For as little as $4/month you can get access to the newsgroups that is rock-solid, compared to what the ISPs want to give you these days. I use SuperNews, but they aren't the only ones.
The ISPs are getting completely out of Usenet. They don't see it as a revenue generator, but do see it as a risk, since one of the things it carries is p*rn.
IF you can live w/o downloading pictures of NEKKID LADIES and tons of Warez software, please take a look at Motzarella. It's free, it's text only, it's as solid as a rock.
They only ask a user name and valid email address to register, you can use a made up user name and a throw away email addy such as Yahoo or Hotmail.
Note: you can't use mailinator.com as it's not really a "valid" email addy.
Who is your ISP? Your posting IP implies that you have AT&T. Don't you have access to the Worldnet servers?
There is more than "warez" (illegal software downloads) and "nekkid ladies" (p*rn) on Usenet. And I find $4 a month trivial to have access to the photos and schematics I can get on NEWS:alt.binaries.pictures.radio
Thanks. I suspected that would be true, but will have to wean myself from the notion of "free" newsgroup posts before I can take the leap. I'll check SuperNews out.
My ISP is Mediacom (the cable company) and they haven't changed their unkind newsgroup policy, since I lost the option to get DSL access and went with the cable company in 2005.
Prior to signing up with the cable company, I did have Bellsouth as my ISP (they now appear to be part of AT&T, but that doesn't help me ... they don't have DSL in my part of town).
Not sure what those are, but if they're supplied by AT&T, then I doubt I do have access.
It's also available free:
Yes, worldnet is part of AT&T. Since your cable company already supplies news servers then you won't have access to the Worldnet ones even though Mediacom is running on AT&T facilities. Or at least your headers imply that: "Organization: AT&T ASP.att.net" (worldnet is att.net)
Another option is Teranews. They have an almost free server. There is a one time $3.95 setup fee. I just checked the group and it has a 30+ day retention.
I'm trying this one. It is free and text only is fine for me, ... but I'm not sure it is solid as a rock.
The posts I do get come later than my ISP's (Mediacom), and later than my read-only newsgroup (freenews.netfront.net).
And sometimes I just don't see a post at all. There is a thread here started by Bill Rueck about "Current Quicken File" to which R.C. White has replied. I have R.C.'s reply in both my old newgroups, but Motzarella does not have it. Motzarella has the post R.C. repled to and it has a reply to R.C.'s post ... but R.C.'s post is missing.
Hi, John.
Just as a reminder to all: this Quicken newsgroup is on Usenet! So there most definitely IS more than p*rn and warez available on Usenet!
My ISP is Grande Communications, based here in San Marcos
For a while, I got my Microsoft public newsgroups through Usenet, but then I learned that those news servers simply "slurp" messages from the servers that host the groups. They get posts from the host server and relay them to their subscribers, but sometimes the messages arrive out of sequence, or delayed, or not at all. Then they relay any Replies back to the host server, subject to the same risks of delays. It's much better to subscribe directly to the host computer, when possible. For example, if a Windows user clicks on: news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.vista.general, the computer starts Outlook Express (if it is not already running), creates a News Account for the Microsoft public news server (which is free and does not require a logon), connects to the Vista General newsgroup, and downloads the 300 latest messages. Later, the user can customize OE as desired. (Vista does the same thing, but uses the current rewrite of OE, which is Windows Mail but is in the late beta stages of becoming Windows Live Mail.)
Unfortunately, nobody "owns" Usenet, so it is not as strictly organized as Microsoft, Intuit and the other private news servers. (The words "private" and "public" get a little confusing here. While Microsoft makes its "public" news servers available to all, they still are "private" in the sense that MS owns them. You can read the exact same posts via a browser in Microsoft Communities.) Even with private servers, messages can be relayed through multiple intermediate servers and they still can arrive out of sequence, but that risk is higher in Usenet.
There are still MANY free news servers out there on the Internet. Google returns 441 MILLION hits on "free news server". (Only 50,000 for "motzarella", and most of those are for cheese, of course.) Surely one of those can get Quicken without dropping too many of my priceless messages - or offering too much malware.
RC
Hi RC,
Thanks for the reply.
