My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

"Michael Koblic" wrote in
message
...
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today
without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What
do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups?
What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

I'll be watching the answers here myself! My
ISP---Verizon---dropped everything but
the "big 8" last month. I kind of miss a couple
of .alt's and one .tx.

Bill

On 2008-08-02, Michael Koblic wrote:
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Well ... I use newsguy (check out www.newsguy.com for
information), and I use a unix-based newsreader -- but they have a
web-based newsreader which is much better than Google, or newsreaders
for Windows or Mac's OS-X which you can download for free one you are a
member. I've never downloaded and tried those, because I use non-Mac
unix based systems for net access.

There are lots of different levels, depending on how much
bandwidth you need. If you download lots of binaries, you'll probably
want more than the original default when I joined -- 9GB per month for
$9.95 per month. I eventually moved to annual paying, $99.00 per year,
the equivalent of two months for free.

They let you accrue any bandwidth you have not used, and at my
usage rates I have nearly a Terabyte of unused bandwidth. :-) As you can
probably tell, I don't follow the binary newsgroups. :-)

And -- they've been increasing the bandwidth per month anyway.

With some accounts you also get several e-mail accounts, and
dial-up internet if you need it.

Best way to find out what they actually offer *now* is to visit
their website (I gave the URL above) and see what is there. If you join
and mention my name, I get a bit more service for free for each new
member, but don't feel that you have to. Just making this full
disclosure. So far, only one person from here has done that, and for
that I give thanks.)

Oh yes -- also, they recently offered a free month to the
clients of several big ISPs who dropped all of their news service, or
some of it. I don't know whether your ISP is one of them, since I can't
tell what your actual ISP is from the headers.

If a problem happens, they are all over it until it is fixed.
You can follow newsguy.announce for what they have added to their
newsreaders or service, and/or newsguy.general for chatter about
miscellaneous things, only some of which are related to their new
service, but it is populated by quite a few of their staff, so
complaints there get acted on, too.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Michael Koblic wrote:
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do
you consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you
pay vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

Bellsouth dropped the one binary I looked at . I'm now using teranews free
, limited to 50 Mb per day . There's a one time setup fee of $3.95 US , and
you always have the option to upgrade to a pay service if 50 Mb/day isn't
enough . www.teranews.com will get ya all the info you need .
--
Snag
'90 Ultra "Strider"
'39 WLDD "Popcycle"
Buncha cars and a truck

I think the isp's are looking at the spam that comes in on the news groups.

The massive pictures and movies.

And so much of the group of r.c.metalworking is political and/or crabby.

Just think - where is the metal - and the nice guys.

Ugly posts don't look good to those who wonder what this group is all about.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/


BillM wrote:
"Michael Koblic" wrote in
message
...
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today
without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What
do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups?
What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

I'll be watching the answers here myself! My
ISP---Verizon---dropped everything but
the "big 8" last month. I kind of miss a couple
of .alt's and one .tx.

Bill




----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.pronews.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups
---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:23:32 -0500, "Martin H. Eastburn"
wrote:

I think the isp's are looking at the spam that comes in on the news groups.

Nope - not their concern unless it originates from one of their
subscribers. And it's simple enough to "Kill them all for TOS
Violations and let God sort 'em out."

The massive pictures and movies.

There's the real concern - that the RIAA and MPAA are going to show
up at their main office and demand a list of all the users downloading
copyrighted music and movies.

Or the FBI going after Kiddie Porn.

Or the Church (Spit!) of $c13nt0l0gee (*) trying to trace down and
persecute the people posting their Sup3r S33kr!t Skr!ptur3s. That are
based on a bad 1950's Sci-Fi book.

(* - Do NOT un-Leet-Speak that name above or type that name in the
clear, it's like saying Beetlejuice three times - they can use Google
too. And we do not want them here making trouble by the boatload.)

Or the BSA going after people up and downloading cracked copies of
Microsloth Orifice and AutoCad.

But they are treading a really fine line - by restricting access to
content, they are dangeroudsly close to editing it, and that can
switch them from a Common Carrier (we don't know what those bits are,
we just transport them!) to a Content Provider who CAN be held liable
for the content they allow through.

