On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical

I thought that surely my isp, panix.com, would have that one,
but no, it didn't.

And jeez, if it doesn't have *that* one, what *else* "equally
obviously desirable" doesn't it ALSO have!

Well, if I had the full list of what some other isp allows

(on unix, via doing eg:
nntplist ! all-newsgroups-on-panix.txt

and then doing an awk '{print $1 }'
on that file, gives me just the names (thousands of them)
available on *that* machine/isp, then via the wonderful "comm"
command:

comm -3 names-on-my-isp.nam names-on-your-isp.nam

gives me a two column file -- ones on mine that are not on yours,
and vice versa.


Then, at least here on panix, we can ask them to add others
(as long as we know their names!), which they always do add
for us, so I too can read it!


Suggestion: various of us on various sites get (somehow)
lists of the names of the available newsgroups, make it
available somehow (maybe post it here, although the
file-of-names will be HUGE (here, it's 9900 lines long
(ie 9900 newsgroups!, making a file that's 200K size, a bit
large to post?)

Anyway, you probably *not* having unix (linux, etc) available,
and maybe not being willing to download the gnu "tools" (unix/linux
tools like awk, comm, nntp, etc), *I* can do the comparisons --
as long as I have the list of groups on your isp.


Anyway, that's my idea.


In a few minutes I'll put up my list of available newsgroups,
at:

www.panix.com/~dkcombs/available-newsgroups.nam

so you can see what at least *this* isp "knows about".


Comments?


David

"David Combs" wrote in message
...
| On some posting here I recently saw reference to
| alt.engineering.electrical


What the hell does this post have to do with Home Repair?

On 10 Jul 2008 18:28:34 -0400, (David Combs) wrote:

On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical

I thought that surely my isp, panix.com, would have that one,
but no, it didn't.

And jeez, if it doesn't have *that* one, what *else* "equally
obviously desirable" doesn't it ALSO have!

Well, if I had the full list of what some other isp allows

(on unix, via doing eg:
nntplist ! all-newsgroups-on-panix.txt

and then doing an awk '{print $1 }'
on that file, gives me just the names (thousands of them)
available on *that* machine/isp, then via the wonderful "comm"
command:

comm -3 names-on-my-isp.nam names-on-your-isp.nam

gives me a two column file -- ones on mine that are not on yours,
and vice versa.


Then, at least here on panix, we can ask them to add others
(as long as we know their names!), which they always do add
for us, so I too can read it!


Suggestion: various of us on various sites get (somehow)
lists of the names of the available newsgroups, make it
available somehow (maybe post it here, although the
file-of-names will be HUGE (here, it's 9900 lines long
(ie 9900 newsgroups!, making a file that's 200K size, a bit
large to post?)

Anyway, you probably *not* having unix (linux, etc) available,
and maybe not being willing to download the gnu "tools" (unix/linux
tools like awk, comm, nntp, etc), *I* can do the comparisons --
as long as I have the list of groups on your isp.


Anyway, that's my idea.


In a few minutes I'll put up my list of available newsgroups,
at:

www.panix.com/~dkcombs/available-newsgroups.nam

so you can see what at least *this* isp "knows about".


Comments?


David


It would be more productive to just use Google and search "groups" for
topics that interest you.

One of the bad things about Usenet is 8 out of 10 groups are dead.

Just worry about the ones that interest you.

alt.engineering.electrical can be useful, but unless you are an
electrical engineer, they usually tell you more than you want to know
over there.

I wish Google had a separate search for Usenet and for Google groups.
I would almost never include Google groups in my searches as they are
pretty much useless. Not all of them are, but because the crap groups
outnumber the good ones by about 10000 fold, I would gladly have them
excluded from the searches.

"David Combs" wrote in message
...
On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical

I thought that surely my isp, panix.com, would have that one,
but no, it didn't.
Comments?

David


Yeah. Go read a book or something. Cripes...is this how you spend your time?
Counting newsgroups?

David Combs wrote:
On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical

I thought that surely my isp, panix.com, would have that one,
but no, it didn't.

And jeez, if it doesn't have *that* one, what *else* "equally
obviously desirable" doesn't it ALSO have!

