One of the guys here talked about losing internet newsgroups and some of
us said how he can still get them.

The "other" end of newsgroups is that -- particularly where there is any
chance of politics to be involved -- they are being taken over by kooks
and extremists who practice one form or the other of shouting,
huffing-and-puffing, yelling-and-screaming, beating-the-chest, posting one
liner insults (or even one or two word insults), name-calling, cussing,
trivia, superficialities, and other meaningless-purposeless
Neanderthalisms.

The commercialization of the internet (blogs and website chat rooms)
allows the owner of the blog to censor out the "noise" but then it might
not be all noise, just something the owner doesn't like.

One of the technical problems of blogs and websies is the chance that they
can download malicious code onto your computer (keystroke loggers, rootkits,
viruses, spyware, trojans, etc), and collect personal data on you, too.
Software firewalls and AV are helpful, but a lot of them, too, collect
data on you (so they are spyware, too).

With ID theft said to be the fastest growing crime, I'm wondering if the
degredation in the quality of internet security is, some few years in the
future, going to lead to another form of economic melt-down as people
start geting seriously hit in the wallet by the hackers.