Just a reminder for ISP users that may just have found out as many newsgroups and complete Usenet access has either been removed or shut down by some providers -
Newsdemon welcomes the Time Warner, Spring, and Verizon Usenet refugees with open arms! We will give a lifetime 15% discount to all incoming Time Warner, Sprint, and Verizon customers. Simply input the couponcode twarner15 in the ‘coupon code’ box on our join page and you will receive a lifetime 15% discount off all our regularly priced monthly accounts.
According to data from the unmanned Voyager spacecraft that was launched in 1977 that is now studying the edges of the hemisphere, it reveals that the solar system may not be a nice round shape once imagined. Instead, the data reveals that it may be squashed and oblong instead.
While studying the edges of the heliopsphere where it defines a huge magnetic buggle around our solar system which was crated by solar winds as it runs up against the thin gas in interstellar space.
Scientists think this indicates that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the heliosphere, which extends well past the distant orbit of Pluto, is not perfectly round, and the solar system is shaped a bit like an oblong.
“Imagine a balloon is being blown up by the solar wind. You might imagine that if you took a balloon, which is mainly spherical, and pushed it against the wall, it would be blunted on one side,” said Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology, one of the scientists involved in the research.
The findings were published in the journal Nature.
“SOS”, the distress signal that is responsible for saving thousands of lives celebrates it’s 100th birthday today. SOS is most commonly used as the international morse code as a distress sigal which contains three dots three long dashes and then three more three dots.
SOS was first adopted by the German goverment in radio regulations which occured on April 1st, 1905. The standard became worldwide and in the 2nd International Radiogrpahic Convention which became effective officially on July 1st 1908.
In the past century, ‘SOS’ has become a firm part of popular culture used in everything from DIY programme titles to Abba hits, British newspaper ‘The Times’ reported.
But, it may be mentioned here that the call actually became famous when one of the radio operators of the ill-fated Titanic had supposedly said to his colleague: “Send SOS”. The tragedy revealed just how vital a universal system was.
After the collision in April 1912, the ship’s radio operators sent out both the old CQD and the new ‘SOS’ signals, but some ships in the area ignored both, thinking that they were having a party.
The new SOS distress signal was rarely ignored after that. Of course, technology has moved on dramatically since 1908 and only very occasionally are the telltale dots and dashes that have saved countless lives employed today.
Happy Birthday, ‘SOS’, and thanks for saving as many lives.
Here is today’s usenet trivia question:The father of the web, Tim Berners, announced the birth of the World Wide Web project to the Usenet community in what year?
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!
According to NASA scientists, preliminary analysis of the red planet by the Phonex Mars Lander mission, the soil is much more alkaline than expected.
“We basically have found what appears to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life, whether past, present or future,” said Sam Kounaves, the project’s lead chemist, from the University of Arizona.
“It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard - you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well.”
This comes after extensive analysis the Phoenix Mars Lander has made on soil it pockets as it digs through the surface of mars then analyzes the contents by powerful microscopes.
The Arctic location where Phoenix touched down is thought to hold large stores of water-ice just below the surface.
Last week, scientists said they were positive there was ice on the planet after eight dice-sized chunks were seen melting away in a series of photographs.
But Phoenix has so far not detected organic carbon - considered an essential building block of life.
Google just announced its odd Google Media Server, a Windows app that finds photos, music, and video and makes it available to DLNA devices like the PlayStation 3, XBox 360, and most Media Center PCs.
Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV. It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3). At the touch of a button, you can then:* Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC* View Picasa Web Albums* Play your favorite YouTube videos
Here is today’s usenet trivia question:What image format was developed due to the extensive Usenet collaboration?
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!
Who would have thought that back in the 1970s a bunch of geeks from New Mexico would be the tech behemoth that it has become today. Microsoft, as however you think of them, set the standard for operating systems in PCs with Windows and since then, has attempted to infiltrate and conquer everything from browsing to gaming.
Since 1975, Gates has had a hand in everything in the company, whether it be software development or the business cument. When the company went public in 1986, Gates stood as the CEO and chairman before stepping back in 2000 giving the role to Steve Balmer.
In 2006, Microsoft announced that Gates would slowly be transitioned out of his responsibilities as chairman and work more closely to the charities he and his wife Melinda have been part of.
During the late 80s to the late 90s, Outlook Express, a Microsoft creation was one of the top programs in the Usenet community to connect and access newsgroups. Although many other Usenet specific programs have grown to replace it in popularity, it is still one of the most widely used programs to access newsgroups.
What happens to Microsoft after Gates departure is still to be seen. But the impact, regardless of perception, that Bill Gates has made to both Microsoft and consequentially - the world - is undeniable.
7 Censored words that have been and continue to be taboo on broadcast television to this day, that normally wouldn’t even be discussed, was exactly what Carlin focused on for the first time in 1972. Since then, “Seven words” hasn’t only been an all time comedy classic, but gained mass-media attention and even a Supreme Court ruling.
“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” Carlin told The Associated Press earlier this year.
Sadly, Carlin at the age of 71 passed away today due to heart failure.
A great comedic force, his legacy of pushing the envelope uncensoring the censored, made a mark not just in society, but in history.
Speaking of uncensored, Newsdemon offers over 60,000 heavily traveled newsgroups completely uncensored.
Newsdemon welcomes the Time Warner, Spring, and Verizon Usenet refugees with open arms! We will give a lifetime 15% discount to all incoming Time Warner, Sprint, and Verizon customers. Simply input the couponcode twarner15 in the ‘coupon code’ box on our join page and you will receive a lifetime 15% discount off all our regularly priced monthly accounts.
