<fos@sdf.org> wrote:

> you seem to see the diminishment of Usenet services by ISPs as a result
> of a crusade against child porn.

Did you receive the letter that AT&T sent to all its cable customers
when they killed their NNTP servers? I did. I received that letter.

It was bullshit. Pure political bullshit. Stupid people believed it.
Oh, AT&T. They care so much for the kiddies. They're saving them.

They "teamed up" with the NY sleazebag Cuomo trying to make a name for
himself as "a good guy with simple solutions" to very complex problems.

If you ask me why they teamed up with that NY sleazebag Cuomo, I suspect
you already know that answer based on what you wrote below, in fact.

> i think it had far more to do with broadband allowing for increased
> volume of bandwidth thus network, hardware, and administrative costs of
> hosting news servers significantly went up and fast and the child porn
> issue was merely a convenient excuse of ISPs to shut them down and
> save money.

I agree. You could actually tell, in those days, how little they supported
NNTP servers because their instructions came with POP3/IMAP4 setup
instructions, but you had to call and go up a few support levels to get
their NNTP server setups.

I'm not an employee of a cable company but I suspect they inherited the
NNTP setup just as they inherited the POP3/IMAP4 setup, and they weren't
expecting the explosion in NNTP data, particularly I guess in binaries.

I don't actually know much about their business model, but what I did know
at the time was that dropping _all_ of Usenet was too simple of a solution.

>> You don't see that as a phony issue?
>
> No.

Whenever you see a politician (or a company, as in the case of AT&T),
propose a too-simple solution to a rather complex problem, there's a good
chance there's a _lot_ more to the issue than they are pretending it to be.

You can use Prohibition, as one (currently non-contentious) example, but
let's not stray too far into politics since the topic is free news servers.

I can't get Rocksolid to work even though they gave me credentials.
I tried every news server setting proposed so far in this newsgroup.
rocksolidbbs.com:119
rocksolidbbs.com:563
news.novabbs.org:119
news.novabbs.org:563

None work for me.
(login/password supplied by <admin@rocksolidbbs.com> RetroBBS Registration)

Do any of those server:port combinations work at all for you?

On 2023-03-07, badgolferman <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
><fos@sdf.org> wrote:

>> you seem to see the diminishment of Usenet services by ISPs as a result
>> of a crusade against child porn.

> Did you receive the letter that AT&T sent to all its cable customers
> when they killed their NNTP servers? I did. I received that letter.

i never had AT&T internet service, only their phone service. i live in a
rural area and had a regional long distance calling plan. i was able to
call the Buffalo area for the cost of local phone calls. i used it to
dial up BuffNET. unknown to me AT&T moved the boundary of the calling
plan and i got whacked for a HUGE phone bill. in those days Unix shell
accounts with Usenet, email, a tilde website, etc, was standard service.
i left BuffNET and used a local ISP closer to me for dialup due to AT&T.
i got less for my money but it was what it was. they did have Unix shell
accounts and everything that went with it. that was right around the time
BuffNET was getting whacked for the child porn stuff. i was furious with
AT&T for a long time.

then broadband (Roadrunner / Time Warner) came to the area and i dumped
dialup. no shell accounts but at the time they still had Usenet service.
i was downloading binaries from Usenet during those days and started
seeing groups i was downloading from disappearing from the service. i
got a letter or an email from Roadrunner they were stopping Usenet
service but i don't recall them making any excuses. it just was.

i started using DejaNews but quickly discovered that really sucked. i
remember Google buying it then fucking it up completely. i used TerraNews
for a while, it was free, then it started becoming unreliable. after
that i paid for and stuck with commercial services. Altopia. Usenetserver.
Supernews. Giganews. i know Altopia is gone, don't know about the others.
now i'm a paying member of SDF (see my .sig) and use the service
available on it. if that ever goes tits up i'll start paying for a
commercial service again.

> It was bullshit. Pure political bullshit. Stupid people believed it.
> Oh, AT&T. They care so much for the kiddies. They're saving them.

> They "teamed up" with the NY sleazebag Cuomo trying to make a name for
> himself as "a good guy with simple solutions" to very complex problems.

of course they did. that what politicians do, they play politics. in this
case it negatively affected something you and many other people enjoy.

how about one of the latest controversies? these imbeciles are talking
about banning gas stoves because, you know, the children can't breathe.
these morons are reacting to whatever is trending on social media these
days. they are not smart at all and neither are most of their
constituents. they do know how to stir up shit for profit and power.
most aren't qualified for nor do they even care about governing.

