News readers

L

LTF

Guest
Any of you lot using these?

Haven't done so myself for a while, just picked up the necessary via the bog standard Outlook Express, any others out there witha few more bells and whistles?
 
M

mookie

Guest
i dont use usenet much but i hear good things about xnews and forte agent from people who do. use this to find them :)
 
S

Scooba Da Bass

Guest
Outlook Express is lovely for newsgroups. Agent is seriously overrated and if you're used to the way OE works seems seriously counter intuitive
 
W

whipped

Guest
I've always used XNews. Very easy to use newsreader that has easy-to-see icons if a binary is incomplete.
 
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Shocko

Guest
Pan, but if i'm downloading large numbers of images(eg All of a pr0n set), or large binaries(pr0n mpegs/avis) i use a program called nget. Cba to look for the URL, however it's a command line downloader, that trys to be like wget in terms of no bs plaine usefulness. It supports yEnc decoding automatically, and works well for getting multipart stuff.

I only really use Pan for browsing the good groups, or for casual pr0n browsing. Saying this, i haven't resorted to usenet for pr0n in ages...
 
P

PR.

Guest
I use OE for normal NG activity, if I want binaries I use BNR2 it does pretty well, I remote desktop in from work and set BNR2 to d/l the Enterprise episodes ready for when I get home :clap:
 
M

Miles_Binck

Guest
OE is fine for a plain old newsreader for articles, but where its starts to fall over is when you 'acquire' binaries that are yENC encoded. OE just throws a nice M$ style wobbly and gpf's away (this is OE 6 SP1)

I personally use Grabit for all my usenet needs, the new version even has the ability to post to newsgroups :clap:

A good place to start for usenet groups (of all flavours) is here
 
L

LTF

Guest
Cheers guys, plenty to play about with...

Nice idea PR :D
 
T

TedTheDog

Guest
NewsShark is superb for all your binary needs, and a complete loser if you actually wanna read text posts.
So, if you wanna participate in the heady excitement of usenet discussions, get something else. A lobotomy would be your first port of call I'd guess.
If you wanna download "research projects" that are split across numerous posts and you want it all put back together again for you, then I'd suggest this.
 
M

mank!

Guest
I think Huw Edwards is a good news reader.

Oh... nevermind. :D
 
D

dysfunction

Guest
I always thought news groups are a bit slow?
 
M

Miles_Binck

Guest
i download from newsgroups at around 65-72Kb/sec and that is from NTL's free newsgroup server. Not to bad :)
 
T

TedTheDog

Guest
Being a nildram customer, I initially suffered their laughably inadequate news service for 2 days, before signing up to Claranews .
Nildram farm the service out, and their news server is in california and rate capped to 16k, which isnt funny.
They had a beta server of their own, which they gave me access to, but it had the retention period of a dying goldfish. You didnt so much download the headers to see whats on as download to see what you'd just missed.

Anyway, claranews is rate capped at 60k a sec (much better) and has a monster retention and more groups than many. Its NOT free though (cue the sound of massed "back" buttons being clicked).
 
S

Shocko

Guest
Originally posted by dysfunction
I always thought news groups are a bit slow?
Click to expand...
See the previous posts where speed is concerned, however usenet is going to be slower than HTTP/FTP due to the way stuff is encoded.

UUencode is poo for binarys, since it's only 7bit... Binary characters are therefore encoded using several characters, since there's not enough available characters to encode them efficently... I think it works out that all the binary-only characters take up twice the space they do unencoded; It works out that the average binary encoded with UUencode is about 140% the normal filesize. The solution is yEnc, which isn't gh3y like UUencode, and only increases the filesize of the average binary by about 4%...

</end attempt at sounding like a data-boffin> :D
 
W

Will

Guest
I'm probably going to sound a bit silly here, but when has that stopped me in the past?

Why do I even want to use newsgroups? I don't want pr0n, and I don't want warez, is there any legitimate use for them that is worthwhile?
 
T

Testin da Cable

Guest
the forums of the past no? well, past... some of the newsgroups contain cutting edge info and will still do so far into the future
 
S

Scooba Da Bass

Guest
Originally posted by Itcheh
I'm probably going to sound a bit silly here, but when has that stopped me in the past?

Why do I even want to use newsgroups? I don't want pr0n, and I don't want warez, is there any legitimate use for them that is worthwhile?
Click to expand...

Talking with like minded people?
 
L

legendario

Guest
Originally posted by Scooba Da Bass


Talking with like minded people?
Click to expand...

Highly unlikely considering Itcheh has a brain and the average IQ of newsgroup spammers is directly proportional to the number of pubic hairs they have.
 
D

dysfunction

Guest
I would never post on a newsgroup...its an invitation for email spam!
 
S

Scooba Da Bass

Guest
Originally posted by legendario
Highly unlikely considering Itcheh has a brain and the average IQ of newsgroup spammers is directly proportional to the number of pubic hairs they have.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you've never used Usenet from that response. There are a vast number of extremely on topic newsgroups out there. Plus the addition of a large number of funny newsgroups.
 
W

Will

Guest
Originally posted by legendario
Highly unlikely considering Itcheh has a brain...
Click to expand...
Maybe, maybe not.

I'll take a look at some Newsgroups tonight I guess. Maybe. The Hitman 2 box next to me says I might not bother.
 
S

Shocko

Guest
Originally posted by dysfunction
I would never post on a newsgroup...its an invitation for email spam!
Click to expand...
a) Use a false email address(and an obvious one so people don't try to email you)
b) Put things into your email address that a human will know to manipulate, but a spam bot won't.
 
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