Tom Watson wrote:
Why this attitude by the ISP's?
Usnet mostly appeals to us old guys who were on the net back before the web
came into being. I'd wager that the vast majority of ISPs are run by
people who got into the computer scene late in the game, after the AOL
revolution. These are people who are helpless if they can't point and
click their way around a problem.
My own is no exception either. They really don't have a clue, and I'd wager
they probably don't understand half of the things I use my connection to
do. I'm totally beyond the realm of their tech support drones anyway
because I run a Linux box. Boy, you should hear them babble pathetic
excuses to me when I say the L word.
However, I've had complaints from some that they don't see my posts
when they come through my ISP's provider (Voicenet, I believe) because
their system does not pick up the posts.
I get your posts. My primary server is at the University of Berlin. They
give free accounts to anyone who's willing to abide by their very
reasonable rules. It's the best free news server I've found, but even
using that one and two others, I still frequently miss original posts.
what is the most reliable way to read and post on Usenet?
Not fool-proof, but the best way I've found is to have multiple upstream
servers. I'm not sure how you might go about doing that without running
your own news spool, but you can run your own spool even on Windows.
Something called Hamster I think. I know little about it, other than it's
"the closest thing to Leafnode Windows has."
I have a crontab run fetchnews every 15 minutes, if I'm online. It pulls
articles from my three upstream sources, then stores them on my hard drive.
I connect to my own server and get the articles instantly. Posts go out
every 15 minutes. I can also run fetchnews manually if I have some
immediate need, such as sending out the last round of posts before going to
bed, or starting the fetch as soon as I get home from work. It's a good
way to go for a modem user too, since I don't have to wait for the
individual articles to download. Once I'm reading, I'm reading; any
waiting is up front.
The only down side of doing it this way is if you read a lot of groups.
Fetchnews doesn't let you at any of the new stuff until the whole run is
done, and if you subscribe to a couple dozen groups, it takes a good bit of
time to finish (by modem anyway.) I tend to only read one or two at a
time, so this is no problem. I can always connect to the upstream servers
directly if I have some need to read a group to which I don't normally
subscribe. KNode makes that easy.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/