Verizon and Wine

While not as easy to use , you can go to google and view.

I'd heard about that, too, James. One suggestion that I'll offer to Verizon customers with no other Usenet access apart from Google is the several free Usenet servers that exist, all of which carry alt.food.wine (I think). The one I use (aioe) is reliable enough that I haven't even bothered looking into Usenet access via my new cable provider (Comcast). Here's a small list of the ones that I know of:

nntp.aioe.org drooper.mixmin.net* news.motzarella.org news.x-privat.org**

All of these provide posting privileges as well as read access. Using them is as easy as turning your existing newsreader software to the new server with whatever user information you want to provide.

• Posting requires that you use TLS to access the server on port 579.

Mark Lipton

Mark wrote on Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:24:24 -0400:

I'm hoping that the response from my congressman is positive and he did acknowledge my letter. I'm fairly confident of his liberal credentials but I only have a 50:50 hope of his intervention being efffective..

James Silverton Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Back when most people used dialup connections, nearly all major isps of dialup services offered Usenet groups as one of their extras to attract customers. However, even the dialup isps starting dropping Usenet many years ago. These included MSN and AOL, among many others. Reasons I have heard include excessive bandwidth usage, not so important on broadband today. However the isps were sick and tired of all of the extra work and trouble Usenet brought them. They would get flooded with complaints and comments that took a lot of the time of their staff. Some would ban addresses of known mass spammers, etc. but this had little effect in the long run. There was little that would help in the long term and the isps got blame from their customers for much that was beyond their control. Many isps apparently decided that any benefits they received by including Usenet were far less than the problems Usenet was causing them.

I would be more than willing to have everyone drop Usenet. It is a relic from a much earlier times. It is now easy to set up a PHPBB or other BB, blog etc, by nearly anyone who has a full-service web site than now costs very little. I could set up a PHPBB on each of my 2 domains with a few key clicks and selections on the control panel for the domains. You can use just about any format you wish. It is easy to ban posters, require approval of posts before they appear, remove posts and on and on, if so desired. There is no need for forcing viewers to set up elaborate spam filters etc such as on the now archaic Usenet system.

If you don't want to bother with some newsreader server, Google Groups works well enough for many. If you want very elaborate filters, etc, then a few of the newsreader providers with elaborate extras may better meet your needs.

Mark wrote on Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:24:24 -0400:

As a result of some other suggestions, I am trying free.teranews.com. It costs $4.95 to register but provides 50MB/month and again, as others have said, this may be enough for the few alt.* text groups that I use. It has even got ba.food!

Mark wrote on Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:24:24 -0400:

By the way, Mark my apologies for not trying motzarella. All I found was real cheese because I was relying on my memory and spelling it mozzarella or mozarella :-)

Glad teranews is working for you. I use Google, but also have a Motzarella account, both work well if differently.