it going to cost me to buy
Usenet access from a third party now?
Kip W
disgusted
Sean O'Hara
News.individual.net is 10 euros per year -- they carry all of the
Big 8 groups, and a good selection of alt.* (though no binaries, and
they're slow to pick up groups that weren't created through a proper
RFD). At current exchange rates that works out to about $15.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Cheryl: This is a hand lotion, so don't put it on any other part of
your body, even if that part needs lubrication. We try to keep
frivolous lawsuits to a minimum, unless, of course, the customer is
at fault.
-The Good Girl
Sean O'Hara
Here are the details from Road Runner:
http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_newsgroups_termination.aspx
Note that their official position is that they're discontinuing it
because of low usage, even though the decision is clearly timed to
coincide with the NY AG deal.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Wally: Ratso Rizzo's not the kind of character that looks good on
Taco Bell cups.
--Mission Hill
Alan Winston - SSRL Central Computing
>Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So commiserations to all the Time-Warner users who are going to have
>> to switch to a third-party provider.
>
>How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
>their customers. And to its stockholders. Since Usenet is a major
>part of why people want access to the net,
My sense is that it's not a major part of why *most* of the potential customer
base want access to the net, although I expect rec.arts.sf.fandom members
would have mileage that varies.
> an ISP that doesn't provide
>it isn't much of an ISP. What next, block access to email? To the
>web? Both of those can be used to transmit child pornography. Or to
>transmit terrorist plans. How about just allowing "ping"? That can't
>transmit child pornography -- as far as I know.
You could fire off your pings at intervals that encode arbitrary binary
data, which might as well be child pornography as anything else.
>
>I trust they will give their canceling customers prompt refunds?
One hopes. My suspicion is that most of them won't notice. How many
people read netnews using an ISP-provided feed vs, say, not using it at all,
logging in to a shell account and reading it from there, or using Google
Groups?
I genuinely don't know the answer to this question.
-- Alan
Keith F. Lynch
> So how much extra is it going to cost me to buy Usenet access from a
> third party now?
I didn't see Road Runner listed as one of the ISPs that's going to
block Usenet. So maybe you have nothing to worry about.
Keith F. Lynch
> http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_newsgroups_termination.aspx
I get nothing at that page except:
Road Runner Help & Member Services Site Selector Page
Choose Your Provider, State, City and Provider
[sshelp3.gif]
[Select your Provider_] [Select your State] [Select your City]
[Select your Provider]
[SSbtn_apply.jpg]
LOONEY TUNES, characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks
of and Warner Bros. (s07)
Kip W
> Kip W <k...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>> So how much extra is it going to cost me to buy Usenet access from a
>> third party now?
>
> I didn't see Road Runner listed as one of the ISPs that's going to
> block Usenet. So maybe you have nothing to worry about.
Road Runner is Time Warner. Sean pointed me to a message in their help
area where they say they're cutting off Usenet on the 23rd of this
month. I've already used profanity, so I don't really have much left to say.
Kip W
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Here are the details from Road Runner:
>> http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_newsgroups_termination.aspx
>
> I get nothing at that page except:
>
> Road Runner Help & Member Services Site Selector Page
>
> Choose Your Provider, State, City and Provider
> [sshelp3.gif]
>
> [Select your Provider_] [Select your State] [Select your City]
>
> [Select your Provider]
> [SSbtn_apply.jpg]
>
> LOONEY TUNES, characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks
> of and Warner Bros. (s07)
You need to fill out a web form that requires javascript before
they'll show you the information.
The short version is that they're terminating Usenet access on 23 June.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Convenience Store Owner: We Greeks invented democracy.
Redneck: You also invented homos.
-Ghost World
Keith F. Lynch
> Road Runner is Time Warner.
Ah. In your place, I'd change ISPs and insist on a refund for the
remainder of my year from RR/TW.
Aaron Denney
> How about just allowing "ping"? That can't transmit child pornography
> -- as far as I know.
from ping(1):
-p pattern
You may specify up to 16 ‘‘pad’’ bytes to fill out the
packet you send. This is useful for diagnosing data-dependent
problems in a network. For example, -p ff will cause the sent
packet to be filled with all ones.
Sixteen bytes isn't a lot, but...
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
mike weber
wrote:
>How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
>their customers. And to its stockholders. Since Usenet is a major
>part of why people want access to the net, an ISP that doesn't provide
>it isn't much of an ISP.
I believe that the world has changed a bit, Keith.
mike weber
wrote:
I'm paying $2.95/month for APN (from Forte).
http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php
(You might have to be an Agent user, i'm not sure - "APN" stands for
"Agent Premium News")
Arthur T.
Kip W <k...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
There are some free newsfeeds, but I haven't tried them.
AFAIK, they're all text-only.
Suggestion from another newsgroup (greatly paraphrased):
If you're doing mostly text with perhaps a bit of binaries,
you'll almost certainly do better (financially) with one of the
providers that lets you buy a block. Some people suggest that
even if you do mainly binaries, you'd still do best with a block
plan. In both cases, they're comparing buying by the block (i.e.
some number of GB) vs. buying by the month or the year. There was
a site that compared several block and monthly plans, but I can't
find the pointer. I'd google it, but it's not my problem, yet.
--
Arthur T. - ar23hur "at" intergate "dot" com
Looking for a z/OS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer position
Harry Mary Andruschak
>
> How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
> their customers. �And to its stockholders. �Since Usenet is a major
> part of why people want access to the net, an ISP that doesn't provide
Are there any reliable statistics as to what percentage of people who
have access to the internet use it for newsgroups? I would assume that
nowadays the WWW, along with YouTube, would have priority.
netcat
art...@munged.invalid says...
I'm on a 7-dollar block from Octanews and haven't yet used it up in 2
years, I think. Before that I had a 4-dollar block that was also good
for a year or two. So yes, it is cheaper.
rgds,
netcat
Kip W
> There are some free newsfeeds, but I haven't tried them.
> AFAIK, they're all text-only.
During the two weeks we were in an apartment, waiting for home and
cable, I went down a longish list of those that I found, and not a
single one of the links I tried led to anything. They were all ex-parrots.
Kip W
David G. Bell
<484f36b5$0$5707$4c36...@roadrunner.com>
k...@rochester.rr.com "Kip W" wrote:
IMPORTANT TECHNICAL POINT
There is a huge difference between an ISP shutting down an NNTP server
and one _blocking_ NNTP traffic.
An NNTP server costs money to run properly, and if relatively few
customers use it, shutting it down can be a rational commercial
decision.
Blocking NNTP traffic is a whole different can of worms.
--
David G. Bell -- SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
On the horizon, a carrier task force of the Salvation Navy was
turning into the wind, preparing to launch Zeppelins.
David G. Bell
sean...@gmail.com "Sean O'Hara" wrote:
> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Kip W declared:
> > Sean O'Hara wrote:
> >> I half suspect that TW is using this as an excuse to dump a legacy
> >> service that only a small fraction of users bother with.
> >
> > Well, fuck a duck. So how much extra is it going to cost me to buy
> > Usenet access from a third party now?
> >
>
> Here are the details from Road Runner:
>
> http://help.rr.com/HMSFaqs/e_newsgroups_termination.aspx
>
> Note that their official position is that they're discontinuing it
> because of low usage, even though the decision is clearly timed to
> coincide with the NY AG deal.
My ISP still claims to run a server, but it's always been unreliable and
seems poorly maintained. I use news.individual.net instead.
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
>Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> So commiserations to all the Time-Warner users who are going to have
>> to switch to a third-party provider.
