Usenet was my first real online community -- it's coming up on twenty-five years (!) since I pushed my first clump of snarky, juvenile flamage out into the aether. I'd like to download copies of my old messages from Google Groups, but they don't make it easy, and worse, a lot of what Google used to have isn't showing up in searches anymore... [more inside]
posted by Lazlo on Jun 30, 2009 - 5 answers

Regarding scrubbed Internet history. Anyone remember a famous-for-the-time poster on the alt.sex newsgroups who called herself Saltgirl? Google doesn't. [more inside]
posted by bgribble on Jun 17, 2009 - 3 answers

I recall reading a thread years ago on alt.astronomy or one of the similar news groups regarding the, "Pail of Air" scenario. The basic idea is, if the sun were to go out tomorrow how long would life on earth survive? The thread had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of posts and lasted for months. Does anyone have a link to a copy of that discussion?
posted by dustsquid on Mar 26, 2009 - 2 answers

Many moons ago, when I was naive and young, I left an embarrassing trail of incriminating Usenet posts. I had Google remove them from their archive but, forward a few years, they're back! How can I get them deleted for good? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Feb 18, 2009 - 15 answers

How much does a spaceship weigh? [more inside]
posted by eurasian on Oct 20, 2008 - 16 answers

Is there a way I can automate downloading TV shows off of usenet? [more inside]
posted by cosmic osmo on Oct 13, 2008 - 9 answers

Google Groups denied two requests to add new subscribers to a listserv. Can I appeal this decision? Or, failing that, is there a way to see the two lists of emails that it denied? [more inside]
posted by Phire on Sep 7, 2008 - 4 answers

Grrrr, Time Warner Cable has unceremoniously removed their stellar USENET access. What do I do now? [more inside]
posted by willie11 on Jun 25, 2008 - 18 answers

Can someone explain Usenet to me? Specifically how to use it and read newsgroups. [more inside]
posted by Funky Claude on Apr 15, 2008 - 18 answers

I created a website that "tracks" Usenet related software. Whenever a new revision is announced, I list it along with a ChangeLog. But I'm having trouble finding the right community to market it to. It seems that most Usenet people tend to keep to themselves. Is this a crazy niche that I should abandon, or does it have real merit? [more inside]
posted by lowfi on Apr 8, 2008 - 8 answers

Besides Google Groups, where else can I find archives of discussions from the early days of the internet? (on any subject)
posted by vizsla on Mar 11, 2008 - 7 answers

Recommend to me a good (and preferably free) NZB download site [more inside]
posted by tundro on Feb 16, 2008 - 7 answers

I wanna download TV to watch on my TV; where do I learn... [more inside]
posted by dpcoffin on Feb 1, 2008 - 16 answers

TV-over-the-internet-filter: What's a good source for finding TV shows online? Specifically, Ninja Warrior (originally titled Sasuke in Japan)? [more inside]
posted by ignignokt on Nov 4, 2007 - 6 answers

What's the best way to find cool stuff on Usenet? [more inside]
posted by matkline on Sep 8, 2007 - 18 answers

Downloading from Usenet: what are the risks? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Apr 28, 2007 - 20 answers

On the Internet, maybe somebody does know you're not a... [more inside]
posted by fuse theorem on Dec 16, 2006 - 10 answers

Best usenet binary newsgroup reader? [more inside]
posted by porpoise on Nov 3, 2006 - 13 answers

I've used Forte Agent (paid) for about 10 years. However, they are now claiming they don't have a record of my most-recent upgrade and some of the tweaks they've made, I'm not cool with. Can anyone recommend a (preferably freeware) newsreader that has the following: Support for multiple servers (where it doesn't seperate each server like Thunderbird does), ease of use (remember, I'm familiar with Agent's interface), and tailored for offline (since I like to just read at leisure). I tried installing 40Tude's Dialog, but it will not run on my system for some reason.
posted by polexxia on Oct 6, 2006 - 14 answers