They'd be better off NOT trying to control content.

-- Bruce --

On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:20:07 -0700, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:


There's the real concern - that the RIAA and MPAA are going to show
up at their main office and demand a list of all the users downloading
copyrighted music and movies.

Or the FBI going after Kiddie Porn.

The story on the shut down of the Alt.Binary groups on many ISP's is
that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced the ISP's to stop
carrying the binary groups because he claimed UseNet was FULL of
kiddie porn. Apparently there were about 8 binary groups with KP in
them, out of the 2 or 3 thousand binary groups.

In the mean time, he shut down freedom of speech for a great many
people who used the binary groups to trade valuable information.

The guy they are trying to shut up is really Alex Jones. Seriously.

www.infowars.com

www.prisonplanet.com

Jones' stuff was routinely posted in many many groups, and the Nazis
hate him and want to shut him up.
Dave

nntp.aioe.org

Free and very little spam.



--
Steve W.
Near Cooperstown, New York

In article ,
Bruce L. Bergman wrote:

On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:23:32 -0500, "Martin H. Eastburn"
wrote:

I think the isp's are looking at the spam that comes in on the news groups.

Nope - not their concern unless it originates from one of their
subscribers. And it's simple enough to "Kill them all for TOS
Violations and let God sort 'em out."

The massive pictures and movies.

There's the real concern - that the RIAA and MPAA are going to show
up at their main office and demand a list of all the users downloading
copyrighted music and movies.

Or the FBI going after Kiddie Porn.

Or the Church (Spit!) of $c13nt0l0gee (*) trying to trace down and
persecute the people posting their Sup3r S33kr!t Skr!ptur3s. That are
based on a bad 1950's Sci-Fi book.

(* - Do NOT un-Leet-Speak that name above or type that name in the
clear, it's like saying Beetlejuice three times - they can use Google
too. And we do not want them here making trouble by the boatload.)

Or the BSA going after people up and downloading cracked copies of
Microsloth Orifice and AutoCad.

But they are treading a really fine line - by restricting access to
content, they are dangeroudsly close to editing it, and that can
switch them from a Common Carrier (we don't know what those bits are,
we just transport them!) to a Content Provider who CAN be held liable
for the content they allow through.

They'd be better off NOT trying to control content.

I think you are correct on the ISP's motives, but not on the
controlling-content theory, because the ISPs have not tried to stop the
use of alternate news services.

The advantage of alternate news services is that there are always
independent services that are out of the reach of any given crusading
politician and/or intruding vested interest, and when those politicians
and interests try to force the local ISP to prevent access to those evil
alternate services, constitutional freedoms of press and expression can
be invoked, and will almost always prevail in court.

I also think that the ISPs regard news services as more trouble than
they are worth, as they generate far too many calls to tech support, and
are glad to make it someone else's problem.

Joe Gwinn

Michael Koblic wrote:
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

shaw still have the ones I want...
google groups?
If you have high speed, I buy 10 GB of download from usenext, while
their policy says one month, it usually lasts me several, not bad for
10 bucks. Lots of binaries, video, images, fairly well managed
reassembly of any available file fragments etc. Good search facility.
YOu can get a free trial, I think. THey have "some" free groups, but
limited.

If you are stuck with dialup, as I was until Shaw bought out the local
cableco, ....

cheers / mark on Salt Spring

"Michael Koblic" wrote in message
...
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?


Assuming that your Usenet needs are modest, use http://news.aioe.org/ for free
and/or http://www.teranews.com/ for a one-time $3.95 setup fee. Google is the
pits.

Vaughn

"Steve W." wrote in :


nntp.aioe.org

Free and very little spam.




A great FREE service if binaries are not wanted.

http://www.usenetserver.com was the Usenet service supplied by an old (now
out of business) ISP that does carry binaries. It's ~$15/mo.

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
I also think that the ISPs regard news services as more trouble than
they are worth, as they generate far too many calls to tech support, and
are glad to make it someone else's problem.

