As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:51:39 -0500, Ignoramus21403
wrote:

As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.


Hey Iggy,

If we NEED to do it, I'd be happy to oblige. I don't think the "need"
is here yet, but...........

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario

"Ignoramus21403" wrote in message
...
As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.


That's a damned fine gesture, and it sure would interest me. My ISP hasn't
dropped news groups yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time,
considering others are dropping them. Besides, my service sucks.

Keep us posted, Iggy.

Harold

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:51:39 -0500, Ignoramus21403
wrote:

As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.


Now thats mighty nice of you.

Ignoramus21403 wrote:
As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.

wonderful, can you offer free email addresses too? Email and usenet are
really hard to get access to in 2008.

wonderful, can you offer free email addresses too? Email and usenet are
really hard to get access to in 2008.

No. Let's not ask for too much here. Iggy, it would be just wonderful to
have a server for the important newgroups.

Karl

Ignoramus21403 wrote:

As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.


Is leafnode practical past 10 or so clients? I seem to remember something about that when
I set up leafnode on my w2k (cygwin) box that I do statistics with.

Wes

On 2008-09-25, Wes wrote:
Ignoramus21403 wrote:

As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.


Is leafnode practical past 10 or so clients? I seem to remember something about that when
I set up leafnode on my w2k (cygwin) box that I do statistics with.

I would doubtfully have more than 5 clients.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Wes wrote:
Ignoramus21403 wrote:


As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.



Is leafnode practical past 10 or so clients? I seem to remember something about that when
I set up leafnode on my w2k (cygwin) box that I do statistics with.

Wes


Knowing that my Comcast news access is going to end next month, I signed
up with this free news server:

www.motzarella.org

I was please to see that they provide all of the newsgroups I regularly
frequent.

And, when I saw that it didn't carry "pdax.services.plumbing", a group I
occassionally lurk at, I emailed motzarella's operator "Wolfgang" about
that newsgroup and received an almost immediate reply that he'd add the
pdax groups. They were available the next day.

I was so impressed with that quick service I made a small donation to
him via PayPal.

No binary groups on his servers, but that doesn't bother me at all. If
you need a quick free jumpstart you can always try

http://www.youporn.com

What a world it's become, eh? G

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
The speed of light is 1.98*10^14 fathoms per fortnight.

Jeff Wisnia wrote:
Wes wrote:
Ignoramus21403 wrote:


As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.



Is leafnode practical past 10 or so clients? I seem to remember
something about that when I set up leafnode on my w2k (cygwin) box that
I do statistics with.

Wes

Knowing that my Comcast news access is going to end next month, I signed
up with this free news server:

www.motzarella.org

I was please to see that they provide all of the newsgroups I regularly
frequent.

And, when I saw that it didn't carry "pdax.services.plumbing", a group I
occassionally lurk at, I emailed motzarella's operator "Wolfgang" about
that newsgroup and received an almost immediate reply that he'd add the
pdax groups. They were available the next day.

I was so impressed with that quick service I made a small donation to
him via PayPal.

No binary groups on his servers, but that doesn't bother me at all. If
you need a quick free jumpstart you can always try

http://www.youporn.com

What a world it's become, eh? G

Jeff

It's fairly trivially to offer all the newsgroups for free. With the size
of PCs these days, you can offer all the text groups with a retention of a
year and service probably 50,000 user accounts on a single PC with a cable
internet connection at home (though you really need a static IP to make it
work). The only real bitch is dealing with abuse complaints when one of
your users starts being stupid on Usenet.

new.individual.net is another well known free text service but they got so
popular they ended up having to add a small fee. But at 10 euros a year,
it's nearly free.

The services that sell block accounts - that is you pay for so many GB of
download and it stays active for as long as you have GB left, works out to
be basically free if all you read are text groups. Octanews.com for
example sells an 8GB block account for $8.

Text messages average about 2K per article. At 8 GB. that's about 4
million text articles you get to read for your $8. If you read 1000 usenet
posts a day, that means your $8 will last you 10 years. If you only read
100 per day, then your $8 will last 100 years. Basically free as long as
you don't download too much porn.

