Is Usenet Dying? 343
TNLNYC writes "The Washington Post has this interesting article about the status of Usenet. It talks about the decreasing number of people using it and at the same time, the increasing amount of traffic. Overall, an interesting quick overview of the current state of Usenet." I'll note for the record that slashdot doesn't have a "Usenet" topic - thus the Spam can. My personal experience is that almost no one coming online these days even knows Usenet exists.
Film at eleven! (Score:4)
Death of USENET predicted! Film at 11.
Not a patch on /. (Score:2)
The changing landscape (Score:3)
We can't forget that in some cases, such clearcut technical perspectives on what is the Internet hardly matters to the rest of the world just discovering it. Indeed, i would be more concerned whether these new people coming online understand how to be polite, patient and humble when using what ever resource that involves other human beings.
Ahhhh... The 80's! (Score:3)
Remember "Biff posts", every September?
What about Kibo, and the world's longest .SIG file? I'm afraid he's just one more loon on the web, now.
I'm afraid that I have been a USENET lurker for almost 20 years now, myself!
My few posts were replies to pleas for help, and the occasional, well-lobbed troll posting.
I suppose that that's no different than my posting history on Slashdot, really.
Too much Spam, too many forums (Score:2)
Sad... (Score:1)
What about the Internet Icon? (Score:1)
Moving the Focus. (Score:1)
The maturing of the www in general, and the wealth of moderated, intelligent discussion forums available through HTML (looking at nowhere in particular *cough*), combined with the Spam that covers Usenet, means that it looks like a pretty messy medium to work with, for the bulk of people who want information. The lowest common denominator do seems do drive where the focus of net traffic is...
I prefer usenet to lame web interfaces (Score:2)
dead, or due for pruning? (Score:3)
Perhaps it will eventually be replaced by a system that is less prone to the problems described. Or the dead parts will need to be amputated to restore the balance. I don't think we're going to find ourselves entirely without some sort of distributed/non-centralized discussion system, however.
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Usenet's great (Score:4)
comp.arch
comp.lang.c++.moderated
sci.space
rec.running
misc.fitness.weights
etc..
So all the newcomers to the 'net aren't using Usenet. This doesn't worry me in the least! The web-based chat boards are, frankly, tiresome. The SNR on IRC is near zero.
So. Us oldtimers are quite happy commincating with NNTP, thanks.
... it's 'to difficult'! (Score:1)
People are using browsers, and when they are through the struggle of getting a connecting running they stop doing more.
Secondly the mistake browsers with 'the net' even though it's so much more.
Im running a channel on IRC for people with depression and angst. The main obstacle is getting people to use those 5 mins it takes dwl. and setting up a client. Apparently they prefer webchats flashing 10-15 linies limited history. Go figure....
And my dad, have set up a nice mailreader..... but he's using Netscape and calls me up quite often (how do I do this or that....)...
Lastly, UseNet actually lacks a whole lot. I kinda miss fidonet. On usenet eg. it's impossible to participate in any kind of political struggle unless you are an extremist og got a NewsReader with a heavy/AI-filter.... but if you have that NR there wont be anyone left to debate!
Anyway, to sum up. For most people Web=Net. Most newbies don't know of IRC, UseNet, Talk, FTP, Gopher, Telnet/MUD... and that's why eg. ICQ have become such a success: old (cheap) wine on new bottles. When people don't know the free world of the net, it's easy to 'sell' what formerly have been freely available (and still is)....
Bjarne
Usenet shall live on! (Score:2)
But, like all good usenet things, this too is moving to the web [asstr.org]. And the web version is much nicer.
Incidentally, in case anybody's looking for more porn stories (are you listening, mr person-who-keeps-posting-porn-to-slashdot?), the best place to go -- that's right, the BEST place -- is The Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository [asstr.org].
Thank you, and keep Porn alive!!!
Reflections on Usenet (Score:1)
I, for one, still read Usenet. The S/N is still high enough in the groups I read (even the ones in the alt.* sewer) to be worthwhile. DejaNews searches turn up a wealth of useful information, too.
The spammers have made me stop posting, though. Once you post to Usenet, your email address becomes instant fodder for the spambots. It's a shame, because the desire to not get spammed has outweighed my desire to be a help to the net community by sharing whatever clues I might have in a way that might benefit someone. Yet another instance of how spammers have ruined part of the 'net and made it worthless.
Perhaps most of all, the death of Usenet saddens me because I met my fiancee on alt.folklore.urban back in 1994, and we've been together (albeit long distance for most of those years) ever since. It's like discovering that the Lover's Lane where you made out with your first SO has been turned into a toxic waste dump.
Bill
Dying? It's dead already... (Score:2)
What is needed is a better system for news sharing. Usenet has no decent moderation mechanism (Yes, you can Cancel messages, but it's inefective).
I've always thought that a more "IRC" type aproach to Usenet would work better, with Moderators (Or OPs) for each thread, who can easily kill posts that don't belong, and even ban users/domains from threads who continusly break the rules. It would be nice if you could create threads easier, and have threads automatically die if inactive after a certain period (I.E 30 days). It would certainly make Usenet a better, more lively place to be, IMHO.
The newbie effect -- only the web exists (Score:3)
The other main services are not in decline (not by a long shot as their usage statistics make extremely clear), so who cares if newbies are slow to find them useful? If network news were any *more* popular we'd be utterly overwhelmed -- isn't a doubling every nine months growth enough?
And of course news is the main bastion of freedom on the Internet, being the only service that is largely immune to control, so it's good to see it growing so massively. I can't see much of a story here.
Re:I prefer usenet to lame web interfaces (Score:1)
BTW, I still think usenet is the best place to find answers and information.. The web is cluttered up with porn pages and shitty corporation pages, making it hard to get relevant hits in search engines.. I'm exxagurating a bit, but... Don't get me wrong, companys on the net is good.. But not when 200zillions of their pages are indexed in altavista or something..
Re:Reflections on Usenet (Score:1)
Or, if you're really concerned, remove your adress completely, or, use a separate (*web*mai
anyway, the usenet still rules, anyone disagreeing must.. hmm.. well, they're not agreeing with me..