>
>How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
>their customers. And to its stockholders. Since Usenet is a major
>part of why people want access to the net,
MUST
Bite
Tongue...
>an ISP that doesn't provide
>it isn't much of an ISP. What next, block access to email? To the
>web? Both of those can be used to transmit child pornography. Or to
>transmit terrorist plans. How about just allowing "ping"? That can't
>transmit child pornography -- as far as I know.
>
>I trust they will give their canceling customers prompt refunds?
--
"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that
you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who
misunderstand you."
Sir Karl Popper
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> >
> IMPORTANT TECHNICAL POINT
>
> There is a huge difference between an ISP shutting down an NNTP server
> and one _blocking_ NNTP traffic.
>
> An NNTP server costs money to run properly, and if relatively few
> customers use it, shutting it down can be a rational commercial
> decision.
>
According to a forum where I came across this information,
Warner/Roadrunner has been outsourcing their NNTP server and only
has to pay for the number of people who actually use it.
I'm leaning towards them being too chickenshit to admit that they're
rolling over for the government in doing this, rather than using the
kiddie porn groups as an excuse to cut the service.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
"I give her sadness,
And the gift of pain,
The new-moon madness,
And the love of rain."
-Dorothy Parker
"Godmother"
Kip W
> On Tuesday, in article
> <484f36b5$0$5707$4c36...@roadrunner.com>
> k...@rochester.rr.com "Kip W" wrote:
>
>> Keith F. Lynch wrote:
>>> Kip W <k...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>>>> So how much extra is it going to cost me to buy Usenet access from a
>>>> third party now?
>>> I didn't see Road Runner listed as one of the ISPs that's going to
>>> block Usenet. So maybe you have nothing to worry about.
>> Road Runner is Time Warner. Sean pointed me to a message in their help
>> area where they say they're cutting off Usenet on the 23rd of this
>> month. I've already used profanity, so I don't really have much left to say.
>
> IMPORTANT TECHNICAL POINT
>
> There is a huge difference between an ISP shutting down an NNTP server
> and one _blocking_ NNTP traffic.
By "cutting off" I meant "no longer offering." Sorry if it was ambiguous.
Kip W
cryptoguy
wrote:
Someone has to say it:
DEATH OF THE NET PREDICTED, FILM AT 11
(on YouTube).
I'd have to search to find numbers,
but my impression is that:
* P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
* After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in that
order.
* Usenet is way, way down in the noise.
Very few of the younger SW engineers I interview
have even heard of it.
pt
netcat
2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com>, treif...@gmail.com says...
> On Jun 11, 3:27=3F am, Harry Mary Andruschak <adoptsoldc...@aol.com>
> wrote:
> > On Jun 10, 5:43=3Fæ=3Fpm, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > How about commiserations to Time-Warner, who is about to lose most of
> > > part of why people want access to the net, an ISP that doesn't provide
> >
> > Are there any reliable statistics as to what percentage of people who
> > have access to the internet use it for newsgroups? I would assume that
> > nowadays the WWW, along with YouTube, would have priority.
>
> Someone has to say it:
>
> DEATH OF THE NET PREDICTED, FILM AT 11
> (on YouTube).
>
> I'd have to search to find numbers,
> but my impression is that:
>
> * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
> * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in that
> order.
And over 90% of that mail traffic is actually spam.
rgds,
netcat
rksh...@rosettacondot.com
I'm using Astraweb as a secondary source. One of their options is
pricing by number of bytes, body only, with no expiration time on the
credit. Current price is $10 for 25 GB, $25 for 90 GB.
I've used 2 GB in the last 2.5 years...
<http://www.news.astraweb.com/>
I think there are a number of others.
Robert
--
Robert K. Shull Email: rkshull at rosettacon dot com
Kip W
> I'm using Astraweb as a secondary source. One of their options is
> pricing by number of bytes, body only, with no expiration time on the
> credit. Current price is $10 for 25 GB, $25 for 90 GB.
> I've used 2 GB in the last 2.5 years...
> <http://www.news.astraweb.com/>
> I think there are a number of others.
Thanks, this looks pretty good. Bookmarked.
Kip W
Aaron Denney
Streaming video appears to be above P2P these days.
cryptoguy
That's perfectly plausible, but do you have a cite? I've seen
wildly variable figures for how much bandwidth
P2P uses.
As I said, most people have no idea what Usenet is,
let alone use it. There are plenty pre-web protocols
which were once important, but are now gone or buried
inside browsers so people have no idea they're using
them.
How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or
telnet, let alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher,
or wais?
pt
Sean O'Hara
> >
> I'd have to search to find numbers,
> but my impression is that:
>
> * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
> * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in that
> order.
> * Usenet is way, way down in the noise.
>
Usenet is probably up there -- remember, binary groups are still a
popular channel for trading porn and pirated videos. But getting rid
of binary groups would take care of that -- note that Verizon said
they're dumping the alt.* hierarchy and Sprint is planning something
similar, which would eliminate the groups that take up most of the
bandwidth.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Batman: They may be drinkers, Robin, but they're still human beings.
-Batman the Movie
Aaron Denney
>> On 2008-06-11, cryptoguy <treifam...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I'd have to search to find numbers,
>> > but my impression is that:
>>
>> > * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
>> > * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in that
>> > order.
>> > * Usenet is way, way down in the noise.
>>
>> Streaming video appears to be above P2P these days.
>
> That's perfectly plausible, but do you have a cite? I've seen
> wildly variable figures for how much bandwidth
> P2P uses.
http://gigaom.com/2008/04/22/shocking-new-facts-about-p2p-and-broadband-usage/
* 20 percent of traffic is P2P applications
* During peak-load times, 70 percent of subscribers use http while 20
percent are using P2P
* Http still makes up the majority of the total traffic, of which 45
percent is traditional web content that includes text and images.
Streaming video and audio content from services like YouTube accounts
for nearly 50 percent of the http traffic.
cryptoguy
> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful cryptoguy declared:
>
>
>
> > I'd have to search to find numbers,
> > but my impression is that:
>
> > * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
> > * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in that
> > order.
> > * Usenet is way, way down in the noise.
>
> Usenet is probably up there -- remember, binary groups are still a
> popular channel for trading porn and pirated videos. But getting rid
> of binary groups would take care of that -- note that Verizon said
> they're dumping the alt.* hierarchy and Sprint is planning something
> similar, which would eliminate the groups that take up most of the
> bandwidth.
It depends how and where you want to measure. Usenet uses
part of its bandwidth for server-to-server propagation. I suspect
that these machines have wide pipes.
The ISPs are screaming not about NNTP traffic between servers,
but rather about congestion in 'the last mile' to the end user. I
suspect that the NNRP traffic is a drop in the bucket
compared to Bittorrent or YouTube. All the evidence I've seen
is that BT and YT are used by many times the number of
people that use Usenet.
Its plausible that, like the airlines adopting ID requirements,
dropping usenet is an action that all or most ISPs would like
to do, but all are afraid to be the first to go, lest they drive
customers to the competition. Now they'll all do it at once.
I predict that within two years, no major US ISP will have
a Usenet service. Whether they'll block port 119 remains
to be seen.
pt
Ben Yalow
>http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php
You don't (although they give a free three month subscription if you buy
Agent, limited to 10G/month).
Ben
--
Ben Yalow yb...@panix.com
Not speaking for anybody
mike weber
wrote:
>You don't (although they give a free three month subscription if you buy
>Agent, limited to 10G/month).
Right - that's how i gotr in.
I have never come anywhere near that 10G.
Keith F. Lynch
> It depends how and where you want to measure. Usenet uses part of
> its bandwidth for server-to-server propagation. I suspect that
> these machines have wide pipes.
