AOL dumping newsgroups

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:09:21 -0500, loutent <[email protected]> wrote:

>I cast a vote for Giganews. Not a serious problem
>in the 3 years with them ... and their prices
>actually go down with increasing capacity &
>service.
>
>Increasing groups & increasing retention (i.e
>months).
>
>Ain't many like that these days.

Newsguy.com is also very good. I've been with them for years and they
keep getting better. I can only recall one non-scheduled outage.

They also filter spam pretty well.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com

"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
2005".
>
> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
more
> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
other
> chores.
>
> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>
> Charlie Self
> "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
some
> kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November
2,
> 2000


Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
or so.

I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.

--
********
Bill Pounds
http://www.billpounds.com

"TWS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
d> I checked the Supernews site and they claim to do a great job removing
> spam. Do you think this is the case?
>
> My own ISP does nothing that I can tell and I can't access newsgroups
> while I'm traveling. It seems something like Supernews might be a
> good solution.
>
> TWS


I see very little offensive stuff with Supernews. If they could just filter
the trolls ...

--
********
Bill Pounds
http://www.billpounds.com

In article <[email protected]>,
TWS <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:00:09 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
>>ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
>>used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
>>or so.
>>
>>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>I checked the Supernews site and they claim to do a great job removing
>spam. Do you think this is the case?

SuperNews is widely regarded as the _best_in_the_business_ at 'despamming'
their newsfeed. And one of the top-tier news providers, on any basis of
consideration.

I just changed ISPs. and one of my primary considerations was that the ISP
provided "news" from SuperNews.

>My own ISP does nothing that I can tell and I can't access newsgroups
>while I'm traveling. It seems something like Supernews might be a
>good solution.
>
>TWS

I get excellent service through earthlink. The are the best ISP I've
ever had. The upgraded their newsgroup servers about 2 years ago and
things have been fast and reliable ever since. They actually resell
network services through others, but I believe own their own servers.
My actual network connection is through time warner cable - also
superb.

Bob Davis
Houston, Texas

AOL just doesn't get it.

What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
Dave Hall

I'm using Google on the road via a browser from my hotel. I use
earthlink at home for newsgroups. I know what you're talking about.
By the way, you don't have to show an earthlink address to access
earthlink newsgroups through an earthlink server on an earthlink
network. You wouldn't know I was using earthlink unless I told you.
Bob

"Tom Watson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> watson - who remembers when having a low numbered CompuServe account
> had a certain amount of cachet...

Mine was [75016,3500] but I joined up in the early 80's.
I also remember America Online when it was Apple Online and there was a few
hunnert of us on it...

I cast a vote for Giganews. Not a serious problem
in the 3 years with them ... and their prices
actually go down with increasing capacity &
service.

Increasing groups & increasing retention (i.e
months).

Ain't many like that these days.

Lou

In article <[email protected]>, Swingman
<[email protected]> wrote:

> "Charlie Self" wrote in message
>
> > Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
> more
> > rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
> other
> > chores.
>
> Giganews is an excellent source of usenet. Stay away from Meganetnews, if
> they're still around ... lousy servers and an attitude that the customer is
> always wrong.

In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
<[email protected]> wrote:

> Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and I
> only hold posts on my workstation for a week.

300 - 400 posts per day is not unusual here, in my experience.

djb

--
"The thing about saying the wrong words is that A, I don't notice it, and B,
sometimes orange water gibbon bucket and plastic." -- Mr. Burrows

Brian Elfert wrote:

> The number of Internet users who use Usenet news is small and getting
> smaller. Most people haven't even heard of Usenet. There are some
> sizeable ISPs that have never even offered Usenet news.

The number of people who access Usenet via web gateways, and believe
they are actually on a large chat site is amazing.

Google is the most well known, but I've seen many.

Barry

On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, Charlie Self <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early 2005".
>
> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little more
> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have other
> chores.
>
> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.

You should be able to get connectivity through AOL and then connect to
another newsserver with a real newsreader. news.individual.net is
a great free server.

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early 2005".
>
> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little more
> rapidly than I had planned.

Charlie, just for info, when my dialup ISP went south I switched to
intergate, mainly because they were only $9.95 a month and gave me 100
megabytes for a web site.

They seem to have a reasonable news server (I think it's Supernews) that
carries both text and binaries. But for text groups like this one I use
news.individual.net. Free and one of the best, but no binaries.

--
Homo sapiens is a goal, not a description

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:05:13 -0800, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 23:07:15 GMT, [email protected] (Charles Max) wrote:
>
>>On 24 Jan 2005 20:21:29 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>Why not try this post. Beside posting from news.individual.net. What
>>newsreader am I using,
>
> Newsreader: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95;1)

Wow. Just...wow.

"Dave Balderstone" <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca> wrote in message
news:290120050358169075%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca...
> In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and
>> I
>> only hold posts on my workstation for a week.
>
> 300 - 400 posts per day is not unusual here, in my experience.
>
I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
250,000 posts to it.

And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.

Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze products
(work computer and all).

"Nova" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Lee Michaels wrote:
>
>> "Dave Balderstone" <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca> wrote in message
>> news:290120050358169075%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca...
>> > In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
>> > <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone
>> >> and
>> >> I
>> >> only hold posts on my workstation for a week.
>> >
>> > 300 - 400 posts per day is not unusual here, in my experience.
>> >
>> I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
>> 250,000 posts to it.
>>
>> And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
>> these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.
>>
>> Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze
>> products
>> (work computer and all).
>
> Microsoft IE actually calls on Outlook Express for newsgroup access. To
> change
> the default number of headers downloaded at a time click on "Tools" then
> "Options". Then click on the "Read" tab. In the "News" section of the
> menu is
> the number of headers to download at a time.
>
>
I know that.