OK, let's say I'd like to download this thing, but it's a 56 GB thing (well, it's a bunch of things, let's say, for educational purposes only, .par and .rar files). My hard disk is only 30 GB (about 11 GB of currently free space). But: I have a 250GB external drive (firewire) that I sometimes use to store stuff. Can I download the big file (it'll take, I guess, an entire day) straight on the external drive? Or is my Mac (G4) going to blow up for some reason? thanks!!!
posted by PenguinBukkake on Sep 6, 2006 - 23 answers

Any good, free, hopefully easy-to-use tools to join .ts files in OS X? mpgtxwrap does not work for me (10.3.9). Thanks!
posted by PenguinBukkake on Aug 14, 2006 - 1 answer

Usenet question. [more inside]
posted by PenguinBukkake on Jul 25, 2006 - 22 answers

Is there a simple way to have very old Usenet posts authored by you, deleted? [more inside]
posted by pricklypear on Jun 22, 2006 - 11 answers

Who owns the posts to Internet forums? I know someone who produced and acted in a one-woman show in which she "performed" weird stuff she found on Usenet. She claimed this was legal. Was it? [more inside]
posted by grumblebee on Mar 10, 2006 - 13 answers

What's the origin of "oh noes!"? I think I first encountered it at fafblog.
posted by kenko on Jan 20, 2005 - 10 answers

Setting up news with Mozilla Thunderbird. My ISP uses giganews and requires login. How do I get it to work? Works fine with OE. Using Thunderbird RC1. [more inside]
posted by AstroGuy on Dec 6, 2004 - 5 answers

I'm having trouble getting on the Usenet server for Time Warner Cable in NYC... [more inside]
posted by skwm on Dec 2, 2004 - 3 answers

TrollFilter: I recently revisited an alt. newsgroup that I hadn't been using for about a year, only to discover that it has been taken over by this irritating troll character. The troll strikes me as someone who is lonely, paranoid, barely sane, lives in the middle of nowhere with lots of cats, and who obsessively posts to the group, off-topic, angrily and aggressively. Something like 4k posts in the past year.

I'm familiar with the conventional wisdom: get a good newsreader with a killfile, ignore the person, or start a moderated group (too much work) or find another forum, such as a web discussion.

I'm wondering--is there any other way to remove this person and restore what used to be a very useful, informative community, other than the above? And by "remove" I am not speaking euphemistically of "terminating with extreme prejudice."

Have you ever been able to spray for trolls successfully? [more inside]
posted by mecran01 on Nov 15, 2004 - 13 answers

NewsReaders - I'm looking for a good newsreader to download huge multipart binaries from usenet. I've tried Forte Agent and Quadnews, and both choke when downloading massive amounts of headers from my news server {mi} [more inside]
posted by quibx on Oct 27, 2004 - 7 answers

What's a good newsreader for Linux for binaries?
posted by kenko on Jul 10, 2004 - 7 answers

Who is your usenet provider, and do you like them? Retention, uptime, number of groups, logless access... I know that milage varies according to what one is looking for in a news server, but what usenet providers have you had good and bad experiences with? (More) [more inside]
posted by squirrel on Jul 5, 2004 - 18 answers

Does anyone know of a free service like Google News alerts, only for Usenet? Filtering in newsreaders won't do: I need alerts from across all available groups; I can't very well subscribe to 40,000 newsgroups and then filter on the client side. If the results came in RSS form, that would be fine, too. Right now, my best option seems to be to save searches at Google Groups to a browser bookmark group.
posted by Mo Nickels on Jun 3, 2004 - 6 answers

When downloading multi-part binary posts from the VCD/SVCD groups on Usenet, there's always a zillion of them labelled only with gibberish like: "vcd-gnd1.r01" or "ctk-2.part01.rar" I know how to join and decode rar files. I just don't know what the heck's been posted, and don't want to blow 100s of megs of bandwidth to find out. I'm sure these are codes for something. Posting "clans" perhaps? Do I have to lurk on some 12-year old's IRC channel to figure out what these are? [more inside]
posted by scarabic on Apr 28, 2004 - 16 answers