We are still beta testing our new ssl function from our European server farm. We would like to get a few dozen MORE European customers who are already subscribed to one of our “Premium Plans with 20 SSL Encrypted Connections”. If you are interested, please email us with your memberid and we will add you to the list. Please keep in mind this is a beta test. Your normal servers will remain active during your testing process.
The average usenet newsgroups feed for April 2008 was 3.7TB. This is down slightly from 3.8TB in March 2008. As we approach warmer weather in the Northern Hemisphere our feed size often decreases slightly as more people are undoubtedly preoccupied with outdoor activities.
You can check our monthly feed size numbers on the Newsgroups Feed Size page.
Today’s Question: In 1993, the NSFnet Acceptable Use Policy was “reinterpreted”. Why?
The FIRST person to reply to the following email address with the correct answer PLUS their Name, City, State, and Country will be declared the winner. The winner will receive a free month of Newsdemon.com Usenet Access! Only the FIRST CORRECT email we receive at trivia@newsdemon.com with the user’s real information will be considered. We will announce the winner within 24 hours of posting the Trivia Question. If you submit an answer and do not hear back from us, then you are not the winner. We will post the winners first name, last initial, city, and country on the blog IN THE COMMENTS section of this post after we have emailed the winner.
We donate a portion of our profits to local charities. We have never publicized this fact. We do it because we want to, not because we want the publicity. However, recently we stumbled upon someone who could really use some help and we want our readers to know about this young man. Through various contacts with this young man we have been overwhelmed with his intelligence and charisma. We don’t really want to go into detail about any of his medical conditions or his situation, all we can say is that we really encourage you to visit his site.
Nwmedeosn npwsruoges is a pierumm uneest pirdoevr splnuipyg hgih seepd ascces to ididivnual uress.Noeedsmwn aonccuts hvae up to 110 dyas of brniay reitotenn and hvae 256 Bit SSL cipbliaaty wtih up to tenwty sumaueitnols cinnoceotns.Acconut pcegkaas rngae form ten gigaeybts per motnh all the way up to umleitnid gayetibgs per mnoth.Ptsnoig access is fere and deos not cnuot in yuor altotled bddianwth acanowlle.Hraeeds are aslo fere and do not count torwdas yuor moltnhy amnleoltt.Wtih srveer frmas in the Unietd Stteas and Erpuoe, Nesdowemn can prdoive a hgih seepd scrieve to ceuomrsts in any prat of the wlrod.Bsceuae of the wlwdriode acidunee Nemsodwen reecievs, pmneyat oopnits are aabvlliae thgruoh taiodtrianl U.S. diebt and cidret cadrs, Papyal, and Eupearon dbeit and cdeirt cadrs can be psereoscd tghoruh Wlrpaody.
We thought we would have a little fun today. We stumbled upon a study at Cambridge that found “It doesn’t matter in what order the letters in the middle of a word are. All that matters is that the first and last letter be in the correct place. The rest can be totally randomized and you can still read it without problem”. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. We have found that some words are easier to recognize than others, mostly because we use them in everyday language more often. Traditional, options, through, and allotment were a few of the words in the paragraph above that stumped our staff originally. Newsgroups
We are in the process of beta testing our new ssl function from our European server farm. We would like to get a few dozen European customers who are already subscribed to one of our “Premium Plans with 20 SSL Encrypted Connections”. If you are interested, please email us with your memberid and we will add you to the list. Please keep in mind this is a beta test, and we are only accepting a few dozen testers.
We want everyone to know we are really excited about the trivia contest. We received over 25 correct answers for the trivia contest from April 26th. We decided to create a free one month account for every correct answer we received! If you didn’t answer, you missed out! We may do this again in the future so keep trying even if you do not win the first or second time you enter.
Just a reminder, we will now be posting the winners in the comments section of the blog post for each question.
The Usenet Newsgroups Trivia contest appears to be a success. We have received over twenty correct answers for each of the first two questions. We are sure once the idea catches on, we will probably get even more people interested in joining the game and we will begin asking more difficult questions. The competitive aspect of the game will likely increase as people try to guess what time of day we will be posting the questions, so they can be the first to answer. We will try hard to accomodate all our global customers, not just posting questions during times where certain time zones have an advantage. We don’t want you losing sleep over this!
