Paradise newsgroups updating has nearly ceased, nearly useless soon

I have just got back from a 3 week overseas holiday.

Updated my paradise.net newsgroup headers ok.
nothing about ANY NEW GROUP added to the system.
In fact about 20 groups had no content and must have
been removed by the Newsmaster.

Yet Teranews update had over 400 new groups.

and news.isu.edu.tw had over 500 new groups.

Paradise decline continues at a steady rate, i notice 3 off my
relatives have moved to Orcon broadband while i was away.

Protected by GIANT Company's Spam Inspector
The most powerful anti-spam software available.
http://mail.spaminspector.com

 

How many crap newsgroups do you need?

 

Grumpy!!!

 

Me? Never. But Paradise likely carries 13,000 groups. How many does
one need?

Some people could need lives

 

New Zealand does not have the resources to carry a decent NNTP News Service..

The Storage for this would be Massive..

 

So would it be OK with you if xtra dropped nz.general? Maybe the OP
lost a group he likes.

NZ ISPs are crap with newsgroups.

 

Xtra has 50 -60,000 last time I looked

Reality == the enemy!

 

SuperNews has some 77k plus.

EasyNews 58k..

 

Google groups has a massive usenet database that they took over from Deja
News some time ago. You can also post to newsgroups using Google groups. I
guess it would include the world's largest database of postings that have
been made to usenet groups over the last 10 years. I use Google groups all
the time.

 

Shane scribbled:

Just reset Paradise newsgroup list in OE. 79882 newsgroups downloaded...

 

The storage isn't really a problem. Many of us would have enough disk
space at home to store a typical 180 days retention of text groups.
Attempting to store binary groups for perhaps three days (typical, even
for overseas servers, with the exception of those who are marketing news
products specifically) would only be a few thousand dollars investment
in equipment. Long term storage of binaries becomes expensive however.

The biggest factor preventing NZ from having a decent news feed is
bandwidth cost. Transfering 300+ gigabytes per day of international
traffic is prohibitively expensive.

The Other Guy

 

I manage to get by on two - but then I can read.

 

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:06:58 +1300, in message

1. I would be more impressed by these figures if you had told us
how many of these were real groups with real discussions, and
how many were not.

Some jerks post "NEWGROUP" control messages to create groups
with dorky names, that will not be used for real discussions.
Some news servers honour these "NEWGROUP" control messages
automatically.

2. In my experience, Paradise will add a newsgroup if you ask
them to.

 

On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:36:22 +1300, in message

Make that 79,882 newsgroups (as Max Burke has already stated).

Odd response. The OP said nothing about Paradise dropping or losing
groups, like nz.general, that it previously carried.

As I read it, the OP's complaint is that Paradise did not automatically
add 400 or so unspecified groups that some other server had added.

The OP did not say what these groups were, and AFAICT from the OP's
message the OP may not even know what those 400 groups are. It might
be that a good percentage of these 400 groups have names of this ilk

alt.jimmy.spenks.from.my.junior.high.school.is.a.loser.and.a.jerk
alt.genius.jerry.hoofnagle.i.am.the.greatest.at.my.junior.high.school

For binary groups, true.
For text groups, if you want your ISP to add a group then generally
you only need to ask them to do so.

 

And then, after a time of wonder (usually 3 - 13 working days) you get
through to someone who knows what a newsgroup is. I've had to do that
with three ISPs, for the obscure NG that I moderate.

But that's minor compared to the hassle in getting support for
newsserver problems.

Changing to a pay newsserver was well worth the money. Must be more
than a year now, and never a worry.

 

Paradise used to. "Big 7" groups (comp.*, rec.* etc) usually got added
automatically. But they dropped their news server and started using
TelstraClear's. The TC admins are not interested in adding newsgroups.
For example, I requested comp.os.os2.ecomstation but was told:

------------------------------
We have requested this group to be added to our IS Ops team, however,
unfortunately we cannot add this group, as we already have the maximum
amount allocated from our upstream provider.

We can only suggest in this case that you try an alternative news server
for comp.os.os2.ecomstation

Kind Regards,
Helpdesk
TelstraClear Customer Help

 

<snip>

When are you gonna upgrade Don I remember the day we ran up NT 3.51
and thought, hey how come OS/2 (Warp) doesn't multitask like this.

Multitasks poorly, no app base - get rid of it.

 

Put the trolling pole away, Dave. I ain't biting. But I will gloat a bit for
the peanut gallery.

I wouldn't recommend it to any newbie, but it works for me. Even Linux
hasn't yet caught up - the kernel gurus are still trying to come up with
workable fast threading. It makes an ideal internet appliance - there are no
exploits for it. It requires no maintenance - it just runs. I installed this
machine in 1999 and installed the latest fixpak at that time. I haven't had
to touch it since then.

Apps? Well, what do you need? Open Office runs. There's an older OS/2 native
version, and the current Windows version runs in an emulation environment
from Innotek. There are OS/2 ports of the more popular Linux apps, and you
can recompile any others you need. The emx library handles API translation,
console apps usually recompile without changing any code at all.

I use:
Firefox for browsing
yarn/soup for mail/news (PMMail is also good)
PMView for graphics (GIMP has been ported if you prefer it)
CDRecord, RSJ and JCDRead for ripping and burning
LAME for MP3 encoding
Z! for MP3 playing
Acrobat for PDFs
Tame/Sane for scanning
Pilot Link for syncing my PDA

That's all this old laptop has room for. I have a more modern version of
OS/2 (called eCS) on my main desktop system. OS/2 will no longer be
available for purchase from IBM as of the end of this year, but eCS will
continue to be actively maintained and updated because the vendor has an
ongoing support agreement with IBM (as do the other large customers still
using OS/2). It comes bundled with a useful selection of apps (see
www.ecomstation.com).

Hardware support is still not a big problem - IBM and others are still
fixing problems that arise with new core chipsets. Scitech's video drivers
are up to date, Uniaud handles sound chips, USB support has been there for
years, Winmodems are supported, and there's even a new driver wrapper that
allows using Windows NIC drivers in OS/2 for the more esoteric chipsets.

So tell me again - why should I move?

I know I'll have to move eventually, most likely to Linux, if only to gain
some skills that have relevance in the modern world. As I pointed out, my
knowledge of security, rootkits, trojans, patches, AV and spyware tools etc
is all sadly lacking because I haven't needed any of it.

 

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:53:32 +1200, in message

You could be right. I haven't tried since Paradise started using
TelstraClear's news server.

That sucks.

If one is going to try an alternative news server, one
might also "churn" (drop Paradise for another ISP).



--
Cheers,
Ralph

"There is only one boss, the customer. And he can fire everybody in
the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money
somewhere else." -- Sam Walton