But it maxes out at a thousand.

I will go with the catch up command.

"Mike Marlow" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>>
> >
>> I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
>> 250,000 posts to it.
>>
>> And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
>> these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.
>>
>> Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze
> products
>> (work computer and all).
>>
>
> Use the "catch up" feature. It's in the Edit menu.
>

Thank you sir!!

I always wondered what that command was.

I am installing newsgroups on several computers in the next week or so. You
have just help me prevent a case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Lee

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
> Yep. Sure. I see about 100+ entries every day. But that's from the
> whole world's use of that NG, and IME this is a pretty active ng. In
> the context of the total trafic through my ISP it is peanuts.
>
Whoa! I'm seeing about 300 and that's with a lot of stuff filtered out.

--
Homo sapiens is a goal, not a description

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:18:25 -0800, Larry Blanchard
<[email protected]> vaguely proposed a theory
......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

>In article <[email protected]>,
>[email protected] says...
>> Yep. Sure. I see about 100+ entries every day. But that's from the
>> whole world's use of that NG, and IME this is a pretty active ng. In
>> the context of the total trafic through my ISP it is peanuts.
>>
>Whoa! I'm seeing about 300 and that's with a lot of stuff filtered out.


Ok OK. I said 100 _+_! <G> But seriously. It's still a miniscule
portion of total traffic. Both of my ISPs have said that. It's just
that one cares more!

Lee Michaels wrote:

> "Dave Balderstone" <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca> wrote in message
> news:290120050358169075%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_S.balderstone.ca...
> > In article <[email protected]>, J. Clarke
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and
> >> I
> >> only hold posts on my workstation for a week.
> >
> > 300 - 400 posts per day is not unusual here, in my experience.
> >
> I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
> 250,000 posts to it.
>
> And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
> these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.
>
> Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze products
> (work computer and all).

Microsoft IE actually calls on Outlook Express for newsgroup access. To change
the default number of headers downloaded at a time click on "Tools" then
"Options". Then click on the "Read" tab. In the "News" section of the menu is
the number of headers to download at a time.


--
Jack Novak
Buffalo, NY - USA
(Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

[email protected] (Charlie Self) writes:

>Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early 2005".

>Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little more
>rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have other
>chores.

>Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.

The number of Internet users who use Usenet news is small and getting
smaller. Most people haven't even heard of Usenet. There are some
sizeable ISPs that have never even offered Usenet news.

I doubt too many who still have AOL's service care about USenet. I also
doubt they will lose many customers.

Brian Elfert

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:05:13 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

Reposting again from news.individual.net.

Nope, I am actually using Forte Agent Ver. 1.32 (not exactly, 1997
version). I patched it to read "Mozilla 3.0". I have not tried
patching Forte Agent Ver 2.


>On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 23:07:15 GMT, [email protected] (Charles Max) wrote:
>
>>On 24 Jan 2005 20:21:29 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>Why not try this post. Beside posting from news.individual.net. What
>>newsreader am I using,
>
>Newsreader: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95;1)

On 24 Jan 2005 20:21:29 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

Why not try this post. Beside posting from news.individual.net. What
newsreader am I using, ISP or other information? (Obviously, I fake my
name).

Just try it and you will be surprise.



>I'm using Google on the road via a browser from my hotel. I use
>earthlink at home for newsgroups. I know what you're talking about.
>By the way, you don't have to show an earthlink address to access
>earthlink newsgroups through an earthlink server on an earthlink
>network. You wouldn't know I was using earthlink unless I told you.
>Bob
>

On 24 Jan 2005 17:16:40 -0800, "Dave Hall" <[email protected]> wrote:

The best newsreader, Forte Agent. Been using it since 95's. Try it for free

http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

>What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
>as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
>is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
>Dave Hall

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:00:09 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
<[email protected]> wrote:


>
>Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
>ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
>used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
>or so.
>
>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
I checked the Supernews site and they claim to do a great job removing
spam. Do you think this is the case?

My own ISP does nothing that I can tell and I can't access newsgroups
while I'm traveling. It seems something like Supernews might be a
good solution.

TWS

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 16:18:17 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
<[email protected]> wrote:


>
>I see very little offensive stuff with Supernews. If they could just filter
>the trolls ...
I prefer they castrate them rather than filtration. Thx for the info.
TWS

On 24 Jan 2005 17:16:40 -0800, "Dave Hall" <[email protected]> wrote:

>What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
>as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
>is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
>Dave Hall


agent

Pounds on Wood wrote:
> I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
> get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.


I don't know that I agree. I've had pretty good luck with Road Runner for many
years. There is the occasional hiccup but it's the exception rather than the
rule.

As for AOL.... <spew> it's little better than a virus. Charlie will finally
get to experience the real internet without them. With a good set of mail
rules, that ain't necessarily a bad thing. <G>



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

[email protected]

Holy Usenet Batman! What in God's name are you on AOL for anyway Charlie?

--
Jeff P.

"A ship carrying blue paint collided with a ship carrying red paint. The
crew are believed to be marooned."

Check out my woodshop at: www.sawdustcentral.com


"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
2005".
>
> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
more
> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
other
> chores.
>
> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>
> Charlie Self
> "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
some
> kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November
2,
> 2000

"Tim Douglass" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Agent and Free Agent will download them all, but the catch-up command
> is the way to go in either case, you really don't need to download all
> the old headers - and certainly not all the old articles, which I
> think is what MS wants to do.

