OT: Newsgroup client suggestions

[J. Clarke]

There's showing me dial-up and satellite. And their dialup costs as much as AT&T DSL.

[Greg Guarino]

That's what I've been using. Took a few tries to get it working, but no trouble at all since then.

[Jack]

Every topic has been discussed to death. In fact, bringing up that lame argument has been discussed to death...

And it

That's plain bogus. First, I use a free server, Eternal-September and have not had any problems, no dropped mail, nothing. Second, I pay for Astraweb for my binaries. So I use both free and paid, just on that, you are wrong.

Whining has been discussed to death on here, again and again. Whining about it won't change a thing. BTW, After reading about Astraweb on here over and over, and over, I finally decided to try it out. So for me, and I'm sure others, things did in fact change because of repeated posts on the subject.

[Jack]

I don't know dick about aioe, but I don't like the idea of no username and password. Too wide open for abuse for me.

How's that?

[FrozenNorth]

It isn't that open, the logging is pretty good, with aioe, the only problem I had with them years ago was a 25 post limit/24 hours per IP.

[HeyBub]

"To order EarthLink Cable over Comcast lines, call 1-866-570-8333 and they will initiate the switch. The first step is to speak with the EL rep and check availability. They will then set you up with your first email address and then transfer you to Comcast so they can make the switch on their end. Comcast takes about 10-15 minutes to do their part and they will either call you back or you can stay on hold for the next step. They will send you to the online provisioning page to reprovision you with EarthLink as your ISP. Your domain will then switch from Comcast to EarthLink."

luck.

[-MIKE-]

That's like not buying a new car because it doesn't come with built-in GPS. Who cares? The built-in (which is already woefully out of date) isn't as good as any of the stand alone units, or any of the free gps apps you can get for your phone.

This whole usenet process is woefully out of date which is why every isp on earth has or will drop it. Yet, all the dinosaurs like us still use it for whatever reason.

[Larry Blanchard]

Two people divided by a common language?

[Scott Lurndal]

One must admit that the name 'eternal september' is a bit of a joke; while the service they provide is anything but.

(In the early days of usenet, when most users were educational institutions, every september a new crop of freshmen would be introduced to usenet, and the next couple of months were crazy newbie time. When ISP's started offering NNTP feeds, usenet entered the "eternal september" zone, all newbies all the time).

scott

[Josepi]

The project pictures would not be available without binaries. This could be important, even to woodworkers.

works for all groups (binaries included) for $3.95 one time fee and a limit of 50-65MB per day. It has been known to collapse occasionally for a few days at a time in the last few on the freebie accounts. Probably somebody's hobby servers.

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That's like not buying a new car because it doesn't come with built-in GPS. Who cares? The built-in (which is already woefully out of date) isn't as good as any of the stand alone units, or any of the free gps apps you can get for your phone.

This whole usenet process is woefully out of date which is why every isp on earth has or will drop it. Yet, all the dinosaurs like us still use it for whatever reason.

[Robert Bonomi]

[sneck]

You, sir, "Don't know what you don't know".

It has been -proven- that Eternal-September has been 'over-aggressively' (and ERRONEOUSLY) filtering out at least some 'legitimate' postings, since early June of this year, IN A NEWSGROUP YOU PARTICIPATE IN.

[Robert Bonomi]

In article , Home Guy wrote:

For the narrow-minded simpleton who believes *HIS* way is the only 'right' way:

