Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003 |
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eWorld
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Internet Roll over, blogger! Pratap Ravindran
EVERYBODY'S going ape over blogging and about how it's going to change the very face of the mass media as we know it today yaddah yaddah ... and, somewhere down the line, faddism, that bane of the Web, seems to have sidelined Usenet. Which is a pity for a whole bunch of reasons. But that's another story... .. This is all about this marvellous thing that the folks at Google have done. They have integrated the past 20 years of Usenet archives into Google groups which offer access to more than 700 million messages dating back to 1981. Google says that it is, by far, the most complete collection of Usenet articles ever assembled and a fascinating first-hand historical account... .and they're right. The articles and threads range from Tim Berners-Lee's announcement of what was subsequently to become the World Wide Web to Linus Torvald's post about his "pet project." But, before we begin a tour of the Usenet archives, a brief note for the uninitiated on what Usenet is all about - and what it isn't about: Usenet is a world-wide distributed discussion system. It consists of a set of `newsgroups' with names that are classified hierarchically by subject. `Articles' or `messages' are `posted' to these newsgroups by people on computers with the appropriate software — these articles are then broadcast to other interconnected computer systems via a wide variety of networks. Some newsgroups are `moderated'; In these newsgroups, the articles are first sent to a moderator for approval before appearing in the newsgroup. Usenet is available on a wide variety of computer systems and networks, but the bulk of modern Usenet traffic is transported over either the Internet or UUCP. As for what it's not, here's a zany posting, reproduced in the original format:
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 09:00:24 GMT Supersedes: {lt}http://groups.google.com/ groups?selm= us{gt} Expires: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 09:00:24 GMT Message-ID: {lt}http://groups.google.com/ groups?selm=FnG10o. HGt@tac.nyc.ny.us{gt} From: netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Subject: What is Usenet? Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers, news.admin.misc,news. answers Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Archive-name: usenet/what-is/part1 Original-from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Comment: edited until 5/93 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Last-change: 16 Jan 1998 by netannounce@deshaw.com (Mark Moraes) Changes-posted-to: news.misc,news.admin. misc,news. answers
What usenet is not 1. Usenet is not an organization. No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole. No one controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated where, who can post articles, or anything else. There is no "Usenet Incorporated," nor is there a "Usenet User's Group." You're on your own. Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet newsgroups. The newsgroup creation process is one such activity. But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the organized activities it makes possible. If they were to stop tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them.
2. Usenet is not a democracy. Since there is no person or group in charge of Usenet as a whole -- i.e. there is no Usenet "government" -- it follows that Usenet cannot be a democracy, autocracy, or any other kind of "-acy." 3. Usenet is not fair. After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? Neither you nor I, that's certain.
4. Usenet is not a right. Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech" to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of said computers have no right to stop them. Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak. If I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
5. Usenet is not a public utility. Some Usenet sites are publicly funded or subsidized. Most of them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on Usenet, and little or no government control.
6. Usenet is not an academic network. It is no surprise that many Usenet sites are universities, research labs or other academic institutions. Usenet originated with a link between two universities, and the exchange of ideas and information is what such institutions are all about. But the passage of years has changed Usenet's character. Today, by plain count, most Usenet sites are commercial entities.
7. Usenet is not an advertising medium. Because of Usenet's roots in academia, and because Usenet depends so heavily on cooperation (sometimes among competitors), custom dictates that advertising be kept to a minimum. It is tolerated if it is infrequent, informative, and low-hype. The "comp.newprod" newsgroup is NOT an exception to this rule: product announcements are screened by a moderator in an attempt to keep the hype-to-information ratio in check. If you must engage in flackery for your company, use the "biz" hierarchy, which is explicitly "advertising-allowed", and which (like all of Usenet) is carried only by those sites that want it. 8. Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. It carries many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And the Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic.
9. Usenet is not a UUCP network. UUCP is a protocol (actually a "protocol suite," but that's a technical quibble) for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. Sites use UUCP to carry many kinds of traffic, of which Usenet is only one. And UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet traffic.
10. Usenet is not a United States network. It is true that Usenet originated in the United States, and the fastest growth in Usenet sites has been there. Nowadays, however, Usenet extends worldwide. The heaviest concentrations of Usenet sites outside the US seem to be in Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan. Keep Usenet's worldwide nature in mind when you post articles. Even those who can read your language may have a culture wildly different from yours. When your words are read, they might not mean what you think they mean.
11. Usenet is not a UNIX network. Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a UNIX machine. Among the systems used to read and post to Usenet are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, Macintoshes and MS-DOS PCs.
12. Usenet is not an ASCII network. The A in ASCII stands for "American". Sites in other countries often use character sets better suited to their language(s) of choice; such are typically, though not always, supersets of ASCII. Even in the United States, ASCII is not universally used: IBM mainframes use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore non-ASCII sites if you like, but they exist.
13. Usenet is not software. There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called "the Usenet software." Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two. Such private communication networks are typically kept distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from the universally-recognized ones. Well, enough negativity. That was fun, wasn't it? Just read on... .. pratapravindran@hotmail.com
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