Well, if I had the full list of what some other isp allows

(on unix, via doing eg:
nntplist ! all-newsgroups-on-panix.txt

and then doing an awk '{print $1 }'
on that file, gives me just the names (thousands of them)
available on *that* machine/isp, then via the wonderful "comm"
command:

comm -3 names-on-my-isp.nam names-on-your-isp.nam

gives me a two column file -- ones on mine that are not on yours,
and vice versa.


Then, at least here on panix, we can ask them to add others
(as long as we know their names!), which they always do add
for us, so I too can read it!


Suggestion: various of us on various sites get (somehow)
lists of the names of the available newsgroups, make it
available somehow (maybe post it here, although the
file-of-names will be HUGE (here, it's 9900 lines long
(ie 9900 newsgroups!, making a file that's 200K size, a bit
large to post?)

Anyway, you probably *not* having unix (linux, etc) available,
and maybe not being willing to download the gnu "tools" (unix/linux
tools like awk, comm, nntp, etc), *I* can do the comparisons --
as long as I have the list of groups on your isp.


Anyway, that's my idea.


In a few minutes I'll put up my list of available newsgroups,
at:

www.panix.com/~dkcombs/available-newsgroups.nam

so you can see what at least *this* isp "knows about".


Comments?


Change ISPs.

My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups. Instead, they
contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with access to over 108,000
groups, with five year retention.

Calab wrote:
"David Combs" wrote in message
...
On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical


What the hell does this post have to do with Home Repair?

If he can't access the newsgroup, he can't have anything to do with AHR.
Duh!

In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:


My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups. Instead, they
contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with access to over 108,000
groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says only
about 31,000 or so groups.

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:


My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.

news.west.earthlink.net

In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:


My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.

news.west.earthlink.net

Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are only
31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles number
of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

Time Warner. Discontinued usenet, entirely. I'm on an alternate server, now.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..

Kurt Ullman wrote:

My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.

news.west.earthlink.net

Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are
only 31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles
number of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

Dunno. Outlook Express doesn't count newsgroups - I got the number from
Giganews web site. I PRESUME I have access to all the groups Giganews
carries (can't see why not), but I haven't tried the all.

Ah ha! You may be right. There are only 27 newsgroups from my server with
the word "binary" in their name.

Nope! Giganews web site only lists 33 newsgroups with "binary" in the name.

"HeyBub" wrote in message
...
Kurt Ullman wrote:

My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.

news.west.earthlink.net

Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are
only 31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles
number of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

Dunno. Outlook Express doesn't count newsgroups - I got the number from
Giganews web site. I PRESUME I have access to all the groups Giganews carries
(can't see why not), but I haven't tried the all.

Ah ha! You may be right. There are only 27 newsgroups from my server with the
word "binary" in their name.

Nope! Giganews web site only lists 33 newsgroups with "binary" in the name.

How about the word "binaries"?

Stormin Mormon wrote:
Time Warner. Discontinued usenet, entirely. I'm on an alternate server, now.

ATT just dumped. with no notice, the entire alt.binaries hierarchy. Not
an immediate problem, I guess, but I suppose I need to start looking for
another news provider, or even a new ISP. I don't get my connectivity
from ATT any more, just wanted to keep the same email and have news, so
no big reason to stay with them if I can get news elsewhere. (Other than
my father signing up with another arm of the ATT octupus's ISP, and
being able to see the same screen will make doing tech support for him
from 1100 miles away easier.)

--
aem sends, walking bowlegged again....

Bob F wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in message
...
Kurt Ullman wrote:
My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.
Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.
news.west.earthlink.net
Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are
only 31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles
number of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).
Dunno. Outlook Express doesn't count newsgroups - I got the number from
Giganews web site. I PRESUME I have access to all the groups Giganews carries
(can't see why not), but I haven't tried the all.

Ah ha! You may be right. There are only 27 newsgroups from my server with the
word "binary" in their name.

Nope! Giganews web site only lists 33 newsgroups with "binary" in the name.

How about the word "binaries"?


I'd wait a few weeks before you bother signing with anyone. I got a
hunch that by labor day, most of the mainstream companies will be
dumping binaries entirely. Can't have them dirty pitchers, bootleg
music, and and hot software, ya know,

--
aem sends...

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:41:06 GMT, aemeijers wrote:

Stormin Mormon wrote:
Time Warner. Discontinued usenet, entirely. I'm on an alternate server, now.