Last December Andrew at Supernews said Usenet was running at around
3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
people who view each posting.
> All the evidence I've seen is that BT and YT are used by many times
> the number of people that use Usenet.
I don't know. An enormous number of people use Usenet. The number of
people who use BT and YT may be even larger, of course. But do these
numbers matter? Does anyone say SF cons aren't important because
there are more people at football games?
Anyhow, don't confuse number of bits devoted to a service with the
number of people who use it, or with the number of person-hours of
use it gets. One 60-second TV commercial contains more bits than
every Hugo- or Nebula-winning SF novel ever written, put together.
> Its plausible that, like the airlines adopting ID requirements,
> dropping usenet is an action that all or most ISPs would like to do,
> but all are afraid to be the first to go, lest they drive customers
> to the competition. Now they'll all do it at once.
> I predict that within two years, no major US ISP will have a
> Usenet service.
I would be astonished if Panix drops Usenet.
Even if you're right, that just means a market for third-party
Usenet providers.
Keith F. Lynch
>> * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
>> * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in
>> that order.
I'd be more interested in the number of person-hours spent on each.
I spend about half my online time on Usenet, and most of the other
half evenly split between email and the web.
> And over 90% of that mail traffic is actually spam.
Probably over 99.99%. The time I spend on email is split about
equally between reading email, replying to email, and updating my
spam filters and whitelists.
Keith F. Lynch
> Someone has to say it:
> DEATH OF THE NET PREDICTED, FILM AT 11
I first saw that over 20 years ago.
> (on YouTube).
But not that.
Karl Johanson
>Are there any reliable statistics as to what percentage of people who
>have access to the internet use it for newsgroups? I would assume that
>nowadays the WWW, along with YouTube, would have priority.
I have some unreliable stats.
-78 people use Usenet. Some have as many as 300 pseudonyms.
-257 use the web, 183 of whom go to YouTube (122 of them only watch videos
of people hurting themselves with skateboards).
-2 people use ARPNet, but all they do is argue what "ARP" stands for.
-27 people still use email, 14 of whom spend at lest 4 hours per day
deleting spam and messages from friends which say that a tap dancing moose
will appear on their screen if they forward the email to the other 25 email
users.
Karl Johanson.
netcat
@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, treif...@gmail.com says...
> As I said, most people have no idea what Usenet is,
> let alone use it. There are plenty pre-web protocols
> which were once important, but are now gone or buried
> inside browsers so people have no idea they're using
> them.
>
> How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or
> telnet, let alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher,
> or wais?
One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know and
use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too many file
uploading necessities in today's world - both work and hobby related -
not to encounter it at some time or other.
rgds,
netcat
netcat
80ece6...@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, treif...@gmail.com says...
> I predict that within two years, no major US ISP will have
> a Usenet service. Whether they'll block port 119 remains
> to be seen.
Let them. Most commercial NSPs with any sense have already provided
access on alternative ports for years. Supporting encrypted connections
is on its way up.
rgds,
netcat
netcat
> cryptoguy <treif...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It depends how and where you want to measure. Usenet uses part of
> > its bandwidth for server-to-server propagation. I suspect that
> > these machines have wide pipes.
>
> Last December Andrew at Supernews said Usenet was running at around
> 3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
> people who view each posting.
The terabyte traffic is binaries, Keith. No subscriber ever views all of
it, or ever could. Lots of this crap consists of people mirroring
everything they get their hands on into some arbitrary binary group,
junk that most people don't ever want to see.
Non-binary news traffic is only a tiny fraction of that.
> Anyhow, don't confuse number of bits devoted to a service with the
> number of people who use it, or with the number of person-hours of
> use it gets. One 60-second TV commercial contains more bits than
> every Hugo- or Nebula-winning SF novel ever written, put together.
And may cost more than any writers of said novels earned for them, put
together. And may bring in more profits than... etc.
> Even if you're right, that just means a market for third-party
> Usenet providers.
Initially, yes.
In the long run, it'll mean a declining potential user base for them.
Let's face it, most people who started on Usenet did not start by
subscribing to a commercial service, first thing. They first heard of it
somewhere else - like joining up with an ISP - got a taste of it, and
slowly realized that they would like a better level of service, more
retention, better spam control or whatever, and then sought out a
commercial NSP. If ISPs will stop offering the service and publishing
information about news servers and news clients on their websites and
tech specs, awareness of Usenet's existence will drop even more sharply
than it already has.
Also, since many ISPs don't actually _run_ their own news servers, but
rather outsource the access to them from existing commercial providers,
shutdown of these services will probably hurt those NSPs _immediately_,
as they'll lose some of their largest customers.
Also, with those ISPs that _do_ run their own servers, any major news
server taken off the net could potentially mean worse distribution and
peering for those that are left.
If I was running a commercial NSP I'd be making some other long term
plans right now.
rgds,
netcat
cryptoguy
> cryptoguy <treifam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It depends how and where you want to measure. Usenet uses part of
> > its bandwidth for server-to-server propagation. I suspect that
> > these machines have wide pipes.
>
> Last December Andrew at Supernews said Usenet was running at around
> 3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
> people who view each posting.
Why? Most people view only a tiny portion of postings. Do you think
that
3.5 Tb number has *any* relevance to, for example, the average rasf.*
reader? The only people to whom that number has meaning are the
server operators, for planning storage and peer-server bandwidth.
> > All the evidence I've seen is that BT and YT are used by many times
> > the number of people that use Usenet.
>
> I don't know. An enormous number of people use Usenet. The number of
> people who use BT and YT may be even larger, of course. But do these
> numbers matter? Does anyone say SF cons aren't important because
> there are more people at football games?
Can you give a cite for your claim that 'an enormous number of people
use Usenet'? It may be enormous compared to the number of people
that can fit in your living room, but compared to, say, Firefox and IE
users? i don't think so.
The people who decide how an ISP resources should be allocated
are the ones that count - they aren't running charities. Many
see Usenet as a disproportionate cost - it requires a lot of
storage, services a small number of users, and opens them
to a potential legal trouble (note the cause of this thread).
> Anyhow, don't confuse number of bits devoted to a service with the
> number of people who use it, or with the number of person-hours of
> use it gets. One 60-second TV commercial contains more bits than
> every Hugo- or Nebula-winning SF novel ever written, put together.
The number of dollars of profit that can be generated by a service
is the metric that counts, from the PoV of major ISPs. There are
markets for niche services, but the costs of running a Usenet
service are disproportionately high.
> > Its plausible that, like the airlines adopting ID requirements,
> > dropping usenet is an action that all or most ISPs would like to do,
> > but all are afraid to be the first to go, lest they drive customers
> > to the competition. Now they'll all do it at once.
> > I predict that within two years, no major US ISP will have a
> > Usenet service.
> I would be astonished if Panix drops Usenet.
I certainly hope they don't. But I'm not sure if
they count as a 'major' ISP, compared with
Verizon, Comcast, etc.
pt
David Friedman
netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
> > How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or
> > telnet, let alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher,
> > or wais?
>
> One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know and
> use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too many file
> uploading necessities in today's world - both work and hobby related -
> not to encounter it at some time or other.
>
That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently (fetch),
will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made direct use of any
of the others.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now
Marcus L. Rowland
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
>In article <MPG.22bb13d22...@news.octanews.com>,
> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>
>> > How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or
>> > telnet, let alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher,
>> > or wais?
>>
>> One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know and
>> use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too many file
>> uploading necessities in today's world - both work and hobby related -
>> not to encounter it at some time or other.
