OT: but how else can I find out?

[James Silverton]

Hello All!

I know this is OT but there appear to be no recent posts on m.p.
newsgroups other than m.p.outlookexpress.general. Has everyone been
persuaded that the groups don't exist or has MS somehow worked out how
to drop the groups from the 'net?


--


James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

 

[Hoyst Owen Petard]

Has your head been buried in the sand? MS is dropping the NNTP newsgroups.

: Hello All!
:
: I know this is OT but there appear to be no recent posts on m.p.
: newsgroups other than m.p.outlookexpress.general. Has everyone been
: persuaded that the groups don't exist or has MS somehow worked out how
: to drop the groups from the 'net?
:
:
: --
:
:
: James Silverton
: Potomac, Maryland
:
: Email, with obvious alterations:
: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
:

 

[James Silverton]

Hoyst wrote on Tue, 6 Jul 2010 08:28:47 -0500:

Has your head been buried in the sand? MS is dropping the NNTP
newsgroups.

message : Hello All!
:
: I know this is OT but there appear to be no recent posts on
m.p. : newsgroups other than m.p.outlookexpress.general. Has
everyone been : persuaded that the groups don't exist or has
MS somehow worked out how : to drop the groups from the 'net?

Is yours there too? AFAIK, the fact that MS has dropped the groups does
not prevent others from posting to them. I simply wondered if many sheep
believed everything MS said.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

 

[Paul]

Hoyst wrote on Tue, 6 Jul 2010 08:28:47 -0500:



Is yours there too? AFAIK, the fact that MS has dropped the groups does
not prevent others from posting to them. I simply wondered if many sheep
believed everything MS said.

I can see fresh posts on nntp.aioe.org for that
microsoft.public.outlookexpress.general news group.
It seems to be working.

Perhaps the article numbering on your client is screwed
up, with respect to the article numbers on the server ?

That can result in an apparent lack of new posts. The
client doesn't attempt to pull articles, because the
article numbers look too old. Resetting your client,
for that group, can help. In the case of Thunderbird,
this requires some manual fooling around, to fix it,
as using any GUI feature isn't enough.

As for the fate of the 1700 or so Microsoft groups, it is
true that at the current time, many servers still carry them,
articles propagate and it all seems to be working. But behind
the scenes, there is still the possibility that more damage
could be done. The saga of the Microsoft groups versus USENET,
is not settled yet. The group you see today, could disappear
from at least some of the USENET servers, within the next year
or so. Their continued existence isn't a sure thing. For
example, if Microsoft issued a properly digitally signed
"rmgroup", at least one news admin has promised to honor
such an attempt. (Presumably because he knows Microsoft
won't do that.)

This is an example of what goes on behind the scenes.
The OP in this thread, is a proxy for keeping track of
Microsoft groups. He is part of why there is uncertainty.

http://groups.google.ca/group/news....read/thread/f96813d01aa21327/9ede88b8881269ca

Another element in the puzzle, is how Google will respond.
For at least some newsgroups, if the group was "rmgrouped",
they keep the existing message archive, but any new messages
to that group would not be retained. So in terms of your
ability to search for articles, you'd be relying on some
of the other leech sites and the archives they maintain, to
get article archiving for current articles. The difference is,
the more fragmented nature of the archiving that results.
Considering how poor the search results are on Google now
anyway, I suppose this isn't that big a loss.

Paul