The Computer Is Your Friend: The End of an Era

[athelind]

Duke University Shuts Down Their Usenet Server

USENET started at Duke, back in 1980.

This is a Sad. I met my wife on the USENET group alt.fan.dragons.

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Edit: Please note that, as far as I can tell, USENET is still active on other servers, as is a.f.d. But still, let's hoist a glass.

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Comments

thanks for this

[newwaytowrite.livejournal.com]

have passed this on to a friend who might not have heard.

[scarfman]

Wow. Just wow. I still announce my cartoons weekly at alt.drwho.creative. Lately I've been including a paragraph wondering whether the traffic there warrants it, and since I've been doing that the traffic has died off even more, which I hate to think is a causal relationship. It does seem that alt.tv.mash has died down considerably since Larry Gelbart passed away last September, though he never posted often.

Wow.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I was never that big into usenet but I did still spend some time on RADP, and used RADM to get a hold of stuff before there was an eBay to pay fees to. So it goes I guess- things are moving on, for better or worse.

EDIT: I may not have made it clear enough in my comment that I realize that Usenet was still running even if the original host was going dark. Still a milestone of the technology's decline from prominence.

[sternbunny.livejournal.com]

*hoists a drink to alt.fan.dragons, alt.tv.animaniacs and alt.fan.dragonlance, the three groups of my college career*

And alt.fan.dragons too lead (in a very round-about-way) to me and my husband. I would also say that the beings of alt.fan.dragons and my co-ed professional chemistry frat were the two largest influences on me while I was in college.

[tombfyre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is a little sad. Sure had a nice long life though didn't it? I remember my alt.fan.dragons days fondly. ^^

[soreth.livejournal.com]

*raises a glass and dips his head*

So many good memories... glad that's just one server, not the whole of them!