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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?"
Low-cost is a subjective term, and it really depends on how much you use it, but Giganews is rock solid. Super fast (I can get 20Mb sustained -- that's my connection max) and over a year retention on binaries.
Now that they're cutting a portion of the service out - do you get a cut on the monthly rate as well?
I use Astraweb as its currently the best unlimited monthly payment going
http://www.news.astraweb.com/specials/kleverig-11.html
$11/mo
SSL
Unlimited downloads
I've never had a problem capping my connection's bandwidth or with the service.
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.
If you actually want to READ and POST text news, then I don't know why anyone would use an NNTP client nowadays. Google Groups is a far superior gateway.
What?? How is the Google groups UI even remotely better at threading, marking, filtering and generally managing long conversations? Compared to even something like Free Agent it's utterly shit!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
It really depends on what you need it for, the best place to go is here: http://www.newsgroupreviews.com/usenet-providers.html
Out of the list I liked binverse.com and usenetserver.com, generally if you go thru the links provided by newsgroupreviews you'll get discounts that may or may not be "obvious" from just going directly to the sites in question.
Well, it is better if you want to get caught easier...
No one is really actively tracing downloads from USENET, not like P2P solutions.
For the original poster, go google "open usenet servers", you'll find a couple of sites that index open usenet servers, and gives stats on them.
I know...I know...first rule of USENET is not to talk about USENET.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
When my isp dropped usenet, I switched to readnews.com. It was something like $7 or $7.50 a month. I created an account, set up automatic billing, switched my news reader to the readnews nntp server, and forgot about it. It's a lot faster than my old ISP's news server ever was, especially when doing mass newsgroup updates, actually making use of the 20 Mbit pipe. They don't appear to do any newsgroup filtering, if you're concerned about that sort of thing.
Of course, I have no connection to readnews.com except as a customer. My first job on a Unix box back in 1982 was as the local usenet administrator, (ah, the days of "B" news and 1200 baud modems...) have always gotten Usenet for free, so it grates to have to pay for it, but I have to admit, the service works flawlessly.
Someone will inevitably point out that you can access news on groups.google.com. That service is excellent for searching for articles, but it fails when you're trying to browse a lot of articles. The interface is just too slow. If you're using usenet as a resource, google groups is fine. If you're actually trying to actively participate in any really effective fashion, you'll need a local news reader and an nntp service.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
http://www.sixxs.net/misc/coolstuff/#newsservers
Public:
news.ipv6.eweka.nl
newszilla6.xs4all.nl
Requires signup:
reader.ipv6.xsnews.nl
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.