AOL and newsgroups

Free service, spam filtered, no binaries, use the newsreader of your choice.

I'll second

Very fast server. I use it with Thunderbird as the reader. It is free and works great.

Mike

I use the Google Groups Usenet Portal:

You'll have to feel you way around to get the hang of it since it doesn't behave exactly like a newsreader. Three suggestions 1: Sort rec.food.drink.tea by date so most recent threads sort to top 2: Use date view of any thread and not tree view 3: You choose your moniker such as Space Cowboy when you first do a post. You'll need a valid email address to sign up. My current ISP never had newsgroup service and if they did I'd be using Google Usenet with the latest enhancement of immediate rollups. Google filters all binaries in a post but not the groups perse. There are commerical newsgroup services on the Internet for about $5/month which carries everything.

Jim

Joseph Kubera wrote:

Do you have any friends that use newsgroups nearby that perhaps use a different ISP? If they have broadband or something, it's more than likely that they don't use newsgroups, so you could just ask them if you could borrow their access. Most only require you having a newsgroup reader and a news-server address.

I mean, it really wouldn't put much of a drain on their account and most ISPs really don't monitor IP address of newsgroup users; they probably wouldn't care either way.

Just an idea.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Better yet - get them to set up a wireless network and tap into it. ;)

I'm not so sure about that. All of the ISP's I have used limit access to only members of their network. For example, my DSL ISP at home won't let me access their newsservers when I'm on the campus network, and vice versa.

This is why I signed on with Individual.net. I can take my laptop anywhere and still access newsgroups.

hm. Ya, I think you're right....I forgot about that one.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Of course, I'm right. I'm always right...

... except when I'm left. Oh, we weren't talking about politics?

There are still a few ISPs that don't. We have a local one here called Cox, cable, that doesn't need to be on the network. I used to use an AOL server a long time ago...but I know times have changed and so have security measures. heh.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Oh, I'm sure there are still ISP's that don't block access for "non-members." But I'd hazard that this number decreases a little each week.

When I was an undergraduate in Kentucky, we actually used the NNTP servers at the University of Minnesota. But now, UMN doesn't let me access the servers unless I use my modem or I am on campus.

haha, yeah. there was one point where we would have to actually telnet in...but then they blocked it.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Actually, access when I was an undergraduate was through the central computing mainframe. It was all telnet. ;)

Well, some of us still use telnet^H^H^H^H^H^HSSH.

/Lew

Yes, well. The telnet interface to the university news server is horrible. For email, however, PINE is pretty darned good.

It's still better than the mediocre webmail system they've implemented.

i miss pine. I would use it more than hotmail.

my uni locked pine as well, and made it so you could only use your pop3 account on their webmail servers...wouldn't let you put it in Eudora or anything.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Somedays, I miss it. Somedays, I wish there was a stand-alone version that I could use from home with whatever account I chose.

Oh, they haven't locked PINE. I can still access it through telnet. But they now require an SSH terminal emulator, so where I once could access my email through the basic Windows telnet client from anywhere, now I have to have a special program. BAH!

As for the webmail, they haven't limited it. I actually access my university email through Thunderbird, but I can also access it through the webmail system. Fortunately, UMN didn't make it an "either/or" situation.

But they're on a security kick. They've added secure login for email, and now they require secure FTP. This means my existing FTP client, which I actually paid good money for, won't work and I "get" to use the free client they recommend.

I understand the need for security, but that doesn't mean I can't be frustrated by the process.

I have a copy of flashfxp if you want it. It does SSL.

Mydnight

-------------------- thus then i turn me from my countries light, to dwell in the solemn shades of an endless night.

Thanks, but I'll pass.

My current FTP client supports SSL and SSH connections. SFTP is more than just SSL or SSH, though. It's a different protocol.

The guy who wrote the FTP client I currently used has suggested another client, WebDrive, which functions similarly to Internet Neighborhood. In the mean time, I guess the free software will do.