To the contrary Tim. Outlook operates just like Agent does in that you can
download only header, select the article(s) and then view them on-line or
download them for later viewing.

> One benefit to Agent is that all you
> download is the headers, then you select which articles to retrieve.
> By the time my filters are done I only have to see about 2/3 of the
> headers in the group. Another 10% or so get hit with ignores and
> disappear forever from my sight. Of the rest some are being watched,
> so I have set it to retrieve those articles automatically, others I
> just skim down the list and see if there is anything I want to read.
> If so a quick double click gets the article - if it is an interesting
> thread I mark it for watching and download the rest of the current
> posts in that thread. If not, I just leave it alone and when I hit the
> end of the group I mark all messages read. Next time I do the same. It
> is amazing to see how quickly you can trim 300+ new messages down to
> the 30 or so you want to read.

For the most part - very similar to the way Outlook Express works.


--

-Mike-
[email protected]

"J. Clarke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Old Nick wrote:
>
> > On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
> > vaguely proposed a theory
> > ......and in reply I say!:
> >
> > remove ns from my header address to reply via email
> >
> > I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....
> >
> > I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
> > they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
> > right, but you may be from here on!" and left.
>
> The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
> their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they
get
> from their upstream provider.


This is incorrect. Not every news provider carries every group.

--
If at first you don't succeed, you're not cut out for skydiving

"J. Clarke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> I went from IBM (yeah, Big Blue IBM) to SBC in order to get DSL and found
> that the number of groups carried and the scroll rate were much inferior
> with SBC. That's when I started using Newsguy.
>

Just migrated from earthlink to alltel myself, in order to get DSL, and
found that alltel carries a lot more groups than earthlink did. It's too
soon for me to know about retention rates but then again for archived stuff
I find myself a google anyway, so retention beyond a few days doesn't really
matter to me.
--

-Mike-
[email protected]

[email protected] writes:
>I'm using Google on the road via a browser from my hotel. I use
>earthlink at home for newsgroups. I know what you're talking about.
>By the way, you don't have to show an earthlink address to access
>earthlink newsgroups through an earthlink server on an earthlink
>network. You wouldn't know I was using earthlink unless I told you.
>Bob
>

Path: header? Surely you can't control its content...

scott

"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Pounds on Wood wrote:
> > I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just
cannot
> > get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>
>
> I don't know that I agree. I've had pretty good luck with Road Runner for
many
> years. There is the occasional hiccup but it's the exception rather than
the
> rule.


Do you really think so? I find that RR sucks. When I lived in NJ, I was
with Comcast and they used Giga-News and even though I had a 1 gig download
limit (unless I paid extra), the news servers held the posts for many days
and even weeks. Here with RR, even the text groups lose posts after only a
day or two and forget about the binaries.

--
If at first you don't succeed, you're not cut out for skydiving

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 14:05:13 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

Nope, I am actually using Forte Agent Ver. 1.32 (not exactly, 1997 version). I
patched it to read "Mozilla 3.0". I have not tried patching Forte Agent Ver 2.

>On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 23:07:15 GMT, [email protected] (Charles Max) wrote:
>
>>On 24 Jan 2005 20:21:29 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>>
>>Why not try this post. Beside posting from news.individual.net. What
>>newsreader am I using,
>
>Newsreader: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95;1)

"Lee Michaels" <leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
> I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
> 250,000 posts to it.
>
> And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
> these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.
>
> Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze
products
> (work computer and all).
>

Use the "catch up" feature. It's in the Edit menu.

--

-Mike-
[email protected]

Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:
> Pounds on Wood wrote:
>
>>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>
>
>
> I don't know that I agree. I've had pretty good luck with Road Runner for many
> years. There is the occasional hiccup but it's the exception rather than the
> rule.

Same with SBC, here in CT. Other parts of the country may vary.

Barry

"Tim Douglass" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 15:09:16 -0500, "Mike Marlow"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >For the most part - very similar to the way Outlook Express works.
>
> It's obviously improved a lot over the last couple of versions. I
> won't use it for anything because it is incredibly difficult to
> configure or adjust. It seems like every time a friend of mine has
> e-mail trouble with it the only solution (suggested by MS, no less) is
> it un-install and re-install - no, not OE, Windows XP entirely! There
> is no way to do an un-install on *just* OE! It always leaves too many
> droppings behind to get a clean re-install. My solution is to just
> junk it as best I can and install Eudora. The free version of Eudora
> works as well as OE and the sponsored version is significantly better
> - and they can both be tweaked and fixed if needed.

Indeed - Microsoft's standard reply of uninstall and reinstall is very
frustrating. Even more so when most of the time that is not even necessary.
It gives their software a bigger blackeye image that it rightfully deserves,
and it rightfully deserves quite a bad rap in some respects.

>
> Ah hell - I'm getting carried away, aren't I?
>

S'what? Everyone's entitled to get a little carried away once in a while.
--

-Mike-
[email protected]

Yeah, I'm with you on that. It's almost impossible to complete multi-part
binary files on RR.

--
Jeff P.

"A ship carrying blue paint collided with a ship carrying red paint. The
crew are believed to be marooned."

Check out my woodshop at: www.sawdustcentral.com


"TBone" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "Mortimer Schnerd, RN" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
> news:[email protected]...
> > Pounds on Wood wrote:
> > > I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just
> cannot
> > > get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
> >
> >
> > I don't know that I agree. I've had pretty good luck with Road Runner
for
> many
> > years. There is the occasional hiccup but it's the exception rather
than
> the
> > rule.
>
>
> Do you really think so? I find that RR sucks. When I lived in NJ, I was
> with Comcast and they used Giga-News and even though I had a 1 gig
download
> limit (unless I paid extra), the news servers held the posts for many days
> and even weeks. Here with RR, even the text groups lose posts after only
a
> day or two and forget about the binaries.
>
> --
> If at first you don't succeed, you're not cut out for skydiving
>
>

"Pounds on Wood" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> I see very little offensive stuff with Supernews. If they could just
> filter the trolls ...