>>
>
>That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently (fetch),
>will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made direct use of any
>of the others.
>
Same here. It's difficult to run any sort of web site without it.
--
Marcus L. Rowland http://www.forgottenfutures.com/
LJ:ffutures http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/
Forgotten Futures - The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game
Diana: Warrior Princess & Elvis: The Legendary Tours
The Original Flatland Role Playing Game
Cryptoengineer
<forgottenfutu...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> In message <ddfr-F930E2.10385512062...@CA.NEWS.VERIO.NET>, David
> Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
>
>
>
>
>
> >In article <MPG.22bb13d22d494899989...@news.octanews.com>,
> > netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>
> >> > How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or
> >> > telnet, let alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher,
> >> > or wais?
>
> >> One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know and
> >> use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too many file
> >> uploading necessities in today's world - both work and hobby related -
> >> not to encounter it at some time or other.
>
> >That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently (fetch),
> >will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made direct use of any
> >of the others.
>
> Same here. It's difficult to run any sort of web site without it.
As netcat (I think) suggests, I was considering the command
line version. There are a jillion ftp:// urls out there, but the end
user has no idea that he or she is using a protocol that long
predates the WWW.
pt
Jay E. Morris
On 12-Jun-2008, "Marcus L. Rowland" <forgotte...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> In message <ddfr-F930E2.1...@CA.NEWS.VERIO.NET>, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
.....
> >That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently (fetch),
> >will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made direct use of any
> >of the others.
> >
>
> Same here. It's difficult to run any sort of web site without it.
Except for the multitude using something like Frontpage that treats the web
site as a remote drive, or use online tools to do it all.
--
The email fix is obvious.
Help solve world hunger http:\\www.cropwalk.org
Keith F. Lynch
> Except for the multitude using something like Frontpage that treats
> the web site as a remote drive, or use online tools to do it all.
Those probably use FTP, even if they hide it from the user.
Keith F. Lynch
> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>>> How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or telnet, let
>>> alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher, or wais?
>> One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know
>> and use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too
>> many file uploading necessities in today's world - both work and
>> hobby related - not to encounter it at some time or other.
> That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently
> (fetch), will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made
> direct use of any of the others.
Sigh. Am I the only one who regards archie, veronica, jughead,
gopher, and wais as the new protocols, along with http, as contrasted
with good old telnet and ftp?
To me, telnet and ftp are the backbones of the net. Telnet is how you
move around, and ftp is how you move files around. Eveything else is
-- or used to be -- built on top of them.
mike weber
wrote:
>I would be astonished if Panix drops Usenet.
>
>Even if you're right, that just means a market for third-party
>Usenet providers.
Keith, Usenet contributed heavily to killing off the paper fanzine
(for all intents and purposes).
I'm stil la member of one of the few surviving amateur press
alliances, which used to run routinely to 400+ pages/mailing, and
broke a thousand for its 100th mailing.
The current mailing is 239 pages, and they're sometimes smaller.
It used to have a two-year waiting list; it now has reduced membership
twice.
Other apas of which i have been a member have either died out
completely or gone to a sort of electronic approximation on Yahoo.
Blogs and social networking sites are/will continue to vampirise
Usenet in the same way.
I - and you, i'm sure - could name a number of people who used to post
regularly ere but now seem to mostly confine their online activity to
blogs.
The three other newsgroups i used to frequent - alt.fan.kinks,
alt.books.david-weber and alt.books.george-fraser - were never as
active as RASFF - but i could count on several continuing threads and
conversations among regulars who "knew" each other.
AFK hasn't had a post in five days, ABD-W seems to get one or two a
day, mostly in a thread which, from the title and from the posts i
sampled, started out, at least, as a discussion of who's in love with
who in Dave's "Honorverse".
ABGF i gave up on even checking on a long time ago.
The only reason there's this much activity here (and on RASFW, i
presume) is that fans are by and large stubbornly text-oriented.
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
>David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>>>> How often do most people knowingly fire up ftp or telnet, let
>>>> alone archie, veronica, jughead, gopher, or wais?
>
>>> One of these is not like the others. Plenty of ungeeky people know
>>> and use ftp; granted, not from the command line, most likely. Too
>>> many file uploading necessities in today's world - both work and
>>> hobby related - not to encounter it at some time or other.
>
>> That's consistent with my situation. I use ftp quite frequently
>> (fetch), will be using it today. I don't know if I've ever made
>> direct use of any of the others.
>
>Sigh. Am I the only one who regards archie, veronica, jughead,
>gopher, and wais as the new protocols, along with http, as contrasted
>with good old telnet and ftp?
MUST
BITE
TONGUE
>To me, telnet and ftp are the backbones of the net. Telnet is how you
>move around, and ftp is how you move files around. Eveything else is
>-- or used to be -- built on top of them.
--
"We all grew up on Mickey Mouse and hula-hoops
Then we all bought BMW's and brand new pickup trucks
And we watched John Kennedy die one afternoon
Kids of the baby boom."
- David Bellamy
Keith F. Lynch
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> Last December Andrew at Supernews said Usenet was running at around
>> 3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
>> people who view each posting.
> Why? Most people view only a tiny portion of postings.
So? If 3.5 terabytes of messages were posted today, and the average
message was downloaded by 100 people, that's 350 terabytes of
downloading, right?
> Do you think that 3.5 Tb number has *any* relevance to, for example,
> the average rasf.* reader?
If we're going to compare the Web as a whole to Usenet as a whole,
then we have to look at all of Usenet, not just the rasf groups.
You wouldn't count only fannish websites when judging how large
the whole Web is, right?
> Can you give a cite for your claim that 'an enormous number of
> people use Usenet'? It may be enormous compared to the number of
> people that can fit in your living room, but compared to, say,
> Firefox and IE users? i don't think so.
How enormous is enormous? As I asked before, should the Worldcon
be shut down because pro football games attract bigger audiences?
> ... and opens them to a potential legal trouble (note the cause of
> this thread).
Because of course websites and email are never used for child porn,
only Usenet is. Sure.
>> I would be astonished if Panix drops Usenet.
> I certainly hope they don't. But I'm not sure if they count as a
> 'major' ISP, compared with Verizon, Comcast, etc.
Verizon and Comcast only barely even count as ISPs. There's no
"there" there. They're basically just pipes.
Keith F. Lynch
>> 3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
>> people who view each posting.
> The terabyte traffic is binaries, Keith.
Yes, of course. So? If we're comparing the size of the Web to the
size of Usenet, we should count all of both. Much of the web is
binaries, too. As is much of email. And *all* of child porn.
> No subscriber ever views all of it, or ever could.
Of course. But if 3.5 terabytes of messages were posted today, and
the average message was viewed by 100 people, that's 350 terabytes
of downloads, right?
>> Even if you're right, that just means a market for third-party
>> Usenet providers.
> Initially, yes.
> In the long run, it'll mean a declining potential user base
> for them.
I doubt that. People will hear about Usenet on blogs, and want to
go there. At worse, they'll do so via third-party Usenet providers.
More likely, people will prefer full-service ISPs, and the ISPs that
dropped Usenet will go the way of the dodo.
Nate Edel
> Jay E. Morris <mor...@epsilon3.combo> wrote:
> > Except for the multitude using something like Frontpage that treats
> > the web site as a remote drive, or use online tools to do it all.
>
> Those probably use FTP, even if they hide it from the user.
Possibly, but IIRC Frontpage uses a proprietary protocol when used with a
server that supports "Frontpage extensions", and I believe a lot of other
ones use WebDAV.