An analysis of Persistence. (Score:4)
Slashdot has escaped the worst of those consequences utilising the cooperative moderation system, condeming most of the spam and junk to their own little world that people using 1/2 moderation levels rarely see. Various IRC channels have managed by either being particularly unknown, or in the case of one channel I'm a member of, simply having a very low kick threshold.
Usenet similarly, has adapted in several ways, some groups are small and targetted so specifically that they rarely recieve spam or don't attract people who are liable to argue a point well beyond having lost it. Others are moderated, the IRC kick equivalent, and some users have killfiles, the Slashdot moderation equivalent.
Unfortunately, the sheer freedom of usenet is working against it. Killfiles are the responsibility of the user, and most users are not willing to put much effort into filtering. Cancelbots do a good job against the worst offenders, but even cutting the spam down by 25% still leaves way too much.
But the very worst thing in terms of junk is the timespan. On slashdot, a story lasts a day. Shit flies for a day, then its gone, consigned to the archives for people doing searches. On IRC, the conversations are too rapid and too realtime to last long, but on usenet a political or value argument can last weeks, with people reading daily, replying, branching out into huge unweildy threads of disinformation and mistakes. Worse, their persistence means that if a user who hasn't read for a week or two fires up their client, they'll see all the articles in a discussion dead days, they post, and boom it starts all over again, constant non-ending argument. it hops threads, it hops newsgroups via common users, and pretty soon your signal to noise ratio has gone to hell and you flinch every time you see a new post just in case it starts up another diatribe.
I don't have solutions, but the problem is all too clear, and for those websites implementing discussion forums, beware, such a fate is not limited to usenet.
Re:Dying? It's dead already... (Score:1)
(methinks procmail becomes useful to such people)
Re:eyecandy (Score:3)
- it doesn't need (and prefers not to have) BlinkinGifs
- its safer to post to than mailing lists (you can spam-protect your email addr when you post; whereas that's obviously not possible on a mailing list)
- you have semi-selective control over the general lifetime of the message (if x-no-archive is set then deja and other archive engines are supposed to respect your wishes. deja seems to follow this for now, at least)
- the base subjects are reasonably well-defined yet new ones can still be created if a need exists.
and finally:
-NO SINGULAR ENTITY owns usenet. its the ONLY forum I know of that is, by its very nature, unbiased by a single commercial collective.
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Out with the old, in with the new (Score:2)
What I'd like to see is a new Usenet, a Usenet2; not like the invitation-only self titled so-called Internet2, but a new newsgroup system. I'm no ubergeek, so I don't know what would go into a project like that, but probably far too much for anyone to want to bother. But it really would be great to have a new system that is built from the ground up to help prevent the problems that are ruining Usenet.
Well, creating a new Usenet format probably wouldn't be THAT difficult to do, except for one minor little detail that screws the whole thing up: Usenet's current problems aren't caused by poor technology, they are caused by people. People create useless groups, people send out tons of spam, people don't bother to behave with at least a minimal amount of respect towards one another, people fuck up the whole works! And what can really be done about that while maintaining the things that make Usenet great, like anonymity, diversity, widespread access and ease of use? Fuck all if I know, to be quite honest, but if anyone has some good ideas, I'd love to help make it happen, because even as much as I dig Usenet, the bullshit is beginning to run a bit too thick. And it is bullshit when the casual user is being driven away because these days you have to devote a lot of time to reading even one newsgroup just to follow the topics of discussion, as newsservers are forced to push articles out faster all the time to make room for new articles and volumes of spam. And good luck finding populated groups that actually discuss the group topic. *shrug* Maybe they're right, maybe Usenet is dying.
Deosyne
There is still a place for Usenet. usenet vs web (Score:2)
For one Usenet provides a hierarchy of discussion groups with the same basic rules. Web based discussion is fine for some areas of discussion. However every site has a different set of rules and is scattered over many sites. It is faily clear on how to find a discussion that pertains to a certain topic. With the web I'd have to search around yahoo until I happen upon a good web site that has a discussion forum.
The fact that usenet is not "centeralized" eliminates the single point of failure or control. If for some reason slashdot.org disappeared tomorrow for some strange reason where would I point my browser to and hit reload every 10 seconds? If I didn't like how slashdot was evolving what choice do I have other than to just leave?
I think the web and web based discussion forums are great, but there is not other better source for topical discussions. When ever I have a technical problem I always search Dejanews.
Re:I prefer usenet to lame web interfaces (Score:2)
since the general populace is being drawn to the web, it, in some ways, allows those who know a wee bit more about what the Net is to have their own separate place ;-)
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this not knowing thing... (Score:1)
MIRC != IRC (Score:1)
HOW?!? (Score:1)
Re:What about the Internet Icon? (Score:1)
But in the end it might become irrelivent, considering that most new internet users don't even know what Usenet is.
Re:The changing landscape (Score:2)
-Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. One lick and you will suck forever.
Is DNS dying? (Score:4)
;-)
Re:Is DNS dying? (Score:1)
Re:HOW?!? (Score:1)
Ya wanna talk aging information sharing tools....? (Score:1)
I've been a newbie usenet reader for 6 years, and many of the comments here defending usenet, while totally laudable, apply equally or more to compuserver. Extremely low S/N ratio (because of the expense), and very high quality communities and high quality answers.
Yet who's going to try to preserve compuserve, like some urban club-footed butterfly. It was a real good thing in many of the same ways usenet was (although commercial), but good things wilter and die. Sad, but there you go.
Deja still rules (Score:2)
I never post on Usenet - I think my last post would have been in about '97 or something - and that email address got spammed out of existance
I still find www.Deja.com (or Dejanews for those who loved it from long ago) the best site anywhere on the 'net for finding something fast.
I do which they hadn't changed their interface though - having to go to another page to try and do a search on more than the last couple of monts news is pretty annoying.
Their database makes up for it, though. I think it goes back to '95 - or maybe even 94. I first stated using it in 95, I think, and I'ved loved it ever since. It was one of the first big sites using Linux, too, which makes it even cooler.
Re:Ahhhh... The 80's! (Score:1)
Regarding the current noise, I'm just waiting for september to end, then everything will be better. September has just felt so long, this year.
Kicked outa the house by our kids (Score:1)
Re:Dying? It's dead already... (Score:1)
The system works as follows (I am not an expert on this, so minor errors may exist - my apologies to those who are offended by this or by naked flying turtles): User posts to a moderator newsgroup. The post is then forwarded to the moderator, who either disapproves it (does nothing) or approves it and posts it to the newsgroup with an Approved-by header. Moderation bots exist that automate this process as much as possible.
