[clue-talk] Corporate Media Is The Problem

[grant at amadensor.com]

> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, grant at amadensor.com wrote:
>
>> How was Usenet done?   There had to be a central point of truth for each
>> newsgroup.   If that server went, didn't it all come down for that one
>> group?
>
> No central point existed, either in theory or in practice.  It used
> something
> called a "flood fill" algorithm.  In practice, edge sites with only one
> peer
> could miss the occasional article, but if a site had 2 or more peers, you
> got
> everything.  Maybe not in the same order, but that's what trn and other
> threaded newsreaders were for.
>
> Seriously, usenet was completely decentralized.  In practice a few user
> IDs
> and site names had a bit more control over group creation and article
> censorship, but it was relatively easy to opt-out of that control and
> censorship.  That was usenet's strong point and weak point.  All it took
> was a crowd of braying jack at sses to bring it down.  I blame AOL,
> CompuServe
> and Prodigy for bringing that crowd in.

My step dad has an AOL address.   I let him keep it, just as a warnign to
others when they get email from him.

So, from a technical note, when a message was posted to usenet, it went
just to the local news server, who shared it with its peers, and with
theirs?   That sounds good.

It sounds like everything we need was already done.   Other than the spam,
what else needs to be fixed?