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Where Can I Get Free, Read/Post Usenet Access?
Phaedras asks: "G'day. I live in Germany, and have an Internet connection from a simple ISP, no email, webpage or other services included. (It's cheap, of course. You need that in Germany, at our usage costs...) Now I would like to have access to the Usenet, but can't find a free provider out there that will do that. I'm talking something like a webpage where i can call up articles and post back. Surely something like that must exist, and I'd be most grateful if someone could point me to such a provider." After a quick search of the web, I found a couple of lists which list a few servers offering free NNTP access. You might want to check them out. Be aware that Your Milage May Vary with these services.
generally stinks. If it's a good server (lots of groups, decent bandwidth, up-to-date articles) it doesn't take long for the word to get around, the server gets overloaded, the admin realizes that everyone and their brother is using them for a free feed, and the admin shuts off access. ?p? Most of the free feeds that "stick around" don't offer very many newsgroups, and have large lags (days) between when stuff is posted and when it is available/readable.?p? Oh, and free feeds don't have much pr0n either ;)
What the point of using Usenet now a days; it sucks.
One, you can't get good porn on it anymore. All the right wing nazi anti-porn weenies cancel parts of the multi-part postings, so you can never get the whole message/pic.
Two, the noise to signal ratio is so bad with Usenet. You have to read about 100 messages to get just alittle bit of information. That is not worth it to me.
Three, there is so much traffic that you can't keep up with it and there is too many people talking at once. A newsgroup with tens of thousands of readers and posters is too much. Slashdot is becoming the same way. That is why I like the Ask Slashdot that don't show up on the main page. Lots of signal, no noise.
Four, can't find a good free server. I want to get a feed to my home computer, but as someone pointed out, once everyone finds out and the server gets smoothered.
I tell you, the epoche of Usenet was back in 90-94' where there was few noise and lots of signal. You actually knew the people on Usenet. You knew their personality, and you kinda knew what they knew and they did not. Usenet is a big city with too many "faceless" people on it. I like the small and old town Usenet of yester year.
Linux O Muerte!
http://newssearch.pilum.net
What free usenet service can I use from X/Emacs and gnus, not through a web based interface ?
I know there was some elisp floating around that allowed you to search deja through gnus. Does that still work given deja's recent changes ? Is it possible that gnus could use the w3 stuff to interface with one of the web based newsreader/posters ?
And -- here's the big question: if that is possible, can someone hack that interface so that I can browse slashdot from emacs ? Wow. That would be awesome.