Most of the newsgroups I read are relatively spam-free. None of the moderated newsgroups are controlled because of spam. One example is the local babylon 5 newsgroup, which is moderated because the readers are very sensitive to spoilers.
As for the issue at hand (Usenet being dead), I disagree. It is used by many people, and just because most people don't doesn't mean that it's dead or useless.
Re:Is DNS dying? (Score:1)
I still find the Usenet useful. (Score:1)
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Local hierarchies are fine (Score:1)
I won't EVER post anything in alt.*, since I simply KNOW I'll be bombed with spam. Both by email and directly from usenet.
In nl.*, I don't notice any decline in the number of users. Newbies pop up all the time, and some of them will stick around.
So, Usenet's not dead, the focus is just changing from the traditional hierarchies to local hierarchies with more control and active spam cancellation.
Still funny though that most newbies think everybody uses MS Outlook Excess to read their news, they won't even tell you they're using it when they're asking something about their software
Re:Too much Spam, too many forums (Score:2)
I've never found an answer in a web forum, I generally end up with hits on a bunch of web forums when I search for something on google or wherever, but all I ever find is a bunch of other people asking the same question I am, and no one ever seems to have answered any of them. I have much more success with Deja.com.
How not to get or see spam. (Score:3)
I can't believe most of you are using UNIX/Linux. At least, I always thought Slashdot was a UNIX site. Maybe most of you are using Windows. Anyways, how to avoid spam on Usenet:
DON'T mangle your e-mail address. It's against every fucking RFC on the internet!
I'm sorry, but I'm tired of clueless newbies saying that there's no way to get past the spam, breaking RFCs, and saying Usenet is dead. If I get moderated down as flamebait, I hope someone will re-post this in nicer words.
Re:Dying? It's dead already... (Score:1)
Having all posts forwarded to the (single? Can you have more than one thread moderator?) moderator, and the moderator having to then re-post the article to the group, means that the poor moderator has to go through _every_ post to the thread, and this also means delays in postings reaching the thread. If the thread atracts a lot of traffic (For example, the alt.sex.stories.moderated group mentioned above), then the thread could quickly slow to a crawl, with a massive backlog of true posts & spam waiting to be moderated.
Of course, the moderator could use procmail, but that still introduces delays, and a clever spammer could adjust their "posts" to curcumvent any checking that the procmail filter uses (I.E having to add a "code word" into the subject line of each post). So then you're back to manual moderation, and the problems i've outlined above.
Maybe September is ending... (Score:2)
September that never ended
All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before hand, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups. See also AOL!.
...but now, the new users are unaware of Usenet's existence. The only traffic increasing is binaries (porn, mp3 & warez, mainly).
So the influx has finally stopped! The newbies will be assimilated, as they always have. So it was, and so it shall remain...
Now if we can just sort out this spam, Usenet is back in business :)
Yours optimistically,
Martin Ling
Re:Usenet's great (Score:1)
speaking of usenet.. (Score:1)
(works on linux - uses gtk)
get it at superpimp.org
w00
Re:How not to get or see spam. (Score:2)
I post fairly regularly on a couple newsgroups in the alt. hierarchy, with an unmangled email address.
So long as you filter your email by the To: header, you'll get very little spam. Anything that's not specifically to one of my email addresses or an endorsed mailing list is automatically bounced. Only a couple pieces of email make it through this in a month. A couple hundred messages (across a few addresses) bounce. If a -lot- of spam makes it through this, which isn't too likely since spammers rarely use bcc, you could go so far as to only allow posts in if they have keywords.
Filters, though.. If you don't/won't set them up, you deserve what you get.
(Does someone pay off Hotmail to not allow filtering by the To: header? Use Netaddress [netaddress.com] for your throwaway accounts instead.
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I think spam is the main problem (Score:1)
Re:eyecandy (Score:3)
What makes slashdot different:
- topics vary widely and usually are alife for only a few hours or days at most
- the forum is moderated
- each topic is linked to a news story
- treads of messages can be presented to users in arbitrary ways
- it uses the http protocol and HTML for client server communication
Usenet is dying for a good reason, it can no longer cope with the requirements put on a forum these days.
The rumours of Usenet's death... (Score:4)
As others have stated previously, newbies think that Internet == Web, and they don't know that Usenet exists. So what? Does it really matter, that Usenet isn't a place where newcomers gather?
In my opinion, no. Usenet is a nice little service where some people feel comfortable, and those that don't can go elsewhere. I started out on BBSes back in '92 (yes, I'm a "newbie") and enjoyed the discussion taking place in various groups. Some BBSes carried international networks (RIME springs to mind) and that made us able to talk with people in other parts of the world.
When I first came online in '95, starting my college education, I didn't know about Usenet. I quickly got to know about IRC though, and #chatzone (or some other chat-channel) was my starting place. Around new-years '96 I found out how Usenet worked, and was happy to know that it was more or less like my old BBSes. Since then I've been an irregular poster to various newsgroups (mostly Norwegian ones).
I've tried participating on various web-based message boards, and there's always something I miss. Threading, ease of reading, and Gnus' incredible score-capabilities spring to mind. Things I am used to having around, things that make my everyday Usenet experience better. Not to mention that once those message boards reach a certain size it's fairly impossible to quickly read through it (in my opinion). Browsers (and the web) wasn't created with message boards in mind, I think.
The newbie/experienced ratio on Usenet is probably somewhat consistant, but those newbies are still easy to notice. I understand those who feel that Usenet has lost its usefulness because there's too much spam and clueless newbies. Trying to educate the general public is somewhat difficult, but it can probably be done (but lets not get into that discussion here).
I think Usenet is going to be around for quite a while. In Norway the traffic on Usenet is slowly but surely becoming larger. There's room for this kind of service.
Re:Usenet's great (Score:2)
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
Yeah, usenet is dead, long live usenet (Score:4)
In the meantime, those of us who have been using it since the 80s can continue to do so in peace and quiet.
It's like the CB craze in the 70s. It used to be a self-regulating anarchy, populated by a close knit community. Then it became popular, the common idiot came into it, made it useless, and then left. Now you still have a small number of CBers that use it a lot and it's gone back to what it was in the old days.
