ISPs, Newsgroups, etc. ...OH MY!!!

[Adrian Griffis]

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Jonathan Hutchins
<hutchins at tarcanfel.org> wrote:
> Usenet still runs a majority of backbone connections in the U.S. - but I know
> of no dial-up UUCP connections that are still in use.

I'm not immune to making mistakes, but this claim of your seems
contrary to my understanding of the term, Usenet.  You see, Usenet
arose as a kind of poor man's Internet, back in the days when the
Internet was still to expensive for a lot of universities, and far too
expensive for most individuals.  UUCP offered a ways of giving email
and discussion forum access to a lot of organizations that couldn't
afford to connect to the expensive research network that DARPA was
starting to use to support its research.  A bunch of academic sites
started using UUCP to connect to each other, and they called it
Usenet.  Each site on Usenet simply had to connect to a small number
(possibly only one) other Usenet site, and then files could be
transferred, hop by hop, to any other Usenet site.  There were maps of
Usenet connections, and programs that would facilitate building "bang
paths", which were used to route files along Usenet's UUCP
connections.  The whole point of Usenet was that it was a cheap
alternative to the Internet.

I guess what I'm pointing out to the group as a whole is that the word
"Usenet" has a meaning that is related to "Usenet News" but is not at
all the same as "Usenet News"  I think most people who use the word
"Usenet" these days are using it incorrectly, and I'm guessing that
you are, also.  It would be correct to say, "Usenet News still runs"
on a lot of servers on the Internet in the US.  A lot can still be
said about "Usenet News".  But Usenet, itself, was inherently
UUCP/dialup based.  The whole point of Usenet was to give people a
communication alternative to the Internet, back when it was still far
to expensive for most of us.  The services that Usenet used to provide
have migrated over to the Internet, and I think this confuses people.
Also, since most people have no experience with Usenet, itself, but
they do have experience with Usenet News, they don't see the harm in
shortening "Usenet News" to "Usenet".  But "Usenet" does have a
related but distinct meaning.

I don't mean to pick on you, Jonathan, or on Jeffrey.  Almost everyone
who uses the word "Usenet" uses it wrong, these days.  It makes it
hard to even talk about the old Usenet days, because most people
think, incorrectly, that they already know what the word means.

Adrian