Free Newsservers

wrote:
On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:18:17 -0400, Paul wrote:

Your news reader software, may default to port 119. That results
in anyone "looking at the packets in flight", being able to
see the message. But since your message is public anyway,
all this detail means, is they can theoretically track the
source of a new posting, to the coffee shop it's being sent
from. If you use SSL, it means that big warehouse in Utah,
has to work a little harder to crack the content :-)

How can you use SSL on newsgroups? Or are you referring to
Googlegroups?



Change port numbers, and your news reader software should do
the rest for you.

http://www.aioe.org/

"Currently, active servers a

1. nntp.aioe.org which opens the following ports:

* 119 (Plain Text and TLS)
* 563 (SSL Only)
* 443 (SSL Only)
* 22 (SSL Only)
* 80 (Plain Text and TLS)"

In the list here, at least 563 appears to be listed specifically
for NNTP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...P_port_numbers

Paul

| Very surprising to me. I've used them for over a year now, I think,
| with never a hitch. What I don't get is why they do it. What's in it
| for them?
|

It seems to be just simple idealism and generosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I'm surprised there isn't any "About Us" on their website.
It's ironic to me that richard2 says the Internet has been
destroyed, while he's posting via E-S. To a great extent I
agree with his view. Google's commercialism and monopoly
have allowed the Internet to become little more than a
shopping mall. The weight given to incoming links on webpages
ensures that Google finds little that isn't retail something-or-other.
But E-S is one of many examples of the Internet functioning
just as many had envisioned it would.

I've always thought of the Internet as something like the
town square, where everyone can chip in as they see fit
and everyone can benefit. That Internet is still there. It's
just harder to find. The generation that came of age in
commercial town squares (shopping malls) now feels
comfortable living on a commercial Web. (Facebook, which
is really just AOL combined with high-speed access and
javascript advances.) Perhaps what's needed is to rouse
a few idealistic college students from their timelines in order
to write a new search engine that performs the job that
Google used to do.

wrote:


Another AIOE quirk is that if a message cant be sent for some reason,
like lines being too long, such as huge website urls, sometimes after
you fix the problem you cant send the message because it will say the
"message has already been sent" (even thought it was not). It's an easy
fix. Change the subject line by one character. Add a period or
something. Then resend it.


You can add an extra period to the end of one of your sentences, in
the body of the message..

You do that, after receiving an error message, because each message
offered to AIOE, has a hash computed for the message (a checksum).
Changing one character in the message, changes its checksum and will
let it through.

(Now, to see if my other reply makes it through E-S, where the load
was reported as 56.0 a few moments ago.)

Paul

On 27 Mar 2012, wrote in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

I've tried eternal-september several times. They were originally
mozerella, and worked, but were down quite often, and I had to
sign up all over again when they lost the system records. When
they switched to eternal-september, my account was lost again. I
had to sign up once again, and shortly after that one would not
work. Again I signed up and used a different name. That lasted a
month or two before I could not connect again. That's when I gave
up on them. There's no reason a person should have to keep
signing up over and over, every few months or less.

I've had a Mozzarella/eternal-september account for several years, and
I've never had any of those problems, except for their occasional brief
outage. AIOE, on the other hand, used to be down frequently, sometimes
for a week or more at a time.

On 27 Mar 2012, Paul wrote in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

Change port numbers, and your news reader software should do
the rest for you.

That is, if your newsreader does SSL. Many don't. My choice, Xnews does
not, but I use use stunnel to make up for that lack.

http://www.aioe.org/

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:34:42 -0400, "Nil"
wrote in article
...

On 27 Mar 2012, wrote in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

I've tried eternal-september several times. They were originally
mozerella, and worked, but were down quite often, and I had to
sign up all over again when they lost the system records. When
they switched to eternal-september, my account was lost again. I
had to sign up once again, and shortly after that one would not
work. Again I signed up and used a different name. That lasted a
month or two before I could not connect again. That's when I gave
up on them. There's no reason a person should have to keep
signing up over and over, every few months or less.

I've had a Mozzarella/eternal-september account for several years, and
I've never had any of those problems, except for their occasional brief
outage.

Likewise, except I do recall an outage that was longer than what I
would call brief. They certainly haven't been perfect but hey, what do
you want for a free service?

AIOE, on the other hand, used to be down frequently, sometimes
for a week or more at a time.

Every time I tried to use AIOE they were down, so I gave up even trying
them. Bad luck on my part I suppose, but still.