May usenet suffer the same fate. The world can naff off. The greater the intelligence needed to find usenet, the better for all involved.
Efficient, cheap, pervasive...Re:Not a patch on /. (Score:4)
If everyone in the world visits the same Website to pick up their technical advice and chat, then that Website needs stupendous bandwidth, which costs a lot; which means that if it is to be provided in a capitalist environment it has to be covered with flashy adverts. Furthermore, that website is a single point of failure, and a single point of control - AKA censorship.
Usenet works (and will continue to work in the long term) because it distributes the cost of transmission of news across a very large number of nodes. Its store-and-forward method of propagation means that it is invulnerable to intermittencies in service. Each individual connection is relatively short distance, limiting congestion at network choke-points. It's easy to be selective of the groups you will cover on your own node, and, if you want groups which aren't available on your upstream node, it's easy to peer with another to feed them.
Furthermore, it's a profoundly subversive technology. It worked originally over dialup networks using UUCP; although we probably wouldn't use UUCP again, if the corporates succeed in getting control of the network backbone and deciding what we can transmit over it, Usenet would be incredibly easy to get working over other links.
Usenet will evolve of course, and ultimately will be supplanted by something else (RDF hints at some possibilities). But sites like
I'm not really at all disappointed that new Net users aren't adopting Usenet in droves. Usenet has always had a problem with acculturating large numbers of newcomers at the same time (it's always September...), and, as the people who are joining the Net are increasingly drawn from a broad, non-technical, non-academic public, the proportion who really have something to contribute (and who are able to express that something clearly and eloquently) declines. If Usenet were to dwindle into the hangout of the hardcore techies of the Net, that wouldn't worry me at all.
This may happen. But what won't happen is that Usenet will just die. Enough of the people who use it and care about it have the ability and resources to maintain it that you can guarantee it's survival for a long time. I first used it fifteen years ago; I will still be using it fifteen years into the future - not as my only information source, but as one of my information sources.
Simon, aka control@scot.news-admin.org
DNS dying? MS will market this (Score:2)
_________________________
Why UseNet will remain popular (Score:5)
It's easy to dismiss UseNet as an unwieldy, overblown relic of the times when people didn't zoom along over cable modems, viewing everything at 32bit colour on their 19" monitors. However, many people still live in that era. UseNet is enormously useful, if:
- You don't have graphical access to the internet. Yes, text-based browsers make many things perfectly usable, but have you tried using board-type discussion forums using Lynx lately? Sites such as Slashdot are usable - but when you want to rapidly check on cross-references, determine posting status, etc, a newsreader such as 'tin' beats web browsing any day.
- Secondly, a newsfeed is local. You browse articles on a local server, usually either on a campus/office network or just at the other end of your modem. I know many people praise the cheap and available nature of ADSL, Cable modems, etc, but in many places, individual high-speed access is just a dream. Take China and India, for example. What do you think is more realistic - millions of people clicking 'Read followup' in their Netscape/IE window, or selecting 'next article', thereby quickly retrieving a local article to their screen?
- Guess what. Newsreader interfaces right now are superior to anything I've seen on the web for discussion forums. They're also much faster, but that's just a snide remark. Even the somewhat crippled newsreader in Communicator beats any configurability and power that, say, Infoworld's forum's offer. This really isn't mean to be a cheap shot at web forums - but newsreader interfaces have had more than a decade or two to mellow and be improved. Sure beats the 'Submit' and 'Preview' buttons, doesn't it?
- Yeah, the binary problem is rampant. But so what? If your sysadmin has any clue as to what he's doing (and this means doing more than just configuring INN to auto-subscibe all), he'll be able to filter out anything he wants to. This specifically means binary postings, for instance. If a user desperately needs them (and I'm sure many do
:), then www.deja.com remains an option. - This is probably a moot point to many, but UseNet has become a global cultural archive of our age. From the days of clear, simple, useful inter-governmental discussions, through the university glory days, finally when AOLers became the most maligned force on UseNet, and ultimately entering our current stage, UseNet has become a cultural mirror of society. Larry Wall's postings from more than a decade ago are still *somewhere*, and the Wall Quote Archive is a damn good proof of that
:-) - Perhaps more importantly - UseNet is distributed. Yes, this means that a ridiculous lot of spam and other junk is moved around the net daily. But so what? I know that no site admin can censor what I want to read - there will always be open news servers, or even - oh dear - web interfaces like Deja.com. I will never ever have to fear that Andover and then VA Linux will mess with any freedom. I can create a new group, if peer approval is given. The people I want to talk to can subscribe to the group. Ultimate, anarchic freedom. Isn't this what the Internet is supposed to be all about - and what we're celebrating on Slashdot? We seem to believe that Slashdot is the ultimate free anarchical net community. Nonsense. UseNet is. Has been. Will be.
- I remember reading through the 'Zen and the Art of UseNet' years and years ago, my mind lighting up with the pure joy at the realisation that UseNet was truly self-governed. So what if spam innundates the unmoderated groups? You can set up a moderator, if enough people care about your topic. Even create a new group and get rid of the old one. Spammers can't always get to you, but the information will always get out to those who want to reach it.
Personally, I believe that Usenet will continue existing long after those who're predicting its death right now have gone away. Maybe it'll be a beautified Usenet, with lots of graphics tacked on top, the way Deja is trying to turn it into a 'community-based' collection of 'forums'I don't see anyone predicting the death of e-mail or the web, yet both are full of spam and useless junk. But similarly to Usenet, both are based on extremely simple principles, and remain usable with an extremely low technological investment. Everything IE/Netscape/Outlook/Eudora/etc. may throw at you, from Templates to Style Sheets to embedded video, is just eyecandy. The underlying backbone, the information, survives.
God, that was sentimental. Now if that wasn't the pinnacle of geekdom - coming close to shedding tears over the beauty of bits and bytes and a text interface...
Alex T-B
I have a dream... (Score:3)
Some of the solutions the
My dream would be to see an Usenet-2 (or whatever you wish to call it) incorporating some of the ideas we see here. Of course, a distributed system would be a bitch to write and maintain (as opposed to the current
Re:Out with the old, in with the new (Score:2)
One other thing... (Score:2)
Usenet is de-centralised, and all articles (usually) get replicated to all servers. This makes retrieving the information that much easier.
