Astraweb/US retention losses (skips/fades)

Beck, you did great.

Your knowledge on the matter helps you give them thorough hints and ur participation in making usenet a better place is highly appreciated. =)

Let's just hope they don't screw things up again soon. This whole situation is kinda sad, because when one screws up, everyone in the world seems to know, but when one fixes things and do good, everyone has moved on already and reputation is damaged anyways
=> less clients, less money=>less improvements, stability and more problems=>...

I think they should employ you as a consultant ;P

If I still lived, quite literally, right down the road (okay, some 15 miles or so, 'just down the road by California standards!) I'd think about it. But I'm retired now, and am several states away. But hopefully, they may have learned something by this, and will make changes accordingly.

It appears today that they may be doing some 'clean up' as posting to the system has pretty much ground to a halt. But 'leeching' appears to be going at a 'normal' rate.

I think, despite all the problems, even the latest (the last 6+ months) of 'sky is falling' pronouncements, that the number (and quality) of totally non-scrambled, non-encrypted, totally 'in the open' postings continues apace, and haven't hardly been touched. Those that are what I consider 'open encrypted' (no silly website-based system for retrieval) also continues.

I, literally, was there (SF-area) when torrents were first 'launched'. I had (this was 1999!) a T1 connection at my home (several companies had rolled out service at pretty good prices) and, compared to Usenet, was pretty poor. Now, the system (torrents) has improved, and the availability of really fast internet/broadband service has spread pretty far and wide (actually, so far and wide that at least in the state I live in, farms and orchards here now have BETTER access to fiber (100Mb to 1Gb) than those of use in the 'big cities'). But this time next year, that may well be 'solved'. We'll see.

But as I was saying, even with all the silkiness, I vote for Usenet.