Newsgroups

[Rab]

Morning All

Ok, I have been thinking about these newsgroups, yes I know its been around for like 20 years, but I have never once used them, and to be honest not entirely sure how they work.

So if some kind soul out there could help me out as to regards what it is, how it works, and how do I get using them for free, or if not free, a very small amount that you can pay by Switch card.

Many Thanks

Rab

[abe]

Put your money away m8. :)

Newsgroups are commonly integrated into a mail client (outlook or similar). Your ISP should give you newsgroup information to their newsgroup servers, check with your ISP and see what they have.

[Rab]

Hi Abe

Thanks for your reply mate. I use crappy NTL, so I have Outlook Express and I have noticed some jibberish somewhere on it about newsgroups, so I will go and see what I can find, but I have no idea what my login in and password is for NTL?? Would I need that?

And also is there some sort of giant newsgroup server, that is popular and can get fast downloads off, cause I am getting pretty peed off with Kazaa these days.

Cheers mate

Rab

Also cheers for not taking the ****, for me being so stupid!!

[Rab]

I just tried using Outlook Express to set up a newsgroup account but it asked me for a NNTP server name???

Is there a bit of software that just logs you on like Kazaa by any chance?

Cheers

Rab

[abe]

The server may require a username/pass to authenticate against misuse etc.

The whole idea behind usergroups is that there isnt a central location. Much like the internet in general. :)

Have a look at the NTL ones and see whats avaliable, also check out newsgroups on google (http://www.google.co.uk/grphp?q=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=).

[abe]

The NNTP server is the newsgroup server.

Find out your SMTP or POP details (pop.ntl.com ? smtp.ntl.com ?) and change the smtp/pop to nntp (nntp.ntl.com ?).

[ 15 November 2002: Message edited by: *abe* ]

[ToM-f]

Take a look here: http://www.ntlworld.com/help/generalHelp/settings.html

I use Outlook and it works fine for me. Heres how you setup if you are unsure:

Tools > Accounts... > Add > News...

Then just complete the setup by adding your personal details and the appropriate settings provided in the above link.

Hope I have been of some help.

[Rab]

Hi Tom

Thanks the info was great I got onto NTL newsgroup server, but the only thing, is wanted to use it for getting Divx movies, and stuff, and there doesnt seem to be too much with relation to Divx, when I type it in, it just throws up a lot of stuff about porn, any ideas, sorry to be a pain in the **** .

Cheers

Rab

[abe]

Remember that newsgroups arent a file sharing community (kazza morpheus etc).

It may just take a little getting used to compared to the likes of kazza.

[Rab]

Thanks to everyone that helped, but Abe your right it does take a bit of getting used to, I think I would just be better sticking to Kazaa, but once again cheers lads!

Thanks

Rab

[ross]

You might want to look at Grabit (http://www.shemes.com/grabit/). I've heard of a few people using it to get Divx,etc from newsgroup servers. Don't ask me how to use it though as I've never looked at it myself :).

[The Pimp]

Originally posted by ross:
<STRONG>You might want to look at Grabit (http://www.shemes.com/grabit/). I've heard of a few people using it to get Divx,etc from newsgroup servers. Don't ask me how to use it though as I've never looked at it myself :).</STRONG>

Superb piece of kit. Bear in mind though that currently NTL News servers (news.ntlworld.com , newscache.cable.ntlworld.com , news.cable.ntlworld.com) all have a 24 hour file retention limit, so if you miss a few files you either have to wait for a repost (generally in the repost group for the binary group that you originally d/l from) or request fills (but only after the original poster has finished the complete post). Also worth having is a bit of software called FSRAID. This checks the PAR files that accompany the binary posts (sort of a failsafe) which will check each part of the multipart archive for missing files and replace missing parts upto the number of par files you have , i.e. if you have 5 par files for the archive, you can replace upto 5 parts of the archive should you have them missing).

Fairly straight forward overall once you have had a look at it all.

[RimBlock]

Ok, old thread but still..

Usenet 101 (sort of).

Newgroups are like forums contained on News Servers.

It was designed as a method of communication between like minded people on different subjects.

