Re: AT&T Usenet Netnews Service Shutting Down

On Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:54:37 -0700, Joerg <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

krw wrote:
On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:22:20 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
newsmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Please note that on or around July 15, 2009, AT&T will no longer be
offering access to the Usenet Netnews service. If you wish to continue
reading Usenet newsgroups, access is available through third-party
vendors.
Of course, you folks will reduce your monthly service charge, since you are
providing fewer services.

Right?

Don't count on that. Anyhow, I've just signed on with news.individual.de
at Berlin University. 10 Euros a year, no spam-related issues, meaning a
domain that has a low chance of being blocked anywhere.

I've used Individual for five years or so. I've been quite happy with
their service. No binaries though.


Well, since it's been two days I emailed them an hour ago. Lo and behold
I got an instant reply that yes, banks over there do take their time but
they'd hand-switch my account to active. And this was well past 7:00pm
in Berlin. Amazing customer service, much different from Missy Bell.

Yep. I lost my password[*] and ID (d'oh!). I sent an email to their
customer service and had the information in an hour or so. ...on a
weekend.

[*] Dumb random character non-user specified passwords though.

So now I am posting through them.

Binaries, well, they are toast since the overzealous NY AG has de-facto
shot them down. a.b.s.e. would be nice but what's the point if 90+
percent of NG posters don't have access. Even alt.home.automation which
isn't binary but alt.* (and I still have access to it) has dropped
straight to anemic after the NG had his hissy fit.

Toast? They're still around, if you pay for a real NNTP service. That
was just an excuse for the ISPs to shed a cost few customers cared
about.

I wonder if there is a way to have a NG that allows binary attachments
or at least PNG and stuff limited to some small size, like 30k or so.
Probably not because all servers would have to be in sync about that limit.


Now I just have to wait until they have processed my payment which does
not seem to be a next-day event.

Should be the next day. IIRC, the payment get routed through someone
on this side of the pond.


Some banks tend to drag on, maybe they play with the money in that time.
I mean, two days delay divided by 365 times the total transfer volume,
that's quite some dough.

IIRC, it wasn't a bank issue. It was whoever they collect through in
Left Pondia. I don't remember the details. It's been at least five
years.

.

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