Usenet is a million conversations on the Internet about thousands of topics. It predates the Web by a considerable period but it remains a bit of a Cinderella to many Internet users. One young person I know who is otherwise net-savvy knew it as Google Groups but had no idea that NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) is the “real” way of accessing it, preferably with a “real” News Reader like Forte’Agent rather than the cack-handed implementation that Internet Explorer offers.

It seems that I have access to 62,742 different NewsGroups. I used to be subscribed to dozens, now it is down to 19 and with so many filters that I screen out vast quantities of babble, or should I say Babel?

I now find that the interesting conversations thrive in the blogosphere, as well as the HTML based forums (fora?) that are the online equivalent of mailing lists.

I suspect that next time I clean-install my PC, I’ll probably leave off Agent. I’ll miss it, but I’ll get over it…