AOL meassge boards. Ahh the good ole' days.
AOL Chatrooms, those were hilarious.
Deja News was a discussion archive, no binaries. It was not a Usenet provider.
It was really great if you wanted to look up old information. That kind of stuff doesn't usually last long on the web. It went back a lot further than any Usenet provider's retention.
IRC? It's been my experience though that dl's are slower and it takes more effort to unpack them. The only real upside is...how do you dl content off of IRC? Most people are in the dark about it and finding a decent channel can be difficult.
You could always put your time in with a release group as a capper or runner and after a few weeks you might gain access to the FTP.
There's this thing called PAR...You get bad files far more often with usenet. With torrents, if it has thousands of seeds and lots of upvotes, you can be pretty confidant it's a good file.
The UFC only sends take down request to the files pertaining to NZB's posted on the popular sites, other copies are still available.
After my modem was quaranteened the other day by Time Warner for downloading something they didnt even name and I didnt even do anyway, I am not touching this crap.
um.. no warning at all? that sounds pretty scary. i would call them up and tell them they just lost a customer for life, and you will also be actively trying to stop anyone you know from subscribing to them. you might be surprised at their reaction. ive said those exact words to comcast before. they will change their mind.
Well that was the "warning". I couldnt connect to the internet, so I plugged in straight to my modem, and it went to a Roadrunner page.
I had to promise to secure my router and educate any roomates on the illegality of piracy before they would let me regain access.
i wouldnt have been so nice. "um, im sorry but i dont understand how my neighbors are effected by this. please run this by me again, you say you know what im doing online, does this mean you have people that are always actively watching my private account?"
...
and if you get the "no, we dont watch you. its some 3rd party 'insert name here' that told us you were downloading illegal content"
and my reply would be "that is interesting. please have your contats take me to court, as serious allegations such as this should be decided by a judge in a public forum. thanks"
Please, do this. Let us all know how it works out for you.
I'm curious. A LOT of users have been noting how great torrenting is without really adressing it's major drawback ... that using this system braodcasts your IP address to the world, therefore the user lack anonymity.
Why? Why, assuming you live in the US would you use this method knowing that you lack anonymity?
It's been working out pretty well lately. The retarded concept that an ip address=a person has been getting rejected, as has the "duty" to secure the router. I run an open network, and have no inclination to change that. If they want to accuse me of copyright infringement, they'll need more than some douchebag in a swarm thinking he saw my ip address.
ive torrented way more then usenetted. i hated how i always spent so much time sifting through utter crap on usenet. ive found some things, but for the most part it was a headache.
torrents are much easier. who knows which one is more private or safe, but if i had to guess i would say neither. but i encrypt my torretns, and the RARE times i have a problem its because i used a tracker site that i normally dont. my only guess is i connected with a monitoring server, because there is no other way anyone could know.
but i doubt its much longer before they start setting up fake newsgroup servers to catch pirates just the same way.
I'll stick with my irc xdcc transfers, searching for specific files is a lot easier these days and it's still very active.
I had newsgroups with TWC for free for a while, but it was weird how you had to download little pieces and put them together. I don't know if Usenet is the same way or not.