What is Usenet?

[HappyTree]

What is Usenet and why is it better than regular torrents? How and why would one set about it?

Sometimes I see it as an option, but since torrents work and don't take that long what would the benefit be in changing old habits?

[Zetetic]

At the risk of seeming catty, try this fine article.

If you're fine with torrents, carry on with torrents. I've a vague idea that the software scene might still release on Usenet first, but since I don't download software these days, I don't really know. (If you download a torrent that actually contains a multipart archive, consisting of lots of little files that you have expand, that's a fairly major sign that the torrent was just a copy of Usenet release.)

[HappyTree]

Yeah I was looking more for personal input from people who use Usenet themselves and can explain why they like it. I have a friend on Youtube who goes on about it and I just wondered if there was more to it than being an obsolete BBS.

[Zetetic]

If you've got decent access to a news server that serves the binary groups then you're guaranteed a good download speed ; this is particularly the case if your ISP operates such a news server.

You don't have to upload anything, making it both safer and more convenient that BitTorrent.

Aside from the continued presence of spammers, there's a degree of quality control not so obviously found with (public) BitTorrent trackers. Beyond that you're probably more likely to find slightly obscure things, and there's slightly greater degree of interaction than with most (public) trackers. These comparisons don't really concern specialised private trackers and their communities.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Yeah I was looking more for personal input from people who use Usenet themselves and can explain why they like it. I have a friend on Youtube who goes on about it and I just wondered if there was more to it than being an obsolete BBS.

I used to use newsgroups a lot, but not so much now.  It's the alt.binaries that most people want to use, since the other groups have been superceded by yahoo groups which in turn is mostly superceded by forums.

A few isp's have their own news server, but for most people you'll have to subscribe to some sort of service.  I can't recommend anything as I use my isp's free one, those that actually subscribe to something can do that.

There's a whole lot of very narrow little niche groups for almost anything you could want, for example someone will post a request in alt.binaries.radio-programs.1960's [nb]Name won't be exactly correct, something like that, I can't be bothered looking it up.[/nb] for some old radio show, and someone else will flood the newsgroup with hundreds and hundreds of episodes of every existing episode.[nb]Which is great, but they'll most likely all be in 32kbps which sounds rubbish and is worse than useless.  I assume they're old files from a decade ago when the internet was a smaller, slower place, but nobody ever bothered to upgrade the files.  That's a problem that's specific to old radio shows though, so don't let that put you off the rest of usenet where you'll more than likely get high quality files.[/nb] Not every request is fulfilled though, that's just an example of when it works well.  There's groups for movies, tv shows, music videos, not entirely official software (probably full of viruses), porn (including some very dodgily-named newsgroups that nobody in their right mind would go near), foreign language stuff, fake star trek nudes, etc...  often you'll see a group name that fills you with hope... ahhh! alt.binaries.krautrock.unreleased.vinyl.rips, now I can get that rare Taiwanese Kraftwerk album!!  But then you'll have a look in the group and it's had 3 posts since 2007 and they're spam.  Some groups are busy, some are disused.  Also you'll find weird trolls, deliberately uploading gigabytes of stuff to the wrong group just to piss people off.  There's still some useful stuff to be found, but like the rest of the internet you'll have to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Have a search around on this usenet search engine.  You won't be able to download any of the stuff you see on it without a news server but it'll give you an idea of what sort of stuff is on there.

[HappyTree]

Sounds intriguing. How does one set up a connection to a news server? How would I know if my ISP has one? It probably does, I think Elion have quite a free and open attitude to the net.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Sounds intriguing. How does one set up a connection to a news server? How would I know if my ISP has one? It probably does, I think Elion have quite a free and open attitude to the net.

If you're connecting via a news server you'll need a program.  I'm using an ancient program but it does the job.  Any email program is likely to be able to do it.  You just need the server name, if your isp has one it'll be on their pages somewhere (probably on the same pages that give details about the mailservers for email), and your email client will connect to the server and do its stuff.  The first time you connect it'll download a list of groups, which will be anywhere between 50,000-90,000 groups or maybe more.  Large files will download as a set of rar files, so you have to make sure all the files are available before you start.  Some people also upload some recovery files which can repair damaged or incomplete files.

For the ones where you subscribe to a service, I think it's all web-based, so you'll pay a monthly fee (or possibly a fee for a certain amount of bandwidth) and just download it from a page.

You could have a mess around with some free servers to get a feel of how it works.
I doubt they'll have the binaries groups but there'll be plenty of text-based stuff to have a look at.
Try this page then click on one of the links for "Index Results".  The one for 2011-02-23 says it has a list of 191 different servers.
When you click the name of a server it says "Your news reader should automatically open in a second window".  I don't know anything about that.  What I'd do is open it in my email prog by selecting the option to add a news server... oh hang on, I just made a link by typing news:// and pasting in the name of a news server and it's opened in Opera.  Within seconds I was able select a newsgroup and I'm now staring at some Russian's naked ass.  Lovely.

[HappyTree]

Ah right so Usenet = pictures of bums :-D

Nice to see human interests haven't really evolved in the last 100,000 years (((_|_)))