Supernews does filter the worst of the trolls. The serious trolls,
the ones who's purpose is to disrupt the group, almost invariably
crosspost to AUK, the nose, the flonk, etc. Supernews does not allow
crossposts to those groups, which has the effect of blocking the
trolls.

The lesser trolls, who are fixated on a particular subject or
poster and stick with one group, aren't as easy to filter.

John

[email protected] (Scott Lurndal) wrote in news:K2xJd.14843$wZ2.12133
@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com:

> Path: header? Surely you can't control its content...

There are ways to pre-load the path, which can obscure the source.
Some but not all servers prevent that.

John

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 23:21:24 -0000, [email protected] (Robert Bonomi)
wrote:

>In article <[email protected]>,
>TWS <[email protected]> wrote:
>>On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:00:09 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
>><[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
>>>ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
>>>used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
>>>or so.
>>>
>>>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>>>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>>I checked the Supernews site and they claim to do a great job removing
>>spam. Do you think this is the case?
>
>SuperNews is widely regarded as the _best_in_the_business_ at 'despamming'
>their newsfeed. And one of the top-tier news providers, on any basis of
>consideration.
>
>I just changed ISPs. and one of my primary considerations was that the ISP
>provided "news" from SuperNews.
>
If your ISP doesn't carry Supernews try
http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php

There is no better news server than this one and it's only $2.95 a month.

On Monday 31 Jan 2005 5:00 am, Tim Douglass scribbled:

> On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:01:33 +0000, Luigi Zanasi <[email protected]>
> wrote:

>>Can't you export (i.e. one of the "Print" choices in my Quicken 2002)
>>to a Lotus *.prn (i.e. Comma Delimited Format) and then import into
>>Excel. That's what I do. Or, maybe Quickbooks doesn't do that?
>
> You can only export into comma delimited format, which doesn't exactly
> do the same thing as dropping it into a fully formatted Excel
> spreadsheet.

Point taken. I see now what you are trying to do.

--
Luigi
Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/humour.html
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/antifaq.html

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 23:07:15 GMT, [email protected] (Charles Max) wrote:

>On 24 Jan 2005 20:21:29 -0800, [email protected] wrote:
>
>Why not try this post. Beside posting from news.individual.net. What
>newsreader am I using,

Newsreader: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95;1)

Pounds on Wood <[email protected]> wrote:
>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.

Try panix (www.panix.com).

Old Nick wrote:

> On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
> vaguely proposed a theory
> ......and in reply I say!:
>
> remove ns from my header address to reply via email
>
> I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....
>
> I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
> they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
> right, but you may be from here on!" and left.

The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they get
from their upstream provider.

There isn't anything to "fix".

> But my point is that the ngs seems to be a very little-used resource
> on the Web. My old ISP has ten of thousands of customers, and they
> said they had maybe 50 people using the groups on any sort of regular
> basis.

Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and I
only hold posts on my workstation for a week.

>>Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
>>2005".
>>
>>Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
>>more rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I
>>have other chores.
>>
>>Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>>
>>Charlie Self
>>"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
>>some kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri,
>>November 2, 2000

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

B a r r y wrote:

> Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:
>> Pounds on Wood wrote:
>>
>>>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just
>>>cannot get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>>
>>
>>
>> I don't know that I agree. I've had pretty good luck with Road Runner
>> for many
>> years. There is the occasional hiccup but it's the exception rather than
>> the rule.
>
> Same with SBC, here in CT. Other parts of the country may vary.

I went from IBM (yeah, Big Blue IBM) to SBC in order to get DSL and found
that the number of groups carried and the scroll rate were much inferior
with SBC. That's when I started using Newsguy.
>
> Barry

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

TBone wrote:

>
>
> "J. Clarke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Old Nick wrote:
>>
>> > On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
>> > vaguely proposed a theory
>> > ......and in reply I say!:
>> >
>> > remove ns from my header address to reply via email
>> >
>> > I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....
>> >
>> > I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
>> > they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
>> > right, but you may be from here on!" and left.
>>
>> The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
>> their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they
> get
>> from their upstream provider.
>
>
> This is incorrect. Not every news provider carries every group.

No provider carries every group and no group is carried by every provider.
However the content of a given group is, aside from local filtration and
vagaries of propagation, the same for all.


--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Old Nick wrote:

> On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:04:15 -0500, "J. Clarke"
> <[email protected]> vaguely proposed a theory
> ......and in reply I say!:
>
> remove ns from my header address to reply via email
>
>>Old Nick wrote:
>>
>>> On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
>>> vaguely proposed a theory
>>> ......and in reply I say!:
>>>
>>> remove ns from my header address to reply via email
>>>
>>> I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....
>>>
>>> I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
>>> they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
>>> right, but you may be from here on!" and left.
>>
>>The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
>>their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they
>>get from their upstream provider.
>>
> What's also different is if their server allows me to pick up news
> messages. If it was amatter of tyhow lomg it held messages, then the
> answer is "not at all".

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

>>There isn't anything to "fix".
>>
>
> Yes there is. I could not get news messages from one ISP's server.
> Their database of news was munged. They were not going to fix it.

That seems odd.

