mdv921
join:2008-06-26
1 edit | reply to Zoder
Re: Is AT&T removing alt.* newsgroups
I've had Giganews for 2 days now and it's quite excellent. Their retention for binaries goes back 200 days and so far I haven't found a single incomplete file. They also give you a free 3 day trial period with 10GB's before you decide to go whole hog with whatever package you choose. I was thinking that once I went over to the package I subscribed for (25GB/mo for $12.99) I would already be down by 10GB's. But surprisingly the 10GB's are truly free and don't count against your 25GB limit.
The only thing that you have to deal with is the indredible initial header downloads. One group I've subscribed to for years on Bellsouth had over 17 million headers that had to be downloaded. Giganews has an accelerator program you can download for free that speeds up the header download 10 times or more and without that I estimate it would have taken me 5 hours or more to download headers the first time and I have a 3mb account. |
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hmmm
@bellsouth.net | graysonf had a suggestion of altopia, they are looking pretty good to me. 2 connections, unlimited for $6 a month...can't beat that. I wonder how the speed is from a seattle server though |
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Buncha BS
@bellsouth.net
| reply to Zora
I called them this morning and the idiot kept saying, "open up your browser and go to either Google or Yahoo and let's do a Usenet search."
Uhhh, no.
Then he tried to say, "AT&T doesn't provide support for 3rd party applications, if you can get to your email and surf the internet then they your internet is working." "Look you ignorant fool, there is more to the internet than the World Wide Web, this IS an AT&T server and service."
Of course this fool had no idea what I was even talking about, most of the really stupid comments came from someone he was chatting with, who also, by the way, tried the "in an effort to reduce child porn, AT&T has stopped..blah, blah, blah...."
Morons.  |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| reply to check1212
I would suggest the following. This is something everybody who objects to what ATT did can do for themselves, and at zero cost risk to themselves.
Take a $6.00/month subscription to news service with Altopia »www.altopia.com. Just see if you are happy with it, and if so, then pressure ATT to lower your DSL price by that amount. If they won't, you really know where they stand.
There are other news services, maybe some of them offer what amounts to a free trial too.
I can tell you one thing, Altopia will never censor content unless it is clearly illegal and they are forced to remove it by law enforcement. and that would be on a post by post basis. |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL | reply to Zoder
If they wanted to delete all of alt.bin* and get less of a shi*storm for it, they should have never mentioned porn, illegal content, or anything else like that. The should have said cost drove the decision. At least that wouldn't be a lie. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL
| said by graysonf  :If they wanted to delete all of alt.bin* and get less of a shi*storm for it, they should have never mentioned porn, illegal content, or anything else like that. The should have said cost drove the decision. At least that wouldn't be a lie. Agreed. But then they couldn't give Mr. Cuomo a phony political victory. |
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alfasub
join:2003-04-06
North Miami Beach, FL
| reply to graysonf
I think that is a good idea, ATT took away a service that now one must pay extra, but I don't think they will credit anything or at most offer a month's access fee.
I am now planning to downgrade my Ultra plan ($32.50) to the cheaper Light plan ($19.00) for I have now no use of the speed. Has anyone tried doing this? are there any hidden fees or penalties? Perhaps if the ATT customer service offered me the Extreme at the Ultra price (not a trial of X months) I would consider. Anyone else planning to downgrade their DSL plan? |
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winterfez6
join:2007-02-02
Forest Park, GA | reply to Zoder
I wish that BS will split off with AT&T so we can have a nice peaceful southeast region. |
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NormanS
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
 ·Pacific Bell - SBC
| reply to X_Att_customer
said by X_Att_customer :
The best way an At&t customer could react to this farce is to promptly cancel their accounts and let them know why!
The pressure of the 1.5% who use the Usenet leaving over the removal of the 'alt.binaries.*' hierarchy will change their minds....how?
