On Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:32:24 -0400, Home Guy wrote:

Oren wrote:

Microsoft did the same thing in recent years. They pulled all
the "official" MS groups back too their server farm.

No they didn't.

They basically turned off their usenet server - period.


I stand corrected. The damn NNTP server was shut down and MS now uses
wed based access for support.

No more official "public" MS newsgroups.

There was never anything "official" about the microsoft.public
hierarchy. Many people believed that Microsoft's servers was somehow in
control of that set of groups, but that implied an incorrect belief in
how usenet works.


"official" meaning MS MVPs participated in support on the groups.

Microsoft simply turned off their NNTP server. No action was required
by the rest of the "world-wide" network of usenet servers for those
groups to continue to exist - and thus they still do.

Yes they still exist, but without the support from MS people in the
know - IMO.