On 1/12/24 09:51, David Breneman via Jukebox-list wrote:
On Friday, January 12, 2024 at 07:59:46 AM PST, John Robertson via Jukebox-list <jukebox-list@lists.netlojix.com> wrote:...Google is also shutting down googlegroups so if you are using that to access usenet you need to find a new host - like http://www.eternal-september.org
That's an ironic name, as September used to be the bane of Usenet users.
It's deliberate, precisely because of that phenomenon.
For those of you that are younger than a Seeburg SPS160, USENET is an old-school version of discussion forums, but decentralized and hierarchical. Also known as newsgroups. It still exists, but these days most usage is posting binary files. Back then, access to Usenet was bundled with regular Internet service and ISPs operated news servers in a peer-to-peer mesh.
In those early days, USENET was important. It was a means of distributing technical information, as well as being pretty much the only forum-like vehicle in existence.
Also, in those days the Internet was pretty much limited to science and research facilities and colleges and universities.
Every September, a new crop of freshmen would enter college and get their first exposure to the Internet and to USENET. They would post inappropriate things such as chain letters and generally annoy much of the community. In a month or two they would somewhat wise up and/or get disciplined for the abuse and things would go back to normal. Next September it happened all over again.
As far as the non-technical public, if they were online at all they were on private walled gardens like Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, etc. AOL became the 800-pound Gorilla in the room. Remember all of those free disks by snail mail?
In late 1993, private Internet service providers offering direct access to the Internet started to gain popularity, and the noise that their customers brought to Usenet added to that of 1993 college freshmen. In March of 1994, AOL opened a gateway between their service and Usenet. It has never fully recovered.
Hence, September 1993 is known as The September That Never Ended, or Eternal September.
Please don't ask me about Archibald Andrews or Veronica Lodge. The last I heard they were hunting gophers.