I think you put a finger on it. The longest hassle I had with my ISP was
when the newgroups were giving problems.

I am trying a couple for free to start with. I run intoan interesting
problem: I have two newsreaders, both hooked up to Motzarella. One seems to
be ignoring new posts (Outlook Express). Cannot figure out why...

wrote:
On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:20:07 -0700, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:

There's the real concern - that the RIAA and MPAA are going to show
up at their main office and demand a list of all the users downloading
copyrighted music and movies.

Or the FBI going after Kiddie Porn.

The story on the shut down of the Alt.Binary groups on many ISP's is
that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced the ISP's to stop
carrying the binary groups because he claimed UseNet was FULL of
kiddie porn. Apparently there were about 8 binary groups with KP in
them, out of the 2 or 3 thousand binary groups.

I've owned and run a usenet service for the past 12 years and that's not
the way I heard it. My understanding is that he simply wanted the few
known KP groups removed, and wanted cooperation from the large ISPs to take
down KP posts that showed up from time to time.

The ISPs decided on their own just to get out of the Usenet business
because it was getting too messy for them (and hasn't been an important
service to them in a very long time). Less than 10% of a typical ISPs
customer base even knows what Usenet is. AOL got out for the same sorts of
reasons a few years ago. Do they defend freedom of speech and get caught
in a nasty PR problem of looking like they are protecting KP posters? Or
do they help fight KP and then just end up getting bad-mouthed by the
freedom of speech guys?

Usenet sure the hell doesn't need the ISPs to survive. Almost no ISPs run
their own servers anymore - they haven't done it for years. They all
outsourced the service years ago because it's just too expensive to run a
full binary Usenet service for all except the largest ISPs.

In the mean time, he shut down freedom of speech for a great many
people who used the binary groups to trade valuable information.

The guy they are trying to shut up is really Alex Jones. Seriously.

www.infowars.com

www.prisonplanet.com

Jones' stuff was routinely posted in many many groups, and the Nazis
hate him and want to shut him up.
Dave

Sounds like paranoid bull **** to me. I don't even know who to **** "Alex
Jones" is. Never heard of him.

Cuomo is fighting KP, and I doubt he's fighting anything else (other than
crime in general). The ISPs are just dropping a service that never had
much of anything to do with their business because it's becoming a
political hot potato for them. Cuomo isn't against freedom of speech -
he's just against KP.

There are 1000's places you can go on the internet if you want access to
Usenet. Nothing about Usenet will change even if all the ISPs dropped the
service leaving only the 1000 or so Usenet providers to get it from.

If all you want is text access to groups like this one, you can get it for
almost nothing (Free if you are willing to put up with the Google service),
and very low cost if you buy a block account from any of the NSPs that
offer that. http://www.individual.net/ used to give out accounts for free
for access to text Usenet but they got so popular they decided to add a
small fee (10 Euro's per year) for the service.

The reason the NSPs exist is for binary Usenet, not for text. To support
binary usenet, we have racks and racks and racks of disk servers and tons
of bandwidth to pay for. If you pay the rates in the $10 per month range,
you get access to these large binary servers.

You can run a text only Usenet server on a machine that's about as powerful
as a single old home PC and support thousands of users and months of
retention. As such, the services that offer only text access can do it
very cheaply. So for about $10 per year, you can get all the text Usenet
you want.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

"Michael Koblic" wrote:
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
I also think that the ISPs regard news services as more trouble than
they are worth, as they generate far too many calls to tech support,
and are glad to make it someone else's problem.

I think you put a finger on it. The longest hassle I had with my ISP was
when the newgroups were giving problems.

I am trying a couple for free to start with. I run intoan interesting
problem: I have two newsreaders, both hooked up to Motzarella. One seems
to
be ignoring new posts (Outlook Express). Cannot figure out why...

Delete the news account and add it again.

You can't just change the name of the news server in your configuration and
have it work. I'm guessing this is what you tried to do?

The problem is that each group on a news server has a current article
number. Each new article that is posted to the group is assigned the next
higher number. The newsreader uses those articles numbers to figure out
what to download. If article 25000 was the last article downloaded, and
the group now has 25030 as the last article number, the newsreader knows to
download articles 25001 to 25030.