ATT just dumped. with no notice, the entire alt.binaries hierarchy. Not
an immediate problem, I guess, but I suppose I need to start looking for
another news provider, or even a new ISP. I don't get my connectivity
from ATT any more, just wanted to keep the same email and have news, so
no big reason to stay with them if I can get news elsewhere. (Other than
my father signing up with another arm of the ATT octupus's ISP, and
being able to see the same screen will make doing tech support for him
from 1100 miles away easier.)

You should check into a program called VNC. It is free.
It sure does make long distance tech support easy for me.


I have a sister I always tell to save her boxes because of this
joke....
http://www.tensionnot.com/jokes/cust...d_own_computer

A major problem is that Verizon has or is planning to soon stop
carrying alt. groups, because on 10 or 20 of them out of thousands,
there was something very bad.

Maybe they'll change their minds, especially if Verizon subscribers
complain.

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:36:40 -0500, metspitzer
wrote:
It would be more productive to just use Google and search "groups" for
topics that interest you.

One of the bad things about Usenet is 8 out of 10 groups are dead.

Just worry about the ones that interest you.

How much worrying do the groups I don't read take?

Every year or so I download an updated list of groups. I think it
takes only a couple minutes but when it took longer, I read my email
while it dl'd.

After that, I continue reading the ones I like and pay no attention to
the others.

Reading Usenet on google is nowhere near as satisfying or as versatile
as reading it off my own computer. Plus I have a copy on my computer
even if my internet connection is down, and I still have use of
Google.

alt.engineering.electrical can be useful, but unless you are an
electrical engineer, they usually tell you more than you want to know
over there.

I wish Google had a separate search for Usenet and for Google groups.
I would almost never include Google groups in my searches as they are
pretty much useless. Not all of them are, but because the crap groups
outnumber the good ones by about 10000 fold, I would gladly have them
excluded from the searches.

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:47:16 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"HeyBub" wrote:


My ISP is Earthlink. They don't even bother with newsgroups.
Instead, they contract out their newsgroup links to Giganews with
access to over 108,000 groups, with five year retention.

Hmmm. What server you using. I've ELN, too and my newreader says
only about 31,000 or so groups.

news.west.earthlink.net

Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are only
31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles number
of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

When was the last time you downloaded a new list of newsgroups. For
me it's been 6 months to a year, but I have over 107 thousand.

In article ,
mm wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:47:16 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:


Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are only
31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles number
of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

When was the last time you downloaded a new list of newsgroups. For
me it's been 6 months to a year, but I have over 107 thousand.

I am set-up to check automatically every time I come on. I also ran
"check for new groups" when the number disparity first came up to see if
I had missed something.

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:00:10 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
mm wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:47:16 -0400, Kurt Ullman
wrote:


Hmmm (squared) Me too, but according to MT-NewsWatcher, there are only
31,000. Nothing in the preferences that looks like it throttles number
of news groups.
Wonder what I am missing (g).

When was the last time you downloaded a new list of newsgroups. For
me it's been 6 months to a year, but I have over 107 thousand.

I am set-up to check automatically every time I come on. I also ran
"check for new groups" when the number disparity first came up to see if
I had missed something.

Darn. I knew that was too obvious.

I've got it! You check too often.

In article ,
mm wrote:



Darn. I knew that was too obvious.

I've got it! You check too often.

After I thought about it, I figured I am having enough trouble trying
to follow those I am interested and have access to. It is probably best
that I can't get to the entire universe. (g).

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:12:58 -0500, metspitzer
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:11:13 -0400, mm
wrote:


Just worry about the ones that interest you.

How much worrying do the groups I don't read take?

Every year or so I download an updated list of groups. I think it
takes only a couple minutes but when it took longer, I read my email
while it dl'd.

After that, I continue reading the ones I like and pay no attention to
the others.

Reading Usenet on google is nowhere near as satisfying or as versatile
as reading it off my own computer. Plus I have a copy on my computer
even if my internet connection is down, and I still have use of
Google.

alt.engineering.electrical can be useful, but unless you are an
electrical engineer, they usually tell you more than you want to know
over there.

I wish Google had a separate search for Usenet and for Google groups.
I would almost never include Google groups in my searches as they are
pretty much useless. Not all of them are, but because the crap groups
outnumber the good ones by about 10000 fold, I would gladly have them
excluded from the searches.

All I am saying is that you would probably find more groups you are
interested in by searching for topics that interest you than making a
list of thousands of groups and try to eliminate them from the list.

