- You've heard about them. The free
newsgroup servers. They do exist. But they probably
don't have what you want.
- Who has them - Free newsgroup servers
(supporting NNTP newsreaders like FreeAgent) typically fall into
one of three categories:
- Someone left the barn door open.
In this case, someone has set up a Usenet NNTP server, is
getting feeds of articles from a peer or two, but has forgotten
to put a password on the server. So anyone who finds the
address can just connect and download articles. While this
does happen from time to time, it's pretty rare these
days. Anyone with a fat enough pipe and enough disk space
to host a newsgroup server of any size also has some decent
knowledge about what they're doing, and leaving the barn door
open is a mistake they are unlikely to make. Further, as
soon as an address is found and people start to connect, the
host's bandwidth gets so overwhelmed that they fix their mistake
pretty darned quickly. Anyone who isn't overwhelmed in a
few hours probably doesn't have any newsgroups of interest (i.e.
binary newsgroups). Further, there is some question
regarding the legality of connecting to a newsgroup server
without their permission and taking advantage of their
mistake. Typically it's easier for the host to just close
the door and forget about those who sucked up their bandwidth
for a while, but it is not inconceivable that a law firm
somewhere would be willing to take on a damages case against an
uninvited reader. In a nutshell, open barn doors are rare,
don't last long, and typically don't have any interesting
groups.
Face it, if you want the good stuff, you're gonna end up paying
for it. Still, a good usenet service is much cheaper than
a web site subscription and looks better on the credit card
bill.
- Humanitarian causes. These
servers are often hosted by universities or other not-for-profit
organizations that want to foster free speech. That's what
newsgroups were about in the first place, and these
organizations aspire to continue that history.
However, free speech is about text messages here, not
binaries. You are very unlikely to find
alt.binaries.nude.spongebob on one of these servers.
- Corporate servers. Many of the
larger computer software and services companies run usenet
servers dedicated to the newsgroups about their products.
There are hundreds of public newsgroups dedicated to products
from Borland, Microsoft, IBM, and HP. These newsgroups are
typically available on all the ISP Usenet servers, but it is not
uncommon for the corporation that makes the product to also host
a free usenet server that carries just the newsgroups about its
products. Why would Microsoft host a bunch of
servers about its own products when most ISP's already host them
too? Because this allows them to archive activity much
longer, years for some group. A newsgroup discussion group
is also a great self-help product support vehicle for many
companies. Also, because many of their clients (other companies) give
their employees access to the Internet from work, but do not
supply a newsgroup server for them. This allows the
employees in IT at XYZ Manufacturing to read the
microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp newsgroup at work by
connecting to an open server at Microsoft.
- Web-Based free services. We
haven't found any free web-based usenet services that offer
binaries. But for text we have a new favorite: Mailgate.
It has about 3 months of message retention, and while it doesn't
include any of the alt.* groups, it's much easier to read than Google
Newsgroups. The Google database is actually a continuation
of the old DejaNews service, and goes back nearly 20 years.
The only thing we don't like about Google is that it's hard to just
browse a newsgroup - everything is search oriented, not browse
oriented.
- If you are still intent on trying to find and
use a free newsgroup server, the following is a list of web pages
that collect information about open servers. Note, these sites
come and go, as they must be updated almost daily when open servers are
re-passworded. If you find any of these links to be dead, or wish
to suggest an addition, please write to us here.
|
|
