alt.binaries.pictures.astro HELP

Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:05:02 -0400, VOR wrote:

Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

Most of the free news servers don't carry binary groups. But you don't
have to pay anything like $25/mo for newsgroups. Forte (the folks who
produced Agent reader) offer excellent newsgroup connectivity for
$2.95/mo, on a fast server that carries every newsgroup, including
binaries. http://www.forteinc.com/apn/

Dumping AT&T is a good way to send a message, but check closely any
other ISPs you consider. Many of them are abandoning Usenet. Earthlink
is pretty good, and still operates a good news server, but I don't know
for how long. This whole stupid child porn thing has got all the ISPs
scrambling to cover their asses.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:36:28 -0600, Chris L Peterson
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 21:05:02 -0400, VOR wrote:

Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

Most of the free news servers don't carry binary groups. But you don't
have to pay anything like $25/mo for newsgroups. Forte (the folks who
produced Agent reader) offer excellent newsgroup connectivity for
$2.95/mo, on a fast server that carries every newsgroup, including
binaries. http://www.forteinc.com/apn/

Dumping AT&T is a good way to send a message, but check closely any
other ISPs you consider. Many of them are abandoning Usenet. Earthlink
is pretty good, and still operates a good news server, but I don't know
for how long. This whole stupid child porn thing has got all the ISPs
scrambling to cover their asses.
_______________________________________________ __

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Will check them out. Thanks much, Chris and clear skies.

In article ,
VOR wrote:

Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

I've been in the same boat since April; my ISP is Telus. At least one of
the big outfits is dropping Usenet altogether.

One alternative: There's a site that captures, in web-forum format,
postings made to abpa among other NGs related to astronomy & space:

http://www.spacebanter.com/forumdisplay.php?f=25

Another alternative: You can get a free[1] NNTP account with Teranews
that will be more than adequate for the amount of traffic on abpa: IIRC
the download limit is something like 50 MB/day. The only drawback IME --
a minor one in this case because there's so little spam and trollery
there -- is that they don't let you filter on headers[2]. OTOH their
retention time is at least triple what Telus's was.

http://www.teranews.com/

There are several other news services from which you can get enough
bandwith to read abpa (and doubtless several more groups) for under $10
a month. Unless you download movies and the like, requiring many
GB/month, or perhaps want access to postings made up to six months ago,
I expect most subscriptions costing more than that would be overkill for
your purpose.



1. "Free" meaning without ongoing costs; there's a $3.95 registration
fee.

2. Unless there's some kind of incompatibility with my newsreader. Or
perhaps it's some of the specific headers my system checks; I have
filters for headers other than the basic From and Subject. At any rate,
I have to turn off my filters in order to download message headers from
Tnews.

--
Odysseus

1. "Free" meaning without ongoing costs; there's a $3.95 registration
fee.

2. Unless there's some kind of incompatibility with my newsreader. Or
perhaps it's some of the specific headers my system checks; I have
filters for headers other than the basic From and Subject. At any rate,
I have to turn off my filters in order to download message headers from
Tnews.

Thanks. Will also look into that one.

"VOR" wrote:
Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

I know of a free, limited download service (50MB/day). It has it's problems,
like posts that never appear, but it does carry binaries (or at least it did
several hours ago).

Of course if I told you about it, I'd have to kill you. ;-)

/spoon feed on
Try googling "free news server".
/spoon feed off

-Steve Paul

On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:30:26 -0400, "Spanky"
wrote:


"VOR" wrote:
Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.

I know of a free, limited download service (50MB/day). It has it's problems,
like posts that never appear, but it does carry binaries (or at least it did
several hours ago).

Of course if I told you about it, I'd have to kill you. ;-)

/spoon feed on
Try googling "free news server".
/spoon feed off

-Steve Paul

Thanks Steve. You're a gentleman.

VOR wrote:
Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is

TimeWarner Cable removed all usenet feeds - talk about overkill.

"VOR" wrote in message
...
Help!! My ISP, AKA the assholes at AT&T, have removed ALL binary
newsgroups because they're supposedly trying to combat child porn. Is
there a way to continue to see the pictures in
alt.binaries.pictures.astro without going to a pay service? My other
options of course are to dump AT&T (seriously considering) or sign up
for Giganews for an additional $25/month.


As a long-time poster of images in a.b.p.a I'm pretty convinced that it's
time to move on and find another forum (other than a club or personal
website) to post my astro images. Anyone have any ideas?

George N

"George Normandin" wrote:

As a long-time poster of images in a.b.p.a I'm pretty convinced that it's
time to move on and find another forum (other than a club or personal
website) to post my astro images.

Not sure why you think that George. I've been out of the imaging gig for a
while, and probably will remain so for years to come, but I still lurk in
a.b.p.a and enjoy seeing the work being done not only by the regulars, but
those budding imagers who stumble in with their pride at having successfully
created even the most humble of images.

I'll never forget my first image of the moon with a webcam held up to the
eyepiece of a 4" Mak. Nor will I ever forget that first image of The Ring,
and years later M51, both with the MX5-C and the Ultima 8-PEC, or M42 with a
DSLR and a 200F5 Newt on a Vixen GP... ah heck, I enjoyed all of it,
immensely. M27 with a C102ED, The Helix, M3, M13, M8, M17.... different
scopes, ED80, C9.25, C11, StarHOC 8, various mounts, all with pretty humble
consumer level cameras.

Looking forward to doing more of that when I retire, with better gear,
permanently setup in a shelter of some sort.

-Steve Paul
Lurking, poking with a stick now and then, and never far from saa and abpa.
It's in my blood.