With that said, we would like to point out that we have been putting in a lot of hard work to generate useful Usenet and Newsgroups related content on the site. If you haven’t already been there, we recommend you try out our “What is Usenet” page. There are lots of helpful pages of information regarding the usenet, newsgroups, and how it all got started. We also try to answer some of the common questions our support department receives regarding “Usenet Rules”, etiquette, and just a general overview of how NNTP works. Many of our usenet trivia answers can be found in these pages. We have a whole section of our staff dedicated to creating these pages, so check back on these frequently, we are adding new pages every day. If you think we have left something out, or you disagree with our take on a certain process or term, please do not hesitate to inform us. We are not perfect, but we are trying! Oh wait! We ARE the perfect Usenet and Newsgroups Provider! (gotta keep the bosses happy!) :)
We have decided to offer a regular “Free Usenet Trivia Contest”. We will be asking a single trivia question regarding something “usenet related”. The FIRST person to reply to the following email address with the correct answer PLUS their Name, City, State, and Country will be declared the winner. The winner will receive a free month of Newsdemon.com Usenet Access! Only the FIRST CORRECT email we receive at trivia@newsdemon.com with the user’s real information will be considered. We will announce the winner within 24 hours of posting the Trivia Question. If you submit an answer and do not hear back from us, then you are not the winner. We will post the winners first name, last initial, city, and country on the blog after we have emailed the winner. If you are not the winner, check back tomorrow, we may post another Usenet Trivia question tomorrow!
Today’s question: On what date did America Online (AOL) discontinue providing free newsgroup access through its service
Just a quick note, the usenet feed size, or the amount of data posted into Newsdemon.com usenet newsgroups, for the month of March was roughly 3.8 TB per day. We will try to post a monthly note regarding the feed size.
This number is up from a little over 3 TB per day a year ago, and 2 TB per day in 2005.
Thats right. We know the economic times have tightened. Thats why we have decided to offer creative ways for our customers to get free usenet access. We have created three easy ways you can get a free month of Newsdemon Premium Newsgroups Service. All it will take is a little of your time and your creative energy!
The Latest revisions of Version 13.2 address the following:
Improved the error retry facility so that logon errors are retried as well as download I/O errors. There is a new parameter on the Configure/Advanced screen that specifies the number of times to retry errors.
Changed the Configure/Server screen so that it is now possible to have two entries for the same news server. You can specify a server nickname to cause the two entries to have different display names.
Fixed a problem that could cause News Rover to crash if the Delete key was held down to delete many messages while other messages were being downloaded by the same group.
Fixed a problem that could cause News Rover to crash if the message list was refreshed while performing a Save-As or Move-To operation.
When event logging is turned on, News Rover now presents a screen with a button that can be clicked to copy the event log file specification into the clipboard.
Removed the option from subscribed newsgroups and Autoscan to not combine parts of multipart messages.
Just a reminder, Newsdemon provides a FREE registered copy of Newsrover with ALL Newsdemon Newsgroups subscription plans!
Hi,
I’ve finally managed to get a convenient connection to the Internet. I
opened an account at the Santa Fe Institute earlier in the year, but it was
slow and complicated using it from London so I gave up on it.
I know there is a ton of accumulated mail on my Santa Fe account, which I
will try and get to. I’ll try and post news here from time to time if it
seems like it might interest people - for instance, it looks as if the HHGG
movie is finally coming after the shelf after 10 years.
I’m going to be doing a book signing tour in November, and I’ve posted a
current provisional list of where I’m going.
Best,
Douglas Adams
London, UK
Too bad Newsdemon was not around at the time to help. Come back, Mr. Adams!
Speaking of spam, Robert Soloway, the man authorities had dubbed “the king of spam” is facing a possible 26 year jail sentence after pleading guilty to charges of fraud and tax evasion. Apparently, Soloway raked in more than $300,000 from his spam operations in 2005 and failed to file either a state or federal tax return in his home state of Washington.
Soloway is accused of using a database of 157 Million email addresses to send out spam e-mails using a botnet. The prosecution is also seeking more than $700,000 in damages.
March 31st is the 15 year anniversary of the first “SPAM” message. The USENET can take credit for being the first online medium to experience the phenomenon so many of us now hate. Supposedly, in 1993, Joel Furr, a USENET administrator coined the term “spam” when he discovered that a piece or experimental software had released dozens of recursive messages onto the popular news.admin.policy newsgroup.
The term was supposedly inspired by this 1970 Monty Python sketch:
Yeah, we know we are about a decade behind the rest of the world when it comes to generating a blog, but after many requests from customers, we have decided to add a blog.
We will use this blog to discuss happenings at Newsdemon, the world of the usenet, and whatever else seems relevant.