If
Local newsgroups (Score:2)
For instance, git.cc.class.cs2330.flame gets sometimes hundreds of posts a day. Git.unix.linux is one of the best newsgroups around for getting help with problems/questions about linux.
I think that by setting up, say, Mindspring newsgroups for mindspring customers (and advertising them) that they might be able to utilize usenet. But you need some way to keep tabs on the spammers, and terminate them to the full extent of the user agreement.
Re:eyecandy (Score:3)
With web-based forums it's different. How often have you had to wait a couple/few minutes for a busy page or a page from a far-flung country to load? The longer the page, the longer the load-time. The page you're connecting to may have a REALLY slow link, or other slowdowns may occur.
Admittedly, some of these slowdowns would affect a "local" newsserver as well, but definitely not to the extent it affects foreign webpages, or those on slow/busy links.
(The drawback to the localized server approach is that posts sometimes take a great deal of time to propagate to other servers...whereas web-based forums are updated as soon as your post makes it there and is processed)
Anyone from overseas (non-North America) care to comment on
Re:Bring me the head of Kanter & Siegel. (Score:2)
At first I though your subject should have read "Bring me the heads of Kanter & Siegel." Then I recalled that they probably only have one brain between them - if that many.
I'm in. Death to spammers. Hmm, where'd I leave that katana?Re:The changing landscape (Score:2)
Re:Dying? It's dead already... (Score:2)
The downside, of course, is you won't get the volume you get on Web based discussion boards. Of course, the upside is you won't get the volume you get on Web based discussion boards...
As long as Usenet continues to actually exist, it will continue to be useful, even if it never achieves the volume of people accessing the Web. Now, does anybody think Usenet is going to just up and disappear?
From the article, it appears that the biggest problem Usenet is having right now is the binaries, but we'll see, maybe Napster (or something Napster like) will take care of that problem (on the other hand the most hardcore Usenet user I know spends his time looking for binaries of pictures.... but if he had a simpler and more straightforward way to get them, he'd probably use it. See, this is what happens when we make people too ashamed to get subscriptions to Penthouse...)
At anyrate, I'm not worried about Usenet really dying... the big problem is more when ISPs like netzero (and my school) prevent access...
Re:Newsgroup quality going down? (Score:2)
After using it long enough, you know which groups are *mostly* worth subscribing to (i.e. alt.guitar). However, it would be very nice if we had something like a newbie zapper that would shock the keys of an idiot when he discovers the fine world that is USENET.
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot is dying (Score:2)
--------------------
If you would use Usenet, then you would notice new users to Usenet (they do what new users to Usenet have done for years...). If you don't use usenet, it's easy to reason that no one else does either. What a lot of people don't think about are the other usenet news groups, for example, the entire bugfix discussion for Opera (and all the other opera discussion areas are all usenet based. (The name of the news server is news://news.opera.no.)
Moderator. Please moderate this article down.... Oh wait you can't do that... ;)
-----
Re:I have a dream... (Score:3)
Oh
The imminent death *did* occur (Score:2)
Hmm, I just ran into a limitation of lynx--I can't break that quoted line. But itstill beats thetar out of netscape for reading things . .
Anyway, the Imminent Death did occur. Most of the usenet was nukedinto oblivion and rendereda wasteland ofspam.
However, some groups survived (Including the two that I care about
In both cases, it was due to agressive reporting of any abuse or advertising. The days when newbies could be flamed into compliance wiht nettiquette are gone (and seem to have ended before "newbie" was regularly used in this context). That worked when the established population was quite large compared to the newcomers, and it took a bit of effort to connect
A few groups survived. Many more didn't.
Ooops. I said the two groups i cared about survived. That's not right. Two ofthe three groups survived. The third got overrun, and the old regulars formed a mailing list. Then that became popular, the new folks got hostile about our culture (the amount of off topic stuff), and the old core formed a closed mailing list.
hawk, who really can't be old enough to be this nostalgic about the good old days
Re:eyecandy (Score:3)
Usenet is more democratic, if
I don't read Usenet much anymore, in numbers of hours spent browsing, but when I do, I can almost always find the answers I need. Web pages are too static, and web discussion boards are rarely as full-features as newsreaders, which allow decent searching, threading, killfiles, etc.
Something to think about (Score:3)
2 and a half years ago we started a small mom/pop ISP in a small town. Started up with 12 analog 33.6 modems connected to a terminal server. As most startup ISP's do we outsourced our news service. We purchased 10 concurrent connections for $50 a month. Two and a half years later we have 204 phone lines over 2 POP's, 1200+ paying accounts, and guess what? The same 10 concurrent connections to Usenet for $50 a month. I am a nightly reader of Usenet and have never hit the connection limit, and I have never received a complaint.
Despite a fair amount of growth and an average increase in online time accross the board, Usenet is the ONLY service we offer that we have never had to increase or upgrade.
What does that say?
Re:classic flames mano-a-mano (Score:5)
Re:alt.hackers is moderated, but no moderators. (Score:2)
Back ten years ago when I wanted to post I asked the local guru and he said 'RFC', a week later, after being sidetracked by a ton of very useful reading, I posted my first post to that NG.
And I was a better net citizen because of that. If it had been handed to me, I wouldn't have appreciated it.
I help clients now who get on the net and then expect red carpet treatment, and expect people to go out of their way to help them, as if it's not mostly people running volunteer sites. If these clients ever had to work at anything in their pampered little lives they wouldn't be such assholes.
(Not that I feel you don't have a right to use anything they didn't invent, but you need to understand the tools you use, and be capable of inventing something, if not those specific tools. If someone can't be a productive member of the information society, they aren't someone I want around.)
Usenet death? Some are actively killing it... (Score:2)
Of course, it seems like 99% of the users don't even know that Usenet exists. Most of the 1% who do know that it exists aren't interested for various reasons, and prefer IRC because of its immediacy.
This isn't really a good thing, because as others have pointed out previously, Usenet has some things going for it that neither IRC nor Web-based discussion boards have. Unlike IRC, it's asynchronous and persistent. Unlike Web-based boards, it's both centralized and distributed. It's centralized in this way: If you have a question on hardware compatability for Linux, you can easily figure out that you should go to news:comp.os.linux.hardware. On the Web, there's no one place you could go, and you'll spend a lot of time chasing pointers. And of course, it's distributed over N local newsservers, making it that much quicker to d/l your alt.punk fix. And unlike Web boards, the protocol is standardized and the interface is customizable.