If you switch servers, the article numbers will be different. Every server
assigns it's own article numbers. If the new server has article numbers
which are less than the old server, your news reader will get confused and
think there are no new articles to download. If you get lucky, and the new
server has higher article numbers in all the groups, it will work. What
will typically happen is that some groups will have higher article numbers
and some will have lower article numbers so some groups may work, and some
won't.

You have to delete all the old cached information about the old server, and
start again in order for your newsreader to correctly understand the new
article numbers from the new server. How you do that is different for each
newsreader.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

"Curt Welch" wrote in message
...
Delete the news account and add it again.

That is exactly what I did and indeed it solved the problem. I was puzzled
why it only happened with one group, but I just cannot remember what I did
with the others.
Thanks anyway.

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

Curt Welch wrote:
wrote:

Sounds like paranoid bull **** to me. I don't even know who to **** "Alex
Jones" is. Never heard of him.

Cuomo is fighting KP, and I doubt he's fighting anything else (other than
crime in general). The ISPs are just dropping a service that never had
much of anything to do with their business because it's becoming a
political hot potato for them. Cuomo isn't against freedom of speech -
he's just against KP.

Cuomo is against free speech in many ways as well as being anti-gun and
another example of the Democrats in charge in NY. He is trying to build
a base for his own run for the governors office in a few years. Then on
to the BIG chair in D.C.



There are 1000's places you can go on the internet if you want access to
Usenet. Nothing about Usenet will change even if all the ISPs dropped the
service leaving only the 1000 or so Usenet providers to get it from.

If all you want is text access to groups like this one, you can get it for
almost nothing (Free if you are willing to put up with the Google service),
and very low cost if you buy a block account from any of the NSPs that
offer that. http://www.individual.net/ used to give out accounts for free
for access to text Usenet but they got so popular they decided to add a
small fee (10 Euro's per year) for the service.

The reason the NSPs exist is for binary Usenet, not for text. To support
binary usenet, we have racks and racks and racks of disk servers and tons
of bandwidth to pay for. If you pay the rates in the $10 per month range,
you get access to these large binary servers.

You can run a text only Usenet server on a machine that's about as powerful
as a single old home PC and support thousands of users and months of
retention. As such, the services that offer only text access can do it
very cheaply. So for about $10 per year, you can get all the text Usenet
you want.



--
Steve W.
Near Cooperstown, New York

Life is not like a box of chocolates
it's more like a jar of jalapenos-
what you do today could burn your ass tomorrow!

"Steve W." wrote:
Curt Welch wrote:
wrote:

Sounds like paranoid bull **** to me. I don't even know who to ****
"Alex Jones" is. Never heard of him.

Cuomo is fighting KP, and I doubt he's fighting anything else (other
than crime in general). The ISPs are just dropping a service that
never had much of anything to do with their business because it's
becoming a political hot potato for them. Cuomo isn't against freedom
of speech - he's just against KP.

Cuomo is against free speech in many ways as well as being anti-gun and
another example of the Democrats in charge in NY. He is trying to build
a base for his own run for the governors office in a few years. Then on
to the BIG chair in D.C.

That could very well be true. I really don't know much about him or his
political views. I was just talking about what I head about him in
connection to the actions the ISPs took in dropping Usenet. There was
simply no evidence I know of that he was out to shut down free speech on
Usenet.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
http://NewsReader.Com/

In article , Michael Koblic says...

My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

Hi Michael,

If you only access text newsgroups you could go through free/cheap newsgroup
sites like Motzarella, Google, Individual, etc. and you should be fine.

If you also access the binary groups as I do (MP3, Video, etc.) you'll most
likely need a paid newsgroup service if your ISP has dropped groups.

I've trialed several out there (Giganews, Easynews, etc.) and selected
Newsguy.com because the price was reasonable (50 GB / $8 month or 10GB / $3
month) and they offered the most features of the services I tried (Unused GB
roll over, NNTP & Web access, newsgroup search engine, etc.)

