I just got a notice that my ISP, AT&T, will no longer provide usenet
access after July 15.

Any further info on this??

Thanks!

On Jun 17, 1:15*pm, Peter Creasey > wrote:
> I just got a notice that my ISP, AT&T, will no longer provide usenet
> access after July 15.
>
> Any further info on this??
>
> Thanks!

Lots of ISPs have done so. When posting about a Ridge, I realized I we
hadn't heard from Ed Rasimus in a while, and emailed him. He's mainly
stopped posting due to that (he's well by the way).

Choices include google groups, motzarella (though I just got notice
they're doing a switch, haven't closely read yet), etc

DaleW wrote:
> Lots of ISPs have done so.

Dale, Isn't this effectively sounding the death knell of usenets?

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:42:35 -0500, Peter Creasey
> wrote:

>DaleW wrote:
>> Lots of ISPs have done so.
>
>Dale, Isn't this effectively sounding the death knell of usenets?

This has been happening worldwide. It doesn't mean the end of usenet
groups due to the manner in which Google has taken over the Deja
archives as Google Groups &c.

For those who find the noise on Google Groups too much, there are free
usenet servers and also some subscription ones. Many UK ISPs don't
offer Usenet and when mine did I transferred over to

http://news.individual.net

This is a German server based at the Free University of Berlin and
costs EUR 10 per annum. I've never had any problems with it. It has
far less spam than in Google Groups.

A list of free and commercial servers can be found at

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Feed_Services/

James

Peter Creasey wrote:
> DaleW wrote:
>> Lots of ISPs have done so.
>
> Dale, Isn't this effectively sounding the death knell of usenets?
>

Hey, Peter, funny seeing your name here. No, "Usenet" newsgroups
predate most ISPs and may very well outlive most of the current ones.
What will happen is that those people who care about such things will
transition to pay services such as Giganews, Highwinds or Supernews, or
to free newservers. Here's a short list of those latter, since they all
carry text groups like alt.food.wine:

nntp.aioe.org
news.eternal-september.org (the successor to Motzarella)
drooper.mixmin.net
news.individual.net
news.x-privat.org

For more details, see:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.f...e2a0633f0f5597

HTH
Mark Lipton

--
alt.food.wine FAQ: http://winefaq.cwdjr.net

>news.individual.net

No longer free, but very reasonably priced, and gives a good service.
I've been with them for quite a few years, starting when my ISPs
newservers went through a bad patch of unreliability. No binaries I
believe, but that does not bother me.

--
Steve Slatcher
http://pobox.com/~steve.slatcher

On Jun 17, 12:15*pm, Peter Creasey > wrote:
> I just got a notice that my ISP, AT&T, will no longer provide usenet
> access after July 15.
>
> Any further info on this??

I have ATT/Yahoo DSL Elite DSL service, and was not even aware ATT
still supported Usenet groups. MSN quit many years ago as well as well
as AOL and many others. Now Google groups takes up much of the slack
and is free and quite easy to use. For diehard admirers of Usenet,
there are several free and pay news servers that will let you
configure download of Usenet groups in minute detail. I wish the whole
Usenet group structure would be discarded, as it is a relic of the old
days even before there were isps. The speed of service is now so great
and many computers are on all of the time, so I see little point in
downloading Usenet or many other groups to my computer. Why would one
even want to configure Usenet posts to lock out seeing posts from
someone, from some isp etc? This reminds me of the ostrich sticking
his/her head in the sand when a lion approaches. Just because you can
not see it does not mean it is not there. If a group has too many
posts useless to me, I usually move on to another group. Then there
are the spam and troll problems, etc on Usenet. I find that many of
the younger generation have little use for Usenet and are much more at
home posting at a php bulletin board. One can easily ban posters that
troll and post gross spam. One can delete posts that are untrue. If
this is overdone, some members are likely to migrate somewhere else or
start their own PHP BB. It is so easy to set up a PHP BB now. I likely
could set up a group within a short time as templates are in place on
the server I use. However, I do not have the time or patience to
manage any sort of group.

In article >, Steve Slatcher
> writes
>
>>news.individual.net
>
>No longer free, but very reasonably priced, and gives a good service.
>I've been with them for quite a few years, starting when my ISPs
>newservers went through a bad patch of unreliability. No binaries I
>believe, but that does not bother me.
>

I also switched to them about a year ago, and agree with others that
they seem reliable and reasonably priced.


--
---
Sheila Page

Mark Lipton wrote:
> What will happen is that those people who care about such things will
> transition to pay services such as Giganews, Highwinds or Supernews, or
> to free newservers.

Mark,

I like to peek in on newsnet periodically but I really don't have time
to start trying to make special arrangements.

It is sad what is happening to old-time venues e.g. Compuserve, newsnet,
etc.

.. . . . . Pete

Peter Creasey wrote:

> Mark,
>
> I like to peek in on newsnet periodically but I really don't have time
> to start trying to make special arrangements.
>
> It is sad what is happening to old-time venues e.g. Compuserve, newsnet,

Well, Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL got caught by developments beyond
their control (and business model) but newsgroups soldier on. In many
ways, it's a return to a bygone era when only the cognoscenti knew how
to access them. FWIW, since it looks like you use SeaMonkey,
reconfiguring it to use a new server for newsgroups is about a 5 minute
process.

Mark Lipton

--
alt.food.wine FAQ: http://winefaq.cwdjr.net

On Jun 17, 5:36*pm, Peter Creasey > wrote:

> I like to peek in on newsnet periodically but I really don't have time
> to start trying to make special arrangements.

All you have to do to read posts for this group is go to
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.food.wine/topics and bookmark that
page. That is all there is to reading this group through Google
groups. If you are there and decide you want to post, you have to sign
up with Google Groups which requires little more than giving them a
working e-mail address and password. This is about as simple as it
gets. If you find you do not like Google groups, some suggestions made
by others are not too difficult and time consuming unless you are
extremely fussy about how you configure your preferences.

Mark Lipton wrote:
> since it looks like you use SeaMonkey,
> reconfiguring it to use a new server for newsgroups is about a 5 minute
> process.

Mark,

If you provide me access to an easy and free method of using SeaMonkey
to access newsgroups with a new server, I will look into it.

I'm not lazy, but neither am I anxious to spend a lot of time/effort to
start reconfiguring my PCs.

.. . . . Pete

Peter Creasey wrote:

>
> If you provide me access to an easy and free method of using SeaMonkey
> to access newsgroups with a new server, I will look into it.
>
> I'm not lazy, but neither am I anxious to spend a lot of time/effort to
> start reconfiguring my PCs.
>

Perfectly reasonable, Pete. Here's a step-by-step guide to setting
SeaMonkey's newsserver settings, courtesy of the folks at individual.net:

http://news.individual.net/configura...1.4-win-en.php

Of course, you can put *any* server name in there, not just their
example of news.individual.net. Personally, I use news.aioe.org since
my ISP was purchased by Comcast. No registration required, posting OK,
good uptime and reliability. Some of those others are also good, though.

Mark Lipton

--
alt.food.wine FAQ: http://winefaq.cwdjr.net

"Nunya Bidnits" > wrote in message
...
> In ,
> Peter Creasey > typed:
>> DaleW wrote:
>>> Lots of ISPs have done so.
>>
>> Dale, Isn't this effectively sounding the death knell of usenets?
>
> Only if you stop using them.
>
> Down with AT&T... boycott!


Get DSL Extreme. Great ISP and still have newsgroup access!