My ISP is small. They contract a 3rd party for the newgroups. They've been thru 3 or 4 in the last year because the ones they try out have been lousy. From what they tell me, very, very few of their subscribers use or care about newsgroups, and I get the feeling that their maintaining that capability is a PITA for them - they only keep it to keep from losing a handful of customers.
They even told me that AOL dropped neswgroup capabilities recently. I commented back that that seemed more a reflection of AOL than on the viability of NG's. They also said that other ISP's are telling them that they dropped NG's long ago.
Can anyone add to this info.? Will NG's fade away in the not-too-distant future? What are my options for stand-alone NG read and post capability (besides Google)? I like using the E-mail browser for NG's.
Thanks for any suggestions.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')
I doubt newsgroups will go anywhere. They may be less accessible to less savvy users (e.g. AOL) but that might have some positive effects. My ISP (RCN) had a bad newsgroup crash a few months back and decided it was too costly to rebuild it. Instead, they decided to outsource to a third party. Hopefully that service will be included far into the future but who knows. Even if some ISPs reduce their nntp offerings, there are numerous third party providers that provide great access to newsgroups at very reasonable prices to individuals.
I've often found newsgroups to be superior in many ways (e.g. searching for useful information) than web based bulletin boards created for certain topics (e.g. Intrepids).
"Registration and use of this NetNews service are free of charge. This server is operated by the computer center of Freie Universität Berlin, Germany."
No binaries.
Perce
On 01/30/05 01:52 pm Bill Putney tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:
My ISP is Pipex (UK), once part of the MCI Worldcom grouping. They own a or the transatlantic backbone. I keep seeing NEW newsgroups being added. No idea how many subscribers they have but it does not look as if my ISP is moving away from usenet.
DAS
For direct contact replace nospam with schmetterling
PIPEX have just announced a deal with one of the premier news service providers, Giganews, to supply almost all PIPEX broadband customers with world class access to Usenet News. Giganews currently offer unprecedented levels of retention and completion on both text and binaries. Completion is quoted as 99%+ while text retention is up to
420 days and binaries up to 50 days. Giganews claims are no idle boast, the service is that good. Most text groups do have well over a year of posts and even the biggest binary groups are around the 50 day mark.
This level of service does come with a cost. To the average PIPEX user who just wants to use Usenet in a moderate way there will be no further financial cost, it is free, but there are limits. These take the form of connection and download limits, see the Settings section for more details. It is worth mentioning that the download limit, supplied to all users for free, Giganews usually charge $11.99 (about £7.00) for. For power Usenet users there are low cost options for extending those limits, again details below.
What's happening to the UUNET news servers ... ?
Very good question and not one easy to answer at this time. They will still be available for now but the new News Service is the primary one for broadband users. It will almost certainly be much less frustrating using the new service as I think everyone recognises that the UUNET servers have had problems for quite a while now. It is up to you though when and if you want to continue using them for now.
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Looks like the thin edge of the wedge for you.
Not sure of the date of the above, but looks like you (will) get 10 gb (per month) of news access for no charge, but every additional 5 gb will cost you 2 lbs. I would bet that will change over time - to the point that you'll have to pay for any level of news from Giganews.
Also - looks like Pipex was using UUNET for news, and it seems you can still use it (if you want to "put up" with the problems Pipex says has been happening with UUNET).
Yeah - Google is good for general searches, but I think it would be rather klunky for daily news reading/posting. But you're right - as a last resort...
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')
By contrast, Bill, my ISP is continually adding to its NNTP capability. I'm always seeing the notice that new newsgroups are available. Unfortunately, a lot of them are the binary newsgroups, but they are being added.
ISP is Wide Open West, by the way, a regional cable provider that competes with Comcast.
Coincidentally I do use T-bird, but, as they point out, any e-mail browser will work.
I am always skeptical of free net services - what's news.individual.net's incentive for doing this? How do they make money? Do they sell my info. to spammers, plant malware, or do other undesireable things? Otherwise, looks promising.
Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')
I haven't gotten any spam at all,not to say it may be being blocked but I have no malware,at least spybot,adaware and norton say I don't. I have used individual for 6 mos but I got the info from a person who has used it for over a year and they say the same,you woul have to go to their site and read about them to see how they make thier money, it's better than google and post come up in seconds and its free!!
Thanks MoPar for following that up. I did see that news item a while ago and decided to do nothing until I am forced to. My main contention, that Pipex is committed to usenet, is valid. The developments just mean that I might wind up paying. Maybe my monthly download does not exceed the free base amount.
I am not sure what the current server problems are, but I do sometimes not see my posts, only reading them in somebody's reply. However, I have seen other people reporting this, even though they are not on Pipex. Since I switched to the text-based server a while ago I get the new stuff downloaded pretty quickly.
Pipex is still getting over the old business relationship within MCI. For example, the domain name registration service is still ridiculously expensive, going via an old MCI division in the US. However, Pipex recently bought a large local company and when I come to renew I'll probably go via that, saving maybe 50% or 75% on present costs.
FYI Pipex was started here in the UK. It was taken over by UUNet, which ultimately became part of MCI Worldcom. The Pipex brand name was used for certain services throughout this period and now the company is back to calling itself Pipex, even though the (newish) parent has/had another name. Pipex is itself on the acquisition trail... blah blah blah...
No, newsgroups won't fade away. One reason is that some websites have set up web front ends for newsgroups that new users find easier to use. That means that you can use a web browser to read newsgroups. This gives the ISP the false impression that newsgroups are no longer being used, when they are still being used. They are just being used with a different tool. I don't like the browser interface and the fact that using a browser is much slower than using a newsreader.
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