And as for participating in discussions, Usenet has long since been superceded by better alternatives.

I disagree.

The biggest thing that USENET lacks is a good way to link to prior posts (without Google or something).

Other than that, its far better for discussion.

No ads, for one. No font crap. Ok, some dumbasses do post in HTML, but its few and far between.

So its very fast - far faster than HTML boards - plus, its essentially cached locally with the local newsserver.

Addison