Joshua B
Member
Do any of you read or contribute to any skiing-related usenet newsgroups? If so, which ones?
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Skiing on Usenet
- Thread starter Joshua B
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What is a "Usenet group"?
Back before the Internet, when computers would call each other by phone and transmit mail and other files back and forth using a protocol called uucp, there was born "Usenet News". By connecting to a machine with a news feed, you could use a newsreader and browse through what slowly grew to thousands of groups, all in a hierarchy.
The first member defined the meaning. Some examples are alt for the uncontrolled groups (anyone can create an alt - all the others are controlled), ne for New England, rec for recreation, comp for computers, etc. Here are a few that hopefully help to explain it (including the free-for-all of the alt groups):
alt.tv.star-trek.wesley.die.die.die
ne.transportation
rec.backcountry
rec.arts.animation
rec.arts.dance
comp.sys.mac
comp.sys.ibm.pc-hardware
comp.sys.ibm.as400
And so forth. For all intents and purpose, these things look like emails, except that they're not addressed to individuals, they're assigned to a group and replicated across all the servers. Before the advent of the web and places like AlpineZone, Usenet News was *the* Internet bulletin board/forum, and was often very useful (especially the very topic-specific groups).
It is still a very powerful tool to this day, especially since non-computer-savvy people don't generally know about it. Spam almost did Usenet in, but spam-filtering has helped a ton. The thing to watch out for is that spammers like to "scrape" usenet groups looking for return addresses to which to send spam email. so you need to be careful about how you post ... use an alternate address from your regular email.
What's more useful and powerful than reading Usenet is searching it. If you use Google, search "groups" instead of the web, and you are in the Usenet archives that they maintain, going back many, many years (there's stuff from me in 1992 in there).
And that's my wicked off-topic post for the day.
The first member defined the meaning. Some examples are alt for the uncontrolled groups (anyone can create an alt - all the others are controlled), ne for New England, rec for recreation, comp for computers, etc. Here are a few that hopefully help to explain it (including the free-for-all of the alt groups):
alt.tv.star-trek.wesley.die.die.die
ne.transportation
rec.backcountry
rec.arts.animation
rec.arts.dance
comp.sys.mac
comp.sys.ibm.pc-hardware
comp.sys.ibm.as400
And so forth. For all intents and purpose, these things look like emails, except that they're not addressed to individuals, they're assigned to a group and replicated across all the servers. Before the advent of the web and places like AlpineZone, Usenet News was *the* Internet bulletin board/forum, and was often very useful (especially the very topic-specific groups).
It is still a very powerful tool to this day, especially since non-computer-savvy people don't generally know about it. Spam almost did Usenet in, but spam-filtering has helped a ton. The thing to watch out for is that spammers like to "scrape" usenet groups looking for return addresses to which to send spam email. so you need to be careful about how you post ... use an alternate address from your regular email.
What's more useful and powerful than reading Usenet is searching it. If you use Google, search "groups" instead of the web, and you are in the Usenet archives that they maintain, going back many, many years (there's stuff from me in 1992 in there).
And that's my wicked off-topic post for the day.
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Shhh....Keep Google Groups on the DL. It's an IT professional's best friend. My day job boss will always come up with whacky computer questions. If I don't know the answer, it usually can be found in Google Groups. He's always amazed how quickly I can find an answer. In IT, it's not how much you know, but that you know where to look to find the answers.MichaelJ said:
The primary skiing newsgroups I've seen are:
rec.skiing.alpine
rec.skiing.backcountry
rec.skiing.resorts.north-america
For hiking discussion there's:
alt.rec.hiking
rec.backcountry
Web-based BBS systems obviously offer many more features and a sense of community, but Usenet still serves a purpose, especially as an informational source/archive.
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