Newsdemon loves to love you, baby. They’re offering two months of Usenet access for $2 starting right now and ending at 11:59 PST tomorrow. You can sign up here.
In more interesting news, they’ve also unearthed the original memo from Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis about the foundation of Usenet. It begins:
Invitation
A group of UNIX systems at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, have established a uucp-based computer communication network. Admission to the net is open to all UNIX licensees. In addition to providing the “uu” services available in the Seventh Edition of UNIX (remote mail, file transfer, job execution), it will provide a network news service. A prospective node must have a call in facility, call out facility, or some other means of communication with another UNIX net system. The node must have, or be able to legitimately obtain, uucp and related software..
Systems which do not call-out to the net must be polled occasionally. We will poll any system that so requests, and will bill the polled system for phone costs. The phone costs are expected to be $10-20/month. Requests for an application should be sent to
James Ellis
Department of Computer Science
Duke University
Durham, NC 27706
They also have a great little interview with some of the greats of Usenet. Check it out.