Usenet is purely text based.

News servers are a users portal to the forums (news groups) and they communicate between one another to pass messages posted on one portal to another. This allows people to answer questions from others anywhere on the internet with access to a news server.

Usenet contains many groups (40,000+) but your news server may limit the number and content of the groups it allows access to.

Some of the groups contain a large volume of messages and therefore take up a lot of disc space on the news servers. Due to this most news servers will have a retention period set for each news group. The retention period is usually the length of time a message remains on the server before it is deleted.

Binaries on Usenet.

Binaries (either programs, compressed archives, movies etc) cannot be sent as they are around Usenet (which is text based) as there may be character combinations in the code that will cause a computer to act strangely (just try cating an executable file in Unix and you will more likely than not get bells and strange characters etc).

To change a mp3 (for example) into a text message you have to uuencode it or use something like Yenc. Both systems convert a binary file into an ascii text file containing an encrypted form of the binary information. To get the message back you need to use a uudecode or Yenc decode tool on the ASCII message.

Converting a binary to and ASCII representation increases the file size quite a bit. Most newws servers have a maximum message line count. Most posting programs for large files will let you cut the file up into multiple messages to get round this issue and will number each message so you can put them back together in the right order before extracting the binary from the uuencoded ASCII file.

But what is one of these messages gets lost and doen't appear on your news server ?. Well you are stuck unless someone is willing to repost the part that you have missed. To partially get round this (especially with large files like movies), people usually use Winrar to cut the file up before converting it to ASCII for posting. Rar archives are usually posted with recovery Par files (created with a program like fsraid or smartpar). Any Par file and be swapped for any one of the missing rar files by using fsraid or smartpar to rebuild the missing part with data from the par file and the remaining parts.

Most programs make the uuencode part transparent and will only show you the rar file when all the uuenc parts have been downloaded. All you need to do then is just save all the rars and any pars. Use fsraid (or other par software) to check the rar files for corruption or missing parts and repair them if it has enough par files. Extract the archive from the rar files with Winrar.

Some news servers are provided by ISP's, some are free (most are for testing / runninging in) for a time and some are services you have to pay for (but carry more groups and have longer retention).

Biggulp (news://biggulp.readfreenews.net/) used to be a big free service although I am not sure if it is still running now. Searches for 'free news server' chucks up loads of pages, many out of date'.

I pay for a couple of news services. www.newsgroups.st and www.newsfeeds.com (one of the largest ont he internet but a bit pricey). Newsfeeds allows access to more than one news server at a time and some software will allow you to pull different messagges from different servers much like edonkey does to create the full Rar file (or whatever).

Multi news server clients include
Zeonews (http://www.zeonews.com)
Newspro (http://www.usenetopia.com/)

Single server clients include
Agent (http://www.forteinc.com/agent/index.php)

If you put a little effort into it then Usenet is just full of stuff waiting to be downloaded. Some you want and some you don't.

Hope this has helped a little

RB

Usenet poster (ABME.*)
DC++ Hub OP for the Official ABME newsgroup hub.

[Rab]

Hi Rimblock

Thanks for that, I do understand what you are saying but it seems like a whole lot of effort to covert text files to movies/programs and vice versa.

I think I will just leave the newsgroups for viewing tech information about networking and computer security of the nature that I dont think can be discussed in these forums, if you know what I mean.

But thanks for your help anyways mate it was apperiated, think I will stick with Kazaa lite for the meantime.

Cheers

Rab

[Tubob]

Rab if yor looking for Divx then i would think about using direct connect p2p software.

I believe this subject has already been discussed in another thread, but my own opinion is DC is the best for films as there tends to be lots of ppl with the same file so even if you are disconnected you can resume the transfer off another person.

Generally the divx have names of the group that released them ie dominion, vite etc. so they are easy to find

[The Pimp]

If you are loolking for any 'copyrighted material' on the binary groups, you will be out of luck with NTL at the moment. They removed nearly 100 of the most popular binary groups from their servers on Friday evening last week. There are a few of the main ones left, but the others came in handy for 'fills' etc.