We have currently filled all our beta testing spots.  We will likely reopen the beta testing next week.  Check back for an update.

We need more beta testers!

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.

To add your name to the list, email us at:  betatest@newsdemon.com

Today’s Question:  In 1969, ARPANET was commissioned by the DoD.  Nodes were setup at four locations.  Name the four locations.

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.

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

Today’s Question:  What does the NNTP reply code 250 mean?

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.

Today’s question:  The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson’s Model 33 Teletype for its “at” meaning.   What year did this happen?

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 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.

To add your name to the list, email us at:  betatest@newsdemon.com

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.

We have a winner!

 H.G from London, England won today’s question with the following answer:  humanities.*, comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.*

H.G. will receive a free month of Newsdemon Newsgroups Service!

Here is today’s usenet trivia question:  Name the Big 8 hierarchies

 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.

Here is today’s question:  The oldest known Usenet article found in the Archive records in the Groups of Google is from what date?

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.

Today’s Trivia Question:  What was the RFC (Request For Comments) Number for the original Usenet Standard?

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.

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!)  :)

Today’s trivia question:  What does it mean if your newsreader returns a status code of 440?

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.

We have a winner!

Juan N. from Madrid, Spain was the first to submit that Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis were given credit for conceiving the Usenet at Duke University in 1979. Juan will receive a free month of Newsgroups access from Newsdemon.com!