NNTP instead of mail

[Adrian Vickers]

At 18:54 08/03/2005, you wrote:

>From: "Adrian Vickers" <javickers at solutionengineers.com>
>Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2005 12:14 PM
>>At 16:27 08/03/2005, you wrote:
><snip>
>>NNTP is a great protocol, and has a real use. Personally, I happen to 
>>think it's NOT ideal for this list, but I should stress that's just my opinion.
>>
>>In defence of e-mail I shall make only one point, & let others do as they 
>>wish... Personally, I *like* having all the messages commingled in one 
>>place. There's a number of times when I've clicked into a message I never 
>>thought I'd be interested in, & ended up following the whole discussion & 
>>been fascinated by it. An NNTP setup with separated subject areas would 
>>make it more difficult to "dip in" like that.
>>
>>OK, 2 points (I know, Spanish Inquisition). Every NNTP client I've used 
>>has deleted old posts after a certain period of time... An NNTP post is 
>>for a few weeks, an e-mail is forever...
>
>NNTP is a great fit for this list.
>
>An email is forever if your server lets you keep a large enough back-log 
>or if you download it to your machine and it never ever fails (who ever 
>hear of a computer having trouble anyway).

Well, touch wood - I've lost very few (if any) e-mails since 1996, when I 
first got connected to the Internet. Proper backups are the key, something 
too many people have forgotten these days, now that hardware is reliable[1].

>NNTP is forever through people like google groups.

You can't rely on that, though, because:

1/ It's hosted on a remote server as a "free" service which could be 
removed (or made subs-only) at any time
2/ You can avoid having posts stored by setting the header "X-No-Archive: Yes"
3/ The search mechanism is dire


>The true problems with NNTP are:  not everyone has access to Usenet will 
>and those that do would have to talk their Usenet provider into including it.
>
>I love NNTP and have several groups I follow on it.  I see no practical 
>way to switch to Usenet.  The list works, it may not be perfect

Agreed: The list is far from perfect. IMHO, it's better than Usenet.

Another reason: I can receive list items on my 'phone while travelling[2] 
around the UK's rail network[3], which I couldn't do via Usenet, as I don't 
know of a suitable NNTP client for my Phone (which I won't mention here, as 
it's less than 10 years old).

Cheers,
Ade.

[1] Not 100% reliable, but a hell of a lot more reliable than it used to 
be. Thing is, though, what's the loss of a 10mb disk pack which is backed 
up daily to tape, compared to a 200gig disk drive which was probably never 
backed up as the tape h/w required to do 200 gig is immensely expensive...

[2] I say "travelling". This usually means waiting on a station for yet 
another delayed or cancelled train.

[3] I use the word "network" in a sort of thin-Ethernet kind of way: One 
little isolated problem and the whole damn lot goes down.