If the text-only nature of many Usenet discussion boards scares people off, good. If people can't feel comfortable communicating using plain text, they should probably stay away from computers altogether until someone comes up with a telepathic user interface....
Usenet is a phoenix... (Score:3)
The only thing that worries me is, it looks like it might be a breech birth, full of extra pain and difficulty. At least one major ISP [mindspring.com] has announced it has no plans to participate. Also complicating the transition will be the fact that Usenet II requires a valid e-mail address to post, meaning that spammers with read access can still do what they do.
Then again, in its early days, Usenet was often an unauthorized service provided by site admins while management turned a blind eye.
Not just Usenet (Score:2)
How many people have heard of Gopher, Archie, or Veronica? I just sold a client a gui FTP client because claimed that he "just couldn't" use an FTP command line. Heaven help me if I'd had to explain Telnet.
And what ever happened to the old Internet Scavenger Hunt (circa 1993-1995) where you had to use any and all net resources to solve the questions?
Oh well, I sound like I'm in old fogie mode:
"Kids today! Why, when I were a youngster, we had to bang two rocks together to get ones and zeroes!"
Mark Edwards [mailto]
Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request
Re:My rather short disagreement (Score:2)
And just to put my two cents in: I'd have to say the Usenet pounds webboards (like Slash) into the ground any day of the week. Mind you I haven't ventured into the <tt>alt.</tt> hierarchy in years, so maybe my view is a bit rose-tinted
Re:Why UseNet will remain popular (Score:2)
The problem with Usenet per se is that it's been co-opted. Dejanews doesn't even have "news" in their name any more, but it's still recognized as being what it is: A discussion tool. Just yesterday, I had someone at work ask "Hey, Andy, could we set up something like Dejanews." He didn't realize that there was an entire Usenet behind it, but it still had value to him.
Maybe the rule that "The Internet will route around problems" has a corrolary, where hard-to-understand technologies are routed around to the more easily understood presentations.
deja meesa no binaries (Score:2)
I don't know about Deja, but I bought a subscription to SuperNews simply because a lot of binary groups on my ISP never got complete postings.
I don't have a problem with spamproofing my email, esp. in USENET. I use a whole other personna, as do most of the regulars in ABSMP3 that I talk to
Also, my 2nd ISP set up procmail to automatically delete anything coming to
Pope
Re:A slashdot-like moderation system for USENET (Score:2)
Re:Why UseNet will remain popular (Score:2)
The author of the original article was probably "inspired" by those f*ckers at Wired -- in a recent Millenium-oriented issue Usenet was listed as something that _should_ not survive into the 21st century -- presumably they would like to every last virtual square foot of "cyberspace" commercialized to the max.
Except for /., I now spend the bulk of my on-line time on Usenet, mostly various comp.os.[linux | unix].* and internet technology forums -- I am only on Day 100 of my Linux initiation/obsession. Usenet has helped me overcome installation and other "learning curve" issues that would have cost me hours or even days of frustating fiddling or required me to purchase expensive books -- in a number of cases I received comments from the creators/maintainers of the software itself or from the authors of leading books on the subject! I cannot say how appreciative I am of the resource -- anyone who is not taking advantage of it is a fool.
In addition to this article, the Wired article and a number of other pieces I recall seeing, it seems that there has been a lot of "death of Usenet" FUD out there. I can't help but be suspicious that this is related to the latest fad in web sites -- "knowledge brokers" or "on-line experts", who essentially seek to commercialize the sharing of information on a micro-level, so that, for instance, I could be charged a couple bucks for a third-party to answer my question on how to install a video card under Linux, with the site taking a cut, of course. I actually had a conversation recently with a "net entreprenueur" who was hoping to be a "first mover" in this "space" (and who had several million in financing behind him) and I asked him how he would handle the competition from Usenet newsgroups, where such information is given away gratis -- his response: he was not familiar with Usenet. Bottom line -- Long Live Usenet.
Re:Is DNS dying? (Score:2)
Re:MIRC != IRC (Score:2)
More that the "comic book" idiom of Ms-Chat trivialises a worthwhile communication infrastructure.
Groups die, not Usenet (Score:3)
Here are some stats on the most read groups (according to one medium newsprovider):
http://www.newsadmin.com/top100reads.htm
Usenet continues to grow, and thrive. It's over 100GB a day now, and over 1 million articles.
Size of Usenet Stats here:
http://newsfeed-east.remarq.com/feed-size/
Although a lot of that is MP3, Movies, Porn and Warez, the number of text messages continues to soar as well, over half those messages posted every day are under 20k.
Message size stats:
http://www.newsadmin.com/cgi-bin/msgsummary
Dejanews is still the best source of information for me, blows away any sort of web search engine. The old Dejanews interface is aailable at:
http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/deja.html
As for SPAM, it's become a virtual non issue if you have a decent news provider.
Usenet SPAM stats:
http://www.newsadmin.com/spamreports.htm
Sure there are the occasional wars and attacks on the usenet infrastructure, stuff like insane number of jobs posts, the clueless cable modem users who post the full Quake3 CD image a few times in one day, the superceeds, forged cancels and so on. But usenet is big, DAMN BIG... it can take a lot of punishment, there are sizable companies throwing mountains of hardware at the problems to keep their paying customers happy.
Re:Yawn (Score:2)
In the latter case, AT&T in NJ was about 2/3 of the entire net, and their management was always threatening to stop forwarding news outside AT&T (thus making outside sites pay the long distance dialup costs). The whole community had to balance AT&T's free bandwidth against the stupid posts from AT&T people who didn't know what "Distribution:" meant, even after following the new users' guidelines that suggested that you read for three months before your first posting.
Any other good death-of-the-net remembrances? Ahh, the glory days of being able to get a full feed, then pass it along to one or two downstream sites, all over a 2400bps modem.
-Ed
Imminent demise of USENET predicted (Score:2)
Some hotshot Open Source programmer is going to get it in his head to write a USENET-like system that brings Slashdot-like, user-moderated discussion forums to the Web in a USENETish decentralized way. When this happens, USENET's only use will be as a mirror for this service.