Usenet isn't going away, and if all you want is text, there are many places
to get it for free, or near free.

On the question of email, free accounts are everywhere - like google gmail.
You can access your mail using a normal mail client as well if for some
reason you don't want to use the web interface.

No one should be worried about losing their Usenet access from their ISP.
Just do a little research and you will find plenty of options.

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

In article , (Curt Welch) wrote:
Jeff Wisnia wrote:
Wes wrote:
Ignoramus21403 wrote:


As various ISPs are announcing that they will no longer carry
newsgroups, I wanted to see if anyone would be interested in me
setting up a public newsserver, that would serve 2-3 newsgroups like
rec.crafts.metalworking, sci.engr.joining.welding, rec.woodworking,
for example. That would be a free service. It will not cost me much,
besides setup time. I cannot offer all newsgroups, but 2-5 or so,
should be possible.



Is leafnode practical past 10 or so clients? I seem to remember
something about that when I set up leafnode on my w2k (cygwin) box that
I do statistics with.

Wes

Knowing that my Comcast news access is going to end next month, I signed
up with this free news server:

www.motzarella.org

I was please to see that they provide all of the newsgroups I regularly
frequent.

And, when I saw that it didn't carry "pdax.services.plumbing", a group I
occassionally lurk at, I emailed motzarella's operator "Wolfgang" about
that newsgroup and received an almost immediate reply that he'd add the
pdax groups. They were available the next day.

I was so impressed with that quick service I made a small donation to
him via PayPal.

No binary groups on his servers, but that doesn't bother me at all. If
you need a quick free jumpstart you can always try

http://www.youporn.com

What a world it's become, eh? G

Jeff

It's fairly trivially to offer all the newsgroups for free. With the size
of PCs these days, you can offer all the text groups with a retention of a
year and service probably 50,000 user accounts on a single PC with a cable
internet connection at home (though you really need a static IP to make it
work). The only real bitch is dealing with abuse complaints when one of
your users starts being stupid on Usenet.

new.individual.net is another well known free text service but they got so
popular they ended up having to add a small fee. But at 10 euros a year,
it's nearly free.

The services that sell block accounts - that is you pay for so many GB of
download and it stays active for as long as you have GB left, works out to
be basically free if all you read are text groups. Octanews.com for
example sells an 8GB block account for $8.

Text messages average about 2K per article. At 8 GB. that's about 4
million text articles you get to read for your $8. If you read 1000 usenet
posts a day, that means your $8 will last you 10 years. If you only read
100 per day, then your $8 will last 100 years. Basically free as long as
you don't download too much porn.

Usenet isn't going away, and if all you want is text, there are many places
to get it for free, or near free.

On the question of email, free accounts are everywhere - like google gmail.
You can access your mail using a normal mail client as well if for some
reason you don't want to use the web interface.

No one should be worried about losing their Usenet access from their ISP.
Just do a little research and you will find plenty of options.

At the recommendation of someone in the group, I tried Teranews's free
service when my ISP (RCN) pulled the plug a couple weeks ago.

What a mistake! I couldn't post, no support to fix that issue, the feed
was very slow, they kept crashing one of my groups (comp.lang.apl), and
today they reset all of their article numbers.

I'm now on Forte's "Agent Premium Newsgroups", which is $3/month for a
very fast feed, good retention, and presumably support that will listen
if I have a problem. I don't know what they do, but their articles seem
to be "cleaner" than some other services I've dealt with. I occasionally
get articles with mal-formed headers or something that crash my reader.
I had to reload a whole raft of artivles to catch up on news I've missed,
and there was nary a hiccup.

I also checked out alt.free.newsservers, and it's full of complaints
about various free services crashing. So far (it's been all of a half an
hour) I'm pretty impressed with what my $3 is getting me. I doubt I will
bother with a free service again. The time I've wasted almost every day
fighting Teranews is worth a lot more than that.

Doug White