>>> But my point is that the ngs seems to be a very little-used resource
>>> on the Web. My old ISP has ten of thousands of customers, and they
>>> said they had maybe 50 people using the groups on any sort of regular
>>> basis.
>>
>>Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and
>>I only hold posts on my workstation for a week.
>
> Yep. Sure. I see about 100+ entries every day. But that's from the
> whole world's use of that NG, and IME this is a pretty active ng. In
> the context of the total trafic through my ISP it is peanuts.

However "total traffic" is a meaningless measure. One big graphic generates
more traffic than a thousand USENET posts.

> _They_ said that they had less than 50 users. They have 10,000
> customers. Not my words.

Which may mean that USENET is unpopular or may mean that 9951 of those
10,000 got disgusted with them and went to Newsguy or one of the other
dedicated USENET hosts, of which there are many.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Tim Douglass wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:24:15 -0500, "J. Clarke"
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>No provider carries every group and no group is carried by every provider.
>>However the content of a given group is, aside from local filtration and
>>vagaries of propagation, the same for all.
>
> Actually there probably are several thousand of the core groups that
> are carried on every (or close enough) news provider.

Nope. There are many specialized providers out there. Microsoft for
example has their own servers for their support groups that carry _only_
those groups and those groups are not generally available elsewhere. The
same for Novell and a number of other larger software and hardware vendors.

If you're talking about the independent providers and the ISPs then yes,
there's large overlap.

> You will only
> see the groups your provider carries.

Which is one reason to use multiple providers.

> You will also possibly not see
> articles from some servers because of the way server peering works.

Which comes under the heading of "vagaries of propagation".

> Most major servers are pretty well linked, but some of the little ones
> don't get nearly as good a coverage.
>
> Tim Douglass
>
> http://www.DouglassClan.com

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Charlie,

If somebody hasn't already suggested it, try USADataNet
(http://mydatanet.com/ ). You may already be using their unlimited long
distance service. Several family members are using them and we have it the
family camp in the summer. Great service so far and I haven't heard anyone
say anything except good things about their dial-up service.

Bob S.



"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
2005".
>
> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
more
> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
other
> chores.
>
> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>
> Charlie Self
> "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
some
> kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November
2,
> 2000

"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
2005".
>

Nuthin' but porn on 'em anyway!
Or - so I'm *told*!

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:01:33 +0000, Luigi Zanasi <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On Saturday 29 Jan 2005 9:32 pm, Tim Douglass scribbled:
>
>> Currently, in my
>> opinion, MS runs second to only Intuit in terms of having idiots
>> designing and developing products. Both have always been that way but
>> have somehow managed to gain near-monopoly status anyway. Now they
>> seem to be in bed together - I was just trying to export data from
>> QuickBooks into Excel, but I can't do it because QB will only export
>> to Excel if Excel is installed on the same computer as QB. I need to
>> export then ship via e-mail to the another system with Excel, but I
>> can't. It won't even create any type of spreadsheet file, but only
>> export to a running copy of Excel on the local system. Stupid farging
>> incestuous relationships between brain-damaged and myopic programmers!
>> Feh! I spit on their packaging! May...
>
>Can't you export (i.e. one of the "Print" choices in my Quicken 2002) to
>a Lotus *.prn (i.e. Comma Delimited Format) and then import into Excel.
>That's what I do. Or, maybe Quickbooks doesn't do that?

You can only export into comma delimited format, which doesn't exactly
do the same thing as dropping it into a fully formatted Excel
spreadsheet.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:00:09 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
<[email protected]> wrote:

Supernews is supergood. My ISP now using UseNetServer. Not bad but having
problems, during the last few months.

>
>
>"Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
>news:[email protected]...
>> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
>2005".
>>
>> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
>more
>> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
>other
>> chores.
>>
>> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>>
>> Charlie Self
>> "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
>some
>> kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November
>2,
>> 2000
>
>
>Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
>ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
>used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
>or so.
>
>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.

On Saturday 29 Jan 2005 9:32 pm, Tim Douglass scribbled:

> Currently, in my
> opinion, MS runs second to only Intuit in terms of having idiots
> designing and developing products. Both have always been that way but
> have somehow managed to gain near-monopoly status anyway. Now they
> seem to be in bed together - I was just trying to export data from
> QuickBooks into Excel, but I can't do it because QB will only export
> to Excel if Excel is installed on the same computer as QB. I need to
> export then ship via e-mail to the another system with Excel, but I
> can't. It won't even create any type of spreadsheet file, but only
> export to a running copy of Excel on the local system. Stupid farging
> incestuous relationships between brain-damaged and myopic programmers!
> Feh! I spit on their packaging! May...

Can't you export (i.e. one of the "Print" choices in my Quicken 2002) to
a Lotus *.prn (i.e. Comma Delimited Format) and then import into Excel.
That's what I do. Or, maybe Quickbooks doesn't do that?

--
Luigi
Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/humour.html
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/antifaq.html

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 11:19:02 -0800, Tim Douglass <[email protected]>
wrote:

After you learn how to use Forte Agent or Free Agent, it's so simple. You can
reconfigures it to your liking. I have since upgrade to Version2. I believe
Forte Agent are Beta testing an upgrade to multi servers capability.

My initial $29 investment and another $15 late last year have gave me so much
pleasure in many ngs. Never regret it.