From the standpoint of the former SBC side of the service, the binary groups were pretty useless; low completion and short retention on the 'sbcgloba.net' servers. This change will have a low impact on AT&T West, AT&T Southwest, AT&T Midwest, and AT&T Northeast. I might add that the former SBC Global NNTP service already had RIAA/MPAA mandated limits on 'alt.binaries.*'.
For 'news.sf.sbcglobal.net', the switch is slated for July 14, 2008. I guess they will "guillotine" the service on that date! 
For now, the following groups are still loading for me:
alt.binaries.pictures.motorcycles
alt.binaries.cd.genealogy
alt.binaries.cd.genealogy.parts
alt.binaries.cd.genealogy.reposts
I never worked with the binary groups that much. But I've known, since about 2001, that, if I wanted better NNTP service than AT&T (then SBC) offered, I'd have to pay Giganews, Newsguy, or one of those to get it.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum |
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Mizzat
Will post for thumbs
Premium
join:2003-05-03
Atlanta, GA
·AT&T Southeast
| reply to graysonf
said by graysonf :I would suggest the following. This is something everybody who objects to what ATT did can do for themselves, and at zero cost risk to themselves. Take a $6.00/month subscription to news service with Altopia » www.altopia.com. Just see if you are happy with it, and if so, then pressure ATT to lower your DSL price by that amount. If they won't, you really know where they stand. There are other news services, maybe some of them offer what amounts to a free trial too. I can tell you one thing, Altopia will never censor content unless it is clearly illegal and they are forced to remove it by law enforcement. and that would be on a post by post basis. I can tell you right now they can't do that. The billing system doesn't allow for custom pricing of DSL service, so they can't just say "oh, ok, *poof* you're $6 lower every month so far". You might get a free month or so, but never get your price set at a custom price for a free feature that you don't think works like you want it to. |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| I agree that they can't do this. But those who are unhappy with what was done have to be able to say they tried.
As to maybe getting one or maybe even several free months of DSL as an accommodation, that would buy a lot of months of Altopia news.
I don't know how many customers who were around back in the 1999-2000 time frame when Bellsouth's news service went into the toilet. But when that happened we got huge promises that it would be fixed, but of course nothing happened within the time frame Bellsouth committed to. It took years to get it back to something that was close to what it was. A lot of folks went to other ISPs because they still did a good job with news, had superior TOS/AUP, free static IPs, no PPPoE, etc. Others just bit down hard and bought 3rd party news, and trust me on this, they did not get it for $6.00/month.
Franky, we are not going see, hear, or read anything new about this episode that wasn't previously covered ad nausea back in 1999. But then again, if you were on the service then and a binary news junkie, you already know this.
In the end, if we can whine all we want about this. But it's falling on deaf ears over at ATT/Bellsouth. If we can't or won't do something about this ourselves, for ourselves, we really have no right to continue complaining.
Last time I voted with my feet, and took DSL with Telocity (the news server was awesome at first but couldn't handle the increasing load due to huge surges in their customer count).
This time almost all the other ISPs are long gone, and it's not important enough to me to do anything at all. But if it was, I'd just do it with Altopia. |
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Count Zero
MD2Be
Premium
join:2007-01-18
Warner Robins, GA | reply to Zoder
I think the files were already off network, they were just contracting with giganews and the other newsgroup providers for the service. |
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newsreader
@bellsouth.net
| reply to Zoder
I was wondering if anyone can help me out? When I looked at altopia's test out page I couldn't seem to get the alt. bin. groups to load up, any idea as to how I should set up the newsreader? I am or was using xnews as my reader but am not sure if I should set up with newsgroups.bellsouth.net or with altopia? Any help would be greatly appreciated. |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| I don't fully know what's happening at Altopia these days other than pricing. I am not a current customer of their's.
In the past, if you wanted to "test" the service, only access to the altnet.* tree was available. Probably not very helpful since those are text groups, not binary. But if you can get your full usable speed, or close to it by downloading all the articles in those groups, the performance should be similar for binary groups.
You have to be using the correct news server in your news reader, regardless of which reader. You can't connect to and read Altopia if you are connected to newsgroups.bellsouth.net. Last I recall, Altopia is on news.alt.net.
