Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent

[Jeffrey Watts]

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Leo Mauler <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I'm just pointing out that it is a better way for Joe Average to download binaries than bittorrent, for lots of reasons all beneficial to Joe Average, be he the uploader or the downloader.

And I'm pointing out that it's wasteful, and poorly designed for
today's modern 24/7 Internet.

I don't care if it's more useful for you, it's not good for the ISPs.
You seem to forget that this stuff costs money, and a service has to
be good for both the servers as well as the clients.  Netnews is not,
and that's why it's slowly going away.  This is a good thing.

Instead of spending so much energy bitching about it, you ought to be
working on a replacement, if, as you say, the alternatives are so
deficient.

> There's a difference between supporting something and just admiring its technological advantages to the end user.  I support NetNews' text-only groups, but I merely admire the system of binary distribution through NetNews.  I'd still want text-only NetNews to stick around, and if the price is binary NetNews vanishing, then so be it, despite its technological advantages to end users in the sharing of binary files.

You've obviously never run a production INN server.  There is NOTHING
admirable about how it works.  It doesn't work well and it's a total
bitch to manage.  Perhaps someone completely rewrote it since I last
managed one (doubt it), but it was a hoary beast back then, very
hackish and unable to support many common situations well (like
multiple volumes).

You only see the client side.  I've run the server.  Your client may
be pretty and you may like the side you see, but the server side is
ugly, wasteful, and stupid.  It's bad technology now.  It needs taken
out back and shot.

> Amiga technology made really great computers, but IBM PC technology ended up working better for me.  I can admire Amiga without desiring that it return and replace something I really do want.

Okay, let's use your analogy.  What you're asking for is like asking
Time Warner Cable to _support Amigas_.  Netnews and Amigas were super
cool in their day, but now they're just items for the computer
museums.  Let them retire.

Regardless, I'm going to call "Hitler" on this one.  It's pretty clear
this won't go anywhere, and I doubt everyone else wants to listen to
it much more.  Feel free to get the last word.

J.

-- 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy
from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a
precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine