There’s a program out there that’ll do a sort of brute force search for free newsfeeds, but I cannot remember the name of it. Of course, many of the news servers you wind up connecting to don’t the specific newsgroup you might be looking for, but eventually with a little effort you can find just about anything (when I used it I wasn’t looking for anything illegal or immoral, IIRC, so YMMV ). Also, here’s a page that might be of interest:
I personally will buy anyone a round of beer at the next Dopefest we’re both at if they take a bet with me that handy will not return to this thread to answer the inquiries of SterlingNorth and David B (see here for why I believe this).
Montfort hasn’t the courage to confront me face-to-face so he enjoys his little behind-the-back, back-stabbing-cowardly approach to handling misunderstandings. However, I appreciate the honor of people who confront me face-to-face.
SterlingNorth: To see those FREE public newservers, select PREFERENCES, NEWSGROUP SERVERS & there they are!
As For Internet Explorer, Ill get back to you on that; but it’s pretty simple.
Then from Internet Explorer: TOOLS:MAIL&NEWS:READ NEWS
(Be sure to Configure first to use whatever newsreader you choose from from step 1 & input a Public newserver, below)
How is offering an invitation to a separate thread considered “behind-the-back, back-stabbing-cowardly”? If a separate thread isn’t considered face-to-face, what is?
Okay, I’m done in this thread. Sorry to hijack it, folks. handy, if you wish to reply to me, do it in an appropriate place, I have no further interest in this thread.
Just because they are public newsservers doesn’t mean they carry anything you are interested in. I looked at that list and tried a few, but they didn’t have any normal newsgroups at all. Not alt or rec heirarchy, etc…
I went to test http://www.mailandnews.com free News readers over on m.f.sd (It’s OK, a bit cumbersome and slow, but you get what you pay for.) Nut I noticed that the service is run by Supernews – of all people.
So…where’s this IE newsserver (ie, newsfeed) you were talking about…? You’ve just given pretty good instructions on how to use IE to open your newsreader, but you were supposed to be telling us about the newsservers that Microsoft and Netscape supposedly provide.
You’re not going to give Oprah a run for her money with instructions like that. Even after deciphering that little criptic koan, and after opening the Preferences dialog from the Edit menu, and going to *Mail and Newsgroup category, I see absolutely no free newsgroup servers.
handy, what special, magical version of Netscape, with all of these free newsgroups are you using. I know Netscapes 4.71 or 6.01 doesn’t have these.
In fact I decided to do some freelance investigation in Netscape 6, just in case the magical incantation is hidden away from the user.
I loaded up Netscape Messanger (the email and news reader.)
From the Edit menu I jumped to Mail/News Account Settings. Nothing about free news servers in there! I clicked on New Account. I picked Newsgroup Account.
Now boys and girls, here’s the kicker.
It did not give me a list of free public servers, nor even a list of private servers. No sir, all it did was (and pay very close attention, folks) ask me for the name of a server provided by my ISP!
So handy tell me, what did I do wrong?
And before you answer, let me quote an actual Netscape 6 dialog box for you…
). Also, here’s a page that might be of interest: