Cabalo pretty much nailed it as to what newsgroups offer and the benefits. But although I realize that large portion of the people here (including me) have been very vocal about how great newgroups are, there is one simple thing they lack: community. Not community as in "hey lets post random bullshit in rate that ass and pretend to care about this forum" but community as in a community driven to share and archive a lot of content for a certain niche, as cliched as that may sound. While our newgroups section's (actual discussion, not index) activity pales in comparison to our BT section, when I was a Newsgroups newbie hunting for information I was surprised to find that our Newsgroups section was multiple orders of magnitudes above any other forum I could find in terms of activity. Newsgroups just feels so lifeless: it's just mindlessly upload everything from the scene, along with some uploads from usenet groups, then have user indexed sites just mindlessly post everything they find from automatic indexers or headers with no real thought involved.
Probably the most obvious example of how BT can excel where Newsgroups can't is in What.CD: While I'm not an audiophile and am plenty satisfied with Demonoid, you simply can't find that level of content and organization anywhere in Newgroups. Another site that has been invaluable to me is BCG: The amount of content dedicated to Wii (and I'm sure every other console) hacking and homebrew is simply unrivaled in the Newgroup landscape. And when even a tiny corruption in a WAD install can permanently brick my Wii, I'd rather be able to read through some comments on the file from BCG enthusiasts rather than get it from random guy x who decided to put it up on usenet. While newgroups is certainly my one stop shop for general content, I don't think it will ever come close to replicating the experience BT users have on some of the better niche sites.
Another, while probably rather obvious, but in my mind understated on this forum, point is that BT can be a GREAT alternative if used right. To defend newgroups and the cost associated with it, people claim that since [generic FST member] is already spending so much on a seedbox, donating to random sites to gain favor/whore invites to trade, why not switch to newgroups and actually save money? Another popular argument is people already spend so much time managing ratios, whoring favor from forums to "move up the ladder", trading invites, etc. that you could yourself a lot of time and headaches by simply switching over to Newgroups.
But hey, maybe you don't want to spend the money, or don't want to hand over your credit card to companies you've never heard of (and lets be honest, free Newsgroups access sucks). Great, BT is a great alternative that is truly free, if used right. This probably doesn't categorize the large majority of FST users, but if you don't ratio whore with seedboxes, don't constantly "kiss ass" and "participate" on various forums to gain favour/hunt for rare invites, don't trade invites, and only join lower stress, less "leet" trackers like TL and TVT that are just as capable quality wise but far less stressful in maintaining a ratio, Bit torrent can be a great, free means of filesharing that's far less of a time sink than it's made out to be. But that comes with a big if.
What kind of files are you talking about/where are you looking? I have never experienced wait times over a matter of minutes compared to torrent sites, let alone days. Supersearch should be even faster, although I personally haven't used it very often.Originally Posted by Tokeman
Given that you're downloading a 35-45GB file that most likely won't have a large number of seeders due to the limited interest in downloading and sustaining such a large file, you're much more likely to get consistent, faster speeds on a news server that can easily max any connection. In addition to that, you're stuck with seeding a whopping 40 gigabyte file for weeks to even have a chance of keeping your ratio (unless you're using a seedbox, which judging by your signature you are, but at that point you're already wasting far more time managing your seedbox and downloading files off the FTP, not to mention seedboxes are far more expensive than newsgroups will ever be). And with ever advancing technology, especially the recent release of Sandy Bridge, extraction times are becoming less and less noticeable every day, not to mention it's being handled in the background by a program without any effort on your part.Unrar 2-8GB Files is a very light operation but when we are talking about 400≈ files and BluRays with a weight around 35-45GB... also you have to add the common CRC problems (itīs easy to fix them with p.par2 files, but the clock is counting and you spend time)
private trackers rocks for get blurays fast
(And frost, in your previous post, you use cost as justification for how BT is better than usenet, but you admit to using a dedicated gigabit server? There has to be some irony in that).
Also, if any one had the endurance to read through this entire post from a batshit crazy guy like myself, you deserve a fucking prize.
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