For that matter, traditional FTP is only a cousin of SFTP, which runs over
SSH and has somewhat different over-the-wire behavior even if the commands
syntax is straight out of FTP.
--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
preferred email |
is "nate" at the | "I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity.
posting domain | I'm for it." - prologue to "Smut" by Tom Lehrer
Nate Edel
> move around, and ftp is how you move files around. Eveything else is
> -- or used to be -- built on top of them.
Those are both functions largely supplanted by SSH, these days.
Nate Edel
> size of Usenet, we should count all of both. Much of the web is
> binaries, too. As is much of email. And *all* of child porn.
Well, all the illegal child porn. I think. They haven't yet gotten around
to criminalizing WRITTEN fiction about it, and there's plenty of that on the
alt.sex.stories.* hierarchy.
> I doubt that. People will hear about Usenet on blogs, and want to
> go there.
Or will just go via google groups.
> At worse, they'll do so via third-party Usenet providers. More likely,
> people will prefer full-service ISPs, and the ISPs that dropped Usenet
> will go the way of the dodo.
Your optimism, as always, astounds me.
Nate Edel
> > I certainly hope they don't. But I'm not sure if they count as a
> > 'major' ISP, compared with Verizon, Comcast, etc.
>
> Verizon and Comcast only barely even count as ISPs. There's no
> "there" there. They're basically just pipes.
Decoupling the parts - shell, email, news, hosting, and the "pipe" makes a
lot of sense to me. Not everyone wants all of those (indeed, the only one
besides the pipe which is semi-universal is email) and it's good to have
your email decoupled from your "pipe" in case a better deal comes along.
Also, in theory, with the pipe, you can always provide the other ones for
yourself. Up until recently, I did.
Andy Leighton
> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
>> Yes, of course. So? If we're comparing the size of the Web to the
>> size of Usenet, we should count all of both. Much of the web is
>> binaries, too. As is much of email. And *all* of child porn.
>
> Well, all the illegal child porn. I think. They haven't yet gotten around
> to criminalizing WRITTEN fiction about it, and there's plenty of that on the
> alt.sex.stories.* hierarchy.
Unfortunately in a recent case someone has copped a guilty plea to an
obscenity charge for just that. Google Karen Fletcher. She is heavily
agoraphobic which may have been a big factor in her choosing to plead
guilty.
--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_
Kip W
> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
>> I doubt that. People will hear about Usenet on blogs, and want to
>> go there.
>
> Or will just go via google groups.
They'll have to be way more dedicated than me. I tried using Google
Groups last month, when I had no provider and could only get on the net
at the library. Talk about a backwards, user-hostile interface -- and I
am. If that was my only way to get Usenet, I'd have to consider quitting it.
Kip W
netcat
> Because of course websites and email are never used for child porn,
> only Usenet is. Sure.
Well, yeah, they mostly aren't, because they're a lot easier to catch,
identify and take down than the more anonymous channels of Usenet, p2p
and IRC. SMTP has never been a method of choice for moving large files
and detecting and shutting down illegal websites is a piece of cake.
rgds,
netcat
netcat
k...@rochester.rr.com says...
I wouldn't even try, if that was the only option.
rgds,
netcat
netcat
> Keith F. Lynch <k...@keithlynch.net> wrote:
> > To me, telnet and ftp are the backbones of the net. Telnet is how you
> > move around, and ftp is how you move files around. Eveything else is
> > -- or used to be -- built on top of them.
>
> Those are both functions largely supplanted by SSH, these days.
Got it in one.
Although, while telnet is deprecated as a backbone protocol, it is still
in use for talking to specialized equipment/ports and for testing other
protocols.
rgds,
netcat
cryptoguy
> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
> > "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> >> Even if you're right, that just means a market for third-party
> >> Usenet providers.
> > Initially, yes.
> > In the long run, it'll mean a declining potential user base
> > for them.
> I doubt that. People will hear about Usenet on blogs, and want to
> go there. At worse, they'll do so via third-party Usenet providers.
> More likely, people will prefer full-service ISPs, and the ISPs that
> dropped Usenet will go the way of the dodo.
Keith, take a reality check. Really. You've been around
long enough to know what things used to be like.
When I look at Usenet today, compared to what it was
15-20 years ago, I am reminded of nothing more than
'The Road Warrior' - a vast landscape, once green and
productive, and filled with people enjoying the prosperous
life, now turned to a vast and empty wasteland where
most activity is criminal, while in a few isolated pockets
survivors attempt to maintain the old life. RASF.* is one of
those pockets.
I can even pinpoint the date the rot set in: April 12, 1994,
the day of the Green Card Spam. A few months after
the start of The September That Never Ended.
Today, if you drop out the porn and the copyright
violations, and I think you'll find that that '3.5 Tb'
drops by well over 95%.
In the meantime, the WWW and its offspring support
over a billion users, the vast majority of whom have
never even heard of Usenet. As part of my job, I
interview CS grads for software engineering positions.
I estimate that less than 10% are aware of Usenet,
less than 5% have used it - this among a population
group that is far more net-savvy than the average.
Usenet as we knew and loved it isn't coming back,
ever.
pt
netcat
@k37g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>, treif...@gmail.com says...
> In the meantime, the WWW and its offspring support
> over a billion users, the vast majority of whom have
> never even heard of Usenet. As part of my job, I
> interview CS grads for software engineering positions.
> I estimate that less than 10% are aware of Usenet,
> less than 5% have used it - this among a population
> group that is far more net-savvy than the average.
Heck, I work for an ISP, in a department full of sysadmins headed by the
the guy who set up and ran our own old news system, and some of these
guys in _this very same department_ are not aware of Usenet. And most of
those that are aware would classify it somewhere in the golden past with
Fidonet, BBS et al.
rgds,
netcat
rksh...@rosettacondot.com
Most of the people that I know who do remember Usenet react with
variations of "is that still around?" when I mention something seen in a
post.
Robert
--
Robert K. Shull Email: rkshull at rosettacon dot com
Cryptoengineer
> cryptoguy <treifam...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> >> Last December Andrew at Supernews said Usenet was running at around
> >> 3.5 terabytes per day. So multiply that by the average number of
> >> people who view each posting.
> > Why? Most people view only a tiny portion of postings.
>
> So? If 3.5 terabytes of messages were posted today, and the average
> message was downloaded by 100 people, that's 350 terabytes of
> downloading, right?
Unless you're on a pay-by-the-byte connection, the ISP sees more
people using the service as a drain, not an asset.
> > Do you think that 3.5 Tb number has *any* relevance to, for example,
> > the average rasf.* reader?
>
> If we're going to compare the Web as a whole to Usenet as a whole,
> then we have to look at all of Usenet, not just the rasf groups.
> You wouldn't count only fannish websites when judging how large
> the whole Web is, right?
>
> > Can you give a cite for your claim that 'an enormous number of
> > people use Usenet'? It may be enormous compared to the number of
> > people that can fit in your living room, but compared to, say,
> > Firefox and IE users? i don't think so.
>
> How enormous is enormous? As I asked before, should the Worldcon
> be shut down because pro football games attract bigger audiences?
Let me put it this way: a commercial ISP has to make a profit. If the
money needed to maintain Usenet (or any other service, for that
matter) would likely yield higher returns invested in Treasury Bonds,
why run a Usenet server? The non-monetary value users find in it
doesn't cut ice with the stockholders.
If only 2% of your customers are using usenet, but it represents
10% of your costs, does it make sense?
> > ... and opens them to a potential legal trouble (note the cause of
> > this thread).
>
> Because of course websites and email are never used for child porn,
> only Usenet is. Sure.
