Well if "they" start to notice NNTPS traffic on 443 rather than HHTPS (if they can mind) "they" might start to traffic shape there. Personally I'd use 119 unless that was being "got at" then 563. Keeping 80 and 443 in reserve. I can't see the point in a "secure" link for NNTP in public newsgroups, what you send or receive is going to be in plain text on many servers all over the world. I guess the paranoid might be worried about their login details being stolen but I can't see those being of great value.
Blocking 80 or 443 would not be popular. 99.99% of "internet" users would be locked out. 80 is the default for World Wide Web access and
119 is the one that Tiscali blocks in the evenings, so that's no good. Neither Albasani nor Motz would work, so it wasn't just the server. As I said, when I first went to Motz (because Albasani on 119 was blocked) it had to be 443, so I stuck with it when changing to EternalSeptember.
Just trying 80 and it's OK; I'll give 563 a go. I don't see the point of the secure server, but that's what was specified.
There are shades of the original problem that AOL created when they unleashed their walled garden audience on usenet - at the time without any real explanation as to what it was and how to use it.
Some may object for "big business" reasons, however for me there are a number of technical points that make it a non ideal way of gaining usenet access. These operate on two levels really - those that make usenet less powerful for the user, and those that hinder / irritate other usenet users.
Over the years (and note that this is a moving target as the google software evolves) they have managed to break usenet functionality in a multitude of ways - especially with threading, and quoting. This has often resulted in message threads being broken up by any gg posts etc. Quoting has been haphazard - in some cases encouraging top posting etc. The other oft cited problem is one of gg being a vector for spammers.
The ways in which it makes life harder for the user, are varied - many simply stem from the fact that a web based interface is so much slower to use. The lack of flexibility in threading, the non availability of kill files, and user defined filters etc. It means it is much harder to say to it say: ok show me all the threads in this group to which I have contributed, and have received any new contributions by others since I last looked. Just the fact that it does not remember which messages are "read" my me since my last visit makes it vastly harder to keep track of.
The searching and archiving are good - and unlike a local newsfeed at least, don't expire so soon (or hopefully ever). The user profiling tools can also be handy. GG Does many things very well, but conventional news feeds / readers do some things better.
Thanks to those of you who gave full and reasoned answers. Years ago I started newsreading with OE but switched to GG when my ISP became hopeless with the feeds (as this thread illustrates). I think I will try and go back to a good classical newsreader, to see how I like it. The big difference seems to me is the accessible posts being available in entirety on the web versus just a minute subset downloaded on your own PC. How, for example, do you answer the question "I'm sure there was a thread about six months ago about Whitworth bolts?" without leaving your non-GG newsreader ? Rob (or was it Topaz this time - another GG quirk)
My experience of TalkTalk broadband is that it will provide a rudimentary service sometimes. If it works ok first time, then you should be ok. If you have difficulties however you are quite possibly screwed!
My SiL went with them in the early days, against advice, with the oft repeated argument "but they are free!". Anyway, by the time she had spent £700+ on their premium rate tech support line (mostly waiting two hours at a time in a queue before speaking to anyone), attempting to get them to raise a fault with BT to fix an obvious line fault[1], talking to "tech" support people who were completely technically clueless, she was getting a bit annoyed when anyone (me mostly!) told her "but they are free!"
Eventually she managed to get freed from her contract by writing to the MD and got some of the support phone charges refunded. Got a MAC code out of them, ported her to plusnet, as expected the line was still broken, raised a plusnet support request, and they had BT fix it in a couple of days.
(experience with a handful of other clients etc who have used them seems to be on par with the general assessment)
[1] With a router plugged into the internal master socket connection and no other equipment or extensions etc, it still failed to get DSL sync, and swapping out the router etc made no difference, it was pretty obvious that it was a line problem. However she could never get past the driods with the Q&A lists that would have her recheck TCP/IP settings, or re-ininstall her OS, or more often than not say "oh we don't support Macs", or "routers" and put the phone down on her.
Yup, one weakness of NNTP access is when you have a poor newsfeed. If that is broken, and you can't find an alternative then a web based solution may be your best hope. However there are now at least credible alternatives to the ISP based newsfeeds.
As with any "change" anything new will seem odd at first.
It depends on how you configure your PC and also to an extent your newsfeed and how you use usenet. In my case I will search usenet in general for info (in GG), but only regularly read a couple of groups - with the occasional glance at a few others. Unless one has masses of time, then I would guess a similar pattern exists for many people.
These days I don't bother bulk downloading newsgroups as I did in dialup days. For text groups plusnet (my ISP) has a very good newsfeed and even on a high scroll rate group like this, will still maintain many many months of posts (I think they subcontract their usenet service to giganews now). I have Thunderbird set to download headers only to start with (I usually let it shlurp 30,000 on a group like this), and then the body of the message as they are read (retrieval of which is to all intents - instant). I set the expiry on my machine to to reasonably long time - like a few months.
As a first resort I would simply type whitworth into the live search box on TB - that will filter all posts that contain the word anywhere in the sender or subject fields. I can also scroll back trough 1000s of messages very quickly without needing to display a page at a time etc. If I want more detailed searching then I either use the TBs full search or use GG. Searching is something GG does well - so I will use it for that. Keeping track of conversations in multiple threads, is something TB does better. (having a filter mark your posts in a different colour, and also setting a "watch" flag on any thread you post to, then makes it very easy to switch to view "watched threads with unread"). Simple stuff like it remembering which messages you have read makes life much simpler.
If I get board with a thread I simply "mark it as read" or if its just spam (of which the newsfeed itself filters most), just hit "k" to kill the thread and not be shown again.
In that case I'd go to Google Groups. But TBH it's not a question I find myself asking more than once every couple of years. I'm much more likely to have a question about Whitworth bolts in general, that can best be answered by an ordinary Google search, than a question about a particular thread that I dimly remember. (*Thread*: hah!).
So, for archiving, I use an archive tool (GG). For reading current postings, I use a newsreader (Turnpike, as it happens). Like the other contributor, I download headers only in the first instance, then reconnect (a couple of seconds only) to download bodies of threads that interest me.
How do you do it in GG without leaving the compose window? Same way. For quite a few years now, computers have had multitasking, or a sufficiently good imitation of it. So, you've got your newsreader open in one window, and you need to do a search. You open up a browser window (Firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome - your choice) and navigate to Google/Google Groups to do the search. From there you can see the old post, message id, etc, and get the information you require to write your post back in your newsreader.
Apologies if that's a bit like teaching you to suck eggs, but it is a straight answer to a probably foolish question.
Fortunately with Thunderbird, its all in nice files. And has 'folders' called 'Old inbox 1999' and so on. It sits neatly on a server that is auto backed up every night, and is NFS mounted to be my local 'Mail Folder' whatever machine I am using.
Having had a few legal situations, I try to do everything with email, and never throw any away..
Be interesting to see how you get on. I sometimes see Re:... and don't remember seeing the OPs item. Motz seems to be good, so I don't know if I've a setting that's wrong in 40tude.
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