Verizon banned Alt.* newsgroups

[JEDI]

Verizon banned the whole Alt.* hierarchy back in June.

Any alternatives besides going with a new DSL provider?

 

[Pepsei]

well, newsgroups are free with verizon dsl. but you'll have better luck with paid newsgroup providers.

 

[olds]

You'll have to get the kiddie porn somewhere else.

 

[Shawn]

the pirate bay

 

[brtspears2]

Join ngroups.net for $29.99/quarter, unlimited download.

 

[Newbian]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
You'll have to get the kiddie porn somewhere else.

Actually it's granny porn.

 

[elmer92413]

Originally posted by: Newbian

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
You'll have to get the kiddie porn somewhere else.

Actually it's granny porn.

granny/kiddie porn, best of both worlds!

 

[Red Squirrel]

Scary, did not realize US ISPs were already getting into censorship/blocking.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Scary, did not realize US ISPs were already getting into censorship/blocking.

Actually, a lot of isp just outright drop ng service. Rogers and Bell up here (which is basically 99.95% of isp) dropped ng long time ago, alt or not.

 

[SKORPI0]

Comcast dropped their NG (Giganews-2GB limit) a few months back too. Paying Giganews $29.99/month unlimited with 240-day retention.

 

[Red Squirrel]

How is newsgroups different then forums though? How can they block "all" of them? Guess you can always use proxies and stuff though but it's a matter of time till they start blocking those too.

 

[Squisher]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
How is newsgroups different then forums though? How can they block "all" of them? Guess you can always use proxies and stuff though but it's a matter of time till they start blocking those too.

Newsgroups aren't part of the web, but are the oldest part of the internet. They look like forums, but you usually access them through your email reader or a dedicated reader. They are generally unmoderated.

Comcast is dropping all newsgroup support. Because I use newsgroups like I use ATOT I don't download much and am satisfied using a free server. I use motzarella.org

 

[yhelothar]

oh well.. they fucked up their newsgroups years ago anyways.
files has been vastly incomplete for me, and unusable even with all the par files.
and they limited the speed to 16KB/s per connection, up to 8 connections.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
How is newsgroups different then forums though? How can they block "all" of them? Guess you can always use proxies and stuff though but it's a matter of time till they start blocking those too.

They don't block them at all, they just don't offer them on their OWN newsgroup servers. "Legitimate" use of newsgroups, particularly in the alt.* hierarchy, has dropped to all but nothing these days (compared to what it used to be). It's just not worthwhile for ISPs to run their own news servers anymore.

 

[StageLeft]

I started using easynews--timewarner dropped our ng coverage, too. It is a dinosaur but I'll ride it until it's done.

 

[EvilYoda]

Uhhh...pay for it? Apparently WOW still has their free service (I use my family's account as a backup even though I moved to Phoenix). You can pay by quota or by month or by block of months...up to you. Well worth it.

 

[finite automaton]

Originally posted by: oldsmoboat
You'll have to get the kiddie porn somewhere else.

Would a good start be your closet?

 

[erub]

Originally posted by: EvilYoda
Uhhh...pay for it? Apparently WOW still has their free service (I use my family's account as a backup even though I moved to Phoenix). You can pay by quota or by month or by block of months...up to you. Well worth it.

lay off the kiddie porn mang

 

[spidey07]

Dammit! First rule, man. First rule.

Why are they removing support? Because people are breaking the first rule.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Scary, did not realize US ISPs were already getting into censorship/blocking.

Actually, a lot of isp just outright drop ng service. Rogers and Bell up here (which is basically 99.95% of isp) dropped ng long time ago, alt or not.

Yep. Bellsouth/AT&T blocked just about any newsgroup that had binaries in it. I think it was more about bandwidth than censorship though.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh I see this is different. I thought it was something like when you go to google groups. Been on there a few times, but I prefer registering on some forums.

 

[SludgeFactory]

For a third party provider, Astraweb works for me. Can be had for $11/month unlimited, retention has been bumped up 160 days.

I'm really not sure why the big boys waited so long to ditch usenet. Maybe some of the old techies behind the scenes were hanging on to the feeds out of nostalgia. I guess it was just too easy to get rid of it when the NY attorney general got a bug up his ass about kiddie porn and usenet earlier this year, and made a big deal about finding it in 88 newsgroups, which is something like 0.1% of usenet groups. I doubt there are even 88 groups that are regularly trafficked by pedos and crammed with porn (i.e. a single dickhead spammer could effectively taint 88 groups pretty much instantly with a good crossposting) but what do I know about that pedo crap. I'm *totally* into S&M, pissing, and trannies. Anyway, some of the big ISP's took that as an opportune time to exit stage left. They dump a service that costs them money and maybe 2% of their customers will even notice, a grandstanding politician gets to claim victory, and his teenage son is probably pulling down a bestiality torrent and browsing pedo forums as we speak. Win win win!

It is kind of sad that the discussion part of usenet isn't nearly what it used to be since everybody bailed for forums. The idiot factor seems much higher with forums, and I find forum trolls are mostly a pale imitation of the brotherhood of dedicated, unemployed, sociopathic, old-school usenet trolls.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Oh I see this is different. I thought it was something like when you go to google groups. Been on there a few times, but I prefer registering on some forums.

Google Groups is an interface to usenet.

Usenet is old school. Pre-web. With the web, you go to a webserver and get the latest version of a page. With usenet, you post a message to your local server, and it gets passed on to the next servers, and they pass it on, and so on and so forth. Then half a day later some guy sees your message and posts a response to his local server, and then it gets passed on to the next server, and so on and so forth until it arrives at your local server and you're able to read it.

It's not surprising that it's been replaced by web-based forums for most legitimate purposes.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Dammit! First rule, man. First rule.

Why are they removing support? Because people are breaking the first rule.

more like the amount of drive space and bandwidth they take up.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Oh I see this is different. I thought it was something like when you go to google groups. Been on there a few times, but I prefer registering on some forums.

Google Groups is an interface to usenet.

Usenet is old school. Pre-web. With the web, you go to a webserver and get the latest version of a page. With usenet, you post a message to your local server, and it gets passed on to the next servers, and they pass it on, and so on and so forth. Then half a day later some guy sees your message and posts a response to his local server, and then it gets passed on to the next server, and so on and so forth until it arrives at your local server and you're able to read it.

It's not surprising that it's been replaced by web-based forums for most legitimate purposes.

Ahh I see. Surprised they're even still in use if that's the case then. Guess they do have good redundancy though. Like way less chance of data disaster.