AIUI, thats somewhat the case. Usenet, due to the difficulty of
tracing
posters (and even more difficult, readers) has much better properties
for the miscreants than do web sites.
Also, with a server, the nasty stuff is actually in the ISPs
possession,
sitting on their hard drives. That sort of thing gives legal
departments
the heebee jeebies
> >> I would be astonished if Panix drops Usenet.
> > I certainly hope they don't. But I'm not sure if they count as a
> > 'major' ISP, compared with Verizon, Comcast, etc.
>
> Verizon and Comcast only barely even count as ISPs. There's no
> "there" there. They're basically just pipes.
Huh? They provide Internet Services. Thus, they are Internet Service
Providers. Comcast has 14 million subscribers. Verizon has 1.8 million
on FiOs alone. How many are on Panix? I don't know about VZ, but
Comcast includes email, web space, etc. They outsource Usenet
to Giganews, which isn't bad at all.
In what universe is the second largest supplier of IP service in the
country not a major ISP?
Besides, many of us would *love* an ISP which provided a pure IP
dialtone, without any blocking, throttling, or filtering. That's what
they're supposed to do.
pt
mike weber
<net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>Heck, I work for an ISP, in a department full of sysadmins headed by the
>the guy who set up and ran our own old news system, and some of these
>guys in _this very same department_ are not aware of Usenet. And most of
>those that are aware would classify it somewhere in the golden past with
>Fidonet, BBS et al.
On a similar note - back in the mid 80's when i was working for
Micromeritics, one of the engineers, who had a Navy electronics
background, was complaining that everybody wanted to use CMOS digital
logic rather than TTL, even though TTL had Significant Advantages in
most of our applications, which tendency on the part of his fellow
engineers he ascribed to their either being lazy or actually not
really knowing how to design a proper power supply.
Then he remarked that he'd bet the rest of the engineers there
couldn't even design uibe circuits, even if they needed to.
And i said "If you design it, i'll breadboard the prototype for
you..."
Aaron Denney
uibe?
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
David V. Loewe, Jr
<nims...@comcast.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:28:24 -0700 (PDT), Cryptoengineer
><pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Comcast includes email, web space, etc. They outsource Usenet
>>to Giganews, which isn't bad at all.
>
>When it works.
I'm with Giganews. I basically never have nay problem with the
service. I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps the
trouble is on the Comcast side.
--
"You won't learn much about capitalism at a university. How could
you? Capitalism is a matter of risks and rewards, and a tenured
professor doesn't have much to do with either.
- Dr. Jerry Pournelle
Jay E. Morris
On 12-Jun-2008, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
> I doubt that. People will hear about Usenet on blogs, and want to
> go there. At worse, they'll do so via third-party Usenet providers.
> More likely, people will prefer full-service ISPs, and the ISPs that
> dropped Usenet will go the way of the dodo.
Back when I worked in the network operations center, about 15 of us were
sitting in the conference room having lunch. Network engineers, sys admins,
techs. Mid-20s to mid-50s. I mentioned something I'd read on Usenet. Half
went "Use what?". The others knew but only two or three had ever used it.
I was the only one currently using it.
The comment was "why would you use that instead of a forum?".
So if the computer geeks don't bother, why do you think the ordinary user
would go there? If it doesn't start with http it doesn't exist .
David Friedman
netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
> SMTP has never been a method of choice for moving large files
> and detecting and shutting down illegal websites is a piece of cake.
I'm curious. Isn't it possible to maintain an illegal website in some
jurisdiction that isn't willing to shut it down based on complaints from
the U.S.?
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now
David Friedman
<f077bfd5-175b-4937...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
Cryptoengineer <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
...
> Unless you're on a pay-by-the-byte connection, the ISP sees more
> people using the service as a drain, not an asset.
People use a service because they value it. The more people use it, the
more reason to think you will lose customers if you stop providing it.
...
> If only 2% of your customers are using usenet, but it represents
> 10% of your costs, does it make sense?
Almost certainly not.
The more relevant question is how many more customers you have if you
provide it than if you don't.
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> netcat <net...@devnull.eridani.eol.ee> wrote:
>> treif...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> I'd have to search to find numbers,
>>> but my impression is that:
>
>>> * P2P takes the biggest chunk of bandwidth, by far.
>>> * After that, streaming video, HTTP, and email, probably in
>>> that order.
>
> I'd be more interested in the number of person-hours spent on each.
>
> I spend about half my online time on Usenet, and most of the other
> half evenly split between email and the web.
>
What do you mean by "person hours"? The whole point of a P2P program
is that it runs in the background and the user only has to check it
occasionally to see if a file's finished downloading. Are you
counting the amount of time someone leaves uTorrent or Azureus
running, the amount of time they actually have it open in a window,
or the time they spend with the files they download?
Similarly, I have iTunes running all the time. Once per hour it
scans for new podcasts, and downloads any it finds. I download two
gigabytes worth every week. However, the only time I devote my full
attention to iTunes is if I'm watching a video podcast or listening
to an audiobook. Do I spend all my time online using iTunes, or only
the time when I'm actually watching it.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Bender: Oh, so Just 'cause a robot wants to kill humans, that makes
him a "radical".
-Futurama
Keith F. Lynch
> What do you mean by "person hours"? The whole point of a P2P
> program is that it runs in the background and the user only has to
> check it occasionally to see if a file's finished downloading. Are
> you counting the amount of time someone leaves uTorrent or Azureus
> running, the amount of time they actually have it open in a window,
> or the time they spend with the files they download?
I think the last makes the most sense, in that it comes closest to
what I was really aiming at: How much would the user miss the service
if it went away? How likely would he be to find another ISP if his
current ISP were to cease providing the service?
Keith F. Lynch
> I'm curious. Isn't it possible to maintain an illegal website
> in some jurisdiction that isn't willing to shut it down based on
> complaints from the U.S.?
Many spams point to websites hosted in China, South Korea, or Taiwan,
apparently because ISPs in those countries won't shut down spam sites.
Whether they also wouldn't shut down child pornography sites, I have
no idea.
Keith F. Lynch
> of us were sitting in the conference room having lunch. Network
> engineers, sys admins, techs. Mid-20s to mid-50s. I mentioned
> something I'd read on Usenet. Half went "Use what?". The others
> knew but only two or three had ever used it. I was the only one
> currently using it.
That would probably always have been the case. There is some overlap
between people who use the net for social or professional purposes and
people who run the net, as there is some overlap between writers and
SF fans, but there's no reason to think everyone in one category is
automatically in the other.
I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of writers -- especially
non-SF writers -- had never heard of SF conventions. But that doesn't
mean SF conventions are dying.
> The comment was "why would you use that instead of a forum?".
What did they mean by "forum"? A newsgroup *is* a forum.
> So if the computer geeks don't bother, why do you think the ordinary
> user would go there?
What does the one have to do with the other? You might as well say
that if automotive engineers seldom drive to SF cons, SF fans would
seldom drive to SF cons. After all, the former know a lot more
about cars.
Keith F. Lynch
> Then he remarked that he'd bet the rest of the engineers there
> couldn't even design uibe circuits, even if they needed to.
University of International Business and Economics circuits? What?
Keith F. Lynch
> "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
>> So? If 3.5 terabytes of messages were posted today, and the
>> average message was downloaded by 100 people, that's 350 terabytes
>> of downloading, right?
> Unless you're on a pay-by-the-byte connection, the ISP sees more
> people using the service as a drain, not an asset.
I'll take that as a "yes."
The same is true of every service. So how is that any ISP offers
flat-rate email or flat-rate web browsing? Do you think ISPs
are likely to start charging by the byte for everything? Or to
discontinue every service, one by one?