>Agent and Free Agent will download them all, but the catch-up command
>is the way to go in either case, you really don't need to download all
>the old headers - and certainly not all the old articles, which I
>think is what MS wants to do. One benefit to Agent is that all you
>download is the headers, then you select which articles to retrieve.
>By the time my filters are done I only have to see about 2/3 of the
>headers in the group. Another 10% or so get hit with ignores and
>disappear forever from my sight. Of the rest some are being watched,
>so I have set it to retrieve those articles automatically, others I
>just skim down the list and see if there is anything I want to read.
>If so a quick double click gets the article - if it is an interesting
>thread I mark it for watching and download the rest of the current
>posts in that thread. If not, I just leave it alone and when I hit the
>end of the group I mark all messages read. Next time I do the same. It
>is amazing to see how quickly you can trim 300+ new messages down to
>the 30 or so you want to read.
>
>Tim Douglass

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:01:33 +0000, Luigi Zanasi <[email protected]> wrote:

>On Saturday 29 Jan 2005 9:32 pm, Tim Douglass scribbled:
>
>> Currently, in my
>> opinion, MS runs second to only Intuit in terms of having idiots
>> designing and developing products. Both have always been that way but
>> have somehow managed to gain near-monopoly status anyway. Now they
>> seem to be in bed together - I was just trying to export data from
>> QuickBooks into Excel, but I can't do it because QB will only export
>> to Excel if Excel is installed on the same computer as QB. I need to
>> export then ship via e-mail to the another system with Excel, but I
>> can't. It won't even create any type of spreadsheet file, but only
>> export to a running copy of Excel on the local system. Stupid farging
>> incestuous relationships between brain-damaged and myopic programmers!
>> Feh! I spit on their packaging! May...
>
>Can't you export (i.e. one of the "Print" choices in my Quicken 2002) to
>a Lotus *.prn (i.e. Comma Delimited Format) and then import into Excel.
>That's what I do. Or, maybe Quickbooks doesn't do that?


Quicken 2002, eh? If you love Tim's problem, you are gonna love the fact
that Intuit has decided that your version is about to be "sunsetted" and
that you will no longer be able to download financial data from your
financial institutions without upgrading to one of their more ad-laden,
anti-piracy, phone-home new versions. In the letter they sent out, they
indicated the reason for this (I love the incestous logic in this
statement): "The Quicken team is committed to delivering the best possible
products, service and security to our customers. Retirement of online
services for older Quicken versions lets us focus our resources on
supporting our more current products, which are used by the mjority of
Quicken customers" ... i.e, since we aren't supporting our old products
and are making people migrate to the new products, the majority of our
customers are using our new products -- gee, imagine that.

Since I don't download from my financial institutions, this doesn't
really do anything for me other than, in similar manner to Intuit's
TurboTax product activation fiasco of a few years ago, motivate me to find
a competitive product to which I'll migrate when I have to retire my
current Quicken product when I replace my computer or OS in a few years.
The TurboTax fiasco was apparently a boon to TaxCut, it'll be interesting
to see if there are any financial program products out there that will take
advantage of this situation and benefit from the Quicken product retirement
plan.




+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety

Army General Richard Cody

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Ah ... but Tom ... do you remember when GE Telenet was bought out by
CompuServe? Those were the days!


Rick

P.S. Really enjoyed the movie.

Is the Pointy Stick II (The Sequel) coming out soon?



"Tom Watson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On 24 Jan 2005 17:16:40 -0800, "Dave Hall" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
> >as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
> >is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
> >Dave Hall
>
>
> sigh...
>
> watson - who remembers when having a low numbered CompuServe account
> had a certain amount of cachet...
>
>
> tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
> http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1 (webpage)

On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
vaguely proposed a theory
......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....

I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
right, but you may be from here on!" and left.

But my point is that the ngs seems to be a very little-used resource
on the Web. My old ISP has ten of thousands of customers, and they
said they had maybe 50 people using the groups on any sort of regular
basis.

>Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early 2005".
>
>Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little more
>rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have other
>chores.
>
>Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>
>Charlie Self
>"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some
>kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November 2,
>2000

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 21:26:47 GMT, TWS <[email protected]> wrote:

>I checked the Supernews site and they claim to do a great job removing
>spam. Do you think this is the case?

Yes - excellent.

You don't _need_ to pay for a Supernews feed. There are still some
free feeds around with good service. If you go for a text-only server,
you often get a better deal (running Usenet is one thing, running a
binaries feed is _quite_ another).

But if you're happy to pay the few bucks a month, then Supernews is
about the best around.

On 24 Jan 2005 17:01:41 -0800, [email protected] wrote:

>I get excellent service through earthlink.

You also get killfiled. Many people, myself included, have kf'ed
earthlink traffic on sight for years now. Far too much spam and
garbage.

But I notice you aren't using earthlink anyway, you're using Google.
We're talking Usenet providers here, not local-loop ISPs.

On 24 Jan 2005 17:16:40 -0800, "Dave Hall" <[email protected]> wrote:

>What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
>as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
>is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
>Dave Hall


sigh...

watson - who remembers when having a low numbered CompuServe account
had a certain amount of cachet...


tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1 (webpage)

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 15:09:16 -0500, "Mike Marlow"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>For the most part - very similar to the way Outlook Express works.

It's obviously improved a lot over the last couple of versions. I
won't use it for anything because it is incredibly difficult to
configure or adjust. It seems like every time a friend of mine has
e-mail trouble with it the only solution (suggested by MS, no less) is
it un-install and re-install - no, not OE, Windows XP entirely! There
is no way to do an un-install on *just* OE! It always leaves too many
droppings behind to get a clean re-install. My solution is to just
junk it as best I can and install Eudora. The free version of Eudora
works as well as OE and the sponsored version is significantly better
- and they can both be tweaked and fixed if needed.

