holkingers wrote:

Can someone please explain why everyone is getting so hot under the collar
about this mob. Is someone making money out of what we are contributing for
free?

Yes, they seem to be trying to, in a lame-ass doomed-to-fail sort of way.

I personally find Usenet to web gateways very useful for viewing and
posting to newsgroups when I don't have access to a computer with the
appropriate software, for example I often use (including now) Google -
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?hl...group=uk.d-i-y
or http://groups-beta.google.com/group/uk.d-i-y

Me too, and I've no objection at all to AltaVista/Google/whoever's-next
doing an unedited, publicly-available, readily-searchable archive:
there's benefit to the newsgroup community being able to say "we had
that discussion a few months ago, try Googling for it". It's the
narrow-minded leeching off the cooperative efforts of all those who
contribute to this group to support some little wannabe-advice-source
which sticks in my throat, and probably those of the others now adding
little "try sucking some tasty caustic soda crystals, diyprojects.com"
additions to their postings...

Stefek