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AT&T Dropping Usenet Netnews; Low-Cost Alternatives?
franknagy writes "This announcement message has appeared in all the news groups on
the AT&T/SBC News Server: 'Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be
offering access to the Usenet netnews service. If you wish to continue
reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party
vendors.' So what free or low-cost alternatives are available for Netnews and
the NNTP services for clients?"
while only the crotchety remain.
It's not nice to talk about someone like that when I'm^Wthey are around ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I use EasyNews to get my pr0...um...er...oh...make that 'I heard EasyNews is good'.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Want to make it worth it?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
Is there any life after news:alt.slack and news:alt.binaries.slack? Hardly!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Good one, you must be new here.
Sincerely,
AT&T
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I subscribed to a variety of Usenet groups. I used that nice Freeagent software for year. Still do on my Museum PC (Packard Bell running Windows 95 with a tape drive and 128 MB of RAM).
I have a spam filter on my gateway so spam messages vanish.
I haven't gotten a new post in 3 years...
Usenet isn't dying. It's dead with nothing but ghosts left...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
What he meant was:
Kibo can grep all of Usenet for his name much faster using Google.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Fortunately, that would never work here on Slashdot.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
What's top posting?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
It's when you reply to a string of earlier messages and place your reply on top, so that whoever reads will have no idea of the context.
What's top posting?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
Should I do this instead?
It's when you reply to a string of earlier messages and place your reply on top, so that whoever reads will have no idea of the context.
What's top posting?
Let's all go into comp.lang.c and start top posting to threads. They LOVE IT when you do that.
Should I do this instead?
No, no, no. When trolling a programming forum, make damn sure you post in HTML-formatted text. If you can figure out how to include the <blink> tag, you could probably hear their heads explode from halfway around the world.
If not, your best bet is to include code snippets in multiple languages, each using different tab-stops for indentation. Make frequent references in how this would be much easier in Java, unless posting to comp.lang.java, then post on how C# fixed it and is really Java done right.
Oh, and make sure to quote a multi-page question fully and answer only with one sentence. They love that.
Finally, big sigs with ASCII art and geek code blocks. The bigger the better. True masters have sigs bigger than their actual post.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You're probably thinking of Kibo's .sig.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
There are still conversations on Usenet.
There is still pr0n.
There is still a boatload of warez.
There is still a ton of spam.
There are still many, many groups and messages.
There are still plenty of Usenet access providers and willing customers.
There is still plenty of software to access Usenet.
ISPs are still reducing services while raising prices.
So what's new and why is Usenet apparently dead?
mmmm...forbidden donut
No, no, no. When trolling a programming forum, make damn sure you post in HTML-formatted text.
Sigh. Kids today, no imagination, that's the problem...
What I used to do was to have a four-line McQ compatible signature containing lots of Unicode line art. My newsreader would then encode this as Quoted-Printable (which is perfectly normal according to the standard). However, people who had ancient newsreaders that only supported ASCII would see the signature as a long line of =d7=81=43=99=e3=11 sequences.
People would go apoplectic with rage over this, accusing me of things like posting HTML, posting binaries, not having a 80x4 standard signature, etc. And then, when they were absolutely frothing at the mouth, I'd point to the headers of my postings and say: "What, Content-Type: text/plain isn't good enough for you?"
Good times. Good times...
Customer: So, since you cut a portion of my service, will I get a discounted rate?
ATTsaurus: RAAWWRRR...Why, I see your point there, of course we can do something for you!
Customer: ...what? really? Oh, ok, great!
ATTsaurus: Let me enter that into the computer...*pound pound pound*...ok...so...you used 5 megabytes accessing the Usenet server last month, and 9 gigabytes total...that comes to 0.054% off of your bill, or about 4.3 cents! Congratulations!
Customer: ...I hate you guys...
ATTsaurus: RAAWR!!!! *eats you*