testing new news server
Allyn Uptain
KO
> I'm finally dropping my dial up connection and need to see if this news server is working.
>
Received your message here.
goo...@miamicomputer.com
does that use a vacuum tube?
Ace
> dial up, what is that? Is that something that uses ethyl gasoline? or
> does that use a vacuum tube?
I guess the message was from 1993 :-)
Allyn Uptain
From the operating speed, one would assume so. ;-)
The benefits of living in the middle of nowhere are numerous. But we
have no cable tv, we have no dsl. I finally decided that if I dropped my
land line, I could afford either satellite or cell phone internet. Both of
which are overpriced. Went with an air card since I can't take a satellite
with me when I travel. It works great when I have a good signal about
85% of the time. Last night it showed no signal bars, yet I was still able
to download my avg update at 16kbps per second which is 3 times
faster than I ever got on dial up. When I have 3 or more bars this sucker
will break 100kbps. Most of the time I get around 75 which is good
enough for me and 15 times faster than the dial up. So, as we say in
the country, I'm in hog heaven!
Caveats are they provide no isp services. no email account, no news
server. gmail handles the email just fine. Only free news server I could
find is in Italy and it appears to be working fine. nntp.aioe.org if you're
ever in need.
And the air card comes with prohibitions against downloading music or
video and of course voip. I'd like to download a few songs every now
and then, but for now I can live without it.
from the boonies via Italy -
PS: And then when I just tried to post this, it got rejected because my
lines were more than 79 characters long. So here it goes again.
goo...@miamicomputer.com
with a webbrowser and groups.google.com.
Back when AOL quit newsserver, I went to google.
Kids today have no idea about what ethyl is or remember the drive-in
resturants with the boxes that you placed your order in, or the
"music boxes" that were at each table in the resturants or drive in
movie theatres or the night RFK was shot or little JOHN JOHN saluting
the solider at his dad's funeral or 96 column cards etc.
You talk about vacuum tubes like in a tv and they look at you like...
Our church organ which is about 50 years old has some vacuum tubes. I
asked the repair man about one of the larger power tubes in it and
asked him if it was hard to get and he said, not that one, it is the
same one used in the B-52 Bomber and remember they started flying in
the early 50's and they expect them to fly until 2050.
chris
CRPence
web. I would lean toward abandoning the groups entirely if NNTP or
something similar were not available; did it once for similar reason as
the AOL case noted. I have yet to find a browser based interface to a
group that is not miserably slow for composing & thread viewing, and
especially poor for tracking progress, tagging, and filtering. Been a
long time since I tried Google again [only visiting for group searches],
maybe it is better; more like a client like Thunderbird? I actually
cursed the loss of DejaNews long ago, which I still recall was better
than anything I have seen in the past several years of web forum\group
interfaces that I have encountered since. Perhaps that is just nostalgia.
Regards, Chuck
goo...@miamicomputer.com wrote:
> If you are just trying to communicate with this group, you can do that
> with a webbrowser and groups.google.com.
>
> Back when AOL quit newsserver, I went to google.
>
> Kids today have no idea about what ethyl is or <<SNIP>>
Allyn Uptain
I love my Forte Agent. I keep all of the worthwhile threads forever.
You never know when an old thread might have an answer you need.
I was surprised at the lack of free news servers when I started
trying to find one. There's so much free stuff out there, I just
assumed nntp would be easily available for free. Not so.
So you have to be the Chuck Pence that wrote for Midrange
Computing. I still exchange emails with Ted Holt and consider
him to be long time friend. Those were the days - mcbbs and all.
And that was just the 90s. How times have changed since then.
later -
CRPence
Actually IIRC that is\was Roger Pence. Although I did have a few
/articles/ in the hints&techniques [or whatever it was called] section.
As for /free/ news servers, they are in my experience mostly
read-only with limits on the number of connections. But for technical
discussions involving topics relating to IBM computing, the ideal option
would be news.software.ibm.com if only more people would participate
there, and more recently, if only IBM actually made the slightest
attempt to stop the spam. Some of the forums that are available on the
web for DevelopWorks are shadowed to the news server, and vice versa.
If eventually I ever pay for News Server service beyond what my ISP
provides, I would choose one only if its primary goal after providing
technical groups, was to limit the spam. I am not sure, but I think
many such services probably exist almost exclusively to serve people
looking for binaries.
Regards, Chuck
Allyn Uptain
> for technical
>discussions involving topics relating to IBM computing, the ideal option
>would be news.software.ibm.com
Are you saying that is a open to the public, free, news server? Currently the only news group I read is sys.ibm.sys3x.misc.
> If eventually I ever pay for News Server service beyond what my ISP
>provides, I would choose one only if its primary goal after providing
>technical groups, was to limit the spam
I have not received any spam from this news group since I started using nntp.aioe.org. May just be a fluke, I don't know yet.
>many such services probably exist almost exclusively to serve people
>looking for binaries.
I saw a lot of those, but none that were totally free.
later -
CRPence
>> CRPence wrote:
>
>> for technical discussions involving topics relating to IBM
>> computing, the ideal option would be news.software.ibm.com
>
> Are you saying that is a open to the public, free, news server?
> Currently the only news group I read is sys.ibm.sys3x.misc
Yes. However do not confuse public News Server with serving USENET.
The IBM news server serves only IBM sponsored /forums/ for facilitate
discussion amongst IBM customers and theoretically an increased chance
of developer comment. There the newsgroup\topic is chosen by IBM, but
nothing from USENET will be hosted on that server.
>> If eventually I ever pay for News Server service beyond what my ISP
>> provides, I would choose one only if its primary goal after
>> providing technical groups, was to limit the spam
>
> I have not received any spam from this news group since I started
> using nntp.aioe.org. May just be a fluke, I don't know yet.
I am using chartermi.com as an ISP. Although this group is not
deluged with spam, given the low traffic, the percentage of spam is
relatively high. Two of four, of initial posts in May are spam; the
only thread in several months is spam; two of four, of all posts in
March are spam. I think that the low volume of posts to this NG
prevents many spammers from /wasting time/ here; i.e. if there is not
normally noticeable traffic, the spammers infer the group is dead, and
thus that there will be nobody watching\reading. But of course the
spammers are idiots, and in time their spam bots hitting a group, will
tend to produce the only [remaining] traffic after the frustrated humans
have finally left in disgust, for having to spend so much time trying to
avoid filtering the silt from the nuggets.
>> many such services probably exist almost exclusively to serve
>> people looking for binaries.
>
> I saw a lot of those, but none that were totally free.
I guess like they say, nothing ever is ;-) I think most of them
charge because they are catering to specific groups of people who are
willing to pay for access to download various types of digital media for
a general fee, instead of having to pay per file.
Regards, Chuck