Usenet feeds going away
Reid Goldsborough
discontinue its Usenet service, it just announced today. It previously
offered subscribers complimentary newsgroup access through Giganews,
and now it suggests they subscribe directly through Giganews if they
want Usenet access, indicating Giganews has special promotional
pricing for Comcast customers.
I know other ISPs have also dropped Usenet -- AOL in 2005, for
instance. Don't know about others. The reason that seems to always be
given, as now, is that relatively few people access newsgroups,
instead getting their information from other sources. But I suspect
another reason is the increasing spam/signal ratio and the pirated
media that are increasingly being shared through the .binaries
newsgroups.
There are other Usenet providers besides Giganews. Don't know anything
about them (or even if they're all still operational), but Wikipedia
mentions UsenetServer.com, Supernews, and Usenet.com. And you can
access Usenet for free over the Web through Google Groups, though it's
not as versatile as through a Usenet newsreader.
Sign of the times ... changing times. Like the dropping of time and
weather services by the phone companies.
--
Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos
PC
"Reid Goldsborough" <reidgold...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:20f101fa-462f-4a01...@64g2000hsu.googlegroups.com...
> As of October 25, Comcast, the country's second largest ISP, will
> discontinue its Usenet service, it just announced today. It previously
> offered subscribers complimentary newsgroup access through Giganews,
> and now it suggests they subscribe directly through Giganews if they
> want Usenet access, indicating Giganews has special promotional
> pricing for Comcast customers.
>
Yep I got the notice today too. Odd how we don't get a reduction in the
monthly rate since we now are going to get less service.
Honus
It's not odd. They were very careful to state that it was -complimentary-
newsgroup access. I never considered it as such, but what do I know? I'm
just a customer.
mazorj
"Reid Goldsborough" <reidgold...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:20f101fa-462f-4a01...@64g2000hsu.googlegroups.com...
> discontinue its Usenet service, it just announced today. It
> previously
> offered subscribers complimentary newsgroup access through Giganews,
> and now it suggests they subscribe directly through Giganews if they
> want Usenet access, indicating Giganews has special promotional
> pricing for Comcast customers.
>
> I know other ISPs have also dropped Usenet -- AOL in 2005, for
> instance. Don't know about others.
Verizon dropped all but the "Big 8" domains a few months ago. We can
still get the rec.xxx newsgroups because they were incuded in the 8,
but a lot of other ones are history.
>The reason that seems to always be
> given, as now, is that relatively few people access newsgroups,
> instead getting their information from other sources. But I suspect
> another reason is the increasing spam/signal ratio and the pirated
> media that are increasingly being shared through the .binaries
> newsgroups.
The official story was that they all are responding to the NY AG's
crusade against kiddie porn. The fact that they're all using a sledge
hammer instead of a scalpel to cut out the offending sites suggests
financial motives as well. As to binaries traffic, they always have
been a small segment of total use, there are better ways to share
porn, pirated, and legitimate material, and they could have been cut
out along with the porn groups.
> There are other Usenet providers besides Giganews. Don't know
> anything
> about them (or even if they're all still operational), but Wikipedia
> mentions UsenetServer.com, Supernews, and Usenet.com. And you can
> access Usenet for free over the Web through Google Groups, though
> it's
> not as versatile as through a Usenet newsreader.
Depending on the poster, all of these plus other paid services have
been recommended or reviled as alternatives.
> Sign of the times ... changing times. Like the dropping of time and
> weather services by the phone companies.
Not to mention free churchkeys at liquor stores, windshield-and-oil
servicing at gas stations, and live human beings at check-out
counters.
stonej
I think AOL made a big mistake dropping Usenet and maybe it was
coincidence but ever since they did that they
have gone into a big decline in number of subscribers (I think
dropping Usenet probably was at least a contributing factor).
PC
"Honus" <Ho...@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:h-idna-uadocnHjV...@comcast.com...
> PC wrote:
>>
>> Yep I got the notice today too. Odd how we don't get a reduction in
>> the monthly rate since we now are going to get less service.
>
> It's not odd. They were very careful to state that it was -complimentary-
> newsgroup access.
Translation: we don't make money specifically by having usenet access so we
want to get rid of it.
mazorj
"stonej" <sto...@mail.lib.msu.edu> wrote in message
news:c38fb847-6c40-4501...@m45g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
It would be nice to think that the PO'd UseNet users are hurting
corporate bottom lines, but the ISPs claim, probably with some
accuracy, that only a small minority of today's users even know about
UseNet, let alone play regularly in the newsgroups. Most go to
websites and blogs. Subscribers undoubtedly were lost, but they
probably were on the order of rounding errors. The $ub$cription
losses may have been more than covered by reduced service costs for
providing the groups.