They're also giving a free month of newsgroup access to anyone that uses AT&T,
RoadRunner or Verizon for their ISP (http://newsguy.com/freemonth.htm).

Hope the info is helpful in some respect.

Remy

I'd have to imagine that it's all about cost with the ISPs, which goes back to
your comment about massive pictures & movies within some newsgroups.

I think RoadRunner, Verizon and AT&T couldn't find a way to make more money from
the newsgroups, so they cut the groups, cut their costs, and used an emotional
reason (child pornography) to justify why they removed a customer feature.

Nowadays with all the free & paid services providing newsgroups these days, I
think it's easier to get your groups through those sources anyways. I've been
very happy with my access through Newsguy, but there are tons of options as I
said.

Remy


In article , Martin H. Eastburn says...

I think the isp's are looking at the spam that comes in on the news groups.

The massive pictures and movies.

And so much of the group of r.c.metalworking is political and/or crabby.

Just think - where is the metal - and the nice guys.

Ugly posts don't look good to those who wonder what this group is all about.

Martin

Martin H. Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal.
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member.
http://lufkinced.com/


BillM wrote:
"Michael Koblic" wrote in
message
...
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today
without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What
do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups?
What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

I'll be watching the answers here myself! My
ISP---Verizon---dropped everything but
the "big 8" last month. I kind of miss a couple
of .alt's and one .tx.

Bill




----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.pronews.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000
Newsgroups
---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

In article ,
says...

On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:20:07 -0700, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:


There's the real concern - that the RIAA and MPAA are going to show
up at their main office and demand a list of all the users downloading
copyrighted music and movies.

Or the FBI going after Kiddie Porn.

The story on the shut down of the Alt.Binary groups on many ISP's is
that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo forced the ISP's to stop
carrying the binary groups because he claimed UseNet was FULL of
kiddie porn. Apparently there were about 8 binary groups with KP in
them, out of the 2 or 3 thousand binary groups.

In the mean time, he shut down freedom of speech for a great many
people who used the binary groups to trade valuable information.

The guy they are trying to shut up is really Alex Jones. Seriously.

www.infowars.com

www.prisonplanet.com

Jones' stuff was routinely posted in many many groups, and the Nazis
hate him and want to shut him up.
Dave

The ISPs involved and Cuomo used the "child porn" explanation because it gives
Cuomo something sensational to put on his resume, and it gives the ISPs a
convenient excuse for why they had to remove a customer feature.

The reality is that the binary portion of Usenet grows bigger every day and the
RoadRunner's & Verizon's of the world don't want to foot the bill. In this case
it's easier to tell paying customers that they're removing a service feature to
fight "child porn" as opposed to a cost cutting measure.

I ditched my ISP's newsgroup service several years ago and have been using a
paid provider since. Less headache, better service, and the costs are very
reasonable. If you only need text groups, there are several free options that
won't cost you a dime.

Remy

"Remy" wrote in message
...
I think RoadRunner, Verizon and AT&T

AT&T has not (yet) made any changes that I am aware of. For now, they have
an excellent Usenet service, the main reason why I am still one of their
customers.

Vaughn

On 2008-08-05, Vaughn Simon wrote:

"Remy" wrote in message
...
I think RoadRunner, Verizon and AT&T

AT&T has not (yet) made any changes that I am aware of.

Do you access any of the alt.* newsgroups, or just the big-8
ones:

comp.*,
humanities.*,
misc.*,
news.*,
rec.*,
sci.*,
soc.*,
talk.*,

As I understand it, AT&T is still carrying the big-8 newsgroup
hierarchies above, but has dropped all of the others -- especially the
alt.binries.* ones.

So -- if all you read is the big-8 newsgroups, you will be fine
for the moment with AT&T.

For now, they have
an excellent Usenet service, the main reason why I am still one of their
customers.

Whatever works for you.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-08-05, Vaughn Simon wrote:

"Remy" wrote in message
...
I think RoadRunner, Verizon and AT&T

AT&T has not (yet) made any changes that I am aware of.

