Wow... been away for a while and

Well, I know I will take a lot of heat for this, but I will mention Google Groups, a web-based interface to Usenet.

Also, in the last four years the biggest thing I have noticed is the drastic drop in daily message count :-(

Welcome back!

Try

As you can see, I am posting via Motzarella at the moment.

I just wonder how much of that is lack of interest, how many were driven away by spam and off-topic arguments...and how many we lost to the grim reaper! I'm 40 and sometimes feel like I'm one of the younger posters.

free.teranews.com

Carries both text and binary groups.

I lost access to newsgroups several years ago when my ISP decided it was no longer going to carry them.

I am a long time poster in one specific group and one of the members there kindly offered to set up a private news server for use by group members who had lost access. This has worked very well for me but sometimes the private server goes down (the owner sometimes has to travel abroad on business and cannot be there 24/7 to reboot the system if it goes down as it 'lives' in his spare bedroom) and then I fall back on the server suggested by Enzo.

As he says, it's free, stable and gives me access to all the text groups I want to read and many thousands more! I have no interest in the binary groups so that is no loss to me. You have to register with them first (via the website) and get an email back almost instantly giving you your access name and password. Just set up a new 'news' account with the details and use any newsreader to access the posts as normal (I use Thunderbird but all the others should work just as well).

on 7/29/2008 9:58 AM eyeball said the following:

You could be. I was building balsa wood models of WWII aircraft while they were still flying!

I take my hat off to you, sir. I attempted a balsa model once as a teenager, but it required a much higher level of skill and patience than I had available.

As long as you got the shape right enough that it was identifiable as a specific plane. The plans included templates that had to be cut out to make sure you got the shapes right. I don't remember if there were any decals. They were no more detailed than the replica models the military pilot schools used for recognition, and probably were based on those models.

Do you still have any of the models you built at that time?

"Well, I know I will take a lot of heat for this, but I will mention Google Groups, a web-based interface to Usenet.

It's interesting since the large increase in ads for counterfeir merchandise - many of us have blocked messages from google completely - and it has really worked no more junk messages - I can't say how much other stuff I've blocked - but it sure is better misus Google.

Val Kraut

their colossal arrogance with complaints is stupefying. they got too bid too dumb. apparently a lot of lawsuits are in the works, some from famous people who don't like the libelous websites that goofgle allows. be funny to watch them burn.

oops, that's too big, not bid.

I went off to the Navy and my younger brother destroyed them, including the half dozen Hudson Miniature cars that I had. He told me they burned easily.

Yea well Brian is spamming this group

"> I went off to the Navy and my younger brother destroyed them, including

I guess I'm lucky - I got to destroy my early kits myself - shame they don't sell firecrackers anymore up here.

Val Kraut

oooh that must have hurt! I've given away a few and recycled a bunch but I could never stand to destroy them. Except for the Titanic kit that recreated the fate of the real one...

oooh that must have hurt! I've given away a few and recycled a bunch but I could never stand to destroy them. Except for the Titanic kit that recreated the fate of the real one...

Was kind of standard practice - kits got busted or you got better and weren't happy having it sitting around - so you got a few firecrackers or your BB gun and played war.

Yes, we young'uns may just have to keep the flame burning.

I got tired of reading the right-wing idiots spout their talk-radio propaganda at every person who made an OT post. Dog forbid they actually take their crappola to a POLITICS newsgroup. No, just throw around their repetition of political party daily talking points...

I decide that the web-based fora had more to offer, with much less noise. I read this NG once per month, if then.

E.P.

This young'un is a right winger but not a judgemental idiot. What was that about political crappola?