Why? Well, imagine if any web site that wanted to could plug in "the global discussion forum" for their pet topic and actually get more than the handful of posts that most sites get to their talkback areas.... This would lead to sites everywhere hooking up, and probably dozens of Deja-like services for indexing it all.
All you need is:
When this exists, the last reasons to use USENET will evaporate.
A lesson from FidoNet (Score:4)
I'm going to dust off one of my favorite soap-boxes, and try to introduce a few people here to a fond place in my memory. It's called FidoNet [fidonet.org]
FidoNet is a network of independent, dial-up bulletin board systems. You connect with a modem to a PC running in some guy's basement. Everything is text. "Graphics" means color text with line-draw characters. Almost none of these systems are connected to a permanent network other then the one run by AT&T. Every night, all these BBSes call the BBSes in the next towns over, and exchange mail and files. It isn't far wrong to say FidoNet was designed primarily to cheat the phone company.
For a long time, this was the only way for someone like myself, living in rural New Hampshire, USA, to get "online". The Internet was something to be found at universities. But FidoNet was everywhere. It had over 40,000 nodes when the Internet hit the big time and started killing it off. It's still alive, but slowly dying out as the 'net makes it obsolete.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, FidoNet had open discussion forms, like Usenet. Fido's "newsgroups" were called "echos". Like Usenet, FidoNet was largely self-regulated. The "coordinators" were a loosely-knit group of system operators who tried to keep everyone on the same sheet of music. But, unlike Usenet, Fido had controls in place to keep things like spam from getting out of hand.
Every Fido echo (discussion group) had a moderator. Not like a Usenet moderator, but more like an IRC "op". The moderator was responsible for keeping the echo in the echolist -- if noone cared about an echo, it would automatically remove itself in about six months. Moderators were free to implement whatever policy they chose. Anyone was free to start their own echo if they didn't like any of the current ones.
The big thing was: People were held accountable. If someone started making an ass out of themselves, the moderator would warn them. If the twit didn't listen, the moderator could mail the sysop of their board and get them removed from the echo. If the same guy kept getting kicked out of echos, the sysop would generally cut their echo access entirely.
But wait -- it gets better. If a particular board was a frequent source of twits, spammers, and the like, a coalition of moderators could contact the local network coordinator (NC). The NC would warn the board, but if it did not improve, it's FidoNet feed would be cut completely. There were ways for this to progress up the chain of command so that entire networks (local areas) could be cut.
If you are used to the loosely regulated anarchy of Usenet, this seems drastically different. But it did work, for the small population of Fido at the time. In effect, FidoNet has a cabal, and is better off for it.
Of course, we'll never know for sure if FidoNet would have scaled as well as UseNet has (and Usenet scaled, just not as well as we'd like). However, a system like FidoNet's might be something to consider for those looking to "replace" Usenet with something "better".
*climbs back down off soap-box*
Just my 1/4 of a byte. ;-)
Re:I have a dream... (Score:2)
Like what? Moderation? Post scoring? Ever hear of killfiles, d00d?
I'm sorry, but I will always prefer a self-maintained scorefile to a system whereby the community decides which posts are worthy. I use slrn, which has the most utterly godly scorefiling/killfiling system imaginable, to read USENET, and I get far less unwanted noise there than I do on /., even when reading ultra-busy weird strange alt groups like alt.slack. Sure, it takes effort to write up a decent killfile rather than letting the 'community' decide for you, but dammit, TANSTAAFL or something.
Fuck, I just quoted Heinlein. I think I'm going to go nip off and shoot myself...
--
"HORSE."
It would be a shame (Score:2)
I think it would mean that the Internet had completely succumbed to Banner Ads, SPAM, one-click shopping, TV (streaming Video) and other nonsense. It would mean that the Internet is nothing but a commercial vehicle.
That's the wonderful thing about Usenet. It connected people everywhere with similar interests and there was no question about commercialism.
In a way, Usenet was a "free ride" for people to connect without paying anything. Maybe everybody pays in their ISP or for supporting institutions (like Universities) that support Usenet, but with less interest in Usenet will this be supportable? I'm not sure the world of the future will be so kind to those people who just want to connect.
Maybe it's time for subscription-supported discussion and Web sites. Adbusters [adbusters.org] is perhaps in the vanguard here. I'd like to see other such media with less of an anti-pop-culture theme, to discuss all sorts of subjects of interest.
There is a place for publicly supported media. Even with their political slant, I find NPR to be the best source of News and discussion on the Radio.
What really happened to cyber-cash initiatives of a few years ago? I know they pretty much died for lack of interest, but I'd sure like to be able to read interesting articles and pay some pittance for each article.
-Jordan Henderson
Usenet II exists, but is (IMO) too restrictive (Score:3)
IMO, because the reach is just a bit too limited. I'm not saying they need to relax the rules, necessarily; I'm just saying that the fact that many otherwise clueful people don't even know Usenet II exists suggests that the strictness does have a negative side effect.
I'm a fairly long-time Usenet user (since 1990), but I don't use Usenet II, because it's just too restricted.
New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
Good ol' USENET (Score:2)
If I was looking for specific information, I would first find the newsgroup(s) related to what I was looking for, ftp to rtfm.mit.edu to look at the FAQ, if it existed, then lurk lurk the newsgroup to see if it was being discussed. Failing that I would post a question and it would be answered in 24 hours.
At that time, spam was non-existent. Traffic was low enough that I could read all of my subscribed newsgroups every day, as most of the posts were informative. The rest were flames, not spam.
Then I broke down and started using HTTP.
I remember a few years ago, I went on alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt and saw somebody ask a question which had not yet been answered. I wrote a detailed answer to the question and posted it. I then got an email from an automated anti-spam program which had deleted my post, as it thought is was spam (I am still unsure what triggered it).
I gave up.
Nowadays, I only subscribe to local newsgroups such as nf.wanted, and the groups for my cable modem ISP. They are low traffic and informative with minimal spam.
Sci.electronics.* is pretty much a writeoff, IMO, as are a lot of other "world" newsgroups.