Do you access any of the alt.* newsgroups, or just the big-8
ones:

comp.*,
humanities.*,
misc.*,
news.*,
rec.*,
sci.*,
soc.*,
talk.*,

As I understand it, AT&T is still carrying the big-8 newsgroup
hierarchies above, but has dropped all of the others -- especially the
alt.binries.* ones.

So -- if all you read is the big-8 newsgroups, you will be fine
for the moment with AT&T.

For now,
they have an excellent Usenet service, the main reason why I am
still one of their customers.

Whatever works for you.

Enjoy,
DoN.

They picked up some new alt. groups , but not the one I was watching .
--
Snag
'90 Ultra "Strider"
'39 WLDD "Popcycle"
Buncha cars and a truck

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
As I understand it, AT&T is still carrying the big-8 newsgroup
hierarchies above, but has dropped all of the others -- especially the
alt.binries.* ones.

So -- if all you read is the big-8 newsgroups, you will be fine
for the moment with AT&T.

I guess I am sort of a boring person, therefore most of the .alt groups I
would never miss, but there are two alt.energy. groups that I visit daily. They
are still there, so AT&T has apparently not eliminated the entire .alt world.
FWIW, I have received no announcements from Worldnet about any changes.

Just in case, I am keeping my options open. I have aioe up and running and
will set up a Teranews account soon .

Vaughn



Nothing personal, but if you are posting through Google Groups I may not receive
your message. Google refuses to control the flood of spam messages originating
in their system, so on any given day I may or may not have Google blocked. Try
a real NNTP server & news reader program and you will never go back. All you
need is access to an NNTP server (AKA "news server") and a news reader program.
You probably already have a news reader program in your computer (Hint: Outlook
Express). Assuming that your Usenet needs are modest, use
http://news.aioe.org/ for free and/or http://www.teranews.com/ for a one-time
$3.95 setup fee.


Will poofread for food.

On Aug 1, 7:31*pm, Michael Koblic wrote:
My *&%@#$&^* ISP dropped newsgroups today without any warning.
I am on through Motzarella but I wonder: What do others use? What do you
consider the best way to access newgroups? What do you get if you pay
vs. for free?

Thanks,

crquack

You've gotten some good pointers but nobody has addressed what you get
for your money. Retention is what you really are paying for, freebie
outfits usually allocate the minimum size for lesser-used groups.
You're paying for the terabytes of storage space and redundancy. First
post in is the first erased. Some of the pay news services can keep
posts for several months in the binaries groups, I've had them from a
year or more back in text groups. If you suddenly find a group you're
interested in, you can get all available posts, should you want them.
So you could pick up on a long-running discussion and figure out what
the heck started it all off. And the pay services are almost never
down due to disk or server issues.

The Agent newsreader has a trial offer combined with Forte's news
service, you get full unlimited access for a trial period, the
continuation fee isn't a whole lot per month and it isn't automatic.
You HAVE to tell them you want to continue, otherwise it gets shut off
at the end of the trial period. Try before you buy.

With most pay news services, you can download the list of groups they
subscribe to prior to signing up. One reason I have a newsguy account
was that they carry some of the lesser-accessed groups that nobody
else bothers with. The current Agent program will let you run against
multiple news servers, if a binary post is botched on one server,
it'll automatically fill the busted parts in from another.

Stan

Vaughn Simon wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
As I understand it, AT&T is still carrying the big-8 newsgroup
hierarchies above, but has dropped all of the others -- especially
the alt.binries.* ones.

So -- if all you read is the big-8 newsgroups, you will be fine
for the moment with AT&T.

I guess I am sort of a boring person, therefore most of the .alt
groups I would never miss, but there are two alt.energy. groups that
I visit daily. They are still there, so AT&T has apparently not
eliminated the entire .alt world. FWIW, I have received no
announcements from Worldnet about any changes.
Just in case, I am keeping my options open. I have aioe up and
running and will set up a Teranews account soon .

Vaughn

I mis-spoke last night , AT&T still carries the alt. groups , they dumped
almost all of the binary groups .

--
Snag
wannabe machinist