Today’s Question: A bit of a tough one today: The Network News Transfer Protocol allows traffic generated by Usenet to be natively routed over TCP/IP. This was not always the case. What Year was this protocol released?
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.
As you may or may not know, Mozilla releases the official Firefox 3 browser. Firefox has high hopes that its users will surpass the record for the most amount of downloads in one day of all time. Either way, if you didn’t know, now you do. You can download it here:
You thought gas prices were getting high? Denon, a manufacturer of mostly entertainment system devices, have a high end solution to keeping you connected. The AK-DL1 Ethernet Cable is supposedly designed to connect to high end audio equipment. Obviously, using this for your PC would work as well, even though its not mentioned. At $499.99 (yes, almost $500.00 for an ethernet cable), you can test it out yourself to see if there is any difference in what you have to this “high quality insulation, tin-bearing alloy shielding and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability” versus a $10.00 Radio Shack alternative.
Three major internet service providers have all agreed to block customer access to newsgroups, according to the agreement that was announced yesterday by the New York attorney general’s office.
Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to dismantle usenet access to their users, either partially or entirely. Details on what each company will end up censoring in total has still yet to be announced.
Time Warner Cable has been the only company to go on the record currently to state that it will be shutting down ALL Newsgroups it controls on its network. Time Warner Cable has already been in the news recently as it announced a tentative release of a new rate plan which would charge users who went over a set download limit per month.
Sprint and Verizon have yet to state anything other than they would “limit access” to newsgroups on their networks to their customers. Verizon has also been a very big proponent of limiting general download usage of customers, as Sprint has been rumored to be in the works of creating a similar rate plan as Time Warner Cable has announced.
The incentive for these companies appear to be noble on the cover. However, with information regarding concerns on the usage of their networks many are speculating that this is drawn from an agenda to reduce traffic on there networks in order to gain higher returns. One of the top arguments is that the proposed incentive is to shut down thousands of legitimate newsgroups that are irrelevant in this case rather than just a few offending groups that would be questionable.
At Newsdemon, we hold open arms to all the refugees of these networks that are being left out in the cold by these ISPs. As an incentive, we’re offing 15% off all of our monthly rate plans for a limited time only for customersfrom Time Warner, Verizon and Sprint.
Simply use the discount coupon twarner15 on our join page to receive a discount for the life on your account.
Newsdemon welcomes the Time Warner refugees with open arms! We will give a 15% discount to all incoming Time Warner customers. Simply input the couponcode twarner15 in the ‘coupon code’ box on our join page and you will receive a 15% discount off all our regularly priced monthly accounts.
This author remembers spending hours upon hours in science labs memorizing the periodic table of elements. I was browsing through one of the newsgroups the other day and I found a discussion about this chart. Its pretty cool….for science geeks like us.
* 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.
* Improved the error retry facility so that logon errors are retried as well
as download I/O errors.
* Improved the handling of arrow and Home/End keys in the search screens.
* Made a change so that the currently selected message is not changed when a
download of another message finishes.
* The up/down-arrow and page up/down keys can now be used to scroll through
the newsgroup subscription list.
* Fixed a bug that could cause News Rover to crash when pictures were deleted
while viewing them in the Slide Show viewer.
* Fixed a bug related to changing the Encrypted/Non-encrypted status of a
group that had a file attachment larger than 2GB.
* Fixed a bug that could cause News Rover to crash if the “Folders” item on
the menu for the File Attachments section was clicked when there were no
defined filing folders.
* Fixed a bug that could cause News Rover to crash if a file was launched
from the File Attachments section and the file attachments section was closed
and reopened while the file was being launched.
* 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.
* Fixed a bug that could cause News Rover to hang in some conditions if the
up-arrow key was used to try to move above the top item in the message
display list.
* Fixed a bug that caused serious display problems when News Rover was run
with Vista 64 with SP1.
Today’s Question: When was the first transatlantic fiber-optic cable linking North America and Europe completed?
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 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.
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.
According to data from the unmanned Voyager spacecraft that was launched in 1977 that is now studying the edges of the hemisphere, it reveals that the solar system may not be a nice round shape once imagined. Instead, the data reveals that it may be squashed and oblong instead.
“SOS”, the distress signal that is responsible for saving thousands of lives celebrates it’s 100th birthday today. SOS is most commonly used as the international morse code as a distress sigal which contains three dots three long dashes and then three more three dots.
According to NASA scientists, preliminary analysis of the red planet by the Phonex Mars Lander mission, the soil is much more alkaline than expected.
Who would have thought that back in the 1970s a bunch of geeks from New Mexico would be the tech behemoth that it has become today. Microsoft, as however you think of them, set the standard for operating systems in PCs with Windows and since then, has attempted to infiltrate and conquer everything from browsing to gaming.
7 Censored words that have been and continue to be taboo on broadcast television to this day, that normally wouldn’t even be discussed, was exactly what Carlin focused on for the first time in 1972. Since then, “Seven words” hasn’t only been an all time comedy classic, but gained mass-media attention and even a Supreme Court ruling.
As you may or may not know, Mozilla releases the official Firefox 3 browser. Firefox has high hopes that its users will surpass the 
You thought gas prices were getting high? Denon, a manufacturer of mostly entertainment system devices, have a high end solution to keeping you connected. The AK-DL1 Ethernet Cable is supposedly designed to connect to high end audio equipment. Obviously, using this for your PC would work as well, even though its not mentioned. At $499.99 (yes, almost $500.00 for an ethernet cable), you can test it out yourself to see if there is any difference in what you have to this “high quality insulation, tin-bearing alloy shielding and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability” versus a $10.00 Radio Shack alternative.