From: nat@land.invalid (nat) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.software.nntp,alt.config Subject: Advantages of Usenet: Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 01:33:37 GMT Message-ID: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advantages of Usenet: -------------------- 1. No single point of failure problems. Since Usenet articles are available on all the servers simultaneously, there are hundreds of copies of the same article exist. Even if your own server goes down, you can just use one of your alternative servers and you won't miss even a bit of anything. With board and things like that, the information is available on a single server. So, if that server goes down or goes out of business, you are screwed for good. Since no web servers contain the same information, where do you get the information you used to get from that server that went out of busines? Well, you'd have to spend days searching for some replacement board that may or may not have the information you want. 2. Fully distributed system This means that even if half of Usenet servers get shut down for whatever reason, such as nuclear war :), you still have Usenet functioning. This means Usenet can not be destroyed in principle. Even if the biggest servers stop doing NNTP, Usenet still functions like nothing happened. 3. Reliability. Usenet can not be "taken out" like some web server, board or blog. Basically, you can not even destroy any article nowadays. Thanks to Hippy, very few servers accept cancels or supersedes nowadays. This means, once the article is written, it is pretty much GUARANTEED to exist from then on. Not only that, but it is almost immediately archived by tons of web based usenet archive libraries, carrying the whole usenet and its history going back for YEARS. 4. No censorship This is probably the most important aspect of Usenet. Put aside the "moderated" groups, any article is guaranteed to exist once it has been written. So, the information can not be destroyed. All the arguments about "spam" are just phony excuses, used by the most intolerant and blood boiling idiots, trying to dictate to everybody what "should" and what "should not" be there. This is profoundly undemocratic approach. It is basically a totalitarian domination trip, imposed by some Nazi, driven by the inferiority complex. Yes, I did see plenty of spam attacks, and I mean ATTACKS, and not just a few spam posts per day, and when I say the attack, I mean they post THOUSANDS of posts per day. Yes, that IS the problem. But there are quite a few ways of dealing with it. If it is THAT bad, the chances are that spammer won't survive for more than a few days. Secondly, you can use filters on your newsreader and forget about that spam even if your group consists of 99% spam. There is simply no excuse such as "spam". But... On the other hand, YOU get to decide which information you want to see and not some power hungry sicko aka dictator, or some "committee" like these bamby ding dongs, who do not even realize their place in the scheme of things. They think THEY "control" the big-8, so it makes them look and feel "important". But, if they even BEGAN to realize who stands behind it all, they'd just jump from the biggest bridge there is, realizing their UTTER insignificance in the scheme of things. They are nothing more than condoms. Once used, they are to be thrown into a garbage bin. And I mean ALL of them, including Russ Allbery and David Lawrence aka tale. So, with usenet, you can present ANY kind of ideas, project and carry out ANY kind of discussion, and you are guaranteed your work won't simply evaporate, just because of some nazi censor, "moderating" your point of vew out. 5. Virtually unlimited number of groups to handle any kind of subject imaginable. Where else will you find such a diversity. 6. Support for virtually any kind of data. Basically, nothing prevents Usenet to look like ANY web site. You can have binary data, images, sounds or anything, just on any web site out there. There is basically no limitations on what kind of information Usenet is capable of handling. -- Eduardo Arte-Cultura-Lusofonia www.alt119.net