Microsoft still seems to view software as stuff you play with on your
computer, they don't get the idea that this stuff needs to work day in
and day out and be readily fixed if it has a problem. Currently, in my
opinion, MS runs second to only Intuit in terms of having idiots
designing and developing products. Both have always been that way but
have somehow managed to gain near-monopoly status anyway. Now they
seem to be in bed together - I was just trying to export data from
QuickBooks into Excel, but I can't do it because QB will only export
to Excel if Excel is installed on the same computer as QB. I need to
export then ship via e-mail to the another system with Excel, but I
can't. It won't even create any type of spreadsheet file, but only
export to a running copy of Excel on the local system. Stupid farging
incestuous relationships between brain-damaged and myopic programmers!
Feh! I spit on their packaging! May...

Ah hell - I'm getting carried away, aren't I?

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:22:56 -0500, "J. Clarke"
<[email protected]> vaguely proposed a theory
......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

>>>The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
>>>their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they
>>>get from their upstream provider.
>>>
>> What's also different is if their server allows me to pick up news
>> messages. If it was amatter of tyhow lomg it held messages, then the
>> answer is "not at all".
>
>I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

You said that the only difference was how long their particular server
holds messages and the quality of the feed they get from their
upstream provider. As far as I could tell, the "place where they held
their messages" was stuffed and they were not fixing it. Blunt enough?

>
>>>There isn't anything to "fix".
>>>
>>
>> Yes there is. I could not get news messages from one ISP's server.
>> Their database of news was munged. They were not going to fix it.
>
>That seems odd.

See above. They have to store it somewhere. The storage was kaput,
munged, distorted, whatever.

>> Yep. Sure. I see about 100+ entries every day. But that's from the
>> whole world's use of that NG, and IME this is a pretty active ng. In
>> the context of the total trafic through my ISP it is peanuts.
>
>However "total traffic" is a meaningless measure. One big graphic generates
>more traffic than a thousand USENET posts.
>
>> _They_ said that they had less than 50 users. They have 10,000
>> customers. Not my words.
>
>Which may mean that USENET is unpopular or may mean that 9951 of those
>10,000 got disgusted with them and went to Newsguy or one of the other
>dedicated USENET hosts, of which there are many.

no. their newsfeed had been great until it collapsed. look. you see
8000 posts in a week, you said? i dont think the wreck gets 1000 a
day, but however, those 800 posts come FROM THE WHOLE WORLD. the total
posts are a minor fraction of both traffic and number of users/hits
ACCORDING TO THE ISPs, not me!

nuff. it was their words not mine. given that they were losing my
custom because of it, and did not give a damn enough to fix it and yet
are doing very well, WTF should i argue. the number of people leaving
because of news feed was stuff all.

"Charlie Self" wrote in message

> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
more
> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
other
> chores.

Giganews is an excellent source of usenet. Stay away from Meganetnews, if
they're still around ... lousy servers and an attitude that the customer is
always wrong.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 11/06/04

"Pounds on Wood" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
>
> "Charlie Self" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Just got an AOL pop-up message: they're dumping Newsgroups in "early
> 2005".
>>
>> Sweet sufferin' sumpin or other. I guess I head for another ISP a little
> more
>> rapidly than I had planned. Like Wednesday. I'd do it today, but I have
> other
>> chores.
>>
>> Bless 'em all. And then they wonder why they lose customers.
>>
>> Charlie Self
>> "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's
> some
>> kind of federal program." George W. Bush, St. Charles, Missouri, November
> 2,
>> 2000
>
>
> Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
> ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
> used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6
> months
> or so.
>
> I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just
> cannot
> get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.
>
> --
> ********
> Bill Pounds
> http://www.billpounds.com
>
>

Sure you can, I have Comcast and they give you a 2gig/month account with
GigaNews, which has great retention and completeness..

Rich

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:27:41 -0600, Prometheus
<[email protected]> wrote:

>I've had both Supernews (when charter high-speed was offering it as
>the news server) and Giganews.

I've had all three. Supernews (from my ISP), Giganews (from my ISP)
and finally Supernews (paid).

Paid Supernews is by far the best. Bundled Supernews wasn't bad, but
it was clearly being heavily throttled. I found bundled Giganews
better for speed, but unreliable in too many other ways.

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 05:18:11 -0500, "Lee Michaels"
<leemichaels*nadaspam*@comcast.net> wrote:

>I signed up recently with giganews (from comcast) and this newsgroup had
>250,000 posts to it.
>
>And since MS IE can only load a thousand at a time, I needed to download
>these posts 250 times to clear out the back posts.
>
>Anybody know of a quicker way to do this? I am stuck with windoze products
>(work computer and all).

Agent and Free Agent will download them all, but the catch-up command
is the way to go in either case, you really don't need to download all
the old headers - and certainly not all the old articles, which I
think is what MS wants to do. One benefit to Agent is that all you
download is the headers, then you select which articles to retrieve.
By the time my filters are done I only have to see about 2/3 of the
headers in the group. Another 10% or so get hit with ignores and
disappear forever from my sight. Of the rest some are being watched,
so I have set it to retrieve those articles automatically, others I
just skim down the list and see if there is anything I want to read.
If so a quick double click gets the article - if it is an interesting
thread I mark it for watching and download the rest of the current
posts in that thread. If not, I just leave it alone and when I hit the
end of the group I mark all messages read. Next time I do the same. It
is amazing to see how quickly you can trim 300+ new messages down to
the 30 or so you want to read.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com

On Monday 31 Jan 2005 3:37 am, Mark & Juanita scribbled:

> Quicken 2002, eh? If you love Tim's problem, you are gonna love the
> fact
> that Intuit has decided that your version is about to be "sunsetted"
> and that you will no longer be able to download financial data from
> your financial institutions without upgrading to one of their more
> ad-laden,
> anti-piracy, phone-home new versions.

