On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:58:17 GMT, "Jim." wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

During last weekend's meeting of the Usenet Cabal (TINC),

Damn - I must have missed the meeting memo.

Oh well - as Grand Supreme Numero Uno Overlord of the Usenet Cabal,
they can't do anything without me anyway. :)

Later,

Tom

PS: I don't know if you are aware of this, but for the past couple of
years there has been a strong undercurrent among ISPs and content
providers to severely limit the number of newsgroups on Usenet.

Interestingly enough, this also seems to coincide with the emergence
of the blogosphere and it's ability to contain, organize and
compartmentalize discussion content.

Of the current 34,000 some odd newsgroups, roughly 8% of them are
actually being used as intended - the rest are just a waste of
bandspace. It won't be much longer that Usenet will cease to exist
as we currently know it. And we'll have to pay for access which
should really create some interesting reactions.

Later,

Tom