Honus
> "Honus" <Ho...@invalid.com> wrote in message
> news:h-idna-uadocnHjV...@comcast.com...
>> PC wrote:
>>>
>>> Yep I got the notice today too. Odd how we don't get a reduction in
>>> the monthly rate since we now are going to get less service.
>>
>> It's not odd. They were very careful to state that it was
>> -complimentary- newsgroup access.
>
> Translation: we don't make money specifically by having usenet access
> so we want to get rid of it.
I'm not going to argue. ;)
Chas Edwards
were major changes in the Comcast TV cable service in my home area.
Several channels, such as Hallmark, were changed to an extra-pay
service (digital). I called Comcast to ask why and was told that the
channels in questions (including C-Span 2 and C-Span 3) required these
changes. I have a problem believing Comcast on this point.
We did get a Big 10 sports channel, however, and one has to suspect
that profits dictated the channel changes.
Chas. Edw.
MySelf
Its NOT MY POST, I'm just passing it on.
========================================================
I'm posting this for people who have been abandoned by Comcast and want a
free news server to replace their old service.
This post gives full instructions for switching to news.motzarella.org
because not all of the settings you need to make are explicitly spelled out
for you when you set up your new account with motzarella.
This post takes you from not having an account, to being subscribed to all
the same newsgroups on the news.motazarella.org server in ten easy steps.
1. Go to http://www.motarella.org/
2. On their home page register for a free account. They will send you a
"user id" and a password in e-mail.
3. Open Outlook, if not already open.
4. Select [Tools] > [Accounts...], and click the [News] tab.
5. Referring to the e-mail sent to you, click [Add] and enter your
information.
6. After you enter the information and click [Finish], you're not really
finished. You still need to click the [Properties] button for this new
account to put all the settings right. So click [Properties].
7. There are four tabs under Properties: [General], [Server], [Connection],
and [Advanced]. The information on the [General] tab is all okay and does
not need to be changed.
8. Click the [Server] tab. The "Server name:" should be set to
news.motzrella.org. Make sure that "This server requires me to log on" is
checked and that "Account name:" is set to the "user id" registered with
Motzarella. Make sure your password is entered. Check "Remember password"
but do NOT check "Log on using Secure Password Authentication."
9. Click the [Connection] tab and check "Always connect to this account
using:" and make sure that "Local Area Network" appears in the drop down box
if you use a LAN in your home (if your computer is connected to a router).
10. Click the [Advanced] tab and make sure that the Port No. is set to
"119."
Close out of "news.motzarella.org Properties" and "Internet Accounts."
"news.motzarella.org" now appears in your Folders pane under Outlook
(usually on the left). Click on "news.motzarella.org" and you will be asked
if you want to download a list of newsgroups. Do so. Then subscribe to the
newsgroups you like to read.
You're finished.
You can now enjoy newsgroups as usual and forget that Comcast finally broke
it's promise to provide them to customers free of charge.
(Their server wasn't that great anyway.)
gogu
In the posting the name of the company is spelled in 3 different ways:
news.motzarella.org
news.motazarella.org
http://www.motarella.org
The correct spelling is "motZarella" so be careful and change the link to:
http://www.motzarella.org
rgrds
PS
I sure prefer giganews.com with about...$8.00 a month;-)
Much more reliable and fast and with a retention time of over 3 months!
PS2
Another alternative could be cnntp organization.
Free and anonymous.
? "MySelf" <TurkeyLips.com> ?????? ??? ??????
news:coydnSpUt4fIr3vV...@comcast.com...
gogu
In the posting the name of the company is spelled in 3 different ways:
news.motzarella.org
news.motazarella.org
http://www.motarella.org
The correct spelling is "motZarella" so be careful and change the link to:
http://www.motzarella.org
rgrds
PS
I sure prefer giganews.com with about...$8.00 a month;-)
Much more reliable and fast and with a retention time of over 3 months!
PS2
Another alternative could be cnntp organization.
Free and anonymous.
? "MySelf" <TurkeyLips.com> ?????? ??? ??????
news:coydnSpUt4fIr3vV...@comcast.com...
MySelf
Honus
> This was posted to the Seahawks NG, perhaps it'll be helpful to some.
> Its NOT MY POST, I'm just passing it on.
> ========================================================
<snip>
Thanks for that.
Go Hawks! ;)
"Roßert G. Schaffrath"
> As of October 25, Comcast, the country's second largest ISP, will
> discontinue its Usenet service, it just announced today. It previously
> offered subscribers complimentary newsgroup access through Giganews,
> and now it suggests they subscribe directly through Giganews if they
> want Usenet access, indicating Giganews has special promotional
> pricing for Comcast customers.
