What are Usenet groups?

megafreak

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Feb 9, 2010
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What exactly is a Usenet group? I went to wikipedia and they say its a way of sharing news "articles", I'd be done there but usenet service providers such as giganews charge quite a lot of money and on top of that there seems to be a lot other software you need to BUY.

It seems that you can pirate through usenet groups and that like bit torrent its a way to connect to a large group of people who you can share files with.

Ok so is Usenet a paid for file sharing (legal or illigal) setup with servers instead of peer to peer?

I'm really puzzled, normally a quick look on wiki would wipe away my ignorance of most thigs (unless its a bit too complex for me) but I just don't get it. Why pay so much?

What can you do with usent that you can't with a bittorent? Or is my comparion of Bittorent and Usenet completely off. :whistle:

Don't laugh :sweat:
 

rdc363

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Apr 12, 2010
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Originally, Usenet was similar to forums like these. A place where people opened threads and others would reply. Usenet also supports binary attachments, that is where you get people using them to pirate software: people posting software in attachments.

The biggest difference between Usenet and bit-torrent is with Usenet a binary file is uploaded to a news server and then propagated to other news-servers. Once uploaded, the file is there until the news-server drops it. This means it is not peer-to-peer, but a more traditional client/server model.

IMO, Usenet has lost it's charm due to spamm and forums like these. Forums are more robust than Usenet was, though.


EDIT: the biggest advantage of Usenet binaries vs bit-torrent is speed. Usenet hosts generally have fat pipes to d/l from.

Just like bit-torrent Usenet binaries are full of malware and other junk.
 

WebBeachBoy

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Dec 22, 2012
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Update for searchers of "Usenet"

I disagree with the tone of your reply rdc363. In my opinion it is the world wide web that is full of malware, junk and 100% spyware where every user is identified and has their information and identity stolen. By contrast Usenet is a very robust system almost free of viruses, malware and spyware where everyone is anonymous and there is a completely free source of information available for everyone.

Toms hardware forums are great but the Usenet is a trillion times bigger than that where everything is available :)

If you want to only see the things that big brother yank Google permits you to see if you sign up to them and pay THEM a fee then keep on doing what you're doing.

I think that useage of the www will diminish due to the total saturation of advertising and malware where you can find nothing...