Well apparently there are quite a few missing friends from our cyber backyard. Grdngal has lost her newsgroups capability, and now I've found that the other Marilyn up in Ohio has lost HER newsgroups thanks to AOL dropping them. This is horrible!! It's like walking down the street to visit a friend's garden and discovering in the night that the whole yard has been whisked away! I guess I'll have to personally e-mail some of my garden friends to see if they're having newsgroup withdrawal. I wonder why AOL would do this? (and the server that Pam, aka grdngal, has) madgardener up on the snowy ridge, where we FINALLY got snow (it's all gone Eastwards to North Carolina every time!) back in Faerie Holler, overlooking a beautiful wintery English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7?, Sunset zone 36
ISPs know that only a tiny fraction of their customers use, or even know about, usenet, yet it ties up a lot of their time and equipment. They can improve their earnings by dropping usenet, as only a few customers will leave when they do that. Some ISPs just eliminate the equipment for usenet, and buy feed from one of the usenet services, at a discount. Mine does that and we never knew it when they made the switch, but now when I ask them to add a newsgroup, they say they can't, as it is out of their control.
Google can be used, or if you want the best service, you can sign up with > Well apparently there are quite a few missing friends from our cyber
So few ISP customers even know what newsgroups are that bandwidth is not an issue. In the case of AOL, a proprietary interface was used (you couldn't use a real newsreader), and it was crappy enough for text messages. I seriously doubt that they had a problem with people downloading or uploading huge quanities of binaries.
It's been a while since you've been on AOL, hasn't it. Or do you not have any personal experience, and are just perpetuating misconceptions held dear by so many others who also really don't have any personal experience?
Quite simplely the issue is that not enough people used newsgroups on AOL to make it worth the expense. AOL may be one of the first to completely dump Usenet because they had the additional costs associated with their proprietary interface (or a choice of revamping the service to allow real nntp traffic.)
Other ISP's are finding their costs too high even without an interface to maintain. The first step, which is already pretty common, is outsourcing their Usenet servers. Next will come limiting monthly transfers to contain the costs of providing wholesale accounts to customers. Eventually Usenet will be dropped completely. For many ISP's, even if they lost every single customer to whom Usenet service is important, they'd still come out ahead. And once their compeditors stop offering unlimited Usenet, the likelyhood of losing any customers goes down.
The bottom line is if every ISP dropped Usenet service tomorrow, it might make the headlines at some techie websites, and it might be worth a column inch or two on an inside page of the local paper's business section, but it wouldn't even get a passing mention on the nightly news. We Usenet users are a very small faction in today's gentified Internet community.
Usenet users are who I was referring to as being a small faction.
There are plenty of gardeners, of varying degrees of commitment. Someone is taking care of all those beds and lawns out there. But Usenet users are a rare breed.
I realize that my message here is doing little more than taking up space, but I must add that I am also greatly appreciative that this group has hung together so well for so long. My interest here follows the seasons, I generally drop out near the end of the summer and resubscribe in January, when the gardening itch demands scratching. I've participated in numerous groups, both Usenet and Listservs, over the years, and I'm so happy that this group has not been overtaken by spammers or control freaks. Thanks guys.
Outlook Express is an offline newsreader. The basic definition of an offline newsreader means it downloads the newsgroup to your hard disk and stores it in a file for reading later on. OE does this when you click on the Synchronize Newsgroup menu item.
For security, make sure Outlook Express is set to view files in Plain Text (Tools, Options, Read tab). And never open any attached documents by double-clicking on them (except maybe .jpg or .gif and ONLY if Internet Explorer is NOT set up as the default program to view such files).
There are two ways to use an "offline" newsreader. 1. Download every message in a group, so that the messages are available to read offline, or 2. First download all the headers, go offline, mark those you want to read, go back online, retrieve those messages, and then go offline again.
In the first example, no tracking is possible because you've downloaded everything. No one can guess which messages you read, and which you didn't. In the second example, tracking is as possible as reading the messages online. The difference is in offline reading, you do not stay connected to the ISP while you're reading.
If you have dial-up, and only one phone line, then the advantage of the second example is that your phone line is only tied-up while you're actually downloading the messages, and not while you're reading them. If you're paying by the minute for your dial-up connection, the advantage is obvious. If you're doing the first method, and downloading everything before going offline, the benefit is less, unless you were going to read every message anyway.
If you're not paying by the minute, or if you have a dedicated connection (either a phone line just for the modem, or you're on cable, DSL or other "always-on" type system), there simply is no benefit to using a newsreader in offline mode.
The same is true of method 1. Doing that, I download 8 groups in just over a minute. The phoneline is only tied up for that minute. Offline, I can then decide for myself what I want to read.
Not sure what you mean by no tracking is possible. As I was specifically talking about Outlook Express, and I don't see anyone as being able to "track" which messages YOU read unless you reply to them. That statement just doesn't make any sense to me...
Almost all newsreaders provide a mechanism for highlighting message threads (called "watching" the thread). Also, unread messages are usually flagged or boldened in some manner. A thread with an unread message gets enboldened as well, making it very easy to tell if there's an unread message in any thread.
When you first download the messages in OE, unread ones are highlighted (boldened)... it's very easy to tell which you have read and which you haven't. Furthermore, there are two other mechanisms in Outlook Express... 1) Flag, you can flag any message, I only find this useful in rare cases, and 2) you can watch messages. Watched messages show up as a red highlight. And if it's an unread watched message, the newsgroup is shows up as bold red.
Microsoft put a convenient feature inside of Outlook Express as well. OE will download the "watched" messages (red) first. And then it'll finish downloading the headers and then move on to the next newsgroup. ;-)
Just remember, watched is red, whether it's read or not, whether or not you actively watch it. Ctrl+A, Ctrl+Q turns off all bold entries and marks everything as read, whether it's red or unread or BOTH!
Being that you are using Outlook Express, I'm a little puzzled by what you mean by tracking.
;-) Enjoy! It was fun writing about watched messages and Ctrl+Q.
Oh, by the way, you usually can tell if the thread interests you, by reading the first item in the thread. If it doesn't interest you, Ctrl+Q on that first item marks the whole thread as read and you can then do a Ctrl+U to jump to the next unread message.
The message from "Jim Carlock" contains these words:
Hm, threads sometimes start dull but become interesting later. On my offline newsreader, I can click open a thread's header to show a list of participants, before opening any messages. Often the authors list is a far more reliable indicator of the thread's interest-level for myself, than its header.
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