The end of newsgroups?

[Oren]

More ISP's farm out the task. Same reason they cannot answer my questions on a local level.

Usenet is here to stay for now.

[HeyBub]

Ah, the old maxim: Be careful what you ask for...

Which just illustrates that MOST anti-monopoly crusades are not about the consumer, they are about the would-be competitors to the alleged monopolist.

The poster-boy for monopolies, John D Rockefeller and his Standard Oil company, brought down the price of Kerosene from $3.00/gallon to five cents. In three years. The people who supplied whale oil for lighting were essentially put out of business but the rest of the world got light.

[George]

Not necessarily. Comcast never had their own NNTP servers and simply allowed us to authenticate at Giganews. Then after the NY AG was looking to make himself look good by "protecting the children" Comcast had a great excuse to eliminate access to Giganews which they promptly did. I believe most of the major ISPs did the same.

[Sea Dog]

Download live CD image of Linux Mint, burn to CD, put in DVD drive and restart your computer. Make sure BIOS is set to boot from DVD drive. See what a good OS is. It won't change anything on your hard drive or alter your Windows system. When your done take out the CD and reboot and your back to using Windows again.

[aemeijers]

Trivial for you and me, not so trivial for a casual user. And for somebody buying a new PC, unless they have connectivity and instructions on how to FTP from a mirror site, just how would they download it without a browser? (Not that anyone should connect a new PC without a firewall, etc, in place, but I digress...) If MS really starts selling naked Win7 in Europe, folks there that don't have access to another PC will have to depend on manufacturer or dealer to either stash it on the hard drive, or provide a CD.

I miss the old days when they provided a semi-current software bundle with new PCs, and didn't assume everyone had a broadband connection, and had the skill set and time to spend 3-4 hours downloading MORE friggin' software and patches before machine was safely usable. I almost suspect MS and the others are still chasing the old dream of people paying a monthly fee to use software, just like they pay a monthly fee to do pretty much anything these days. Of course, if they did get their dream, we all wouldn't need PCs that were more powerful than mainframes from 20 years ago, with more storage. A 300 dollar thin client would be all we needed.

-- aem sends....

[HeyBub]

Putting Linux on your computer is roughly equivalent to have a blow-up doll for a girlfriend. And, at less than 1%, both have about the same market penetration (pardon the pun).

Full disclosure: Just because I own a wheelbarrow full of Microsoft stock in no way influences my opinion of other operating systems.

[The Daring Dufas]

That looks like a cool version but I've had very good luck with Puppy Linux which seems to run on anything I tried it on, especially older computers.

TDD

[Sea Dog]

Puppy is good, also Slax and an old version of Games Knoppix on my old machine. I have two boxes full of distros to choose from but for a novice, Linux Mint would be best IMO.

[Anonymous]

:Walter R. wrote: :> MS Windows 7 will not have an e-mail program or a newsreader. Does :> this mean the end of newsgroups like this one? Even Windows 7 has no :> newsgroup from the MS News Server. Looks like the newsgroups are :> being replaced by web based forums. Is this correct. Will hate to :> lose alt.home.repair : :The lack of an included program to *read* newsgroups does not mean that :usenet is disappearing. Yeah, I use a "3rd party" email/newsgroup reader, not Outlook or Outlook express. It won't affect me.

Dan

[Anonymous]

:"dadiOH" wrote: : :>The lack of an included program to *read* newsgroups does not mean that :>usenet is disappearing. : :Agree : :There are TONS of other readers out there! : :I like and use Agent

Yeah, I use Agent, pretty old version. I know of no reason to upgrade. I'm on 1.9xxx.

Dan

[Oren]

I still have a copy of Agent v 1.92xx. For a text group, you cannot go wrong using it. Thing is I don't believe it is still available "officially".

FYI: ZIP the Agent folder into a zip file. Save it away. The next time there is a need for a new OS / hard drive replacement, all you have to do is un-zip the file into a folder of choice (make shortcut icon). The app will run as a stand-alone - no need for a fresh install.

[Brandon McCombs]

I used Agent for binary stuff but originally used Netscape for text groups. I've been a loyal user of Thunderbird for text groups for a few years now. I also use it for e-mail. As for binary groups, Agent got annoying to use so I use Newsbin. Newsbin actually gives real size units and values for attachments instead of Agent's nebulous "line count" to inform users of attachment size.

[paulaner]

...

You can use astraweb.com and get 25 GB for $10. Working great for me since Verizon dropped most usenet.

[David Combs]

I use trn4, and man is it cool. Draws a neat "tree" of the thread and where you are within it, and the arrow-keys take you back and forth within it.

At one time, maybe still does, it worked only on linux and unix. :-(

David