Over the years, I've had only one ISP that provided what I would consider "acceptable" free newsgroup service: Mindspring.
Once I decided I needed (well, wanted) faster than dialup access, I found myself pretty much limited to the cable company, the phone company, and all those "free" news servers ... if I wanted "free" newsgroup service.
Both my current ISP (Mediacom) and my previous ISP (Bellsouth) were not very good to newsgroup users, so over those years, I have hunted down several alternative sources for news. . [When I need news about Microsoft products, I subscribe to their newsgroups directly at msnews.microsoft.com - I am subscribed to a couple now. In my experience, they are quite good at getting the posts in order in a timely fashion and keeping them long enough.]
My experience has been that of those many free news servers, only a few offer both read and write capability. And those that offer both, have not offered both for long. (It's also nice to be able to use an invalid email address ... the latest free newserver I'm testing won't allow invalid email addresses.)
I have probably used 4 or 5 of the free newsgroup servers over the years, but each was slow, only kept posts somewhat longer than my ISP, and stopped offering either write capability, or any capability, after maybe a year or less.
What I have been doing is downloading from two newsgroup servers: my ISP (Mediacom) and my current read-only server, freenews.netfront.net. Mediacom deletes posts after 24 hours or so. The free newserver is slower but keeps posts for about a month. If a thread stays short, I can usually see all I need to see in my ISP's download. If the thread lasts for any number of days, I have to remember to look in the "free" read-only download to see previous posts: I don't always remember to do that.
I know I could also use Google, but that is much slower and the user interface is not as well organized to me: I've grown to like the organization of OE.
This little diversion only began because I was trying to apologize for a post of mine and give the reason why it occurred. I know that my own personal criteria are contributing to my small dilemma, so I will just try to keep my eyes and ears open for a better solution, and try to remember the potential negative effects of my current approach. I haven't ruled out paying for a better solution.
Hi, John.
Thanks for snipping most of this over-long thread. I've snipped some more.
Wow! Only 24 hours? That certainly would not work for me!
Are you in an area where you can get ISP service from Grande Communications? They do cover at least some of San Antonio, and the news server is included in the ISP price. When I installed the Windows Live Mail beta a few days ago, it downloaded over 47,000 messages from this NG, dating back to
6/26/2003! Since I don't know your actual location, you can look it up via your ZIP code here:Hi, John.
Thanks for snipping most of this over-long thread. I've snipped some more.
Wow! Only 24 hours? That certainly would not work for me!
Are you in an area where you can get ISP service from Grande Communications? They do cover at least some of San Antonio, and the news server is included in the ISP price. When I installed the Windows Live Mail beta a few days ago, it downloaded over 47,000 messages from this NG, dating back to
6/26/2003! Since I don't know your actual location, you can look it up via your ZIP code here:
I agree that putting one's real email address (and name, too, in my case) as a "posted by" or "reply to" is less than desireable these days, but there is no need to use an invalid one. I simply use one created solely for this purpose, and I do check it regularly, since sometimes people (other than spammers) do reply to me directly and not in the groups that I read.
Hotmail works nicely, has a strong built-in virus checking (MacAfee), and in it's basic iteration, it's absolutely free.
As for the "free" news servers out there, I believe your research will prove once again that you usually get exactly what you pay for.
Cheers and good luck, Buck
I know I'm coming in in the middle of this one... and please excuse me if someone has previously mentioned
I've used it where and when I felt necessary and it did the trick.
PeterH
There are several ways to use a valid email address w/o having to get any email responses, check out mailinator.com
I know about hotmail; that's what I'm using for that "new" group now (I've had a hotmail email address practically since hotmail started. But hotmail accounts require "maintenance", so I like the invalid email address better: you can't get *any* spam at an invalid email address.
Hmmm. From one of your previous posts in this thread: "Note: you can't use mailinator.com as it's not really a "valid" email addy."
Which is it? :)
Interesting. Thanks.
It's a valid email address as far as sending email is concerned, if you email me there it will be delivered (and deleted after an hour or two.)
You can't use it to sign up for some services and Motzarella is one of them, it will not allow anonymous email addresses such as Mailinator and some others as Motzarella does not recognize them as valid email addresses. Since it's their news server they get to say what's valid and what's not for their service. ;-)
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