[ale] OT

[rb211 at tds.net (William Bagwell)]

On Thursday 02 June 2011, Ed Cashin wrote:
> Maybe usenet is not quite dead yet?  I always preferred nntp to mailing
> lists, etc., for online expert discussions.

Not dead, but only groups that were very healthy and thriving ~five years 
ago still have much traffic. Almost all of the marginal niche topic 
groups appear quite dead. A few will wake up for an intersting question 
but many are as dead as they look.

> In your shoes I'd check whether "sci.astro" or "sci.physics" newsgroups
> are still available, but in attempting to find out those names, I
> noticed this page:

Both are still viable groups receiving traffic. 

>   http://www.cv.nrao.edu/fits/www/yp_newsgroup.html
>
> ... which might be interesting to you.

Another potentially usefull tool is here.
http://groupsearch.alt-config.net/engine.html

Shows that "sci.astro" and "sci.physics" are both very well propagated 
(the tools original function) and on almost all servers.  Also by using 
the partial match option, one can see there are no real groups 
with "cosmology" in the name. Handfull of joke groups but none on enough 
servers to be usefull.
-- 
William