Newsgroup

server is msnews.microsoft.com newsgroup is microsoft.public.pos

In this case, the server and group have been reborn.

However, even if they go away, there is a solution:

DJ hat uns dieses gebracht :

Dan,

Microsoft may shut-down its newsgroups or even its nntp servers, but that doesn't remove the newsgroups from the net. Due to the peer-to-peer nature of the Usenet and the nntp protocols, there are other servers which still have the newsgroups. As long as the admins of the other newsservers don't remove the microsoft groups, they will be there. If you point Outlook Express to another newsserver you can get the microsoft groups from there. Some ISPs have newsservers for their customers, and there are free independant newsservers. e.g.

Just get an account there.

BTW, any newsgroup users who had accessed the groups via the microsoft servers and don't know about other Usenet servers are cut-off, so traffic may drop significantly when M$ removes a group from its servers.

Helmut.

Hi Helmut,

but the "msnews.microsoft.com" nntp-server is the OWNER-server (or root server) for those groups. All other servers just duplicate from that one. If MS shuts down their nntp-server, then there's nothing to duplicate from, and therefor those MS-newsgroups will just get into a frozen state on all other servers... And even though you could point your NNTP-client to those other servers, you can't post new messages or answer to existing messages, because the master server is not responding anymore.

Thus: Shutting down the MS newsgroupsever does kill those groups. They will still exist as static archives of about 15 years of wisdom etc, but there's no way to keep them active (besides of kidnapping the "msnews.microsoft.com" subdomain to a community-driven server)