Nowadays, I subscribe to mailing lists instead. They are much better, I think, for handling spam. Sure, I get ~250 email a day, but I can go through them quickly, and it sorta forces me to read them, because I can get lazy on the newsgroups. I can also feel safe in using my real email address without the threat of spam. I hate those "user@NOSPAM.whatever.org" addresses and I don't want to have to put crap like that into mine. Slashdot, so far, has been completely safe, as I almost never get spam. The spam I do get is a result of putting my full address in USENET messages for "world" groups, years ago.
This is why I hang out here. It's sort of like what USENET used to be, with neat self-moderation features.
The only real solution (a new Modest Proposal), (Score:2)
Step one is to make spam illegal. That's already done in some states and in the works in others. Step 1.5 is to make spam support illegal, and make spamware illegal.
Step two is to make spam's illegality retroactive. If it takes a constitutional amendment to allow ex post facto laws, so be it.
Step three is to make spam and related crimes into capital offenses.
Step four is to publicly execute Sanford Wallace (he claims to have reformed, but he was one of the first, so he must be an example to all), Canter and Siegel, Andy Brunner (his cartooney won't get him out of this one), HipCrime and his cronies, Alex Chiu (let's see his immortality rings save him from this), the Network Solutions marketing department, and a few other persistent spammers, who I can't name because I don't have my hit list handy right now.
Step five is to appoint an elite squad of net.abuse experts to hunt down EVERYONE who has EVER spammed, and to hunt down those who risk their lives to continue spamming.
Not only will this save Usenet, but e-mail will be restored to its former usefulness.
Re:Deja still rules (Score:2)
Re:Why UseNet ... Deja discontinued binaries (Score:3)
> If a user desperately needs them (and
> I'm sure many do
> remains an option.
Deja.com discontinued their direct news service (the only way to access binary newsgroups via Deja.com, and the only way to read the deja/dejanews internal newsgroups with a standard newsreader).
Alternatives are: Airnews, Altopia, Remarq, Giganews, Newscene, Newsguy, Remarq and so on. You can find any of them at Google or at this Yahoo category:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Compa
Or even better check out the newsgroup which exists to compare news providers:
alt.binaries.news-server-comparison
Here is the letter Deja.com sent to account holders on Jan 22, 2000:
To Our Valued Customers,
You are receiving this email because you currently have a
Deja.com Personal Newsreader account.
Deja.com and bCandid Corporation, the providers of the
Personal Newsreader service, have elected to discontinue
offering the service effective February 2, 2000. In
connection with the discontinuance of your account and as
provided in the Terms of Service, bCandid Corporation will
be issuing to you a prorata refund for any prepaid but
unused days of the Personal Newsreader service. bCandid
Corporation will start issuing refunds in February, 2000.
The refund will be made to the credit card specified in
your Personal Newsreader account. Please let us know if
your credit card information has changed.
Should you wish to continue your Newsreader participation,
we have located a qualified provider, UseNetServer.com,
that can provide a similar service. UseNetServer.com is
prepared to offer you the first 30 days of service free of
charge, and can transition you to its News servers without
service interruption if you act before February 2, 2000.
To take advantage of this offer or to learn more about it,
please visit:
http://www.usenetserver.com/deja.htm
We believe UseNetServer.com will be able to provide you
with a smooth transition to a high-quality Usenet service.
If you have any questions regarding the discontinuation of
your Personal Newsreader account, please do not hesitate to
contact us at support@bcandid.deja.com.
Sincerely,
Deja.com
bCandid Corporation
Re:USENET is dead! Long Live Usenet! (Score:2)
Of course, those of us who were reading netnews in 1983 thought the same thing in September of 1984. Netnews ( ==> Usenet ) survived those invading hordes. At least in the technical arena, people who want to ask/reply/discuss solid questions seem to drift to Usenet in the end.
sPh
Gnus interface to slashdot (Score:3)
Gnus just rocks.
I would really like a gnus interface to slashdot. Maybe some elisp hacker could use the emacs web borwser (w3) and link them together. Among the benfits that would bring would be the ability to compose posts in emacs, so I could use a spell checker.
I would read so much more of slashdot in so much less time. In fact, if I sat down and did that task in week or whatever it would take me, I bet I could make up the time in three years.
Other sites, such as arstechnica (their html sucks watermelons through a garden hose) and wired (same class) and nytimes (slightly better) could benefit from this.
Could you have access to the cookies and deal with them in elisp ? Because then you could write little elisp functions which would cycle the nytimes account randomly through a list of fake accounts you built up, putting noise in their database of what articles you visit.
Re:DNS dying? MS will market this (Score:2)
Whatever turns you on (Score:2)
Just because one doesn't find sex & porn interesting, educational or uplifting oneself, doesn't mean to say that it's any less worthy of bandwidth on network news, any less deserving of protection as a customer service, or any better or worse in accordance with some hypothetical universal morality or absolute value judgement. There are no such universals, despite the hoards of coercive moralists that continually try to impose their own particular values in place of our own.
Personally I prefer to take part in discussions about object orientation, kernel architecture, nanotech and futurism, but that doesn't mean that my own preferred interests are in any way "better" than porn is for those that want it. And for what it's worth, I know that many people would consider my technical interests either a complete waste of time, plain boring, exploitative of the third world, or destructive to the environment of the planet.
So, to each his/her own.
Re:How not to get or see spam. (Score:2)
A few hours? Have you seen the line noise piped to a file that is sendmail.cf?
Do yourself a favour, and get Postfix [postfix.org] -- a replacement for Sendmail. The Postfix MTA is more secure (ie: anything that talks on a TCP port is not priviledged, all the subdaemons can be chrooted), not spammer friendly (it's almost impossible to configure as an open relay, and has good support for pop before SMTP and other authentication bits), can use DUL, RBL, RSS, and ORBS out of the box, and the config file is plain-jane-text, with simple "name = value" pairings.
Not to mention PCRE and regexp support for filtering various mails, the ability to use dbm, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and other backends (like LDAP) for aliases, virtual mappings, etc. And, best of all, it's more RFC compliant than Sendmail (and smaller and faster
---
Re:A lesson from FidoNet (Score:2)
Every so often, you'd go into a group, and find it's all full of duplicates, and all the duplicates were all with a message id from one address.
Re:Out with the old, in with the new (Score:2)
You'll find the odd site which has it's feed configured correctly, but the vast majority, including almost all ISPs, accept & distribute all articles they get.