A paid provider -- even if used only for text groups -- may well provide any, or *all*, of the following benefits: 1) longer retentions of messages 2) _faster_ responses by the servers -- because they're geographically 'closer', or less heavily loaded, or have 'bigger pipes', or higher- performing hardware, etc., etc., ad nauseum. 3) 'more extensive' lists of newsgroups (including 'text only' groups) 4) fewer falsely "filtered out" messages 5) *TELEPHONE* support, when need/desired 6) "higher reliability" in the delivery of service. *EVERY* 'free' NNTP server operator that I am aware of has had at least one 'significant' outage (as in multiple hours) within the last 5 years. As have the 'bargain-basement' paid providers like Astraweb, and individual.net Major 'commercial grade' providers-- like the former SuperNews, NewsGuy, Giganews, etc. -- have had a _combined_ 'downtime' over the last TEN YEARS, that is measured in the low tens of minutes. 7) *assurance* of availability "tomorrow". Contractual -guarantees- of at least 30-90 days notice are important to some people. 8) Better, more complete, support of 'optional' components in the NNTP protocol, which can result in _order-of-magnitude_ (or more) higher performance in a news client doing sophisticated 'selection' (or, conversely, 'filtering') of messages for display.

These things _DO_ matter to some people.

There are other people who think USENET is a valuable resource in it's own right, and are willing to spend some of their own money in an effort to ensure that it remains available for the long term.

[Jack]

What does "logging" mean? To me it means user name and PW, and Home Guy said he doesn't mess with username and password?

[FrozenNorth]

They do log posts by IP, and will do do drop certain IPs as being valid to post from, it is pretty well run, but is just a hobby for the guy, so there is no guarantee of uptime, feed, and retention is just horrible etc.

[Jack]

I understand, but, when I participate in a thread, I think I know when a thread is missing messages. I have not noticed it ever with E-S.

I know they updated their spam filter in June and a few shaky posts may have been filtered, but this was known and supposedly looked into. I never noticed even a blip.

I get 14 text newsgroups from E-S and have not noticed any problems. Granted, I don't read every message, but when I participate in threads, I would sooner or later notice replies to messages I never saw. Hasn't happened to me once with E-S that I recall, but did happen just once with Astraweb.

If it doesn't happen enough for me to recall, then it is too rare to worry about.

[Jack]

I sure don't think my way is the only right way, BUT, I am sure Eternal-September works in every way (other than binaries) as Giganews worked when Comcast provided it.

Never been an issue for me.

None of this has been an issue for me. I send a message, I get it back almost instantly. It's been years, but I notice little difference in speed of D/l between Comcasts Giganews and E-S. If there is a difference, it is too little to notice.

8000 groups is plenty. Never looked for a non-binary group E-S didn't carry.

The only way I know you could "know" this is by noticing a difference. I have not noticed a difference, period.

E-S has a group that works well and web based support. Never needed it but looks like it would serve.

I've only has Astraweb since Sept, and no problems. E-S I've had for years, since Comcast dropped usenet, and I vaguely recall a problem with something that changed and I had to reset all my groups, don't recall what it was, but the server was never down that I know of.

Perhaps, but I recall more than once Giganews was down for many hours, and when I contacted Comcast, they had no idea what was going on, and I was told by at least one tech that they didn't provide newsgroups, when they did. After lots of BS, I found someone that did, and he simply said the server was down. I was obvious to me that comcast support staff was clueless when it came to usenet, the people at E-S are not.

I reckon, but to most people, newsgroups are just a nasty hobby.

I don't have a clue about the above, and after too many years of this stuff, whatever that means is meaningless to me, cause I haven't noticed, not with Giganews, E-S nor Astraweb.

Most of them sound like they would matter, but not one of them has been noticeable by me between Giganews, E-S or Astraweb.

Are you thinking paying money for access will increase it's longevity?

My thinking is eliminating the free access by the main providers (Comcast and Verison) damned near killed newsgroups, and the free ones like Eternal-September, and the cheap ones like Astraweb and Usenet-news.net is about all that keeps them going. If they go, then so will Usenet, imo.

[Lobby Dosser]

Yeah, some just keep repeating and repeating and ...

[Lobby Dosser]

And we all caught it on the replies and the provider fixed the problem. Dead Issue!

[Lobby Dosser]

You don't suppose Home Guy ... Naaah, nobody would spam that much.

[The Daring Dufas]

Frozz! Wut up, eh?! ^_^

TDD