from
Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)
Usenet
/yoos'net/, /yooz'net/, n.
[from `Users' Network'; the original spelling was USENET, but the
mixed-case form is now widely preferred] A distributed {bboard}
(bulletin board) system supported mainly by Unix machines. Originally
implemented in 1979--1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott,
and Steve Daniel at Duke University, it has swiftly grown to become
international in scope and is now probably the largest decentralized
information utility in existence. As of late 2002, it hosts over
100,000 {newsgroup}s and an unguessably huge volume of new technical
articles, news, discussion, chatter, and {flamage} every day (and that
leaves out the graphics...).
By the year the Internet hit the mainstream (1994) the original UUCP
transport for Usenet was fading out of use -- almost all Usenet
connections were over Internet links. A lot of newbies and journalists
began to refer to "Internet newsgroups" as though Usenet was and
always had been just another Internet service. This ignorance greatly
annoys experienced Usenetters.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Usenet
Usenet news
<messaging> /yoos'net/ or /yooz'net/ (Or "Usenet news", from
"Users' Network") A distributed {bulletin board} system and
the people who post and read articles thereon. Originally
implemented in 1979 - 1980 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom
Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University, and supported
mainly by {Unix} machines, it swiftly grew to become
international in scope and, before the advent of the
{World-Wide Web}, probably the largest decentralised
information utility in existence.
Usenet encompasses government agencies, universities, high
schools, businesses of all sizes, and home computers of all
descriptions. In the beginning, not all Usenet hosts were on
the Internet. As of early 1993, it hosted over 1200
{newsgroups} ("groups" for short) and an average of 40
megabytes (the equivalent of several thousand paper pages) of
new technical articles, news, discussion, chatter, and
{flamage} every day. By November 1999, the number of groups
had grown to over 37,000.
To join in you originally needed a {news reader} program but
there are now several web gateways, cheifly Google Groups
(http://groups.google.com/) (originally Deja News). Some
{web browsers} include news readers and {URLs} beginning
"news:" refer to Usenet newsgroups.
{Network News Transfer Protocol} is a {protocol} used to
transfer news articles between a news {server} and a {news
reader}. The {uucp} {protocol} was sometimes used to transfer
articles between servers, though this is probably rare now
that most sites are on the {Internet}.
(http://openmarket.com/info/internet-index/current-sources.html).
Notes on news
(http://ifi.uio.no/~larsi/notes/notes.html) by Lars Magne
Ingebrigtsen <[email protected]>.
[Gene Spafford <[email protected]>, "What is Usenet?",
regular posting to news:news.announce.newusers].
(1999-12-17)