Usenet Binaries Newsgroups?

[Jism Jim]

Originally Posted by Pnin

Another vote for xnews. It's old, but it's so close to perfect it never needed much more.

Yes, Xnews is very good, I've been using it since 2000 or so. For large posts I now use the last freeware version of Altbinz.
I use Xnews to visit the newsgroups and then feed the posts to Altbinz using the 'export to NZB' function.

[cylnz]

Lol, Forte Agent. I never moved beyond 2.45, every thing after was bloatware with useless features I didnt want or need. i'm still on a.b.n.c.f and have been since the group was created and gained widespread server acceptance. Only thing roadrunner has ever been good for was usenet, unfortunately, group participation mostly died out under the new influence of (sic) IRC (LOL). Then web forums came along and drove the final nail in usenets coffin. I still transfer large collections across a.b.n.c.f (alt.binaries.nude.celebrities.female)to a few friends from the old days but mostly its done. Funnily enough, I was so into usenet back then I missed the entire advent of forums on the web and only started using webforums instead of usenet about 5 years ago.

As far as looking at the archived stuff from back then, none of the big posters will be there. With leachers and copyright crap, not to mention trying to save server storage back then, usenet readers had a great feature. "X-NO archive" was a setting that didnt save a message on the server beyond the servers cycle time periods. This was great for content that was questionable but wanted to be shared in the wilds of usenet (ie one guy capped every Traci Lords movie and photo shoot including behind the scenes stuff) if it had been archived, well, you can guess. I've looked at some of the archived stuff and it's hilarious, you can see when people reformatted and were still configuring the reader, they are the posts still around lol. Way back, you can sometimes still find posts from the M.i.B. and the different mobs that eventually became celebs and models on IRC. Things in the community were a lot different then, people joined scanning groups and there was a kind of pride in the work. Thats why there are so many groups tags on the old lq stuff. Anyhoo, if you want, goto : forteinc.com and grab the free trial of agent then goto usenet and grab the archived version of freeagent and use it.

[gordian_knot]

I lost my binary usenet access about a year ago but by then most of the picture groups had already drowned in spam. But there were some exceptions and other groups that were still really useful. The mp3 groups were still going strong as well as some of the mpeg groups.

Usenet will never be what it used to be but it'll be a shame if it's legislated out of existence. I've moved onto forums and blogs (for music) which are where the old communities have mostly gone.

Agent was always my client, a better all-round program than Newsbin, but later versions became ludicrously complicated. Get an earlier version if you can.

[gkar]

Originally Posted by gordian_knot

[...]
Usenet will never be what it used to be but it'll be a shame if it's legislated out of existence. I've moved onto forums and blogs (for music) which are where the old communities have mostly gone.
[...]

i don't think you should write off the usenet that quickly. The binaries groups are very active and still a lot faster than the whole file-hosting crap-sites. If you are into movies or tv-series like me, it will be your first choice because it's the fasted way to get movies in various formats (or languages).

Ever tried to DL a movie in full HD from a File-hosting site? Even with a premium account and broadband access you have to be lucky to get all the parts before the links are dead.

Legislative restrictions are usually a political instrument to adress and solve the matter for public appearances. As long as there is no global banning or global coordination of black-listing groups, it is a pointless action because of alternative access - f.e. accessing a usenet-provider from any point of the globe on any other point of the globe will take care of black listed groups.

You are nevertheless right - the usenet will not be the same as before (the apperance of forums and blogs). In my opinion it will be better

[gordian_knot]

Originally Posted by gkar

Legislative restrictions are usually a political instrument to adress and solve the matter for public appearances. As long as there is no global banning or global coordination of black-listing groups, it is a pointless action because of alternative access - f.e. accessing a usenet-provider from any point of the globe on any other point of the globe will take care of black listed groups.

I hope you are right, but as the technology for monitoring and filtering content continues to improve, once the EU outlaws binaries (if it does), it's going to be increasingly difficult to circumvent the restrictions. In the UK we're seeing the slow but sure increase of governmental control of the internet, the latest being a law that requires all ISPs to record all emails and web visits for a year. What will follow will be a law making it illegal to prevent monitoring (e.g. the use of proxies).

I don't say it'll happen overnight but it's just a matter of time. Enjoy it while you can.

[neod]

Another vote for xnews (I still use it). Newsgroups itself is old but I don't know if it'll ever go away. I had newsgroups with my ISP until last July when they decided to stop their newsgroup service so now I'm with newsdemon.com I spend about $20 a month but it's worth every penny.

some good newsgroups to visit would be:
alt.binaries.erotica.80s
alt.binaries.dvd.erotica.classics

[27cows]

Torrent sites and the proliferation of great posting boards have made usenet somewhere close to obsolete, but I still maintain my Easynews account, simply because their web browsing facility is the bollocks and unique, even after all these years.

[u235]

Is anyone here actively posting to usenet? Is there any interest in doing so? I'd love to grab sets that folks have generously posted here without having to deal with rapidshare and wait times.

BTW, as for usenet binaries, after spending years sifting through newsgroups, I've moved to hellanzb + hellaworld mostly using nzb's from newzbin.com. It's fire and forget.

[27cows]

Originally Posted by u235

Is anyone here actively posting to usenet? Is there any interest in doing so? I'd love to grab sets that folks have generously posted here without having to deal with rapidshare and wait times.

BTW, as for usenet binaries, after spending years sifting through newsgroups, I've moved to hellanzb + hellaworld mostly using nzb's from newzbin.com. It's fire and forget.

I used to be an active usenet poster between 1997-2000. But I think it's very much a dying art now. The NGs are utterly overwhelmed with spam these days and the sense of community that used to exist has long gone. Despite the massive volume of data that is pumped into the newsgroups, there is a far better variety of most things (particularly porn related) on the torrent sites and forums now.

[Zortag]

I still post and get most of my stuff from the usenet, for me the web-based stuff is so slow and extremely annoying to use. Depending on which newsgroups one goes to, there can be either a ton of spam or next to nothing; the generic ones get a lot of spam, but the more specialized groups get almost none. Most of the spam seems to get generated because of "automated, activity counters", once a group hits a certain level of activity, the next month it gets a ton of spam, but if the activity drops back down, the spam stops the next month. But there are still plenty of communities out there, they've just spread out to stay below the radar.