> Let me put it this way: a commercial ISP has to make a profit.
> If the money needed to maintain Usenet (or any other service, for
> that matter) would likely yield higher returns invested in Treasury
> Bonds, why run a Usenet server?
Why own stocks at all? As government becomes deeper and deeper in
debt, more investor money goes into government bonds, leaving less and
less for productive investments. That's probably a large part of why
the US economy is in the toilet. Millions of Americans underemployed
or unemployed, manufactured goods are nearly all made overseas, food
is nearly all grown overseas, and now services are increasingly
outsourced too. What's left for Americans to do? Those who can
get security clearances can work in Homeland Security, I guess.
Once bandwidth becomes even cheaper, I expect to see US IPSs replaced
by overseas ISPs.
> Also, with a server, the nasty stuff is actually in the ISPs
> possession, sitting on their hard drives. That sort of thing
> gives legal departments the heebee jeebies
Where is the "nasty stuff" with email or websites? Also actually
in the ISP's possession, right?
> Besides, many of us would *love* an ISP which provided a pure IP
> dialtone, without any blocking, throttling, or filtering. That's
> what they're supposed to do.
I thought none of these broadband providers provided true net
neutrality. Why prefer them based on what they're supposed to do,
rather than on what they actually do?
Keith F. Lynch
> When I look at Usenet today, compared to what it was 15-20 years
> ago, I am reminded of nothing more than 'The Road Warrior' - a
> vast landscape, once green and productive, and filled with people
> enjoying the prosperous life, now turned to a vast and empty
> wasteland where most activity is criminal, while in a few isolated
> pockets survivors attempt to maintain the old life. RASF.* is one
> of those pockets.
What a bizarre viewpoint. I haven't noticed much difference in Usenet
in the past 20 years. The number of newsgroups is up, and continues
to increase. The volume in each newsgroup is up, but leveled off
five to ten years ago. Some newsgroups, such as the alt.sex groups,
were overrun with spam and abandoned. But other than that, no real
difference. It's a myth that people were more polite or used better
arguments. Or even that posts used to be better formatted.
I'm not just in the rasf groups. There are 314 groups in my .newsrc,
including 119 alt, 4 bionet, 1 bit, 1 ca, 25 comp, 8 dc, 1 ed, 2 gnu,
3 google, 1 humanities, 1 law, 16 misc, 2 ne, 1 net, 4 news, 1 nj, 14
panix, 41 rec, 43 sci, 11 soc, 1 swnet, 5 talk, 1 tx, 4 uk, 1 us, and
2 va groups. I think that's a fairly broad cross-section of the text
newsgroups. I don't know or care what's in the binary groups.
> Today, if you drop out the porn and the copyright violations, and I
> think you'll find that that '3.5 Tb' drops by well over 95%.
I'd have no objection to binary groups being dropped. But then I'd
have no objection to graphical web pages being dropped, either, so I'm
probably not the one to ask.
Keith F. Lynch
> Nate Edel wrote:
>> Or will just go via google groups.
> They'll have to be way more dedicated than me. I tried using Google
> Groups last month, when I had no provider and could only get on the
> net at the library. Talk about a backwards, user-hostile interface
> -- and I am. If that was my only way to get Usenet, I'd have to
> consider quitting it.
It is puzzling that a company that's so good at the web is so poor
at Usenet. Maybe it just isn't possible to build a good newsreader
that has to be used through a web browser, just as it probably isn't
possible to do good word processing through a spreadsheet program, or
good web browsing through a text editor.
Over the past decade, I've read many articles about how it's now
possible to do X on the net, for values of X that I had been doing
for years. What they meant was that X had been reimplemented through
the web.
The web is a valuable part of the net, but it's only a part. It makes
no more sense to do every online thing through the web than to live
your whole life in the bathroom, abandoning the rest of your home.
It's not Google's fault that bathtubs make poor beds.
Keith F. Lynch
> Your optimism, as always, astounds me.
It's interesting that many people consider me an extreme pessimist and
many others consider me an extreme optimist.
Keith F. Lynch
> For that matter, traditional FTP is only a cousin of SFTP, which
> runs over SSH and has somewhat different over-the-wire behavior even
> if the commands syntax is straight out of FTP.
I think the command syntax is slightly different.
Sean O'Hara
declared:
>> Back when I worked in the network operations center, about 15
>> of us were sitting in the conference room having lunch. Network
>> engineers, sys admins, techs. Mid-20s to mid-50s. I mentioned
>> something I'd read on Usenet. Half went "Use what?". The others
>> knew but only two or three had ever used it. I was the only one
>> currently using it.
>
> That would probably always have been the case. There is some overlap
> between people who use the net for social or professional purposes and
> people who run the net, as there is some overlap between writers and
> SF fans, but there's no reason to think everyone in one category is
> automatically in the other.
>
Except if you took a similar group of IT professionals today and
asked them if they were familiar with Facebook or MySpace, you'd
have near universal recognition, and a large percentage of the
people would use one or the other.
>> The comment was "why would you use that instead of a forum?".
>
> What did they mean by "forum"? A newsgroup *is* a forum.
>
A web-based forum, most likely using BBcode.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Bender: Fine, I'll go build my own lunar lander, with blackjack and
hookers. In fact, forget the lunar lander and the blackjack.
-Futurama
Sean O'Hara
declared:
> >
> flat-rate email or flat-rate web browsing? Do you think ISPs
> are likely to start charging by the byte for everything?
That is exactly what they want to do. Time Warner is already testing
metered Internet in Texas to see how customers react.
On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers
in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the
amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over
will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable
executive told the Associated Press.
Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet
usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's
subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive
vice president of advanced technology.
Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of
the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable
Internet service providers report a similar distribution.
[...]
Time Warner Cable had said in January that it was planning
to conduct the trial in Beaumont, but did not give any details.
On Monday, Leddy said its tiers will range from $29.95 a month
for relatively slow service at 768 kilobits per second and
a 5-gigabyte monthly cap to $54.90 per month for fast
downloads at 15 megabits per second and a 40-gigabyte cap.
Those prices cover the Internet portion of subscription bundles
that include video or phone services. Both downloads and
uploads will count toward the monthly cap.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080602/tec_time_warner_cable_internet.html
Comcast is toying with a similar idea, though their cap would be a
much more reasonable 250 gigabytes per month (well, reasonable
unless you have a largish family and an Internet video rental
service like Apple TV or Netflix).
For a number of reasons, including ISP ad campaigns, the
US broadband market has developed such that unlimited
bandwidth is regarded as a universal right. With the advent
of heavy P2P traffic, demand for music and video, and
increased penetration, that "right" has left ISPs in
the uncomfortable position of having overpromised their
network capacity and scrambling for ways to avoid paying
for greater capacity. Comcast's varied—and often awkward—attempts
to come to terms with P2P usage represent a case study of
this scramble, and word has it that the company is trying
yet another new strategy: a bandwidth cap with some significant
costs for users that exceed it.
[...]
But, as Nate Anderson recently detailed, the problem isn't
access to sufficient capacity for the ISPs, but that adding
that capacity costs money. Given that reality, the recent move
by Time Warner to experiment with charging users for exceeding
a well-defined bandwidth cap was almost refreshing in
its honesty: no vague terms of service, and an obvious
forwarding of the ISPs costs on to its consumers.