--
Zaphod

Vell, Zaphod's just zis guy, ya know? - Gag Halfrunt

"Mayayana" wrote in message
...
| Very surprising to me. I've used them for over a year now, I think,
| with never a hitch. What I don't get is why they do it. What's in it
| for them?
|

It seems to be just simple idealism and generosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I'm surprised there isn't any "About Us" on their website...

True... but this part of their URL:

http://www.eternal-september.org/ind...showpage=abuse

I believe tells it all. No?

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:34:42 -0400, "Nil"
wrote in article
...
On 27 Mar 2012, wrote in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

I've tried eternal-september several times. They were originally
mozerella, and worked, but were down quite often, and I had to
sign up all over again when they lost the system records. When
they switched to eternal-september, my account was lost again. I
had to sign up once again, and shortly after that one would not
work. Again I signed up and used a different name. That lasted a
month or two before I could not connect again. That's when I gave
up on them. There's no reason a person should have to keep
signing up over and over, every few months or less.
I've had a Mozzarella/eternal-september account for several years, and
I've never had any of those problems, except for their occasional brief
outage.

Likewise, except I do recall an outage that was longer than what I
would call brief. They certainly haven't been perfect but hey, what do
you want for a free service?

AIOE, on the other hand, used to be down frequently, sometimes
for a week or more at a time.

Every time I tried to use AIOE they were down, so I gave up even trying
them. Bad luck on my part I suppose, but still.


AIOE was down for a long time once, because of a tiny issue with "hosting".

Paolo happened to comment, in a public forum, about the service his current
hosting company was providing. He had a machine inside their building,
running AIOE newsserver and web server.

The hosting, must search the web daily, for even the tiniest disparaging
comment. In North America, if you said what Paolo said, you'd just be
ignored. Most North America businesses react, only when someone does
purposeful damage (and isn't just expressing an opinion in an offhand way).
I mean, if AT&T reacted to every negative comments customers made
about their cell phone service, they'd have no customers if they reacted
the way this hosting company did.

When the hosting read what he said, he was immediately booted. He apparently
didn't have recent backups of everything, so basically had to build AIOE
from the ground up again. The post where he announced he was booted, was
here. The offending post is also in this thread (if you can believe it).

https://groups.google.com/group/alt....n&dmode=source

And that takes a few days, to build a server from the ground up.
The web server content, was never the same. Much was lost.

Moral of the story is, don't do business in Italy.

Paul

In message ,
writes:
On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:15:00 -0500, "BillW50" wrote:

In ,
Jeff T typed:
Are there any good, free newsservers?

I like "news.eternal-september.org" myself. If you want binary
newsgroups, then that would be a bad one.

I've tried eternal-september several times. They were originally
mozerella, and worked, but were down quite often, and I had to sign up
all over again when they lost the system records. When they switched to

I've been with them since they were mozzarella, and have had very little
in the way of problems.
[]
The newsgroups are nearly dead anyhow. Usenet has always been 80% of my

The death of usenet has been being announced for years. Certainly, the
majority of its users are probably not of the Facebook generation, but I
think it's some way from being dead yet!
[]
My guess is that all the former usenet users have either partially
abandoned the internet like myself, completely left it, or have gone to

Nope - I take several very active newsgroups. (That's active with either
useful or interesting content, I mean, not junk.)
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Look, if it'll help you to do what I tell you, baby, imagine that I've got a
blaster ray in my hand." "Uh - you _have_ got a blaster ray in your hand." "So
you shouldn't have to tax your imagination too hard." (Link episode)

In message , BillW50
writes:

"Mayayana" wrote in message
...
| Very surprising to me. I've used them for over a year now, I think,
| with never a hitch. What I don't get is why they do it. What's in it
| for them?
|

It seems to be just simple idealism and generosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I'm surprised there isn't any "About Us" on their website...

True... but this part of their URL:

http://www.eternal-september.org/ind...showpage=abuse

I believe tells it all. No?

No, it tells that they have a very sensible and liberal attitude. But
not "what's in it for them"; not that I don't believe there aren't still
some altruistic people around, but something the size of e-s must
require significant amounts of money to keep it going, so I do wonder.
(Though not too loudly as I'm very glad they're there!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Look, if it'll help you to do what I tell you, baby, imagine that I've got a
blaster ray in my hand." "Uh - you _have_ got a blaster ray in your hand." "So
you shouldn't have to tax your imagination too hard." (Link episode)

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
In message , BillW50
writes:

"Mayayana" wrote in message
...
| Very surprising to me. I've used them for over a year now, I
think,
| with never a hitch. What I don't get is why they do it. What's in
it
| for them?
|

It seems to be just simple idealism and generosity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

I'm surprised there isn't any "About Us" on their website...