>> i think it had far more to do with broadband allowing for increased
>> volume of bandwidth thus network, hardware, and administrative costs of
>> hosting news servers significantly went up and fast and the child porn
>> issue was merely a convenient excuse of ISPs to shut them down and
>> save money.

> I agree. You could actually tell, in those days, how little they supported
> NNTP servers because their instructions came with POP3/IMAP4 setup
> instructions, but you had to call and go up a few support levels to get
> their NNTP server setups.

> I'm not an employee of a cable company but I suspect they inherited the
> NNTP setup just as they inherited the POP3/IMAP4 setup, and they weren't
> expecting the explosion in NNTP data, particularly I guess in binaries.

ISPs are in business to sell service to the masses. even back then more
people knew about Gopher and Archie than knew about Usenet newsgroups.
providing Usenet service which was traditionally once part of an account
with an ISP became unprofitable.

the politics and child porn was a convenient excuse to dump the service
mostly unquestioned.

> I can't get Rocksolid to work even though they gave me credentials.
> I tried every news server setting proposed so far in this newsgroup.
> rocksolidbbs.com:119
> rocksolidbbs.com:563
> news.novabbs.org:119
> news.novabbs.org:563

> None work for me.
> (login/password supplied by <admin@rocksolidbbs.com> RetroBBS Registration)

> Do any of those server:port combinations work at all for you?

i do not have login credentials for Rocksolid. i can however, telnet to
both addresses on port 119 and list newsgroups. so something is amiss
with authentication. what that is, i don't know.

------------------------------
fos@ma:~$ telnet rocksolidbbs.com nntp
Trying 74.207.234.125...
Connected to rocksolidbbs.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 RetroBBS News (Synchronet 3.19c-Linux NNTP Service 1.133)
list
215 list of newsgroups follows
Local.General 180 1 n
Local.RetroBBS_Discussion 12 1 n
DOVE-Net.Advertisements 2323 1252 n
DOVE-Net.Debate 9691 8635 n
DOVE-Net.Entertainment 35055 33951 n
DOVE-Net.Firearms 1028 29 n
DOVE-Net.General 25028 23976 n
DOVE-Net.HAM_Radio 4456 3446 n
DOVE-Net.Hardware_Software_Help 2292 1275 n
DOVE-Net.Hobbies 948 1 n
DOVE-Net.Internet 3529 2491 n
DOVE-Net.Pro-Audio 16750 16543 n
DOVE-Net.Programming 764 1 n
DOVE-Net.Religion 6496 6361 n
DOVE-Net.Sports 504 1 n
DOVE-Net.Synchronet_Announcements 106 1 n
DOVE-Net.Synchronet_Discussion 46770 45689 n
DOVE-Net.Synchronet_Baja 154 1 n
DOVE-Net.Synchronet_Programming 12716 11700 n
DOVE-Net.Synchronet_JavaScript 1438 400 n
DOVE-Net.Unix 902 1 n
rocksolid.shared.announce 308 1 n
rocksolid.test.test 328 1 n
rocksolid.shared.encryption 165 1 n
rocksolid.shared.entertainment 285 1 n
rocksolid.shared.freenet 107 1 n
rocksolid.shared.general 680 1 n
rocksolid.shared.hacking 561 2 n
rocksolid.shared.helpdesk 334 1 n
rocksolid.shared.i2p 629 1 n
rocksolid.shared.linux 307 1 n
rocksolid.shared.news 528 1 n
rocksolid.nodes 487 1 n
rocksolid.nodes.announce 423 1 n
rocksolid.nodes.help 233 1 n
rocksolid.shared.offtopic 629 1 n
rocksolid.programming 357 1 n
rocksolid.shared.rocksolid 43 1 n
rocksolid.shared.security 387 1 n
rocksolid.social 201 1 n
rocksolid.spam 460 1 n
rocksolid.shared.test 4053 1902 n
rocksolid.shared.tor 318 1 n
..
quit
205 closing connection - goodbye!
Connection closed by foreign host.

--
SDF Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf.org

That which does not kill you makes you stranger.
-- Trevor Goodchild - AEon Flux

fos@sdf.org writes:

> now i'm a paying member of SDF

According to your headers, you post from Newshosting.com:

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