>
USENET has always been the Wild West of the Internet and that pi$$es of
a lot of people who want to control things such as Hollywood and various
content censors. ISP's, by dropping the service, hope to please those
masters.
Also, as mentioned in another posting, the issue of SPAM to content is a
big problem. It takes a lot of disk storage for an ISP to maintain a
reasonable history of USENET articles. Of course, one solution is to
keep lowering the article expiration time but then you get to the point
where you may be expiring daily just to keep the data storage
reasonable. I suspect ISP's simply throw up their hands and figure it
is easier and cheaper to annoy a handful of customers than to put time,
money and effort into maintaining a reliable USENET service. Of course
in this situation, not providing the service as part of the service
through a for-profit provider such as GigaNews while keeping the
subscription price the same is pure BS. If the ISP does not want to
host the service fine but they should at least maintain the service
through an outside provider as part of the subscription package.
T-bone
$4900$607e...@cv.net:
As already explained, this service was described as "complimentary" from
the beginning. Comcast gave themseves an out early on, now they are taking
it.
It cost them $7 per customer to maintain that service, plus time of support
personel ect, I don't blame them one bit for doing it.
Giganews is the one really losing out,
To people who are into the usenet, 2gb a month is a joke anyhow, and they
have long since been subscribing to another server - So loss of the tiny
giga account means nothing.
To people not that much into the usenet, and/or who use it just to browse
text groups, there are free alternatives, so, once again, no loss.
If you want binaries, yes you will now have to pay extra.
I would suspect there is a considerably sized 3rd category of folks who
didn't, and who will never know the usenet even exists, and don't care to
find out.
Once again, no loss.
mazorj
"T-bone" <m...@take.net> wrote in message
news:uAYFk.855736$3p2.6...@fe10.news.easynews.com...
That's a very interesting data point. Got a cite? Even if it's an
annualized figure, over a large subscriber base it's a lot of monetary
incentive to drop the service.
T-bone
@nwrddc02.gnilink.net:
I got that from a comcast forums post.
http://forums.comcast.net/comcastsupport/ [you must have a comcast account
to access]
If you have access to comcast forums, log in, check out the "ect" category
[since they have already removed their usenet category] and check a thread
called "No More Newsgroups" - Pretty long thread, I don't have the time to
look it up and paste right now.
If I recall correctly, it was a post pretty much like mine, laying out the
$7 per customer figure without a cite.
I will try to verify, I don't like bandying about undocumented sources any
more than you like to read them.
They obviously paid giga something for the service, lets see if we can find
out exactly how much, should be on documented record somewhere.
T-bone
news:tkaGk.9264$ft2....@fe07.news.easynews.com:
I take that back, that $7 per customer reference was on a thread "Comcast
newsgroups discontinued" in the ect forum, which is now locked [can read
it, no replies] for being a duplicate thread to the one first listed.
mazorj
> "T-bone" <m...@take.net> wrote in
> news:tkaGk.9264$ft2....@fe07.news.easynews.com:
>
>> "mazorj" <maz...@verizon.net> wrote in news:1C7Gk.869$P5.600
>> @nwrddc02.gnilink.net:
>>
>>>
>>> "T-bone" <m...@take.net> wrote in message
>>> news:uAYFk.855736$3p2.6...@fe10.news.easynews.com...
Okay, thanks, although without an authoritative cite it's not much
more than a rumor.
There undoubtedly are cost savings. It just would be nice to have
some documented numbers to fling at the ISPs.
Honus
> There undoubtedly are cost savings. It just would be nice to have
> some documented numbers to fling at the ISPs.
Personally, I'd rather fling the same stuff as Howler monkeys.
mazorj
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Voltronicus
DOn't you have some more crank letters to write to Coin World?
mazorj
"Voltronicus" <fwd...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8ae6433c-a01d-449c...@l62g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
FOAD, jealous boy.
Voltronicus
> < DOn't you have some more crank letters to write to Coin World?
>
> FOAD, jealous boy.
That was almost, but not quite, as witless as your screed to Coin
World.
Now go back and try again, Mary.
clarkent
of a one time set up fee. Used to be $3.95 but that may have changed. They
do have a download limit for free users, but you can also pay to upgrade of
course. I find the free service fine for accessing the few newsgroups I
subscribe to Occassionally the site or server will go down, but they are
pretty good at keeping it working most of the time.
"Reid Goldsborough" <reidgold...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:20f101fa-462f-4a01...@64g2000hsu.googlegroups.com...
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Frank Provasek
bootleg music and video files) from text. I really feel that the
powers that be don't want people to have access to an unfiltered
source of sharing and reading IDEAS.
Voltronicus
It's all eBay's fault, right Fwankie?