True... but this part of their URL:

http://www.eternal-september.org/ind...showpage=abuse

I believe tells it all. No?

No, it tells that they have a very sensible and liberal attitude. But
not "what's in it for them"; not that I don't believe there aren't
still some altruistic people around, but something the size of e-s
must require significant amounts of money to keep it going, so I do
wonder. (Though not too loudly as I'm very glad they're there!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985
MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Look, if it'll help you to do what I tell you, baby, imagine that
I've got a
blaster ray in my hand." "Uh - you _have_ got a blaster ray in your
hand." "So
you shouldn't have to tax your imagination too hard." (Link episode)

I don't know John. There were tens of thousands of us who ran BBS and we
personally paid for the long distance phone charges and equipment and
all. And I don't see it as a bad thing at all. And if a very few
continue and run USENET servers because it is something they believe in.
Well I see it as a good thing. ;-)

--
Bill
Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Windows Live Mail 2009
Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP

In message , BillW50
writes:
[]
I don't know John. There were tens of thousands of us who ran BBS and we
personally paid for the long distance phone charges and equipment and
all. And I don't see it as a bad thing at all. And if a very few
continue and run USENET servers because it is something they believe in.
Well I see it as a good thing. ;-)

Oh, so do I! I'm just wondering how, rather than why, they do it -
basically, how do they afford it! But I don't want to ask too loudly in
case it breaks something (-:!
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I multitask... I read in the bathroom.

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:59:17 +0100, MotoFox
confucius-say@enlightenment!to!him!lead!it!for!bangpath!foll ow!man!wise.UUCP
wrote:

http://cd.textfiles.com/ has at least a couple clipart CDs in its
"shovelware" archive. Every single file up there for download. Best to use
wget -r -l0 --no-cookies http://site.url/directory/ to get anything from
that part of the site en masse, since downloading everything item-by-item
is incredibly tedious.

That looks like an excellent site for clipart.
But you lost me on this
wget -r -l0 --no-cookies http://site.url/directory/

I know you're saying to use this to get the whole collection, but where
do I type these commands? This looks like unix or dos codes. I went to
the site with firefox, is there someplace in FF to enter these commands?

Thanks

| That looks like an excellent site for clipart.
| But you lost me on this
| wget -r -l0 --no-cookies http://site.url/directory/
|
| I know you're saying to use this to get the whole collection, but where
| do I type these commands? This looks like unix or dos codes. I went to
| the site with firefox, is there someplace in FF to enter these commands?
|

I think it's supposed to be a hip, command-liner
way of saying "scrape" the whole thing with an
auto-downloader. (Real men don't use GUIs.

I know you said that you just want these images
for your own use, but these files still may be illegal to
download. I found a "10000 photos" collection that
seems to be a match for a cheap CD collection I
bought many years ago. Besides the fact that the
photos were of terrible quality, there was a ridiculous
license that said I couldn't use the images commercially
and could only print them onto 25 cards at most. I
don't remember all the details now, but the license was
so petty that I don't doubt it also said something to
the effect that one has no right to use the images if
one didn't buy the CD directly.

I used to collect a lot of graphics and sounds from
British magaizine CDs, too. Unfortuantely, nearly all
of it was just cheap junk.

On 29 Mar 2012, wrote in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 08:59:17 +0100, MotoFox
confucius-say@enlightenment!to!him!lead!it!for!bangpath!foll ow!man!
wise.UUCP
wrote:

http://cd.textfiles.com/ has at least a couple clipart CDs in its
"shovelware" archive. Every single file up there for download.
Best to use wget -r -l0 --no-cookies http://site.url/directory/ to
get anything from that part of the site en masse, since
downloading everything item-by-item is incredibly tedious.

That looks like an excellent site for clipart.
But you lost me on this
wget -r -l0 --no-cookies http://site.url/directory/

I know you're saying to use this to get the whole collection, but
where do I type these commands? This looks like unix or dos
codes. I went to the site with firefox, is there someplace in FF
to enter these commands?

This is the command line for the 3rd-party utility WGET. It can
retrieve files from web sites without the use of a web browser. It's a
console program, no GUI.

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm

The "advice" from Motofox is pretty useless without that important bit
of information.