You can't use a news reader to search Usenet without downloading the
messages in the group. For most groups, that is a waste of time.

To each his own.

I read the same groups over and over for years, more than 10 years
now.

I have a list of 131 groups now that I have used in the last 10 years,
about 4 every day, and 7 more repeatedly, and the rest once or once in
a while.

When I have a new question or interest, I look for a group with the
right name. With Agent, I download only the headers: subject lines,
authors, lengths, and posting date. Maybe 300, maye 1000 of them.
Some have nothing but spam and some don't have enough traffic to be
worth it. I usually delete all the headers then. But I also usually
find in the first 3 groups I look at one that goes in my list of 131
groups for current and future use. Someone wrote a utility for Agent
that would allow me to order those selected groups the way I want, to
put the ones I read every day first, but I don't use it.

Once I'm set up, the reading and writing replies goes IMO faster than
with google. Because it's all local, a new screen pops up
immmediately, a tenth of a second or less. For google groups, even
with DSL it takes a second or three.

I offer this in case others are interested.

As to you and me, to each his own.

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 00:11:13 -0400, mm
wrote:


Just worry about the ones that interest you.

How much worrying do the groups I don't read take?

Every year or so I download an updated list of groups. I think it
takes only a couple minutes but when it took longer, I read my email
while it dl'd.

After that, I continue reading the ones I like and pay no attention to
the others.

Reading Usenet on google is nowhere near as satisfying or as versatile
as reading it off my own computer. Plus I have a copy on my computer
even if my internet connection is down, and I still have use of
Google.

alt.engineering.electrical can be useful, but unless you are an
electrical engineer, they usually tell you more than you want to know
over there.

I wish Google had a separate search for Usenet and for Google groups.
I would almost never include Google groups in my searches as they are
pretty much useless. Not all of them are, but because the crap groups
outnumber the good ones by about 10000 fold, I would gladly have them
excluded from the searches.

All I am saying is that you would probably find more groups you are
interested in by searching for topics that interest you than making a
list of thousands of groups and try to eliminate them from the list.

You can't use a news reader to search Usenet without downloading the
messages in the group. For most groups, that is a waste of time.

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:11:14 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:57:16 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

Dunno. Outlook Express doesn't count newsgroups - I got the number from
Giganews web site. I PRESUME I have access to all the groups Giganews
carries (can't see why not), but I haven't tried the all.

My giganews lists over 108,000 with Agent.
I just got a notice that they are extending retention to 240 days on
binaries so I guess RIAA and MPAA doesn't scare them much

I might have giganews too. My ISP contracts out to some service, and
told us once, iirc but I forget.

I just refreshed my list and I have 108,888. I also use Agent. I
have it set to delete extinct groups IF they are empty. i don't know
if I;ve have any that aren't empty, but that might allow for a
discrepancy of a couple groups.

Try news://news.aioe.org . It's free.

"David Combs" wrote in message
...
On some posting here I recently saw reference to
alt.engineering.electrical

I thought that surely my isp, panix.com, would have that one,
but no, it didn't.

And jeez, if it doesn't have *that* one, what *else* "equally
obviously desirable" doesn't it ALSO have!

Well, if I had the full list of what some other isp allows

(on unix, via doing eg:
nntplist ! all-newsgroups-on-panix.txt

and then doing an awk '{print $1 }'
on that file, gives me just the names (thousands of them)
available on *that* machine/isp, then via the wonderful "comm"
command:

comm -3 names-on-my-isp.nam names-on-your-isp.nam

gives me a two column file -- ones on mine that are not on yours,
and vice versa.


Then, at least here on panix, we can ask them to add others
(as long as we know their names!), which they always do add
for us, so I too can read it!


Suggestion: various of us on various sites get (somehow)
lists of the names of the available newsgroups, make it
available somehow (maybe post it here, although the
file-of-names will be HUGE (here, it's 9900 lines long
(ie 9900 newsgroups!, making a file that's 200K size, a bit
large to post?)

Anyway, you probably *not* having unix (linux, etc) available,
and maybe not being willing to download the gnu "tools" (unix/linux
tools like awk, comm, nntp, etc), *I* can do the comparisons --
as long as I have the list of groups on your isp.


Anyway, that's my idea.


In a few minutes I'll put up my list of available newsgroups,
at:

www.panix.com/~dkcombs/available-newsgroups.nam

so you can see what at least *this* isp "knows about".


Comments?


David