Where is this "altopia's test out page" you mention?
Try the Altopia support email address with questions. They are usually pretty fast at getting back to you.
Or you can just sign up for the $6.00 plan, do a real test drive and cancel for your money back if not happy. |
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Hyway
join:2007-07-08
Franklinton, NC
2 edits | reply to Zoder
To do so, set your newsreader to use news.altopia.com as an NNTP server with the account username "testnntp" and password "altnet1". This account will only give you read access to the 'news.*' groups and the local 'altnet.*' groups, but using it will give you an idea of Altopia's performance. If you would like to see a list of all the groups carried on Altopia, click here[[»https://www.altopia.com/active.txt]] for the almost 3 megabyte list.
Just did the test and maxed my speed so I'm getting more interested. |
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vintagewino
join:2003-07-22
Grimsby, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
 ·magicjack.com
·Look Communications
| Don't be surprised if all ISP's dump newsgroups in their entirety. Reasons are two-fold:
1. it eliminates the cost of them subscribing (more $$ for the ISP.
2. it absolves the ISP of any responsibility of the content, questionable or otherwise.
An easy fix to make more money and pacify the politicians and anti-anything people all in one slam-dunk! Can't get more convenient than that!
My old ISP dumped ALL newsgroups 2+ years ago, stating high costs as the only reason, whilst simultaneously increasing the monthly fee.
Keep an eye on it -- it's gonna get uglier. |
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Count Zero
MD2Be
Premium
join:2007-01-18
Warner Robins, GA | reply to charlie92
I can't get my newly created service with forte to work. I can log-in to the account manager, but it times out while downloading the list of newsgroups at alt.binaries.games.xbox heck I don't even want THAT newsgroup. |
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Zora
@bellsouth.net
| reply to vintagewino
said by vintagewino :Don't be surprised if all ISP's dump newsgroups in their entirety. That is what concerns me. Once there are just a limited amount of pay NNTP servers then the RIAA/MPAA will go after them and try to shut them down and the other binary groups hosting legal content will be collateral damage. According to their stated reason, this is exactly what AT&T has done - removed the entire alt.binary hierarchy due to a few offending newsgroups. |
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sobepmp
join:2008-07-13
Miami Beach, FL | reply to mdv921
Tomorrow I'm cancelling my AT&T internet service and Land Line Telephone. I'm switching to Atlantic Broadband. |
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Zoder
join:2002-04-16
Miami, FL
1 edit | reply to NormanS
said by NormanS :said by X_Att_customer :
The best way an At&t customer could react to this farce is to promptly cancel their accounts and let them know why!
The pressure of the 1.5% who use the Usenet leaving over the removal of the 'alt.binaries.*' hierarchy will change their minds....how? From the standpoint of the former SBC side of the service, the binary groups were pretty useless; low completion and short retention on the 'sbcgloba.net' servers. This change will have a low impact on AT&T West, AT&T Southwest, AT&T Midwest, and AT&T Northeast. I might add that the former SBC Global NNTP service already had RIAA/MPAA mandated limits on 'alt.binaries.*'. For 'news.sf.sbcglobal.net', the switch is slated for July 14, 2008. I guess they will "guillotine" the service on that date! For now, the following groups are still loading for me: alt.binaries.pictures.motorcycles alt.binaries.cd.genealogy alt.binaries.cd.genealogy.parts alt.binaries.cd.genealogy.reposts I never worked with the binary groups that much. But I've known, since about 2001, that, if I wanted better NNTP service than AT&T (then SBC) offered, I'd have to pay Giganews, Newsguy, or one of those to get it. Another difference is that ATT SE pays more for our internet service than all of the other regions. So while you are losing a service you never really had, we lose a good service and still pay more than the rest of the country.
I just noticed another difference while looking at the website. Our unlimited local and LD is $53.99. The other 13 states outside the SE is $40. That's $21 more a month if you subscribe to that and Extreme 6.0. Why are we still being screwed on price over a year past the merger was completed? |
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