<snip of Qwicked BS & Mark's true and appropriate reaction>

> Since I don't download from my financial institutions, this doesn't
> really do anything for me other than, in similar manner to Intuit's
> TurboTax product activation fiasco of a few years ago, motivate me to
> find a competitive product to which I'll migrate when I have to retire
> my current Quicken product when I replace my computer or OS in a few
> years.
<snip>
I've been using Qwicked since 1991, when it was a nice, innovative
little accounting program, where I didn't have to bother my pretty
little head with credits and debits. I especially appreciated the fact
that accountants hate it. It was an nice intuitive program that served
both my personal & business needs (2 home-based professional
businesses, two rental properties, all hopelessly intertwined with
personal spending), unlike regular accounting programs (and most
accountants) that want your business to be structured to serve the
accounting system rather than vice-versa.

Like you, I don't download from my financial institutions, so it doesn't
matter to me. I never did see the point in downloading transactions, I
want to enter them by hand and then check them against the bank/credit
card statement. And I don't need most of the gizmos Quicken keeps
adding to the program, turning it into bloatware.

I've seriously considered moving everything to GNUCash, but it is
missing one fundamental feature I need: what Qwicked calls "classes" or
what is usually known as profit centres. I need to split, for example,
my not inconsiderable fuel oil bill into four (my business portion,
GST, my spouse's business, and personal use). And I need to report on it
quarterly.

Problem with the whole Linux thing, which I otherwise find extremely
attractive for all kinds of reasons (note newsreader), is that it's like
buying a really cheap but top quality router, which unfortunately only
comes with a metric collet. And I have to match profiles with work that
others are doing.

Also, I like the fact I can go back and change transactions without
entering time consuming and confusing adjustments: I have done that
on numerous occasions as my business needs changed or I thought of
better ways of doing things or realized I made a mistake.

So if anyone has a better idea about what we could use to replace
Quicken let us know.

--
Luigi
Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/humour.html
www.yukonomics.ca/wooddorking/antifaq.html

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 19:30:43 -0600, WD <[email protected]> wrote:

>On 24 Jan 2005 17:16:40 -0800, "Dave Hall" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>The best newsreader, Forte Agent. Been using it since 95's. Try it for free
>
>http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

Forte also has the best news server around.
http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php
Only $2.95 a month.

>
>>What do people recommend for a good newsreader that is as easy to use
>>as AOL/Compuserve? While Compuserve /AOL may lose messages, the reader
>>is very easy and intuitive to me. MUCH better than Outlook Express.
>>Dave Hall
>

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005 00:04:15 -0500, "J. Clarke"
<[email protected]> vaguely proposed a theory
......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

>Old Nick wrote:
>
>> On 24 Jan 2005 20:32:38 GMT, [email protected] (Charlie Self)
>> vaguely proposed a theory
>> ......and in reply I say!:
>>
>> remove ns from my header address to reply via email
>>
>> I agree it's sad, and seems silly. But....
>>
>> I just changed ISPs because the old one's ngs were moribund. They said
>> they were not fixing them. Nobody used them. I said "Well you weren't
>> right, but you may be from here on!" and left.
>
>The newsgroups are the same for everybody. What's different is how long
>their particular server holds messages and the quality of the feed they get
>from their upstream provider.
>
What's also different is if their server allows me to pick up news
messages. If it was amatter of tyhow lomg it held messages, then the
answer is "not at all".

>There isn't anything to "fix".
>

Yes there is. I could not get news messages from one ISP's server.
Their database of news was munged. They were not going to fix it.


>> But my point is that the ngs seems to be a very little-used resource
>> on the Web. My old ISP has ten of thousands of customers, and they
>> said they had maybe 50 people using the groups on any sort of regular
>> basis.
>
>Dunno about that--right now I'm showing 8000 posts on the wreck alone and I
>only hold posts on my workstation for a week.

Yep. Sure. I see about 100+ entries every day. But that's from the
whole world's use of that NG, and IME this is a pretty active ng. In
the context of the total trafic through my ISP it is peanuts.

_They_ said that they had less than 50 users. They have 10,000
customers. Not my words.

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:00:09 -0800, "Pounds on Wood"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>Charlie, I recently tried a number of Usenet providers, independent of my
>ISP. I suggest you check Supernews.com. I tried Valuenews and Teranews,
>used them for a while, but Supernews has been flawless for the last 6 months
>or so.

I've had both Supernews (when charter high-speed was offering it as
the news server) and Giganews. While Supernews was nothing to sneeze
at, Giganews has them beat cold as far as retension rates and number
of groups goes. Bear in mind that I was accessing Supernews through
my ISP, but I also found that Giganews is faster as well.

>I can't fault you for dumping AOL, but the sad truth is that you just cannot
>get good usenet feed from an ISP these days.

I applaud you for dumping AOL! There's nothing to recommand that
group of bozos.

Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:24:15 -0500, "J. Clarke"
<[email protected]> wrote:

>No provider carries every group and no group is carried by every provider.
>However the content of a given group is, aside from local filtration and
>vagaries of propagation, the same for all.

Actually there probably are several thousand of the core groups that
are carried on every (or close enough) news provider. You will only
see the groups your provider carries. You will also possibly not see
articles from some servers because of the way server peering works.
Most major servers are pretty well linked, but some of the little ones
don't get nearly as good a coverage.

Tim Douglass

http://www.DouglassClan.com