[gentoo-user] Re: Graphical usenet client - alternative to Knode

[Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de>]

On 02/23/2010 03:08 PM, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:39:48 +0200, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> I am currently "subscribed" to 31 mailing lists on GMane.  I don't even
>> want to imagine what would happen if I would receive email from all of
>> them (and 90% of the posts would not interest me anyway, so why recieve
>> them in the first place?)  It's just not practical.  A Usenet-like
>> front-end is the perfect solution here; a mailing list is very similar
>> to a Usenet newsgroup and that's why this approach is the most
>> practical one.  And even if I were subscribed to only one list, it
>> would still be the best way to access it; even though the traffic is
>> much lower when compared to 31 lists, but it's still high enough to get
>> annoying with something landing on your inbox every 10 minutes or so,
>> even stuff you don't intend to read.  With Usenet, you only get what
>> you're interested in, and you get it in a way that is very easy to
>> access and browse though.
>
> With the downside being that the process is slower, as you have to
> download each message or thread as you want to read it. Contrast this
> with having email delivered whether you are reading it or not and being
> filtered at the moment of arrival so it is instantly available, sorted
> into folders, when you start up your client. However, this convenience
> uses more bandwidth, so if that is worth more to you than your time, using
> Usenet for selective reading does make sense.

No, each message gets downloaded in under 1 second; it immediately 
appears when you click on it.  It's blindingly fast.  No surprise 
though, since it's just text.  However, downloading thousands of 
messages per day that I don't intent to read is a waste of bandwidth. 
It's not so much about time, it's about volume.

You and I do the same thing in the end.  The difference is that you 
waste bandwidth, need to set up filters every time you subscribe to a 
new list, need to unsubscribe when you don't want to receive email 
anymore, need hard disk space to store all the downloaded messages, 
don't have access to messages from the time you weren't subscribed yet, 
and probably more I can't think of right now.

So in the end, we end up doing the same thing, by I do it in a saner way 
that was designed to do exactly that. :)  It appears it only has pros 
and no cons, so I don't see a reason to use email instead.