Bye alt.*; so long ne.*...
Continuing the trend for ISPs to offer less service for more money, Verizon announced on their website that they're no longer going to be carrying Usenet groups beyond the "Big Eight" hierarchies. They didn't really explain why.
Apparently they're using Little CuCuomo's attempt to fight kiddie porn to justify their reduction of services. They're dropping the entire "alt" hierarchy and others such as the regional "ne" one. This represents something like 90% of Usenet. Couldn't they just filter the offending newsgroups?
I'm still on the fence about whether it was a good idea to drop Comcast and go to FiOS. Comcast had Usenet retention of several months. Verizon only gave you a week or so. With FiOS it takes over a minute to reconnect when my machine comes out of Hibernate mode; with Comcast it was instant. Comcast offers free McAfee protection; Verizon offers you a teaser trial download for a $5 monthy charge.
There are alternatives
More and more, Usenet newsgroups are something you need to get from a dedicated provider. There are a dozen good ones out there; the more expensive ones tend to specialize in binary groups, and the less expensive ones tend to be text-only.
Sure, Verizon and AT&T are charging the same money for fewer services. But that doesn't mean the death of Usenet.
The Usenet groups I used to
The Usenet groups I used to read have been effectively dead for years. Dedicated message boards eliminated the spam and kept the trolls at bay. Ahhh, for the days of alt.sex.strip-clubs - you'd be surprised at how good the writing was. Watching a guy crash and burn over a dancer was perversly entertaining. Guy talk at its nutty best.
Speakeasy as alternative
Generally reliable DSL, good customer service, they have dialup numbers all over the country for those places where you can't find broadband and, as of a minute ago, they still have ne.* on their NNTP server (and I'm looking at ne.general for the first time in forever and, oh, is it truly sad; all that spam's almost enough to make me wish for the days of SpeedBump).
You beat me to it
Yes, Speakeasy is awesome.
Speakeasy
I usually read ne.general.selected or ne.transportation, but...
Ah, the old days when problematical library use was the #1 topic.
I guess I can stick with google for text groups and use dimeadozen for music. Thanks, glorified phone company!