By these standards, it appears that Comcast may be ready to
experiment with a little honesty, too. Broadband Reports is
quoting an internal Comcast source that suggests the company
is considering a bandwidth cap of 250GB per month, with users
that go over the cap being charged $15 for every 10GB in excess.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed this report, saying,
"Comcast is currently evaluating this service and pricing model
to ensure we deliver a great online experience to our
customers." For now, however, he emphasized that no final
decisions have been made.
This is a serious problem. Modern Internet applications like
streaming video, online computer games, music download services,
VoIP, etc., take up a lot of bandwidth and cable companies don't
have the infrastructure in place to support it. So they start edging
out the protocols used for sketchy functions -- P2P gets throttled,
binary groups are removed from the ISP's servers or they do away
with their NNTP servers entirely.
--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Kif: It's an emergency, sir.
Zapp Brannigan: Come back when it's a catastrophe.
-Futurama
Keith F. Lynch
> streaming video, online computer games, music download services,
> VoIP, etc., take up a lot of bandwidth and cable companies don't
> have the infrastructure in place to support it. So they start
> edging out the protocols used for sketchy functions -- P2P gets
> throttled, binary groups are removed from the ISP's servers or they
> do away with their NNTP servers entirely.
Doing away with their NNTP servers entirely rather than just dropping
the binary groups sounds counterproductive. Time that people are
reading text newsgroups is time they're not using a lot of bandwidth.
Cryptoengineer
> Nate Edel <archm...@sfchat.org> wrote:
> > Your optimism, as always, astounds me.
>
> It's interesting that many people consider me an extreme pessimist and
> many others consider me an extreme optimist.
In common with both is the impression that you have a different
grasp of reality than most.
pt
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
>Why own stocks at all? As government becomes deeper and deeper in
>debt, more investor money goes into government bonds, leaving less and
>less for productive investments. That's probably a large part of why
>the US economy is in the toilet. Millions of Americans underemployed
>or unemployed, manufactured goods are nearly all made overseas, food
>is nearly all grown overseas,
I call "BULLSHIT!"
>and now services are increasingly
>outsourced too. What's left for Americans to do? Those who can
>get security clearances can work in Homeland Security, I guess.
--
"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that
you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who
misunderstand you."
Sir Karl Popper
David V. Loewe, Jr
MUST
BITE
TONGUE
--
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know
that you would lie if you were in his place."
- Robert Heinlein
mike weber
Argh. "tube". And i was being so careful.
mike weber
wrote:
>mike weber <fairp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Then he remarked that he'd bet the rest of the engineers there
>> couldn't even design uibe circuits, even if they needed to.
>
>University of International Business and Economics circuits? What?
"tube".
And i was actually proofreading.
mike weber
wrote:
>I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of writers -- especially
>non-SF writers -- had never heard of SF conventions. But that doesn't
>mean SF conventions are dying.
They're sure way way off what they were ten or twenty years ago...
mike weber
<pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Unless you're on a pay-by-the-byte connection, the ISP sees more
>people using the service as a drain, not an asset.
AT&T is apparently going to institute some form of metered service.
mike weber
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>In article
><f077bfd5-175b-4937...@34g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
> Cryptoengineer <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If only 2% of your customers are using usenet, but it represents
>> 10% of your costs, does it make sense?
>
>Almost certainly not.
>
>The more relevant question is how many more customers you have if you
>provide it than if you don't.
Apparently some ISPs feel that it's *not* worth providing usenet - i'm
using APN because Charter either doesn't provide it or makes it
difficult to use (i forget which).
Konrad Gaertner
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of writers -- especially
> non-SF writers -- had never heard of SF conventions. But that doesn't
> mean SF conventions are dying.
Several times today I heard radio ads for a local SF con (FenCon).
Granted, it seems to be more movies/TV than books, but it's still a
SF con.
Oops, a quick websearch shows that it's actually FedConUSA, which
doesn't seem to have anything to do with books. But it's still SF.
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
Aaron Denney
Ah, makes much more sense.
--
Aaron Denney
-><-
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
Will someone tell him that the news reader he is using has a spell
checker. I know it won't catch everything, but it will catch a LOT of
HIS misspellings.
--
"It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions
in misery."
Publius Syrus
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
>On 14 Jun 2008 13:18:09 -0400, "Keith F. Lynch" <k...@KeithLynch.net>
?
Archon has been setting attendance records this past decade...
--
"I don't mind you *thinking* I'm stupid, but don't *talk* to me
like I'm stupid."
- Harlan Ellison
David V. Loewe, Jr
wrote:
?
I have Charter and I used it last year when my finances were (REALLY)
shaky. The retention time was terrible compared to Giganews (I was
able to put my Giganews account on suspend), but it has a pretty full
slate of groups. Nor was it hard to use.
--
"What can you do when your dreams come true
And it's not quite like you planned?
What have you done to be losing the one
You held it so tight in your hand?"
Don Henley & Glenn Frey
Torbjorn Lindgren
>> Nate Edel wrote:
>>> Or will just go via google groups.
>
>> They'll have to be way more dedicated than me. I tried using Google
>> Groups last month, when I had no provider and could only get on the
>> net at the library. Talk about a backwards, user-hostile interface
>> -- and I am. If that was my only way to get Usenet, I'd have to
>> consider quitting it.
>
>It is puzzling that a company that's so good at the web is so poor
>at Usenet. Maybe it just isn't possible to build a good newsreader
>that has to be used through a web browser, just as it probably isn't
>possible to do good word processing through a spreadsheet program, or
>good web browsing through a text editor.
Given the example of GMail and that the others have been done
semi-decently via Web (word processor, spreadsheet), I think it's
obvious that a decent Usenet client could be done via it and that
Google have guys who could do it (GMail was at least as hard).
It's equally clear that Google isn't likely to do this, in fact most
or all changes they've done after they took over Dejanews has been in
the wrong direction (and some of them are just bizarre beyond words).
The problem appears to be that they'd have to find developers which
doensn't think it's a Web forum, apparently this is near impossible
(or the PHB looks at the result and say "no way", always possible).
>Over the past decade, I've read many articles about how it's now
>possible to do X on the net, for values of X that I had been doing
>for years. What they meant was that X had been reimplemented through
>the web.
There's been some amazingly good examples using AJAX in the last few
years, GMail is probably the best example. I knew elinks had
javascript so I checked and it doesn't do AJAX BUT I did find out that
the Google team actually made GMail work fine with elinks (in "basic
HTML mode")[1].
Not everyone does non-AJAX versions though sometimes there's then a
"mobile" version that works fine (cell phones usually don't do AJAX
either). So AJAX allows bad coders do bad thing, but they do that
anyway and don't need AJAX for that :-)
GMail has some weird ideas where it only does "labels" and not
folders, but those are conscious choices they made and not something
they couldn't easily have implemented. Other than that I'd argue that
it's as good as most stand-alone mail readers and better than some.
Now, labels IS nice but it's not a complete replacement for folders.
But as mentioned it's possible to do folders properly and others are
doing it, the problem with their implementations tends to be that the
mail backend sucks, they can't code so it's slow or they're stealing
most of the screen estate to advertisement (it's not uncommon to see
all three!).
>The web is a valuable part of the net, but it's only a part. It makes
>no more sense to do every online thing through the web than to live
>your whole life in the bathroom, abandoning the rest of your home.
>It's not Google's fault that bathtubs make poor beds.
If you restrict yourself to browsing on a text terminal it will
probably continue to be true for the foreseable future. Even a text
browser in a shell can do quite a bit more than that.
Note: The article features links to screenshots since that's the only
way to show how something looks without requiring them to have the
program and run it which is wouldn't be very practical! (also, some
like GMail you have to have an account and be logged in to see how it
looks/works).
1. http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/howto-use-elinks-like-a-pro/