bye bye news.virginmedia.com?

[Brian Gaff]

[Dan S. MacAbre]

What sort of binaries? Surely, usenet is a very inefficient way of sharing files?

[Chris J Dixon]

It probably depends on how your newsreader is set up, but perhaps they have reset article numbering, and your reader was looking for (but not finding) something in sequence after the highest it had previously seen.

Chris

[stuart noble]

Google Groups seems fine so I'm really not bothered if the server comes back. Typically VM will not admit there's a problem, then they'll quietly fix it while still denying there ever was a problem. Still, the broadband is excellent

[T i m]

I think that was the right answer. I got a nice (informative / formal) reply from NW support earlier:

"Hi T i m,

New posts are still coming into uk.d-i-y. (As I type, the last message came in 6 minutes ago.) A small change was made to the service about

36 hours ago regarding the article numbers for the newsgroups (which affects XOVER and article retrieval by article number). If you delete the newsgroup from your subscribed list and then re-add it, the Usenet client will reindex the group (by redownloading XOVER) and you should see all new articles. (I'd recommend deleting the newsgroup, exiting the client, then reopening the client and re-adding newsgroup.) Please try that and let us know if it works.

Thanks, Brian"

I just did as he suggested and it looks like we are back online via VM again. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[stuart noble]

Thanks Tim. You did the donkey work I frankly couldn't be arsed to do. TB is now busy downloading millions of headers and then "not responding". Not sure I'm prepared to put up with this crap :-)

[T i m]

You are very welcome. ;-)

;-)

Hmm, I've just done a couple on pretty busy ngs in Agent and they both went fine?

Whist I found TB ok as an emergency solution, I still prefer Agent (even my elderly V2.0). ;-)

Mind you, my TB is 0.9! ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Robin]

The ability to download at a steady 50 Mbps makes Usenet a good source, even after allowing for the inefficiency of the coding. I have in mind open source software of course.

(t> What sort of binaries? Surely, usenet is a very inefficient way of > sharing files? >

[John J Armstrong]

Thanks all for your replies, which make perfect sense. You do get this "millions of headers" problem on busy groups like this, but it's a one-off for the first time after re-installation.

[stuart noble]

Hardly a one off. At least 6 times it has said it has 1174943 unread, then hangs. Boring. I can't actually fault GG but maybe I'm missing something

[stuart noble]

Hoo Bloody Ray. Finally TB/news server is back after a lot of frigging about that I won't bore us with. I mean, am I really expected to move obscure files about and enter things in a RUN command box in this day and age? A man of my calibre! Goodness me. Anyway, thanks again Tim. I'm firmly back in the 20th century

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I don't know your newsreader prog or ISP, but can't you just add one of the free news suppliers, like AIOE? I have two such here, and it visits both. But looks for duplicates and ignores them if it's got the posts from the first. If one goes down, it just uses the other one. Seamlessly.

[Stuart Noble]

Thanks. Next time I might just do that. Virgin and Thunderbird, the devils I know (or thought I knew!) For some reason the former's "changes" sent the latter into a tailspin, so I couldn't easily remove the news account and reinstall it. Managed in the end, and all's well so far, so I'll leave well alone for now

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You can easily add a second account to Thunderbird. It's a long time since I've looked, but think the AIOE site gives details of how to.

Every news feed seems to go down once in a while, so makes sense to have an alternative.

[Martin Barclay]

I have agree, I (& lot of other people) block googlegroups.

[Stuart Noble]

Well, they're free, and they do seem to work, and the archive search is painless. Yeah, time to block them then

[Tim+]

Last time I looked archive search was a pain in the arse. All the "advanced search" options seem to have vanished and stuff that I *know* should be there can't be found.

[Tim+]

Sorry, just found 'em (the advanced search options) on the "desktop" version. Too much time messing about on tablets I suppose. ;-)

Tim

[Bob Eager]

You have to be joking. The archive search is *terrible*.

I use news.individual.net. Yes, it costs, but you get what you pay for. It has staggeringly good uptime, carries a wide range of groups, and has excellent spam filtering.

The cost? A monstraous 10 euro - a year.

[Martin Barclay]

Not to mention that they do /nothing/ about spammers, religious nut spammers etc.