On May 20, 2010, Duke University’s OIT (Office of Information Technology) is planning to decommission the Duke newsgroup server – news.duke.edu. Why is that important? For several reasons including students free access to newsgroups and the historical ties that Duke has to Usenet. In 1979 Duke graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis helped bring life to Usenet. Making Duke one of the original Usenet sites.
Would you like to ask Duke to reconsider? If so please contact the Duke OIT office.
Duke OIT contact information:
Phone: (919) 684-2200
Email: help@oit.duke.edu
Live chat: http://messenger.providesupport.com/messenger/oitduke.html
Those who live near Durham can visit OIT service desk at The Link in Perkins Library.
Here is the official announcement from Duke:
On May 20, OIT will be decommissioning Godzilla (godzilla.acpub.duke.edu), an older Solaris login server, and the News Groups server (news.duke.edu) that provides a Usenet news service. The services that were available through Godzilla are now available through the newer, Linux multi-user login servers, login1.oit.duke.edu and login2.oit.duke.edu, and the Usenet services have been made unnecessary by the growing use of blogs, social networking sites and RSS feeds.
If you have any questions or concerns about the servers being decommissioned, please contact the OIT Service Desk.
We would like to thank Jay Furr whose post made us aware of the situation. Also thanks to Thomas Mennecke over at Slyck along with AllThingsD, DSL Reports and WBIR for helping spread the word. Please send any thoughts or comments to support (at) newsgroupreviews.com.
May 3rd update: Jason Scott of textfiles.com (Twitter: txtfiles) opened a ticket with Duke OIT to take the server for preservation purposes.
May 3rd update: NewsDemon is offering free Usenet access to all Duke professors. They are also working on a special promotion for students.
May 5th update: NewsDemon has finalized their promotion for Duke students. The are offering a 40% discount for students with a Duke email address.
