Re: FYI, what do we do now?

noname wrote:
"Paul" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:g3b4h8$t57$1@xxxxxxxxxxx
noname wrote:
"nospam" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:xqCdnbs_-YSCbcXVnZ2dnUVZ_h_inZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"daytripper" <day_trippr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:2fkg541pr4conqmsfvkkh9uqrrh4h992ac@xxxxxxxxxx
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:50:22 GMT, "noname" <vjcdsl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Verizon Online Customer,
Usenet is the last bastion of truly free, truly unaccountable traffic on the
internet (have you tried to find raw FTP lately?), and few people are
going to pay $20 to go see a crap movie when they can find out it's crap
for free. In every case, the ISPs who're dropping Usenet and/or Usenet
binary groups are the ones who're offering (or will soon be offering, in
Verizon's case) their own video content. This is not coincidental, and
it's only the first step. Within a few years from now they'll be blocking
all P2P traffic, using the same utterly lame excuses but for the same
utterly greedy reasons.

Short of a mass consumer revolt or government intervention, neither of
which is going to happen (considering how ***-whipped we've
become, and oblivious to the corruption of our government), this is the
beginning of the end of the internet as we know it in the U.S. Greed,
the same force that has ruined every technology that has come along
in the last 100 years, from FM radio to cable TV, is finally destroying
the internet.


Yes, I agree. But, this is the time for solutions. Forgive my lack of knowledge, but is it too difficult to start a comp.* or another Big 8 Asus group? How about moving threads to a closely related Big 8 group with all Asus posts having the name Asus as the first word in the subject? Time is short, we need answers.

john
Sympatico (my ISP) dumped newsgroups some time ago. I've been using
news.aioe.org since then. And recently, signed up for news.motzarella.org,
as a backup news server. Between the two of them, I don't have a problem
posting or reading text groups. Both are free servers. They use
slightly different filtering and posting rules, which is why
having two of them is handy.

For the people who want binaries, they'll pay. For the rest, a few
free text only servers might be the answer.

To start new newsgroups, there is a proposal and voting process. I
don't think in general, the big-8 hierarchy will be interested in
accepting "refugees". Since, as far as they're concerned, the
alt.* hierarchy still exists. The thing is, those newsgroups
haven't gone anywhere, so any attempt to duplicate the charter
and change the name, isn't going to get you too far. As you
can see from the complexity of this FAQ, pumping thousands of
newsgroups proposals through this mechanism, will "clog the
pipes".

http://www.usenetserver.com/en/faq-creategroup.php

Just change news servers, and move on.

Paul

Thanks, I already have motzarella and will be signing up for aioe. My concern is can Verizon filter my traffic to the extent that they will detect my alternative news servers and the alt.* groups I subscribe to and consequently be subject to their "Inquisition"?

john



The server has a "port setting", if you look in your news reader.
The standard port is 119.

I understand that at least some news servers support alternate
port choices. I believe one choice is to use port 80. Port 80 is
the same thing as a web browser uses. So if the Internet becomes
that unfriendly, you'd be reduced in the choices of news servers
that might work. (For the operators of small news servers, they
likely use port 80 for the web server that offers users
signup and usage information.)

Some people who have extensive filtering at work, are interested
in what services are available via port 80. Some workplaces
filter a lot of other outgoing ports, so for the employees who want
entertainment while they work, finding entertainment on
port 80, is about the only option they've got. Port 80 has
to remain open, so web browsers can do their HTTP thing.

There are also alternate news server connection mechanisms. But at
this point, there isn't a reason to be looking in that direction.
Some of this stuff gets downright bizarre. Apparently there is even a
mechanism that uses a TOR network.

http://news.aioe.org/spip.php?page=print&id_article=6 "NNTP over SSL"
http://news.aioe.org/spip.php?article28 "TOR network"

If you like "charts and graphs", this page shows how busy aioe is.
Scroll down to "NNTP Concurrent Clients", to see some of the
connection methods, and how popular they are. It looks like
the majority of clients use the simplest connection method.

http://194.177.96.78/munin/aioe.org/web.aioe.org.html

If you want to obscure what you're doing from your
ISP, there are VPN tunnels to proxies. Fortunately,
this one offer a 30 day trial, so you can see how slow
this is, before paying money. If you wanted to download
a movie, this is not the way to do it.

https://www.relakks.com/?lang=en

Paul
.